blue eyes apprehensive. “The Carmichael Company is bleeding money,” he told her. “Has been for quite some time. I’ve given your father two large loans to keep things afloat.”
She blinked. “That’s impossible.”
That had been his reaction when Angie’s father had come to him for help. That the Carmichael Company, an over two-hundred-year-old textile dynasty, an American icon with its name on the main campus of one of New York’s most prestigious design schools, could be in the red, deeply in the red, had been inconceivable to him.
He watched the color drain from his wife’s face. “If you bothered to go home, you would know. So many countries are in the mix now, producing high-tech fabrics. Things haven’t been good in some time.”
She shook her head. “If this is true,” she said faintly, “why would you help my family?”
His lips curled. “Because I am loyal to the relationships I form, unlike you. I don’t run when things get rocky. Who do you think is underwriting your studio?”
She frowned. “I pay the rent on my studio.”
“You pay one quarter of the rent. It’s my building, Angie.”
Her mouth slackened. “I hired that real estate agent. Found the space...”
“You found what I wanted you to.” He waved a hand at her. “It made me sleep better at night knowing you were in a safe part of town.”
Her face crumpled as realization set in. “What are you insinuating? That you will pull the plug on the aid you’re giving to my family, toss me out on the street if I don’t agree to come back to you?”
“I prefer to think of it as incentive. We owe our marriage a fair shot before we relegate it to the history books. You come back to me, we try and make it work, I pull Carmichael out of its financial difficulties before it becomes a footnote in a list of great American dynasties. It’s a win-win.”
A win-win? She stared at him, disbelieving. “You would really hold that over my head?”
“You didn’t play fair when you walked out on me, tesoro. You just cut and ran. So yes, I will use whatever means required to make you see the light. To do the right thing.”
“I asked you to go to counseling. I begged you to. I tried to save our marriage and then I left.”
He ignored the stab of guilt that piece of truth pushed through him. “You expected us to solve things overnight. It doesn’t happen that way.”
Her fingers curled tight around the delicate stem of her champagne flute. “Putting the two of us back in a marriage where we’ll destroy one other is not doing the right thing.”
“We are both older and wiser. I think we can make it work.”
She shook her head. “That’s where you’re mistaken. That’s where you’ve played the wrong card, Lorenzo, because I will never become your wife again.”
She turned on her heel and left. He let her go, because he knew she’d be back. He’d never gambled on a deal he couldn’t win.
ANGIE RETURNED TO the party, shaken to her core. Palms damp, heart thrumming in her chest, a frozen numbness paralyzing her brain, she made a beeline for Abigail. Mouthing an apology to the well-known philanthropist her sister was speaking to, she extracted Abigail from the conversation and pulled her toward a quiet corner of the room.
Her sister eyed her. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Lorenzo is here.”
Abigail’s eyes widened. “At your engagement party?”
“Someone screwed up our divorce papers, Abby. We’re still married.”
“Married?” Her sister’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean ‘screwed them up’? Who?”
“Lorenzo’s legal firm. They forgot to file the papers with the state.”
“Is he fixing it?”
She closed her eyes. “He won’t.”
“What do you mean ‘won’t’?”
“Franco can’t have a baby. Lorenzo needs to produce an heir. He wants me to do my duty and put our marriage back together. Give him a baby.”
A gasp escaped her sister. “That’s outrageous. You’re engaged.”
“Am I?” Panic skittered up her spine. “If I’m legally married to Lorenzo, what does that make Byron? My illegitimate fiancé?”
Her sister looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know... Regardless, we’ll sic our lawyers on him. This has to be negligence.”
“He’s angry,” she said quietly. “So angry at me for leaving.”
“You did what you had to do. Lorenzo wasn’t an innocent victim in all this. You both had a role to play in what happened.”
Angie pushed a hand through her hair. Fixed her gaze on her sister. “Is the Carmichael Company in trouble? Is there something you haven’t been telling me?”
A guarded look wrote itself across her sister’s face. “What does that have to do with this?”
“Lorenzo says he’s given Father two loans. That he will bail Carmichael out of its financial problems if I try and make our marriage work. Incentive, he called it.”
Abby’s eyes turned into hard, bright sapphires. “That bastard.”
“Is it true? Did he give father those loans?”
“Yes.” Her sister’s admission made her stomach plunge. “At first it was the need to switch over equipment to compete with other high-tech manufacturers. But Carmichael never really recovered from the new technologies taking over the market.”
Angie’s breath left her in a sharp exhale. She’d been hoping against hope it wasn’t true.
Abigail’s lips firmed. “You aren’t doing this. Father’s been burying his head in the sand for years. He didn’t want to see the writing on the wall. It’s his problem to fix, not yours.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She swallowed past the lump swelling her throat. “You promised you wouldn’t carry the load alone.”
“You needed time. You were shattered when you walked away from Lorenzo. The last thing you needed to know was that your ex-husband was bankrolling the Carmichael Company.”
Blood pulsed against her temple. “And Mother? How is she handling this?”
Abby frowned. “Ange—”
“Tell me.”
“She’s become more unstable since the financial difficulties began. It—” She waved a hand. “It may be time to check her into a program. She doesn’t want it. She swears she won’t go, but I got a call from Sandra last week while they were on a girls’ night out. I had to pour her into bed.”
Emotions she’d long held at bay welled up inside of her, causing her throat to constrict and the knots in her stomach to twist tighter. “What was it this time?”
“Gin.”
She closed her eyes. She’d distanced herself from her family for her own self-preservation—because picking up her mother again and again had left her in a million pieces. Because she just couldn’t do it anymore while she’d been trying to pull herself back together after the demise of her marriage. But the guilt surrounding the difficult decisions she’d made was always there in the background, impossible to escape.
It wrapped itself