a reason entirely other than what you think.
“Are you finished?” she asked quietly. “Because I suddenly seem to have lost my appetite. I’m going to go make sense of my stuff upstairs.”
His gaze narrowed on her face. “Don’t make yourself into a martyr. I’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime.”
She lifted her chin. “Martyrs die for their cause. When this is over I’ll be free of you. Eternally happy is more like it.”
* * *
Lilly took her time unpacking her things, her arms curiously heavy as she hung her delicate pieces on hangers in the huge walk-in closet. Every item she unpacked was an effort, and her stomach was growing tighter with each piece she added with her usual military precision. Sweaters with sweaters, blouses with blouses, pants with pants. It was as if her old life was reappearing in front of her hanger by hanger, row by row.
And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She’d said she’d never come back. What the hell was she doing?
She plunged on, doggedly working until everything was in its place. Then, when she was sure Riccardo was working in his study—which he undoubtedly would be until midnight—she slipped downstairs and made herself a snack. She wasn’t remotely hungry, but skipping meals was a warning signal for her. She put some cheese and crackers on a plate, poured herself a glass of wine and took it to bed.
She had finished her snack and read about half a chapter of her supposedly scintillating book when her husband walked through the door. It was only just past eleven. What was he doing?
“You’re coming to bed?”
A mocking smile twisted his mouth. “That’s what it looks like, no?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “You usually work later than this.”
“Maybe having my beautiful bride back in my bed is a draw.”
Heat flared in her cheeks at the sarcasm in his voice. “As if,” she muttered under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He flicked her a glance. “Mumbling is rude, Lilly. If you have something to say, say it.”
She stuck her nose in her book. She didn’t have to play this game. Except it was impossible not to sneak a glance at his bronzed, muscled chest as he whipped his shirt off. In keeping with his new harsher haircut, his body seemed even harder than before. As if someone had taken a chisel and worked away the remaining minute amounts of excess flesh until all that was left was smooth, hard, defined muscle, tapering down to that six pack she loved.
Hell. She buried her face back in her book. The rasp of his zipper and the sound of his pants hitting the floor had her desperately reading the same sentence over and over. His boxers flew across the room and landed in the hamper. Her breath seized in her throat. She would not—would not—look.
She took a deep breath as he sauntered into the bathroom and shut the door. Her passing out moment last night had meant she hadn’t seen any of that. Her hectic pulse indicated she hadn’t gotten any more immune to the show in the past twelve months.
This was just so not good it was laughable. No wonder she hadn’t come near him in months. Because this happened.
She’d made it through a miraculous two pages when her husband emerged from the bathroom, the smell of his spicy aftershave filling her nostrils. A flash of skin in her peripheral vision revealed he hadn’t lost his predisposition for sleeping in the nude.
She took another of those steadying breaths as he walked around the bed to his side, but all that did was overwhelm her with the cologne some manufacturer had for sure pumped full of every pheromone in the book. The bed dipped as the owner of the pheromones whipped the sheets back and got in. She made a grab for the material, feeling far too exposed in her short silk nightie, but not before her husband swept his eyes over her in a mocking perusal. She gritted her teeth and pulled the sheets up high over her chest.
Her husband’s rich, deep laughter made her grit her teeth even harder. “I saw it all last night, Lil, and I have to say I like the changes. You look like a properly voluptuous Italian woman now. Your breasts are fabulous—and those hips...” He sat back against the headboard, a wicked smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “Without a doubt my favorite spot on a woman’s body. That curve near the hipbone you can slide your hand over, and—”
“Stop.” She flashed him a murderous look. “I may be living with you for six months but these—these types of conversations are not happening.”
He lifted his shoulders and pursed his lips. “This is the point where you’d usually freeze me out anyway.”
She flinched. “It was always about sex. Sometimes I actually wanted to communicate.”
“That’s where men and women differ,” he drawled. “When we’re stressed we crave sex. It’s the way we communicate.”
“It was the only way you communicated. Too bad it wasn’t conducive to working out our problems.”
His face hardened. “You didn’t want to work them out. You checked out, Lilly. You wanted us to fail.”
“I wanted us to work.” She blinked back the emotion stinging her eyes. “But we were light years apart. And we always have been. We were just too stupid to realize it.”
He reached over and grabbed the book, tossing it on his bedside table. “You haven’t read a thing since I walked into this room, cara. You’re so busy trying to deny what’s between us that you can’t see a foot in front of you. That isn’t light years apart—that’s total avoidance.”
“The easier way,” she flashed. “Because we both know how it ends.”
She took satisfaction in the frustrated flash of his eyes before she turned away from him and doused the light, curling up as far away from him as she could in the big king-sized bed. It was still impossible to ignore his presence. His warmth, his still, even breathing was everywhere around her.
She curled her fingers into the sheets and focused on keeping it together, shocked by the need, the almost physical ache for him to reach out and comfort her in the way he always had. When Riccardo had made love to her she had always known where his heart was. The problem had been when the cold light of day had dawned and their problems hadn’t gone away.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Tomorrow she had to tell Harry it was over between them. It should have been a horrible thing to have to do. But with Riccardo back in her life, bearing down on her like a massive all-consuming storm, she knew her relationship with Harry was doomed.
There had only ever been one man who’d had her heart. Too bad he hadn’t been worthy of it.
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
