been so adamant that she was this other woman, this Alison. He thought the stubborn girl he’d known was far more likely to dig in her heels and brave it out than turn and run—
But the truth is, you don’t know her at all, a dark little voice inside him whispered harshly. Because the girl you knew would never have walked away from you.
“We have a responsibility, as the closest thing Lily has left to any kind of family, to determine that she is not suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress brought on by the accident,” Rafael said. “At the very least.”
The words came so easily to him, when deep down, he knew they were excuses. Lily was alive. That meant he would do whatever he must to claim her the way he should have done five years ago.
But he didn’t want to say that to his brother. Not yet.
It was all for the best, he thought, that Luca did not respond.
The roads were emptier the farther they got from the center of Charlottesville, and the land on either side of the car was beautiful. Stark trees with their empty branches rose over fields still white from the last snow. This was rich, arable land, Rafael knew. Lily had always loved the extensive Castelli vineyards in the northern Sonoma Valley. Perhaps it should not surprise him that she’d found a place to live that was reminiscent. Gnarled vines and plump grapes had been a part of her life since she’d been sixteen and not at all pleased her mother was remarrying.
And even less pleased with him.
He could remember it all so clearly as the car made its way through the frozen Virginia fields. Rafael had been twenty-two. Their parents had gathered them together in the sprawling château that served as the Castelli Wine hub of operation and foremost winery in the States.
And Francine Holloway had been exactly what they’d expected. Beautiful, if fragile and fine featured, with masses of white-blond hair and sky-blue eyes. She’d trembled like a high-strung Thoroughbred and spoken in the kind of soft, high-pitched voice that made a certain sort of man lean in closer. Rafael’s father was precisely that type. He’d loved nothing more than wading in and solving the problems of broken, pretty things like Francine—a preference that dated back to Rafael’s mother, who had spent many years, before and after the divorce, institutionalized in a high-end facility in Switzerland.
Rafael had expected the teenaged daughter to be much the same as the mother, especially with such a wispy, feminine name. But this Lily was fierce. Laughably so, he’d thought, as she’d sat stiffly on an overwrought settee in the formal sitting room at the château and scowled through the introductions.
“You do not appear to hold our parents’ mutual happiness foremost in your heart,” he’d teased her after an endless dinner during which his father had delivered the sort of speeches that might have been moving had Francine not been the old man’s fourth wife, and had Rafael not heard them all before.
“I don’t care about our parents’ happiness at all,” she’d retorted, without looking at him. That had been different. Most girls her age took one look at him and melted into shallow little puddles at his feet. That hadn’t been arrogance on his part. It had been pure, glorious fact—though he’d been, by his own estimation, far too worldly and sophisticated to sample the charms of such young, silly creatures. This one, apparently immune, had sniffed, her gaze trained somewhere far off in the distance through the great windows. “Which is about how much they care about ours, I imagine.”
“I’m sure they care,” Rafael had said, thinking he might soothe her girlish fears with the wisdom of his years. “You have to give them a chance to get over how perfect they imagine they are for each other so they can pay attention to their lives again.”
But Lily had turned to face him, that heart-shaped face of hers still faintly rounded with youth, those impossible eyes scornful. She’d been dressed in a perfectly appropriate sundress that showed nothing untoward at all and yet there had been something about the way she’d worn the masses of her strawberry blond hair tumbling in every direction, or the fact that her shoulders were far too smooth, that had made Rafael wonder what it would be like to touch her—
He’d been horrified.
“I don’t need a big brother,” she’d told him baldly, compounding his shock at the direction of his own thoughts. “I don’t want the unsolicited advice, especially from someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“Someone who dates people purely to end up on tabloid television shows, which I’m sure keeps you super relevant in the world of the vapid and the rich. Congrats. And I don’t need you to fill me in on my mother’s ridiculous patterns. I know them all too well, thank you. Your father is the latest in a long line of white knights who never quite manage to save her. It won’t last.”
She’d turned back to the view, her manner clearly dismissive, but Rafael had not been accustomed to being dismissed. Especially not by teenage girls who were usually much more apt to follow him around and giggle. He hadn’t been able to imagine Lily Holloway doing anything of the sort.
“Ah,” he’d said, “but I think you’ll find it will last.”
She’d heaved a sigh but hadn’t looked at him again. “My mother’s relationships have the shelf life of organic produce. Just FYI.”
“But my father is a Castelli.” He’d only shrugged when she’d looked back at him then, her nose wrinkled as if he was more than a little distasteful. “We always get what we want, Lily. Always.”
Sitting in the back of his car as it turned from the main country road and headed down a smaller, private lane lit with quiet lights shaped like lanterns, Rafael still didn’t know why he’d said that. Had he known then? Had he suspected what was to come? Lily had hated him openly and happily for three more years, which had distinguished her from pretty much every other woman on the planet. She’d insulted him, laughed at him, mocked him and dismissed him a thousand times. He’d told himself she was obnoxious. He’d told himself she was jealous.
“She is unbearable,” he’d growled at Luca once, when Lily had spent an evening singing pointed old songs at him and his date.
“But your date really is acting her shoe size instead of her age,” his brother had replied, with a lazy grin. “Lily’s not wrong.”
And then had come that fateful New Year’s Eve party at the château in Sonoma. Rafael had perhaps had too much of the Castelli champagne. He’d long told himself he was simply drunk and she must have been, too, but he’d had five long years thinking she was dead and gone to admit to himself that he hadn’t been anything like drunk. He’d known exactly what he’d been doing when she’d sauntered past him in the upstairs hall of the family wing, in what he’d openly called “hooker shoes” earlier and a dress he’d thought trashily short. Her hair had been tumbling down the way it always had back then, sliding this way and that. The scent of her, a sugared heat, had been maddening.
“If you’re looking for Calliope,” she’d said, and had managed to make his then girlfriend’s ridiculous name sound like an insult, “she’s probably in the nursery with the other children. Your father hired a babysitting service.” She’d smirked at him. “He was obviously expecting you.”
Rafael had known that the last thing in the world he should have done was reach over, slide his palm around her neck and yank that smart mouth to his. Of course he’d known. He’d imagined he would kiss her,
