wasn’t flirting! He was comforting me! After—”
Alessandro’s eyes narrowed. “After what?”
She swallowed, fighting tears. “It doesn’t matter.”
He stepped out of the shower, his body naked and dripping wet. His voice was dangerous as he said, “Tell me.”
In the mirror, she saw the reflection of his magnificent, naked body, and next to him, she saw herself, fat and dowdy in the unflattering beige suit that made her look like a lump. “I can’t.”
“Tell me!” he thundered.
She flinched, and her lips turned down. “They were mean to me.”
He gripped the door of the shower. “Who? Who was mean to you?”
“You were right,” Lilley whispered. “I never should have come to Rome.” She blinked back tears. “I don’t belong here.”
Moving forward, Alessandro grabbed her shoulders. His eyes were dark as he said in a low voice, “Just tell me who.”
She tried to laugh it off. “Nothing, really. They followed me into the bathroom where I was hiding at the restaurant—”
“You were hiding?”
“—and spoke to each other. In English, to be sure I’d understand. They called me fat and stupid, and said you’d divorce me. They couldn’t wait for you to be back with Olivia.”
He stared at her, his mouth a grim line. Then he abruptly released her, turning away. Lilley stared at his muscular backside as he headed for the door.
He was walking away from her without a word. Again.
“Don’t you care?” she choked out. “Don’t you care at all?”
Alessandro whirled around, and his expression was so full of fury that she gasped.
“I care,” he said. “They will regret hurting you.”
“What are you going to do?” she whispered, afraid of the strange darkness she saw in his eyes.
“They are women. I cannot physically hurt them. But,” he stretched his intertwined hands, “I can take what they care about the most. Their money.”
“How?”
He looked past her ear. “A few well-placed calls to the banks … to the businesses that employ their husbands in well-paid sinecures.” He gave a smile as cold as death. “They’ll be penniless.”
She stared at him, her mouth agape. “I thought they were rich.”
“It’s a front. They’re deeply in debt.”
“I thought they were your friends!”
His lip twisted. “Friends?”
“You seemed to be having such a good time …”
“I grew up with them,” he said tersely. “But we’re not close. We share a past. We share a history. But no. They are not my friends.”
Staring up at him, Lilley thought of the friends she’d had in Minnesota growing up, playing marbles with the housekeeper’s daughter Lisa, going for long bike rides with Katie from school, ice skating on the pond with her friends and drinking hot chocolate.
Alessandro hadn’t had that. His friends weren’t real. Pity and grief for him welled up inside her. And suddenly she couldn’t hide her feelings. Not any more.
“I don’t need revenge.” Blinking back tears, she took a step towards him. “There’s only one thing I want. One thing I need.”
His jaw twitched. “What?”
“You,” she whispered. “I love you, Alessandro.”
She heard the catch of his breath. Then his eyes became wistful.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I’ve known since before our wedding, when you almost blurted it out, and I stopped you.”
“What?” She didn’t remember anything like that. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember? You said you had something to tell me before we could marry. I stopped you because I already knew. You were in love with me. I could see your feelings on your face.”
Lilley’s lips parted as she remembered the moment in Las Vegas when she’d tried to tell him the truth about her family. “That was what you thought I was going to say?” she said slowly. “That I was in love with you?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t let you speak the words. I thought it would ruin things between us, that it would make a good marriage impossible.”
He didn’t know. Lilley’s head was spinning. Alessandro didn’t know about her family. All these weeks they’d been married, she’d thought he was so kind not to reproach her, so generous to forgive and forget. But he hadn’t known. He still didn’t know!
“But now,” Alessandro said in a low voice, “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know if I can love anyone, Lilley.” Clenching his jaw, he looked away. “When I was nineteen, I was betrayed by everyone who loved me. The woman I thought I loved told me she was pregnant by another man. My father died after ignoring me most of his life. And then my mother,” he took a deep breath, “informed me that I was not his son.”
“What?” Lilley gasped.
“By their second year of marriage, she’d already grown to hate him. She had a brief affair, and got pregnant with me. My father never knew. He died thinking I was his son, and still left me nothing but debts and an unknown number of half-brothers and half-sisters around the world.”
Grief was shining in his black eyes. She’d never seen him so open with his feelings before. “I’m sorry,” she choked out, wrapping her arms around him. “Who is your real father?”
He looked away. “Not someone I ever wanted to know.”
“I’m sorry,” she breathed again, but it seemed woefully inadequate. Reaching up, she kissed his cheeks, his lips, his chin, his shoulders. She offered comfort by kissing every part of him she could reach. “I’m so sorry.” Tears streamed unchecked down her face as their eyes met. “But I’m your family now.”
He exhaled as he looked down at her. “I don’t know if I can love you, Lilley,” he said in a low voice. His dark eyes shimmered. “But if I could ever love any woman on earth … it would be you.”
Lilley’s heart stopped beating, then suddenly raced at a gallop. “It would?”
“You’re the first woman I’ve trusted in a long, long time,” he said softly, stroking her cheek. “Because I know you’d never lie to me—about anything.”
A tremble went through her. How could she ever tell him about her
