The Delicious De Campos

He lifted his hand away from hers and returned it to the wheel. “Choose your fights carefully, tesoro. You know how many times you’ve won.”

Never. She never won against Riccardo because he was too strong, too smart, and he knew her too well ever to let it happen.

They didn’t speak during their brief stopover at her apartment, nor on the drive to the house.

Magda enveloped her in a warm hug when they walked through the door and told them dinner was ready when they were. Lilly went upstairs to change.

Riccardo was waiting for her in the small, private dining room when she came down. Magda had closed the doors to the terrace as the chill of the early May evening set in, and lit candles on the table in the warm dark-floored room with its elegant white wainscoting and glowing sconces. For a moment she stood standing in the entranceway, a sharp little pain tugging at her insides. She had been so desperate for her husband’s attention in the latter days of their marriage that all she had dreamed about was coming home to a meal like this with him.

She took him in as he opened a bottle of wine, his muscular forearms flexing in the candlelight as he worked the cork out of the bottle. He hadn’t bothered to change, but had taken off his suit jacket and tie and rolled his shirtsleeves up. In charcoal-gray trousers and white shirt he looked better than any man had a right to look. They molded his leanly muscular body into a work of art. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. Women actually stopped in the street to stare at her husband. He was just that good-looking. In the beginning she hadn’t minded, because she’d known she had him and they didn’t.

In the end it had been crucifying.

Her gaze slid up to his face. He was watching her, the bottle in his hands, his dark eyes seeming to reach inside of her and read her every emotion. She shifted her weight to the other foot and stood her ground. Six-foot-four and broad-shouldered, he made the room seem stiflingly small.

He’d always been vastly intimidating. Except when he’d been naked beneath her. Those times she had been in control—her thighs straddling all that golden muscular flesh, his taut, powerful body beneath her tense, begging her for the release that had always bordered on the spiritual with them.

A glint entered his dark eyes. Her lashes swept down over hers. What in God’s name was she doing?

“Rule number two, cara,” he murmured. “No looking at me like that unless you intend to follow through with it.”

Wildfire raced to her cheeks. Dammit. She walked jerkily across to him and took the glass of wine he’d poured.

Magda came in with their salads, her round face beaming. “How nice to see the two of you sitting down to a meal together.”

“Yes, what a novelty,” Lilly agreed. “I hardly remember how to converse.”

Magda gave her a wary look, told them the casserole was in the oven and left.

“You will curb your tongue when others are around,” Riccardo said curtly when the housekeeper was safely out of earshot. “Our deal depends on us being discreet.”

“You liked it in the bedroom,” she taunted.

“Right on the money, tesoro,” he agreed, showing his teeth. “Knock yourself out.”

She shrugged. “Since we won’t be sharing a bedroom, I’ll pass.”

He took a sip of his wine, then lowered the glass with a slow, deliberate movement. “Here I am, speaking your native language, and still you don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“We need to make this authentic, Lilly. We will be sharing a bedroom.”

Her stomach dissolved into a ball of nerves. There was absolutely no way, with all the rooms in this house, that she was sharing that bedroom with him.

“Magda is completely trustworthy. There is no need to—”

“This isn’t up for debate.” He leaned back against the sideboard and crossed his arms over his chest. “Eyes are everywhere. People traipse through this house on a daily basis.”

Lilly gave him a desperate look. “But I—”

“Rule number three.” He kept going like a train, steamrollering right over her. “You will accompany me to all the social engagements I’m committed to over the next six months, and if I need to travel you’ll do that too.”

“I have patients who count on me, Riccardo. I can’t just pick up and travel at will.”

He shrugged. “Then you work around it. Our first engagement, by the way, is Saturday. It’s a charitable thing for breast cancer.”

She bit back the primal urge to scream that was surging against the back of her throat. She had a career, for God’s sake. Responsibilities. And no wardrobe for a charity event. She was at least ten pounds heavier than she’d been when she’d been with Riccardo. None of her gowns upstairs would fit, and nothing she’d been wearing in her low-key life since then would be appropriate.

“Oh,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “It’s a fashion thing. They called today to ask if you’d model a gown when they heard our news.”

She felt the blood drain from her face. “On a stage?”

“That’s usually how they would do it, isn’t it?”

The thought of modeling a gown in front of all those people with her new, curvier figure sent a sharp response tumbling out of her. “No.”

He frowned. “What do you mean, no? It’s for a good cause.”

“Then you get up there and do it.”

His gaze darkened. “Are you going to fight me on everything?”

“When you ask me to get up on a stage and parade myself around in front of a bunch of people when you know I hate that stuff, yes.”

He tipped his head to one side. “You’re a beautiful woman, Lilly. I never understood why you were so insecure.”

And he never would. He had no clue how deep her insecurities ran. The demons she’d finally put to rest. And that was the way she preferred to keep it. Weakness left you vulnerable. Exposed. Open for people to pick at and slowly destroy you.

“I won’t do it.”

“You will,” he returned grimly. “Ground rule number four. You will have no further contact with Harry Taylor.”

The man she still hadn’t had the guts to call back yet. “I have to talk to him. He’s been trying to call me and he sounds—”

“Trying?” He lifted a brow. “I see your old patterns of avoidance haven’t changed.”

“Go to hell,” she muttered. “You sandbagged me with this last night. I need a chance to explain it to him.”

“One conversation, Lilly. And if I find out you’ve seen him after that—if I find out you’ve even chatted with him in the hallway—our agreement will be null and void.”

It was fine for him to cheat in the public eye but when it came to her the same rules didn’t apply!

He flicked a hand at her. “It’s not like it should be a tough call, ending things. Or have you become such a tease you can kiss a man like you did me last night and still go back for more?”

She shook her head. “You’re such a bastard sometimes.”

A savage smile curled his lips. “You like it when I’m a son-of-a-bitch, amore mio. It excites you.”

She turned her back on him before she said something she’d regret. She’d loved that about him in the beginning. That he’d called the shots and all she’d had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. For a girl who’d been taking care of herself most of her life it had been a relief. An escape from the hand-to-mouth existence that had seen her work two jobs to put herself through college and graduate school to supplement the scholarship she’d won.

What she hadn’t been prepared for was the flashy, no-end-to-the-riches lifestyle he’d dropped her into with no preparation, no defences for a girl from Iowa who’d never really grown into the hard-edged, sink-or-swim Manhattan way of life.

It had been her downfall. Her inability to cope.

“Ground rule number five,” he continued softly. “You and I are going to be the old Riccardo and Lilly. The perfect couple. We’re going to act madly in love, there will be no other men, and when you get weak and can’t stand it anymore you’ll come to me.” He paused and flashed a superior smile. “I give you a week, max.”

She spun around to face him, her gaze clashing with his. “I’m not the same person I was, Riccardo. You won’t find me groveling at your feet for attention. And you won’t walk all over me like you did before. You treat me as an equal or I’ll leave and blow this deal to smithereens.”

He lifted his elegant shoulders, as if he found her little outburst amusing. “But you want this house. Badly... I saw it in your eyes last night.”

For a reason entirely other than what you think.

“Are you finished?” she asked quietly. “Because I suddenly seem to have lost my appetite. I’m going to go make sense of my stuff upstairs.”

His gaze narrowed on her face. “Don’t make yourself into a martyr. I’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime.”

She lifted her chin. “Martyrs die for their cause. When this is over I’ll be free of you. Eternally happy is more like it.”

* * *

Lilly took her time unpacking her things, her arms curiously heavy as she hung her delicate pieces on hangers in the huge walk-in closet. Every item she unpacked was an effort, and her stomach was growing tighter with each piece she added with her usual military precision. Sweaters with sweaters, blouses with blouses, pants with pants. It was as if her old life was reappearing in front of her hanger by hanger, row by row.

And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

She’d said she’d never come back. What the hell was she doing?

She plunged on, doggedly working until everything was in its place. Then, when she was sure Riccardo was working in his study—which he undoubtedly would be until midnight—she slipped downstairs and made herself a snack. She wasn’t remotely hungry, but skipping meals was a warning signal for her. She put some cheese and crackers on a plate, poured herself a glass of wine and took it to bed.

She had finished her snack and read about half a chapter of her supposedly scintillating book when her husband walked through the door. It was only just past eleven. What was he doing?

“You’re coming to bed?”

A mocking smile twisted his mouth. “That’s what it looks like, no?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “You usually work later than this.”

“Maybe having my beautiful bride back in my bed is a draw.”

Heat flared in her cheeks at the sarcasm in his voice. “As if,” she muttered under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He flicked her a glance. “Mumbling is rude, Lilly. If you have something to say, say it.”

She stuck her nose in her book. She didn’t have to play this game. Except it was impossible not to sneak a glance at his bronzed, muscled chest as he whipped his shirt off. In keeping with his new harsher haircut, his body seemed even harder than before. As if someone had taken a chisel and worked away the remaining minute amounts of excess flesh until all that was left was smooth, hard, defined muscle, tapering down to that six pack she loved.

Hell. She buried her face back in her book. The rasp of his zipper and the sound of his pants hitting the floor had her desperately reading the same sentence over and over. His boxers flew across the room and landed in the hamper. Her breath seized in her throat. She would not—would not—look.

She took a deep breath as he sauntered into the bathroom and shut the door. Her passing out moment last night had meant she hadn’t seen any of that. Her hectic pulse indicated she hadn’t gotten any more immune to the show in the past twelve months.

This was just so not good it was laughable. No wonder she hadn’t come near him in months. Because this happened.

She’d made it through a miraculous two pages when her husband emerged from the bathroom, the smell of his spicy aftershave filling her nostrils. A flash of skin in her peripheral vision revealed he hadn’t lost his predisposition for sleeping in the nude.

She took another of those steadying breaths as he walked around the bed to his side, but all that did was overwhelm her with the cologne some manufacturer had for sure pumped full of every pheromone in the book. The bed dipped as the owner of the pheromones whipped the sheets back and got in. She made a grab for the material, feeling far too exposed in her short silk nightie, but not before her husband swept his eyes over her in a mocking perusal. She gritted her teeth and pulled the sheets up high over her chest.

Her husband’s rich, deep laughter made her grit her teeth even harder. “I saw it all last night, Lil, and I have to say I like the changes. You look like a properly voluptuous Italian woman now. Your breasts are fabulous—and those hips...” He sat back against the headboard, a wicked smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “Without a doubt my favorite spot on a woman’s body. That curve near the hipbone you can slide your hand over, and—”

“Stop.” She flashed him a murderous look. “I may be living with you for six months but these—these types of conversations are not happening.”

He lifted his shoulders and pursed his lips. “This is the point where you’d usually freeze me out anyway.”

She flinched. “It was always about sex. Sometimes I actually wanted to communicate.”

“That’s where men and women differ,” he drawled. “When we’re stressed we crave sex. It’s the way we communicate.”

“It was the only way you communicated. Too bad it wasn’t conducive to working out our problems.”

His face hardened. “You didn’t want to work them out. You checked out, Lilly. You wanted us to fail.”

“I wanted us to work.” She blinked back the emotion stinging her eyes. “But we were light years apart. And we always have been. We were just too stupid to realize it.”

He reached over and grabbed the book, tossing it on his bedside table. “You haven’t read a thing since I walked into this room, cara. You’re so busy trying to deny what’s between us that you can’t see a foot in front of you. That isn’t light years apart—that’s total avoidance.”

“The easier way,” she flashed. “Because we both know how it ends.”

She took satisfaction in the frustrated flash of his eyes before she turned away from him and doused the light, curling up as far away from him as she could in the big king-sized bed. It was still impossible to ignore his presence. His warmth, his still, even breathing was everywhere around her.

She curled her fingers into the sheets and focused on keeping it together, shocked by the need, the almost physical ache for him to reach out and comfort her in the way he always had. When Riccardo had made love to her she had always known where his heart was. The problem had been when the cold light of day had dawned and their problems hadn’t gone away.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Tomorrow she had to tell Harry it was over between them. It should have been a horrible thing to have to do. But with Riccardo back in her life, bearing down on her like a massive all-consuming storm, she knew her relationship with Harry was doomed.

There had only ever been one man who’d had her heart. Too bad he hadn’t been worthy of it.

CHAPTER FOUR

RICCARDO WOKE UP Saturday morning with the need to hit something. To flatten something. Anything that got rid of the tension sitting low in his belly after he’d been jarred awake by some fool’s motorcycle racing down the street.

Eternally happy. His wife’s words echoed through his head, made worse by the paper-white state of her face when she’d returned home last night after ending things with Taylor.

He wanted to put a fist through the doctor’s face.

He rolled over to glare at her, but there was only an imprint in the pillow where her head had been. Lilly? Out of bed before him? She liked to sleep more than any human being he knew.

He flicked a glance at the clock on the bedside table, his eyes widening as he read the neon green numbers. Eight-thirty. That couldn’t be right. Sure, he was tired, because his wife was driving him crazy, but eight-thirty? A glance at his watch confirmed it was true.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he struggled to clear the foreign-feeling fuzz in his head. He’d plowed through a mountain of work last night before coming to bed. To avoid the urge to come up here and make his wife eat her words. To pleasure her until she screamed and forgot Harry Taylor even existed.

A chainsaw would do it.

He picked up his mobile and called Gabe. There was a half-dead oak on their Westchester property that was a serious safety hazard. He’d been meaning to ask the landscapers to take it down, but suddenly the thought of a physical, mind-blanking task appealed to him greatly.

“Matteo got in last night,” Gabe said. “I’ll bring him and we can have some beer afterward.”

“As long as you don’t let him anywhere near the saw.”

His youngest brother, who ran De Campo’s European operations, and their father were in town for the annual board meetings. Which was probably another reason his gut was out of order. Whatever his father said in those meetings would make or break his chances of becoming CEO. And it had better go in his favor.

“We’ll make him the look-out,” Gabe said drily. “See you in forty-five.”

Riccardo showered, put on an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and went to procure a travel cup of coffee in the kitchen. Lilly wasn’t in there, or in the library she loved.

He was wondering if she’d made another run for it when she rushed into the front entryway just as his brothers arrived, a black look on her face, a curse on her breath.

“Matteo!” she exclaimed, her frown disappearing as his youngest brother stepped forward and scooped her up into a hug. “I had no idea you were in town.”

Matteo gave her a squeeze and set her down. “If that means you two are busy making up for lost time, I’m good with that.”

A flare of color speared Lilly’s cheeks. She and Riccardo’s youngest brother were close—or had been until their separation. Matteo was the more philosophical and expressive of the three brothers. Women naturally gravitated to him. Used his shoulder to cry on far too much, in Riccardo’s opinion.

“It’s so good you’re here,” Lilly said, pulling back and flashing his brother a warm smile. She gave Riccardo’s boots and jeans a brief glance, her gaze staying well away from his glowering face, then looked back at Matteo. “Maybe I’ll see you when you’re back?”

Riccardo’s shoulders shot to his ears. Where did she get off, giving his brother a smile like that when she hadn’t offered him one in days?

He glanced at her purse and sunglasses. “You’re going out?”

“I need to buy a dress for tonight.”

“You have hundreds upstairs.”

Her mouth tightened. “They don’t fit.”

He couldn’t understand how at least one of those dresses didn’t fit. Yes, she’d put on a few pounds since they’d been together, but they were undoubtedly in all the right places. Women. He lifted his shoulders. “You do still have the credit card?”

She flashed him a sweetly apologetic look. “Cut it into a million little pieces... But I have my own.”

The urge to put her over his knee glowed like a red neon sign in front of him. Gritting his teeth, he dug in his pocket and fished the keys to his Jag out. He handed them to her. “Take the car. We’ll go in Gabe’s.”

Her fingers curled around the keys, a hesitant look crossing her face. She loved driving that car. He knew it as surely as he knew where to kiss her to make her crazy. At the base of that beautiful long neck of hers, and most definitely between—

“Okay, thanks.” She gave Gabe a kiss on the cheek and left, the car keys jangling from her fingers. Fury swept through him, raging through his veins. She might not think she had to put on a show for his brothers, but by God she was going to start acting the part—or she had a serious lesson coming her way.

Gabe gave him an amused look. “Glad to see you have everything under control.”

“I can’t believe you gave her the Jag,” Matteo added, leading the way outside. “She looked like she might drive it into a wall just for the fun of it.”

Riccardo muttered something under his breath and took the front seat of the Maserati beside Gabe.

“She looks fantastic, though,” Matteo said, sliding into the back. “Being away from you agrees with her.”

“We all know you’re in love with my wife,” Riccardo shot back. “Why don’t you spend your time finding one for yourself rather than drooling over mine?”

“Lilly needs someone in her corner with you as a coniuge,” his brother returned, unperturbed. “You haven’t exactly been husband of the year material.”

Riccardo turned in his seat as Gabe backed out of the driveway. “What, exactly, does that mean?”

“You work fourteen-, sixteen-hour days and you treat Lilly as an afterthought,” Matteo said belligerently. “I can’t believe she put up with two years of it.”

Riccardo was halfway into the backseat when Gabe threw up his hand. “Sit the hell down. I’m going to drive into a wall if you keep this up.”

Riccardo sat back, pulling in a deep breath. “Keep your mouth shut until you know all the facts.”

“You never talk so how would I know them?”

“Try living with the Ice Queen.”

“She wasn’t always like that,” Matty murmured. “Maybe you should ask yourself what happened.”

“Maybe you should mind your own business.”

That set the tone for the forty-five-minute drive north of the city to Westchester. Riccardo kept his gaze on the scenery while Gabe and Matty caught up. Suburban New York blurred into a continuous stream of exclusive green bedroom communities. But if the scenery was tranquil, his mood was not.

What did they think? He was going to make the De Campo name a player in the North American restaurant business by being home for dinner at six every night? That he was going to claim his birthright by being any less driven and focused than his father Antonio? He rubbed his hand across his unshaven jaw and shook his head.

“You never wanted to hear what I had to say,” Lilly had lashed out at him the other night. “I’m through groveling at your feet, begging for your attention...”

Dio. Was he really that bad?

There’d been a time when he’d been much more laidback. When he’d been driving a racecar for one of Italy’s top teams and all he’d been focused on was winning. The shockingly alive feeling of driving a car at one-hundred-eighty miles an hour finally free of his father’s iron grip. He had eaten up life with the appetite of a man determined to savor every minute.

And every beautiful woman who came along with it—like the froth on top of his espresso.

But Lilly had not been one of those easy-to-attain women who had chased him from track to track. Lilly had been the ultimate challenge. The one woman he could never have enough of. Her sharp wit, her loving nature—before she’d turned cold—and her bewitching sensuality had made her the hottest woman he’d ever touched. He had been consumed with the need to possess her, body and soul. And it had almost made him make the biggest mistake of his life.

He shifted in his seat. The sheer stupidity of what he’d almost done was something that would haunt him forever. He had kissed Chelsea Tate with the intent of taking her to bed at the absolute lowest point of his marriage. When Lilly wouldn’t talk to him and he’d felt so alienated in his own home he hadn’t been thinking straight. He’d wanted to prove he didn’t need her, that he didn’t love her so much that it was sending him straight to hell. But all it had done was backfire on him when he’d kissed Chelsea and realized Lilly was the only woman for him.

A bitter taste that had nothing to do with the espresso he was consuming filled his mouth. Lilly, on the other hand, seemed to have moved on as easily as if she was shifting to the next course at dinner.

His fingers dug into the flimsy paper cup. If he had to sleep in that bed with her one more night with her freezing him out—warning him away from those sweet, soft curves that were his and his alone—he wasn’t going to be responsible for his actions.

The tension in the car spilled out into the brisk morning as they parked in front of the Westchester house and stepped from the car. Riccardo took a big breath of the clean, woodsy air and felt the tension seep away as the soul-restoring properties of his home on the lake kicked in. He’d fallen in love with the beautiful rolling countryside on his first visit here, to a business associate’s home on the Hudson River. When this estate had come up for sale he’d snapped it up as an escape for him and Lilly. But he’d been so busy they’d rarely ever made it out here.

Another promise to her he hadn’t kept.

To hell with Matty.

Locating the chainsaw, he applied his frustration to the tree and they managed to take the huge old American white oak down without hitting the house—which was a good thing, since it had to be ninety feet tall and at least three feet in diameter.

Afterward they sat beside the huge old tree, now sprawled in front of them, drinking cold beer out of the can. As different as they all were—Gabe, the intense, serious one, obsessed with the craft of winemaking, who’d known what he’d wanted to do from the time he’d been a little boy; Riccardo, the rebel oldest son; Matty, the in-touch-with-his-feminine side youngest—they were as close as three brothers could be. Even scattered around the globe, with Gabe spending most of his time in Napa Valley, where their vineyards were located and Matty in Tuscany, where he oversaw the company’s European operations.

Maybe it was because their mother Francesca, who had come from one of Europe’s oldest families, hadn’t been the nurturing type. Maybe that was what had bonded the three of them so tightly. Because they were all each other had alongside Antonio’s domination. It was sink or swim in the De Campo family, and they had learned to survive—together.

Gabe set down his beer and looked at Riccardo. “Any idea where Antonio’s head’s at?”

He shook his head. They called their father Antonio because he was not only their father, he was the dominant, larger-than-life figure who had transformed the small, moderately successful De Campo vineyard his grandfather had passed along to him into a force to be reckoned with in the global wine industry.

Gabe shrugged. “Everybody knows it’s going to be you. You’ve been the de facto head of the company since Antonio started scaling back.”

Riccardo searched his brother’s face for any sign that the logical heir to the De Campo empire harbored any bitterness toward him after his father’s decision to put Riccardo in control of the company when he’d fallen ill—despite the fact that Gabe had been the obvious choice with Riccardo off racing. But his brother’s face was matter-of-fact. As if he’d long ago given up fighting his father’s predisposition for his eldest son.

Riccardo took a long swig of his beer. “It’s impossible to predict what Antonio will do.”

Particularly when teaching his eldest son a lesson seemed to be a greater priority than doing what was right. Antonio had never forgiven Riccardo for wasting his Harvard education on a racing career. No matter how good a driver he’d been—he’d been on track to win his first championship title when his father had fallen ill—Antonio had never forgiven him for his decision. He’d seen racing as a frivolous, ego-boosting activity that pandered to his son’s ego and was disrespectful to the family—to everything Antonio had raised him to be. He hadn’t talked to his eldest son for years, and had only relented when Riccardo had returned to take the reins of De Campo.

Now Antonio was letting Riccardo sweat his guts out in purgatory.

Rolling to his feet, he reached for the chainsaw. “Let’s get this done.”

He worked his way from one end of the tree to the other, with his brothers hauling and stacking the pieces. His muscles relaxed and his head cleared. He was nothing if not a man who knew how to solve a problem. His wife might think this was the way it was going to be, but she had it all wrong. This icy détente was ending. And it was ending tonight.

* * *

Lilly adjusted the plunging bodice of the lavender gown for the millionth time and asked herself why in the world she’d allowed the owner of Sam’s to convince her this gown was it.

She felt conspicuous and exposed. Okay, sexy and desirable too. But maybe it was too much. And the last thing she wanted to do was attract any more attention than she and Riccardo already would tonight. Their first appearance as a reunited couple since their divorce party was going to cause enough waves.

And as for when she came to model Antonia Abelli’s gown... All eyes would be on her, searching for and exposing her flaws. And they were going to have a field-day with her. With her less than perfect body, she could only imagine what they’d say.

Her stomach rose to her throat. Her fitting with the designer had been humiliating. The eclectic woman, whose romantic designs she’d always loved, had circled around her, frowning at the tight fit of the chosen dress. “We’ll have to let some seams out,” she’d muttered. “But it’ll work.”

Lilly had left, cheeks burning, wanting to tell her to make someone else wear the dress—someone it fit! The only problem with that was this was the new Lilly. The Lilly who wasn’t going to care. The Lilly who was going to go out with Riccardo tonight, act like the perfect wife and not let anyone see how it got to her. She was older and wiser now—she’d gained perspective in the past year. She could handle this. And Lisbeth was all that mattered.

She heard Riccardo turn the water off in the shower. “Shoes,” she murmured, ignoring the anticipatory surge of her pulse. And then she’d be ready.

She searched through a shelf full of shoes: slingbacks and stilettos in every shade of the rainbow. Her husband had walked in after his day with his brothers, taken one wary look at the pile of couture creations stacked on the floor for Magda to give away, and had said only, “Ready to leave in fifteen?”