The Delicious De Campos

She pulled out of his grip. “Riccardo—”

He slid a hand into her hair and brought her back. “You went there, Lilly. And so did I.”

“No, I—”

He smothered her reply with a kiss Lilly felt down to her toes, deep and sensuous. He didn’t bother with the preliminaries. He simply took—kissing her exactly the way he knew she liked it, using every weapon at his disposal. Lilly curled her fingers into his shirt, intending to push him away, but she didn’t quite seem to be able to do it.

He pulled her closer, anchored her against him. “Ric—” she murmured as he changed angles and came back to her.

“Shut up, Lilly,” he commanded, sliding his fingers up her bare arms and closing his mouth over hers.

This time his kiss was softer, more persuasive than controlling, pleasurable rather than punishing. And something fell apart inside her. It had been too long since he’d kissed her like this, too long since she’d been in his arms, and God help her...of all the things they had not been good at, it hadn’t been this.

“Dammit.” She grabbed a handful of shirt to steady herself. “This is not fair.”

He slid a hand down over the curve of her hip and brought her body into full contact with his. The feel of his hard body against her made her shiver, remembering everything.

“Nothing was ever fair between us. It was like a wild rollercoaster ride we couldn’t get enough of.”

He shifted her between the hard muscles of his thighs and brought his mouth down on hers again with a look of pure intent. His rigid, pulsing arousal pressed against her, making Lilly ache all over.

No, an inner voice warned. But all that came out was a groan.

He dragged her even closer, a satisfied growl escaping his throat. “Open your mouth, Lil.”

Caught up in the pure, hot sexual power he had over her, she obeyed. She didn’t think about the one hundred and fifty people downstairs, or even what a huge mistake this was. She just wanted this kiss, this magic, the hot intimacy of his tongue tangling with hers.

Oh. She melted into him as her knees threatened to give way. It was like someone offering an alcoholic a double shot after months of abstinence. Pure hedonism. And she wrapped herself in it.

A flash of light exploded around them. She stumbled backward, disoriented, blinking into the bright light that kept coming and coming.

Riccardo cursed and pulled her away from the railing. “Dio. How did they get here?”

“A photographer?” Lilly asked dazedly.

He nodded.

She touched her fingers to her mouth, still burning from his kiss. Riccardo had security everywhere. It didn’t make sense that a photographer would be able to get up here. “You planned that,” she said flatly. “You set that up for your father’s benefit.”

“I set this party up for my father’s benefit,” he agreed darkly. “For the board’s benefit. Not that photo.”

She pressed her palms to her temples. She didn’t want to be back here. She couldn’t go on walking around like a half-alive person, going through the motions but never really feeling anything. She needed this divorce.

His face tightened. “What? Afraid the good doctor won’t understand a six-month hiatus?”

She shook her head. “The answer is no. No, no and no.”

He straighened his shirt and raked a hand through his hair. “We’ll make the announcement at ten.”

She turned her back on him and started for the door.

“I’ll give you the house.”

She stopped in her tracks.

“You’ve never wanted anything from me, but I know you love this house. I’ll sign it over to you at the end of the six months.”

Lilly opened her mouth to tell him where he could put his offer, but the words died in her mouth. The house would pay for Lisbeth’s treatment. Fifty times over.

“Tempting, isn’t it? Your dream house...without me in it?”

She counted to five before she turned around. As if any amount of money would be enough to convince her that revisitng their ruin of a marriage was worth it.

But she was desperate. And she didn’t have the luxury of time.

She lifted her gaze to his. “I will think about it.”

“Ten o’clock, Lilly.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Think of yourself as Cinderella, only your deadline isn’t midnight—it’s ten. And I’m the devil you know.”

CHAPTER TWO

LILLY SPENT THE intervening hours coming up with a million different reasons why she would be crazy to agree to Riccardo’s proposal. He was once again using her in his single-minded pursuit of the De Campo CEO job. He didn’t really want her—he wanted Lilly De Campo the figurehead, his perfect society wife who could smile and say intelligent things to the very intelligent people they met. And, dammit, her life was finally back on track! She had built up her practice, she had started to do the things she loved again, and she had a life.

Whether or not she was just going through the motions was irrelevant. She had been moving on.

Until that kiss tonight.

She touched her fingers to her mouth and tightness seized her chest. How could she kiss Riccardo like that when the same from Harry inspired only lukewarm affection?

“Which do you prefer, Lilly? Snakeskin or alligator?”

She gave the trendy young shoe designer who had cornered her and Alex a blank look. “Sorry?”

“I was asking if you prefer snakeskin or alligator... If I’d known you were doing this tonight I would have begged you to wear my shoes.”

If she’d known she was doing this tonight she would be halfway across the Atlantic!

“Snakeskin, definitely,” she murmured.

The other woman nodded and continued her relentless discussion of fashion.

She would be crazy to go back to Riccardo. But what choice did she have? The idea that the bank would lend her the money—more than she’d make in ten years of work—was laughable. Even in installments. Her parents were barely getting by on the farm, and although Alex had a great job with one of the city’s top PR firms they would never, collectively, be able to scrape up that kind of money.

She had the power to help Lisbeth. Her stomach seemed to go into freefall at the thought of what that might entail. The question was, could she?

Alex gave her an I need to talk to you look and politely whisked her away from the designer. “People keep stealing you away,” she hissed, dragging Lilly toward the windows. “What did he say to you?”

Lilly stared at her sister’s flashing blue gaze—the only thing that differentiated them as twins. Her eyes were a mirror image of their sister Lisbeth’s. And suddenly her guilt for never having been there for her younger sister made her next move crystal-clear.

She forced herself to smile. Riccardo had made it clear no one was to know about their deal. Not even family. There was too much of a chance for someone to say the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. The press would blow it wide open.

“We had a really good talk, Alex. I—”

The music stopped. She spun around to find Riccardo standing at the front of the room, his gaze trained on her. She swallowed hard as he nodded for her to join him.

Judgement time.

She steeled herself and raised a trembling hand to push her hair out of her face. “I’ll explain afterward,” she whispered to her sister. Then she walked to Riccardo’s side.

Her presence there said everything.

A satisfied gleam lit her husband’s eyes. He raised a hand to quiet the room. The elegantly dressed crowd fell silent as every eye moved to them and hushed anticipation blanketed the air. The first marriage in the history of the De Campo family to disintegrate. A golden couple at that.

She was distracted by a waitress, who presented a bottle for Riccardo’s inspection. “The 1972 Chianti.”

A 1972 Chianti? The same wine as on their wedding? Her gaze flew to her husband’s, which was impaling hers with a burning darkness that seared her soul. He was really doing this to her?

What kind of a game was he playing?

The waitress passed each of them a glass of the ruby-red wine. Its deep, rich color was hypnotizing, reminding Lilly of the emotional blood the two of them had spilled. Her hands shook so much around the crystal she was terrified the wine was going to end up down the front of her dress.

Riccardo turned to face their guests, with a controlled, purposeful ease to his movements. “Lilly and I would like to thank you all for coming. You are our closest family, friends and acquaintances and we wanted you to be the first to share in our news.”

He paused. The room grew so silent you could have heard a pin drop. Lilly’s fingers tightened around the glass, her heart pounding in tandem with her head.

“Sometimes it takes a momentous occasion to bring true feelings to the surface.” Riccardo returned his gaze to her face. “For Lilly and I, it took contemplating divorce to realize how much in love we still are.”

A gasp rang out. Alex gaped at her from the front row, where she stood with Gabe.

Riccardo cast his gaze over the crowd. “Lilly and I are reconciling.”

A shocked buzz filled the room—the sound of a hundred conversations starting at once. Flashbulbs exploded in her face. Hearing the words spoken out loud made her knees go weak. But she kept her gaze trained on her husband’s and forced what might have passed for a smile to her lips.

Now her acting role began.

Riccardo tilted his glass toward her. “To new beginnings.”

Lilly lifted the glass to her mouth and drank. Her lashes fluttered down over her cheeks as the heady, intoxicating flavor of the Chianti transported her back to the day when her life had seemed poised at the beginning of a rainbow that stretched forever.

The day she had married Riccardo.

And at that moment she knew her mistake for what it was. She had never been, and never would be, in control of her feelings for her husband. Six months wasn’t just going to be self-destructive. There was going to be collateral damage.

* * *

Riccardo poured himself a two-finger measure of Scotch and sank down in the chair by the window, his gaze on his wife, who lay sleeping in their bed. She had swayed on her feet after the toast, her hands moving to her head in a warning sign that one of those migraines that had always terrified him was about to take her out. He was fairly sure she would have hit the deck had he not slid a subtle arm around her waist and hustled her from the room.

He had left Gabe in charge of winding up the evening and, although Alex had flatly refused to leave her sister, had overridden her and sent her home with his brother. There was still some of Lilly’s migraine medication in their medicine cabinet and the key to these attacks, he knew, was to get it into her as soon as possible and put her to bed. Which he’d done—right after she’d been violently ill in their bathroom.

He took a sip of the smoky single malt blend and moved his gaze over her face. It was ghostly white and pinched even in sleep, and for a moment guilt rose up in him. He had dangled the one thing she loved more than anything else in front of her when he knew she wanted nothing to do with him. But then again, he thought, his lips twisting, she hadn’t given him any warning when she’d walked out on him. When she’d called it quits on their marriage and left without even having the guts to face him.

A fury long dormant raged to life inside him, pulsing like an untamed beast. Who did that? Who took a perfectly good marriage with a few of the usual speed bumps and just quit? Who thought so little of what she had that it was easier to turn into an ice queen and refuse him than to talk it out?

The woman who’d turned into a stranger before his very eyes. The woman who’d taken a lover—a world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon so highly decorated for his work that he made Riccardo look like the most heartless of corporate raiders. That was who.

His fingers tightened around the glass, drawing his gaze to the fiery amber liquid. No, he wouldn’t feel any regret. His wife might have looked at him with those accusing, pain-soaked cat’s eyes of hers and begged him to let her go home. But he was through giving her time and space to come to her senses. She was back in his bed, where she belonged, and she was staying there.

Not for six months.

For good.

He lifted the glass to his lips and let the Scotch burn a path down his throat. It had been that conversation he’d overheard that had set him off. Not his father’s bullish suggestion that he repair his marriage in order to present the kind of image the De Campo board was looking for in a CEO.

The trash-talking locker room chatter he’d heard on his way out of the gym after a squash game with Gabe had amused him at first. There were things guys said in a locker room that were never repeated outside of them. He had smiled, remembering the crude conversations he and his fellow drivers had had after their races, when all the tension was gone, and then started packing up his stuff. But the conversation had turned to injuries and rehabilitation and he’d heard Lilly’s name.

He’d pulled the zipper shut on his bag and had frozen in place as the three men he’d figured must be professional athletes from their height and brawn, went on.

“She’s the best there is,” one of them had said. “Fixed my bum leg in a month.”

“Seriously hot,” added one of the others. “I bet you’d like to have more than her hands on you.”

He’d been halfway across the room before Gabe had intercepted him and shoved him bodily out the door.

“Not worth it,” his brother had muttered. “She’s your estranged wife, remember?”

But it had been too much. Troppo. It was time Lilly remembered who she was. Who she belonged to.

He skimmed his gaze over her still form. If anything, she had grown more beautiful since that day he’d bumped into her in that SoHo bar. She’d reminded him of a young colt, tripping over those long legs of hers, over him, as he’d stopped to put his wallet back in his pocket. She’d apologized, biting her lip in that trademark gesture of hers, and everything about her—her beautiful shoulder-length glossy brown hair, her big hazel eyes and her air of extreme innocence—had knocked him sideways. He wasn’t used to women without artifice. And it had made him want to possess her like no other.

He hadn’t let her leave the bar until he’d had her reluctantly given number. Then he’d pursued her, called her every day for a week, until she’d agreed to go out with him.

Finding out she was a virgin had been the end for him. He’d put a ring on her finger the week after.

She shifted restlessly onto her back and rubbed her hand against her face. Her vulnerability hit him like a punch to the chest. Lilly was different from any other woman he’d met. She hadn’t been attracted to his power or money. In fact it had made her distinctly uncomfortable, given her poor upbringing. But he’d pushed his agenda through anyway, like the big, forceful bull of a man he was. Because that was what a De Campo did. Took what he wanted. Success at all costs.

* * *

Lilly fought her way out of the drug-induced fog that held her under, reaching desperately for the glass of water she kept on the nightstand. But her hand grasped only air, and this didn’t feel like her bed. It felt bigger, softer, familiar and yet...

It was her old bed.

She bolted upright.

“Here—drink,” a husky, fatigue-deepened male voice urged, pressing a glass to her lips.

A strong arm slid around her waist. She blinked and opened her eyes and stared straight into the worried dark-as-night gaze of her husband.

Oh, God. She was in bed with Riccardo.

She pushed the glass away and pulled, panicked, at the sheets.

“Lilly.” He placed firm hands on her shoulders and held her down. “Drink for God’s sake. Those pills are always rough on you.”

She shook her head and reached for the side of the bed, but a series of wheezing coughs racked her body. She reached desperately for the glass and drank greedily. Her thirst quenched, she pushed the glass away. “What time is it?”

“One a.m.”

A dull, deep throb at the front of her head made her sit back against the pillows. “I want to go home.”

“You are home,” he said quietly. “Stay in the bed, Lilly. You’re in no shape to be going anywhere.”

It was then that she realized he was still fully dressed. Hazy memories filled her head. Him holding her hair out of her face while she vomited. Him carrying her to bed. Her cheeks heated with mortification. She needed to get out of here.

“My home is my apartment.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed, wincing as the movement made her head throb. Her legs were bare. And she was drowning in one of Riccardo’s white T-shirts. “Did you undress me?” she demanded, flicking him an accusing look.

An amused glitter flashed in his eyes. “That’s the way it’s usually done, tesoro, but I stopped at the underwear. I prefer to dispense of that when you’re fully conscious.”

Her face felt as if it was on fire. She scanned the floor desperately for her things. “Give me my goddamned clothes, Riccardo.”

His expression hardened. “Are you forgetting our deal? You live here now. You’re mine for six months.”

“Tu sei pazzo,” she spat at him. “I might have agreed to your crazy plan, but in no way, shape or form will your hands ever be on me again.”

“Tu sei pazzo?” he murmured appreciatively. “I do believe your Italian’s coming along. And, yes, I am crazy when it comes to you.” He gently pushed against her shoulders and sent her back into the soft pillows. “Tomorrow we go over the ground rules. Tonight you rest.”

“You are such a bully,” she muttered wrathfully, too weak to defy him. “I have an early clinic tomorrow.”

“I’ll drive you there. You still have some clothes in the spare room you can wear.”

He’d kept them? She’d left in such a hurry she’d taken only what would fit in a suitcase. Left all the beautiful gowns and jewelry behind.

“Yes, I kept them,” he murmured, a bitter smile curving his lips. “Unlike you, I didn’t give up on this marriage.”

She closed her eyes. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Riccardo.”

“Maybe you can enlighten me over the next six months, then. You never did grace me with an explanation.”

Her gaze met his with blazing fury. “You never wanted to hear what I had to say.”

The belligerent tilt of his chin matched hers. “Maybe now I do.”

And maybe there was a blue-cheese moon out there tonight.

A jagged pain whizzed through her head. She winced and held a hand to her temple.

“Hell, Lilly,” he bit out, waving a hand at her. “We’re done arguing. Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

She tried to fight it, but nature was having none of it. He tucked the covers up to her chin, then everything went black.

CHAPTER THREE

SEVEN HOURS OF sleep, one migraine-hangover-filled morning, three patients and one trip to the bank later, Lilly retreated to her office like a maimed fighter who’d escaped to her corner.

Coffee, she decided, setting her briefcase down. It was time to reintroduce the other banned substance in her life. Maybe it would help lift the paralysis that had gripped her since she’d woken up in her old bed this morning, dazed and confused at what had transpired.

She had agreed to become Mrs. Lilly De Campo again. The one thing she’d said she’d never do.

Worse, she’d let her husband see how deep her feelings ran. Distracted, she raised a hand to her hair and pushed it out of her face. The power Riccardo still held over her was disconcerting.

And that was the understatement of the year. She pressed her lips together, picked up her purse and let Katy, the receptionist at the small clinic she shared with another physiotherapist in SoHo, know she’d be in the café across the street. Scanning the menu board, she thought, To hell with it, and ordered the largest, creamiest latte they had, which would certainly knock her brain back into working order, and sat down to drink it in the window facing Broadway.

It helped. But with her escape hatch rapidly closing it was a case of avoiding the unavoidable. Her only alternative to accepting Riccardo’s deal had been to secure the money at the bank. And she was pretty sure the bank manager would have laughed at her request if she hadn’t officially reinstated her position as Mrs. Lilly De Campo by having it splashed across the morning papers.

She’d been getting to her feet when he’d given her a curious look and said, “Your husband is also a client, Mrs. De Campo. We’d be happy to draw up the papers with him.”

She had given him a withering look. “No, thank you, Mr. Brooks. This is a personal matter.”

He was an opportunist, she conceded, scraping the froth off the sides of her mug. Like almost everyone else in this city. Unfortunately Harry Taylor had also seen the news, if his multiple calls to her cell phone were any indication. A stomach-churning glance at her phone revealed she now had a message from him too. The latte seemed to curdle inside her. She’d been waiting, hoping there was some other solution that would allow her to call things off with Riccardo.

And who are you trying to fool? a voice inside her ridiculed. Their reconciliation was the subject of intense public speculation this morning. There was no getting out of it. And how could she when it was Lisbeth’s only chance at survival?

She squirmed on the stool. What was she going to say to Harry? I’m so sorry, Harry. I’ve gotten back together with the man who destroyed me? Or, I’m sorry for saying I wanted you when really I want my sexy, controlling somewhat ex-husband, who kissed me within an inch of my life last night and made me want more.

Ugh. There was no good way to put it that wouldn’t end up making her look like a horrible, horrible woman.

The café door chimed. She looked up to see the other person she was trying to avoid waltzing through the door.

“You really didn’t think you could hide, did you?” Alex asked grimly, tossing an order at the barista and plopping herself down on the stool beside her.

Lilly pushed her empty mug away. “I’m not avoiding you. I had a jam-packed morning.”

Alex’s eyebrows rose. “I’m your twin, remember? I can sense inner turmoil.”

“I’m fine. Just a little groggy from the medication.”

“Good.” Her sister threw the words at her with a determined tilt of her chin. “So you can tell me what the hell’s going on. Your autocratic husband ordered me out of the house before I could see if you’d actually lost your senses.”

Lilly pulled in a breath. “It was like Riccardo said. It took a tough conversation for us to realize our feelings for each other.”

Alex sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Do not try to spin me, Lilly. I know you too well. You walked in there last night intent on a divorce. What happened?”

“We talked...we came to some realizations...”

“Like what?” Alex waved her hand in the air. “Like the last hellish year of your marriage was just an apparition? Like he didn’t almost annihilate you?”

“It takes two to tango,” Lilly murmured. “Riccardo wasn’t the only guilty party in our marriage.”

“Only the majority holder.” Her sister screwed up her face. “What about Harry? Last night you were telling me he’s the one.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I wanted the opportunity to truly pursue things with him.” She bit her lip, realizing how confused that sounded. Dammit, she needed to make this believable. For Lisbeth’s sake.

“You know I’ve never really stopped loving Riccardo,” she said quietly. And the fact that saying it didn’t seem like too much of a stretch shook her to her core. “I want to give it another shot.”

Alex’s mouth tightened. “You left him to save yourself. And I for one don’t relish being the one to pick up the pieces again when he reverts to being his domineering, controlling self.”

“He’s changed,” Lilly lied.

“Men like him don’t change. They come out of the womb like that.”

Her mouth curved. “Probably true.”

“What about his infidelity? Are you prepared to put up with that again?”

Everything around her faded, blurred into the series of carefully manufactured images she had created to keep herself in one piece. Control. Because to imagine Riccardo in bed with another woman—to imagine the man who’d promised to love her for life doing that to her—would damage her beyond repair.

“It won’t happen again.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he promised me.”

In actual fact Riccardo had denied the whole thing. He’d put it down to the vicious money-making tactics of the tabloids. But Lilly had seen the photos. And photos didn’t lie.

Her teeth clamped down on her bottom lip. The effort it took not to blurt out what was actually going on was immense. “You have to trust me,” she forced out huskily. “I’m doing the right thing.”

Her sister gave her a long, hard look. “You promise if things start to get bad you’ll end it? You’ll walk away?”

“I promise. And, Alex—this means we can get Lisbeth’s treatment.”

A light went on in her sister’s cornflower-blue eyes. “Lilly Anderson, you promise me right now you are not doing this because of Lisbeth. I do not need two sisters in critical condition.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Lilly said firmly. “It’s just a very wonderful outcome of this decision.”

But she would. She would do anything it took to make Lisbeth well.

* * *

Riccardo came to pick her up at six. “You still don’t look good,” he said bluntly as she slid into his beast of a car.

She shrugged and pulled her seatbelt on. “You know what my migraines are like. It takes me a few days to get over one.”

He put the car in gear and pulled out into traffic, the low-slung powerful machine reminding her of the man himself. Smooth, dangerous.

He flicked her a glance. “I’d forgotten just how bad they get.”

She wondered if he’d done what she had. Used any method available to wipe her head clean of him—finding it impossible on so many levels.

Don’t fool yourself, Lil. Riccardo wasn’t the type to pine for anyone. Especially the woman who’d walked out on him.

Which begged the question: why hadn’t he had other women over the past year? If she was to believe the highly sexed man she’d married was capable of celibacy, the question was why had he chosen it? Riccardo loved women. He lived for the contrast. Hard versus soft. Rational versus emotional. And with his superstar racing background they were like a feast that had been put on this earth for him to enjoy in endless supply.

She had fooled herself that she could be the only one for him.

She twisted her hands together in her lap and stared sightlessly out the window. They drove in a tense silence until he passed her street.

“What about my apartment? I need to get my stuff.”

“I sent Mrs. Collins over to pick it up.”

Her jaw dropped. He’d had Magda go through her stuff? Sift through the very fiber of her personal life?

“Stop the car.”

He frowned over at her. “Lilly, it was—”

“Stop the car.”

He swore under his breath and pulled to the curb. “It was the efficient way to get it done.”

“Efficient?” she demanded, her voice shaking with anger. “You violated my privacy. My God, how did you even get in to my apartment?”

“I was the one who had the locks installed for you. You’re overreacting, Lilly.”

She clenched her hands in her lap for fear she might slap his handsome face. He’d pretended to be worried about the dismal state of the locks on her front door and had insisted on having them changed and a deadbolt added. She’d been grateful at the time, because in New York a solid set of locks was never a bad idea. But really it had just been another of his attempts to control her.

“You did that so you could spy on me,” she hissed, pressing her head back against the seat. “How could I be so stu—”

“Stop.” His eyes blazed into hers. His bronzed skin was pulled taut across his cheekbones. “You know I have security on you. You are still my wife and, like it or not, there are people out there who itch to get their hands on you. But I have never, ever spied on you.”

“You knew about Harry.”

“I saw you with Harry. You were eating at Nevaros the same night I was.”

“You didn’t introduce yourself.”

“And say what? How do you find my wife in bed? What would you rate her out of ten?”

Her breath caught in her throat. “This is not going to work.”

“You agreed to the bargain. You’re my wife for the next six months. Deal with it.”

She closed her eyes and pressed her palms against her thighs, forcing herself to take deep breaths. If she was to survive the next six months without having to go into emotional rehab she was going to have to learn to control her emotions.

She turned her gaze on him—defiant hazel on arrogant black. “Ground rule number one. You don’t ever go into my apartment again without my permission and you do not enable someone to go through my personal possessions.”

He nodded. “Bene.”

Shocked at how easily he’d acquiesced, she kept going. “I want to go to my apartment now.”

“Why?”

“Because I doubt Mrs. Collins packed my book. Or brought my two violets with her. And there’s a few things I don’t want hanging around.”

“Like the sex toys you use with Harry?” he taunted.

“Why, yes. Harry knows how to keep things interesting.”

He froze.

Her fingers curled around the door handle.

In a lightning-fast movement his hand slammed down on top of hers. “You know what a comment like that does to a guy like me, Lilly. Are you looking for me to up the ante? Because I can assure you Taylor doesn’t make you scream like I do.”

Lilly slunk back in her seat, her heart hammering in her chest.