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.”
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.”