She had heard his truth.
This really was love.
EPILOGUE
THERE HAD BEEN one more lie that Raul had told her.
Raul did get up at night for his baby.
And he fed and changed her.
Serena had come into their lives four weeks ago, and so far it had proved the perfect name.
Yes, she was from Venice—or La Serenissima—but it was more for her nature that the name had been chosen.
They had been rewarded with such a calm baby.
Of course she cried—but she calmed easily when held.
And they loved her so much.
From her one blonde tufty curl to her ten perfect toes.
It was seven on a Sunday—Lydia knew that without opening her eyes because her favourite bell rang its occasional deep note and the others would join in soon.
Raul was speaking to Serena as they stood on the balcony, telling her she should go back to sleep.
It made Lydia’s heart melt to watch the gentle way he held his daughter.
He was naked from the waist up and she could see his scars. She was grateful for them.
Sometimes she needed their reminder, because life felt perfect and the scars told her how far they had come.
Lydia closed her eyes as he turned around, pretending to be asleep.
‘Shh...’ Raul said as Serena let out a protest when he returned her to her crib.
Serena hushed, and after a moment of watching her sleep Raul got dressed.
Lydia wanted to protest and insist that he come back to bed.
Sunday was her favourite day.
Raul would go out from their room and return with the breakfast Loretta had prepared. They loved Sunday breakfast in bed.
Where was he going?
Lydia heard the elevator taking him down and then the engine of his speedboat.
Perhaps he had gone for coffee?
Raul did that now and then.
She had hoped he would not this morning.
She lay there listening to the bells and then rolled on her back and looked at the lights. Wherever he had gone she was happy.
So happy that she fell back to sleep and then awoke to his voice.
‘Happy Birthday.’
He had remembered.
Lydia had dropped no clues and given no reminders.
She hadn’t met a stranger that morning. Lydia knew she had met the love of her life. A man who had told her that there was no one in his life whose birthday he remembered.
Now he had two.
Raul held out a cardboard box tied with a red velvet ribbon which was vaguely familiar.
And then he told her where he had been.
‘Baci in gondola,’ Raul told her. ‘Had you not chosen to walk out that morning you would have had these.’
He handed her the box and she opened it up.
‘I was coming back to ask you to stay.’
‘I know that now.’
And then she asked him something that she had not before.
‘Would you have told me about Bastiano then?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Maybe later that night, but that morning I was definitely coming home to go back to bed with you.’
‘Here.’ He handed her the other box he was carrying. ‘Your present.’
Lydia opened it up and she was reminded of just how much she was loved.
It was an album filled with stunning photos of the castle.
Exterior shots and also interior.
And as she turned the pages it was like stepping into each room and seeing it as it had once been when she was a child.
The castle would be opened to the public today.
With Raul’s help, things had been turned around.
Valerie lived in a cottage on the grounds, and this afternoon would be taking the first visitors in a very long time through the glorious building.
But that wasn’t all of Lydia’s presents.
‘We fly at ten,’ Raul told her. ‘Then we are having afternoon tea in the garden. You’ll make a gentleman of me yet.’
He was one.
A thousand times over and Lydia still cringed a bit when she thought of the words she had said, right here in this bedroom, that awful day.
They had survived it.
Better than that, they had thrived.
Raul came into the bed and they lay there, listening to the bells and to the contented sounds of their baby.
‘When are we getting married?’ Raul asked.
It hadn’t yet happened.
‘Soon.’ Lydia smiled.
‘You keep saying that,’ Raul grumbled.
The last six months had been wonderful, but crazy. Their love had hit like lightning, and Lydia kept waiting to come down from the dizzy high and get organised.
She was starting to accept that there was no come-down when Raul was close.
Their kiss was slow, and he kept telling her he loved her, and then Raul rolled on top of her and told her that he was tired of waiting.
She felt him there and he smiled.
‘I didn’t mean for that.’
‘I know you didn’t,’ Lydia said.
But it had been four weeks and she was ready now.
‘You’re sure?’
He was very slow and tender, and that was a side of Raul that even he was only starting to find out existed.
It was the best birthday she could have known. They made slow Sunday love and afterwards he stayed leaning over her and told her that there was another thing she did not know.
‘Raul?’
‘We get married today,’ Raul said.
Lydia frowned.
They both wanted a small wedding and had thought about having it here in Venice.
Or Rome, where they had first met, perhaps?
Even Sicily, for together they had been back there.
‘At the castle,’ Raul said.
That had been but a dream, for it had been falling down around them when they’d first met.
It was beautiful now.
‘Yes?’ he checked.
‘Yes!’ Lydia said.
‘Per favore?’ Raul said, and took her right back to the day they had met.
‘Yes, please!’ Lydia said, and together they smiled.
She had chosen wisely, for Raul was the love of her life.
And he would be King.
* * * * *
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
A Debt Paid in the Marriage Bed
by Jennifer Hayward
CHAPTER ONE
“SIR.”
Lorenzo Ricci pocketed his phone and lengthened his stride, pretending he hadn’t witnessed the appearance of his portly, balding, middle-aged lawyer in the hallway behind him. Fifty minutes back on US soil, the last thing he needed was to discuss the fine print of the complex acquisition deal he had been negotiating, a subject bound to make his head ache even more than it already was.
Tomorrow, after a shot of his favorite whiskey, a steam shower and a face-plant into the Egyptian cotton sheets his housekeeper had procured for his very comfortable king-size bed, would be soon enough to endure that brain-throbbing task.
“Sir!”
Dio. He pulled to a halt, turned and faced the man doing his best to catch up to him on short, stubby legs, his outward appearance the very antithesis of the pit bull he was in the boardroom.
“I’ve been traveling for sixteen hours, Cristopher, I’m tired, I’m in a vile mood and I need sleep. Trust me when I say tomorrow is better.”
“It can’t wait.” The edge to his lawyer’s voice commanded Lorenzo’s full attention. Not on
ce in five years of completing difficult and sometimes downright antagonistic deals together had his legal counsel ever looked this rattled. “I need five minutes of your time.”
Expelling a long sigh, his stomach souring at the thought of attempting to interpret the finer points of legalese when what his brain officially needed was sleep, Lorenzo waved a hand toward his office. “Bene. Five minutes.”
Cristopher followed him into the sleek, black-and-chrome offices of the Ricci International executive team. Gillian, Lorenzo’s ultraefficient PA, gave him an apologetic I-tried look. He waved her off. “Go home. We can go through everything in the morning.”
She murmured her thanks, got to her feet and started gathering her things. Cristopher followed him into his office, hovering in front of his desk while he dropped his briefcase beside it and shrugged off his jacket. The apprehension skittering up his spine deepened. His lawyer didn’t hover. Ever.
He walked to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows framing a magnificent view of a dusky, indigo-lit Manhattan—one of the perks of being CEO of his family’s international Italian conglomerate, a shipping dynasty he had evolved into a diverse empire that included hotel chains, cruise lines and real estate arms. He loved the view, but tonight, it barely penetrated the fatigue clouding his brain.
Turning, he leaned back against the glass and crossed his arms over his chest. “All right,” he said, “give it to me.”
His lawyer blinked behind gold-rimmed spectacles, flicked his tongue over his lips and cleared his throat. “We have a...situation. A mistake that’s been made we need to rectify.”
He frowned. “On the deal?”
“No. It’s a personal matter.”
Lorenzo narrowed his gaze. “I didn’t invite you in here to play twenty questions, Cris. Spit it out.”
His lawyer swallowed. “The legal firm that handled your divorce made an error with the filing of the papers. An omission, actually...”
“What kind of an omission?”
“They forgot to file them.”
A buzzing sound filled his ears. “I divorced my wife two years ago.”
“Yes, well, you see...” Another long swallow. “You didn’t actually. Not in the technical tense because the papers were never filed with the state.”
The buzzing sound in his head intensified. “What are you saying?” He asked the question slowly, deliberately, as if his brain was having trouble keeping up. “Just so we’re clear?”
“You’re still married to Angelina.” Cristopher blurted the words out, a hand coming up to resettle his glasses higher on his nose. “The lawyer who handled your divorce had an insane caseload that month. He thought he’d asked his clerk to file the papers, was sure he had, until we went back to look at the specifics after the conversation you and I had recently.”
When it had become clear Angie was never going to touch a penny of the alimony he gave her each month.
“My wife announced her engagement this week. To another man.”
The lawyer pressed a hand to his temple. “Yes... I saw the piece in the paper. That’s why I’ve been trying to track you down. It’s a rather complicated situation.”
“Complicated?” Lorenzo slung the word across the room with the force of a bullet. “How much do we pay that firm an hour? Hundreds? Thousands? To not make mistakes like this. Ever.”
“It’s not acceptable,” Cristopher agreed quietly, “but it is the reality.”
His lawyer squared his shoulders, looking ready to be verbally flogged to within an inch of his life, but Lorenzo had lost the power of speech. That his short-lived marriage to his wife, a disaster by its ignominious end, had, in fact, never been legally terminated was too much to take when heaped upon the other news his father had delivered today.
He counted to ten in his head, harnessing the red-hot fury that engulfed him. This he did not need as he attempted to close the biggest deal of his life.
“How do we fix this?” he asked icily.
Cristopher spread his hands wide. “There are no magical solutions. The best we can do is hope to expedite the process. But it could take months. It will still mean—I mean you’ll still have to—”
“Tell my wife she can’t marry her boyfriend so she doesn’t commit bigamy?”
His lawyer rubbed a palm across his forehead. “Yes.”
And wouldn’t that be fun, given Angelina was set to celebrate that engagement in front of half of New York tomorrow night?
He turned to face the jaw-dropping view, blood pounding against his temple in a dull roar. He was shocked at how much the idea of Angie marrying another man repulsed him even though he had once convinced himself if he never saw his wife again it would be too soon. Perhaps because her vibrant, sensual, Lauren Bacall-style beauty haunted him every time he thought about taking another woman to bed... Because every time he tried to convince himself he was ambivalent about her, he failed miserably.
The conversation he’d had with his father before leaving Milan filtered through his head like some sort of cruel joke, had it not been of an entirely serious nature. The chairman of Ricci International had fixed his impenetrable, ice-blue stare on him and dropped a bombshell. “Your brother Franco is unable to produce an heir, which means it’s up to you, Lorenzo, to produce one and produce it soon.”
His dismay for his younger brother, his bewilderment Franco hadn’t told him this the night before over dinner, had evaporated under the impact of his father’s directive. Him marry again? Never happening. Except, he conceded with bitter irony, he was apparently still married. To the woman who had walked out on him and said he had no capacity to love. The woman who had stolen the last piece of humanity he’d possessed.
“Sir?”
He turned around. “Do you have any more bombshells to add to the pile or is that it?”
“That’s it. The deal is fine for the moment. We’re still negotiating the smaller points and you need to clear those last couple of tricky items with Bavaro, but other than that we’re on track.”
“Bene.” He waved a hand toward the door. “Go. I’ll take care of Angie.”
His lawyer nodded. “Do you want me to file the papers? Get the process started?”
“No.”
Cristopher gave him a stupefied look. “Sorry?”
“I said leave it.”
His lawyer left. A wise decision. He walked to the bar and poured himself a whiskey. Padding back to the windows, he lifted the glass to his mouth and took a sip. Began to feel vaguely human as the spirit warmed his insides and smoothed out the raw edges—raw edges that had been festering ever since one of the clippings in his daily press briefing had buzzed about his former wife...current wife’s betrothal plans to a prominent Manhattan lawyer.
He had pushed the news of Angie’s engagement aside. Refused to acknowledge how it sank its claws into his skin, dug into his insides—inspired dark, inexplicable thoughts he couldn’t have identified if he’d tried. Angie had ended a marriage that had descended to the very deepest depths of acrimony, a marriage many would have left for dead. So why did it still sting so much?
Why was he still so angry, still so damn angry it was like a disease inside of him, eating away at his soul? He itched he was so angry.
Why hadn’t he asked Cris to file those papers? Ended something that should have been ended two years ago?
He stared out the window for a long time, sipping the whiskey, watching night fall over a light-strewn Manhattan. Considered his duty to the Ricci line. The fifteen-billion-dollar acquisition deal in front of him—a deal that required every bit of his concentration—that would make Ricci the top luxury hotel chain in the world if he landed it.
The solution to his predicament, when it came, was shockingly, simplistically clear.
* * *
Why wasn’t ther
e any air in this room?
Angie took the glass of champagne the bartender handed her, turned and leaned against the lit glass surface, surveying the cocktail-dress-attired crowd mingling in the elegant, whitewashed art-gallery space. Shimmering light from the antique chandeliers cascaded onto gleaming black marble floors, while directed lighting spotlighted the stunning artwork on the walls. A perfect, sophisticated backdrop for her and Byron’s engagement party, everything they’d envisioned to celebrate their upcoming nuptials. Why then did the room seem to have drained of oxygen as the night wore on? Why this restless pull in her veins she couldn’t explain?
She should be ecstatic. She had the career of her dreams as one of New York’s most buzzed-about new jewelry designers, the freedom she’d always craved from life as a Carmichael and a wonderful man waiting in the wings. What more could she ask for?
And yet something still felt...missing.
It did not, she told herself firmly, have anything to do with the man who haunted the edges of her happiness. Who had shown her what having everything looked like, then taken it away in the next breath. Because she knew now that kind of an adrenaline rush was for fools. What went up must come down, and in her and Lorenzo’s case, had come crashing down.
A searing pang throbbed in her chest. She took a deep breath of the nonexistent air. Perhaps that’s what she needed—oxygen to clear her head.
Byron engaged with a business colleague across the room, she seized the moment. Winding her way through the buzzing crowd, around the live jazz band to the elegant staircase that led to the second level, unused tonight, she climbed the stairs and headed for the small terrace that opened off the upper level.
Hot, thick summer air hit her like a wall of heat as she stepped outside. She walked to the edge of the beautifully landscaped space, rested her elbows on the railing and drank it in. The frenetic activity in the street below as cabs and pedestrians battled for supremacy on a sticky Manhattan night was a familiar refrain that soothed her senses.
Another sensory impression seeped in. Spicy, masculine, it was imminently familiar. Disturbingly, distantly familiar.
Cold fingers clamped down on her spine. Her heart a drumbeat in her throat, she turned around. Her brain flatlined as she took in the tall, dark-haired, olive-skinned male dressed in an exquisitely tailored suit standing in front of her. She lifted her gaze to his hard, dark eyes, as treacherous as black ice. Moved them down over Lorenzo’s prominent Roman nose, the day-old stubble lining his jaw, his beautiful, sensual mouth that knew how to wound and pleasure in equal measure.
Innocent's Secret Baby (Billionaires & One-Night Heirs, Book #1) Page 17