The Delicious De Campos: The Divorce Party

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?”

“Aha!” She located her silver slingbacks on the top shelf. At least her shoes fit. They were her absolute weakness and, oh, did she love the strappy soft leather of these, which molded to her feet and felt like heaven...

She sat down on the bed and pulled them on. They made her legs seem a mile long, and if there was anything she needed tonight it was that. The fact she couldn’t walk in them was of little consequence. Anything that increased her confidence level was worth it.

Her fingers clumsily refused to obey her as she struggled to thread the thin strap through the tiny loop. The fashion show was one thing. How she and Riccardo were going to fool all those people they knew and make them think they were still in love when they were in the middle of the War of the Roses was another matter entirely.

She managed to get one shoe done up, then started on the other, enduring the same frustrating process. Maybe what she needed were glasses, because the strap didn’t seem to want to—

“Dammit.”

“Need help?”

Riccardo’s rich, sexy drawl sent the strap pinging out of her hand completely. “No, thanks,” she murmured, snatching it up again and yanking it desperately through the loop. This time the pin slid right into the hole and stayed. Thank goodness. She didn’t need a naked Riccardo any closer than he was right now because—

Hell. The blood had rushed to her head, bent over like that, but now, sitting up, her gaze moved over her husband leaning against the doorway of the bathroom and it seemed to congeal right there, pounding in her ears. Not naked. He’d wrapped a towel around his waist, but that was almost worse, because far, far too much mouthwatering muscled, bronzed flesh was still on display. Everything she hadn’t let herself look at the other night.

She gulped in a desperate breath as that six-pack she’d loved to tell him turned her on stared her in the face. Her gaze moved lower, over the grooves in his abdomen only the most defined men had, skipped the next part, because really she couldn’t go there, and ended up at his gorgeous thighs and calves. Riccardo had the best legs of any man she’d ever encountered. Muscled, strong and perfectly shaped. Heavenly.

No looking at me like that unless you intend to follow through with it.

She stood abruptly, teetering on the high shoes. “We should go. We’re late already, and if we’re going to get through traffic—” He was so not listening to her. His long-lashed dark gaze was conducting a thorough inspection of her physical assets that had begun with her face, swept down over the plunging neckline of her dress, over the flare of her hips in the clinging gown to her lavender-tipped feet.

Heat rushed to her face as his gaze lingered. Riccardo had always had a thing for feet.

Her feet in particular.

He turned, walked to the dresser and pulled something out of a drawer. Her heart-rate increased as he walked back toward her, a purposeful look on his face.

“We need to go,” she repeated in a strangled voice. “We’re already late.”

He stopped in front of her, took her by the shoulders and turned her around.

“You need a necklace,” he murmured, lifting her hair aside. “What are you worried about, Lilly? That I might tear this dress off you and end this détente?”

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done it before... She shivered as he slid the necklace around her throat, the cold stones resting against her heated skin. “Riccardo...”

“Riccardo what?” Humor deepened his voice. “Tear the dress off?”

“Get the hell away from me.”

“Because you don’t trust yourself when I touch you?”

“Because this is a charade,” she hissed. “And when we aren’t in public you don’t touch me.”

He fastened the clasp of the necklace. “Do you remember how we christened this?”

She stared down at the row of diamonds encircling her throat, sparkling against her skin like a ring of fire. As if she could ever forget. They had been out for dinner, wholly unable to keep their hands off each other, and he’d slapped his credit card on the table as soon as the entrées were removed and taken her home, where he’d ravished her with such urgent, sensual demand she had never been able to wear the necklace again without going back to that moment.

The fleeting sensation of his lips on her bare shoulder made her jump under his hands.

“You look stunningly beautiful in this dress, tesoro. You could easily convince me to forget all about tonight and play hookey.”

She would have replied, except his teeth nipped gently into her skin and a wave of heat swept through her. That would be one way of avoiding the fashion show...

Not worth the consequences.

She yanked herself out of his arms and fixed him with a glare. Remember how he broke your heart. Remember this is only for six months...

He watched her with a hooded gaze. “I take it that’s a no?”

“Not ever,” she agreed icily. “Shall we go?”

He inclined his head, stepped toward the closet and stripped off the towel. She averted her eyes and left to wait for him downstairs—but not before she got a full-on shot of his firm, beautiful behind.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE BALLROOM OF the historic hotel near Central Park glittered with light, muted laughter and a sense that time hadn’t really moved on—it was just different souls passing through it.

Lilly stood at the entrance with Riccardo and took in the ambience with that same feeling. Massive chandeliers five feet in width still dominated the room, still exuded the elegance of decades past, the band was timelessly tasteful, filling the space with rich classical music, and the black-coated wait staff could have been from any time period. It was her that was different. Once she had walked in here with naive, trusting eyes that had seen only the sparkling beauty of so much loveliness in one place. Now she saw it for what it was—a backdrop for the rich and powerful, a symbol of how beauty could destroy and disfigure.