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.
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.”