Modern Romance March 2017 Books 5 -8. Natalie Anderson

pushed herself upright. “I—” She slicked her tongue over her lips. “I couldn’t get into this bed. There were too many memories, too many things I—”

      “What?” he responded harshly. “Too many things you want to forget? Too much backstory you’d like to erase instead of facing it?”

      She blinked, her eyes becoming accustomed to the light. Anger pulsed in his face—a living, breathing entity that made her heart tick faster. “Why are you so angry?”

      “You weren’t in bed,” he said tersely. “I didn’t know where you were.”

      He’d thought she’d left. Again. The realization wrote itself across her brain in a dazed discovery that had her studying those hot, furious eyes. She’d known instinctively that walking out on Lorenzo hadn’t been the right thing to do, but she hadn’t been equipped with the emotional maturity at twenty-three to handle the destruction they had wrought. Instead she had left Lorenzo alone to face the fallout of their marriage while she’d spent a month in the Caribbean with her grandmother. She’d never quite forgiven herself for it.

      “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, reminding herself he had things to be angry about, too. “For leaving like that. I didn’t handle it the right way. I did what I thought was necessary at the time. I needed to find myself—to discover who I was. But it wasn’t right. I know that.”

      He reached for the top button of his shirt, eyes on hers. “And did you succeed? Did you find what you were looking for?”

      “Yes.” She laced her fingers together, eyes dropping to the sapphire that blazed on her finger. “I found me.”

      “And who is she?”

      “The true me,” she said quietly. “The one who spends her evenings with a sketch pad beside the bed, who gets to get up every morning and make those ideas into reality, tells a story someone might find beautiful. That’s what I love, Lorenzo. That’s when I am at peace.”

      He stared at her for a long moment, then finished unbuttoning his shirt. She told herself to look away as he stripped it off, but her sleepy, hazy brain, her senses, still filled with the scent of him, the parts of her that still craved him like a drug demanded she watch. Absorb every lean, cut line he exposed, angling down to the V that disappeared into his belt line.

      Heat lifting to her face, she lay back against the pillows. It didn’t matter how many times she’d seen Lorenzo naked, it still had the ability to fluster her beyond reason.

      Seeking to distract herself, she voiced the one question her still unguarded brain needed to know as she lay staring at the ceiling. “Those women you talked about...did you sleep with them?”

      * * *

      Lorenzo balled up his T-shirt and tossed it in the hamper, struggling to get his anger under control. A part of him, the bitter, wounded part that hadn’t been able to enjoy the one woman he had taken to bed during their time apart, while she had apparently found her fiancé more than satisfactory, wanted to see her flinch, hurt. But something stopped him. He thought it might be the knowledge that if he followed through on that desire, it would haunt them forever.

      Setting his knee down on the bed, he joined his wife. “I don’t think we should go there,” he said softly. “I said, forward, Angie, not back.”

      Her face crumpled. “I want to know.”

      A knot formed in his chest. He drew in a breath. Dannazione—he was not the injured party here.

      “One,” he said evenly, “and no, I won’t tell you who she is.”

      “Why?”

      “Because you don’t need to know.”

      She closed her eyes.

      Heat seared his belly. Blood fizzling in his veins, he threw a thigh over his wife’s silk-clad body and caged her in, forearms braced on either side of her head. “Angelina,” he murmured, watching as her eyes fluttered open, “you asked. And while we’re at it, let’s not forget about our friend Byron.”

      Her lashes shaded her cheeks. “I didn’t sleep with Byron. We were waiting.”

      He rocked back on his heels. “Waiting for what?”

      “Until we got married.”

      Incredulity that any man would marry a woman without knowing whether they were sexually compatible warred with the infuriating knowledge that she had lied to him.

      “And yet you deliberately let me think you’d bedded him,” he murmured. “‘I have no complaints,’ was how I think you put it.”

      Her eyes filled with an icy blue heat. “You blackmailed me back into this marriage, Lorenzo. If you think I’m going to apologize, think again.”

      What he thought was that he had no idea what to think. Knowing his wife remained his and only his satisfied him on a level he couldn’t even begin to articulate. That she might be as haunted by him as he was by her...

      He traced his gaze over her lush, vulnerable mouth. Across the enticing stretch of bare skin the askew neckline of her nightie revealed, down over the smooth flesh of her thighs where the silk had ridden up...the dusky shadow between her legs. Unbearable temptation. Hard as rock, he ached for her.

      “Get off me.” His wife drew his attention back up to her flushed face.

      His lip curled. “What’s the matter, mia cara? You afraid I’m going to penetrate those defenses you cling so desperately to? That make you feel so safe?”

      A defiant look back. “Just like yours do?”

      “Ah, but I am promising to open up.” A lazy smile twisted his lips. “I’m a caterpillar poised for transformation. You get to come out of your cocoon, too, and try your wings.”

      “Very funny.” She pushed at his chest. “Off.”

      He dropped his mouth to her ear. “An open book, Angelina. That’s what you and I are going to be. The brutal truth and nothing but. We might just survive this little experiment if we can offer each other that.”

      He levered himself off his sexy, furious wife and headed for the bathroom. It occurred to him, then, as he stepped under a hot shower, his emotions a tangled mess, that he might have underestimated the power his wife still held over him. That both of them might end up getting burned before this was over.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      ANGIE SPENT THE WEEK leading up to the Hamptons party attempting to avoid any further confrontations between her and Lorenzo. That combustible scene in their bedroom had convinced her engaging with her husband was not a good strategy. Avoidance was. And with Lorenzo immersed in his big deal, it hadn’t proven difficult. It was almost like old times.

      Except it wasn’t. She had been working long hours, too, at the studio getting Alexander’s collection ready, with Lorenzo’s support. Her husband, however, had insisted they share dinners together, even if they had to work afterward. He was intent, it seemed, on making this marriage work. They talked, shared things about their day, managed, for the most part, to be civil. But soon afterward, Lorenzo retreated to his office to work, not coming to bed until the early hours, ensuring her strategy had worked perfectly.

      Tonight, however, she conceded as she watched a perfect East Hampton sunset stain the sky, there would be no escaping—not from her combustive relationship with her husband, nor the past she’d worked so hard to leave behind. Tonight they would host the toast of high society for cocktails at their sprawling waterfront estate, an event that had the gossip hounds frothing at the mouth and her insides curling in an intense, visceral reaction that begged her to retreat.

      But it was too late. It had been too late ever since Gillian had sent out the cream-and-silver embossed invitations via courier and the RSVPs had started flooding in by