the delicate stem of her champagne flute. “Putting the two of us back in a marriage where we’ll destroy one other is not doing the right thing.”
“We are both older and wiser. I think we can make it work.”
She shook her head. “That’s where you’re mistaken. That’s where you’ve played the wrong card, Lorenzo, because I will never become your wife again.”
She turned on her heel and left. He let her go, because he knew she’d be back. He’d never gambled on a deal he couldn’t win.
ANGIE RETURNED TO the party, shaken to her core. Palms damp, heart thrumming in her chest, a frozen numbness paralyzing her brain, she made a beeline for Abigail. Mouthing an apology to the well-known philanthropist her sister was speaking to, she extracted Abigail from the conversation and pulled her toward a quiet corner of the room.
Her sister eyed her. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Lorenzo is here.”
Abigail’s eyes widened. “At your engagement party?”
“Someone screwed up our divorce papers, Abby. We’re still married.”
“Married?” Her sister’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean ‘screwed them up’? Who?”
“Lorenzo’s legal firm. They forgot to file the papers with the state.”
“Is he fixing it?”
She closed her eyes. “He won’t.”
“What do you mean ‘won’t’?”
“Franco can’t have a baby. Lorenzo needs to produce an heir. He wants me to do my duty and put our marriage back together. Give him a baby.”
A gasp escaped her sister. “That’s outrageous. You’re engaged.”
“Am I?” Panic skittered up her spine. “If I’m legally married to Lorenzo, what does that make Byron? My illegitimate fiancé?”
Her sister looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know... Regardless, we’ll sic our lawyers on him. This has to be negligence.”
“He’s angry,” she said quietly. “So angry at me for leaving.”
“You did what you had to do. Lorenzo wasn’t an innocent victim in all this. You both had a role to play in what happened.”
Angie pushed a hand through her hair. Fixed her gaze on her sister. “Is the Carmichael Company in trouble? Is there something you haven’t been telling me?”
A guarded look wrote itself across her sister’s face. “What does that have to do with this?”
“Lorenzo says he’s given Father two loans. That he will bail Carmichael out of its financial problems if I try and make our marriage work. Incentive, he called it.”
Abby’s eyes turned into hard, bright sapphires. “That bastard.”
“Is it true? Did he give father those loans?”
“Yes.” Her sister’s admission made her stomach plunge. “At first it was the need to switch over equipment to compete with other high-tech manufacturers. But Carmichael never really recovered from the new technologies taking over the market.”
Angie’s breath left her in a sharp exhale. She’d been hoping against hope it wasn’t true.
Abigail’s lips firmed. “You aren’t doing this. Father’s been burying his head in the sand for years. He didn’t want to see the writing on the wall. It’s his problem to fix, not yours.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She swallowed past the lump swelling her throat. “You promised you wouldn’t carry the load alone.”
“You needed time. You were shattered when you walked away from Lorenzo. The last thing you needed to know was that your ex-husband was bankrolling the Carmichael Company.”
Blood pulsed against her temple. “And Mother? How is she handling this?”
Abby frowned. “Ange—”
“Tell me.”
“She’s become more unstable since the financial difficulties began. It—” She waved a hand. “It may be time to check her into a program. She doesn’t want it. She swears she won’t go, but I got a call from Sandra last week while they were on a girls’ night out. I had to pour her into bed.”
Emotions she’d long held at bay welled up inside of her, causing her throat to constrict and the knots in her stomach to twist tighter. “What was it this time?”
“Gin.”
She closed her eyes. She’d distanced herself from her family for her own self-preservation—because picking up her mother again and again had left her in a million pieces. Because she just couldn’t do it anymore while she’d been trying to pull herself back together after the demise of her marriage. But the guilt surrounding the difficult decisions she’d made was always there in the background, impossible to escape.
It wrapped itself around her now—tight, suffocating. For when Della Carmichael started sliding down her slippery, alcoholic slope, the bottom came fast and furious.
“Angie.” Her sister’s firm voice brought her head up. “I won’t allow him to do this to you. This is not on you.”
But Angie knew her sister was wrong. The only solution to this was her. Her convincing Lorenzo this was insane, that it would never work. Because she knew tonight hadn’t been the end of it.
* * *
Her dilemma was still raging in her head as she put down the phone the following evening having assured Byron she was fine—that the headache she’d pleaded to extract herself from the party just before midnight was gone. The same headache that had made her slide out of her fiancé’s kiss and leave him on her doorstep, a frown on his face.
Dammit. She gave up on the idea of work, pushed to her feet and walked across her bright studio space to stand looking out at the street. SoHo at night was still busy with foot traffic, the city thick with tourists at the height of the summer. A good thing for the boutique she ran below the studio that featured her work. The bell announcing visitors had been ringing all day.
The purple awning bearing her name whipped in the breeze below. Carmichael Creations. It rankled, more than she could say, to know this studio she loved, that she was so proud of, had been contaminated by Lorenzo’s powerful reach. She’d wanted—needed—to prove so badly she could do this by herself. To follow her heart and forge a successful career as a designer after Lorenzo had dismissed it as a hobby, when in fact, self-expression was as necessary to her as breathing.
She watched a group of young girls walk by, laughing and jabbing each other in the ribs as they pointed at a slick-suited handsome male in front of them. Her
