Modern Romance March 2017 Books 5 -8. Natalie Anderson

assuming your sister’s husband doesn’t know, then, either?”

      A flush swept her cheeks.

      “Dannazione, Angelina.” His hands clenched into fists by his sides. “Why didn’t you feel you could trust me with this?”

      She waved a hand at him. “You have the perfect family, Lorenzo. I was worried you would look down on us. You have such a disdain for a lack of discipline.”

      Heat seared his skin. “I would have helped you, not looked down on you. That’s what a husband and wife do for each other.”

      “And we had that aspect of our relationship perfected, didn’t we?” Her eyes flashed. “I never felt good enough for you, Lorenzo. Appreciated by you. Ever. Not after those first few months when you started tuning me out. Treating me like an afterthought. At least when you wanted me, I felt I had some value. When you lost interest in even that, it decimated me. Why would I tell you about my mother? Air my family’s dirty laundry? All that would have done was make you regret your decision to marry me even more.”

      “I did not regret my decision to marry you. Ever.” He stared at her, stunned. “Is that what you think?”

      No response.

      Confusion warred with fury, the red tide in him winning. “You are so off base, Angelina. So off base. I might have been distant, we agree that I was, but do you really think I would have thought any less of you because of this? That I wouldn’t have supported you?”

      Her mouth pursed. “I don’t know.”

      His breath hissed from his lungs. His marriage was suddenly illuminated in a way it had never been before. What the cost of his emotional withdrawal had been on his wife. What he should have seen. He didn’t like what he saw.

      He took hold of her hand and pulled her to her feet. Turning her around, he reached for the zipper of her dress. She jerked away from him, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”

      “Putting you to bed.”

      “I can’t go to bed. The party’s still going.”

      He moved his gaze over her face. “You’re a mess. You can’t go back down there. Things are winding down, anyway. I’ll go finish up.”

      He turned her around and slid down the zipper. She pulled away, arms crossed over her chest. “I can do the rest.”

      He headed for the door. “Did Abby talk to Courtney Price?” she called after him. “She can’t print this in her column tomorrow.”

      He turned around. “She pulled her aside. I saw them talking.”

      Her face relaxed. “Abby will fix it. She always does.”

      Abby will fix it. She always does. The words rang in his head as Lorenzo went back to the party. Is that what Angelina and her sister had spent the past decade doing? Fixing their mother’s lapses before they made it to the tabloids? Preserving a family secret that was tearing his wife apart, a secret he hadn’t known about because he’d been too caught up in himself, in his own stuff, to see the warning signals?

      The tension that had always lain between his wife and her parents, the distance she’d put between herself and them this past couple of years, his wife’s refusal to ever have more than one or two drinks no matter what was put in front of her—it all made sense now.

      Anger at his own blindness fueling him, he found Alistair Carmichael and ensured he went and checked on his wife. What kind of a man was he to leave it to his daughters to pick up the pieces? To ignore what was clearly a cry for help from his wife?

      Perhaps, he thought, the same kind of man he had been during his marriage. A man who had simply not been there.

      * * *

      Angie willed herself to sleep after Lorenzo left, curling up into a ball under the cool satin sheets and squeezing her eyes shut. But the scene with her mother kept replaying itself over and over again in her head.

      You who don’t care. You who turned your back and walked away.

      A knot tied itself in her stomach. She had walked away. Because going through what had happened tonight again and again, never reaching that place inside of her mother that was in so much pain she couldn’t heal, had taken a piece of her soul.

      She burrowed into the pillow, an ache consuming her insides. Lorenzo’s anger, his fury, twisted the knot tighter. Perhaps she should have told him. Perhaps she was as guilty of holding things inside as he was. Except it was difficult to communicate with a brick wall and that’s what he’d been near the end.

      She hugged the pillow tighter. Tried to force herself to sleep, because it hurt too much to be in the here and now. But she couldn’t settle. She was still awake when Lorenzo came in just after one, stripped off his clothes, showered and came to bed.

      He smelled so good, so achingly real and familiar, she had to fight the urge to beg him to hold her. Closing her eyes, she curled her fingers into the sheets. Lorenzo sighed, reached for her and turned her toward him. Feeling utterly exposed with her tearstained face and puffy eyes, she closed her eyes.

      He ran a finger down her cheek, making her lashes flutter open. “Angie,” he murmured, “mia cara. Things between us have to change. You have to learn to trust me. I have to get better at reading you...at knowing when you need me, because clearly I am terrible at that.”

      She searched the angular shadows of his face in the moonlight. “You’re serious about this.”

      “You think I would have done what I’ve done if I wasn’t? I want you back because you are meant to be with me, Angie, not because I have some cruel desire to make you suffer. I married you because you are beautiful and intelligent, because you were what I wanted in a wife, not simply because you were pregnant. Because for the first time since Lucia died, I felt alive. You made me feel alive.”

      Her heart stuttered in her chest. If she had sensed that this was the case, felt that intense connection that had bonded them together, he had never once verbalized it. When he had begun to shut her out, she’d convinced herself she’d imagined it, that she was delusional and hopelessly naive where he was concerned. But this, this, she didn’t know how to process.

      His fingers traced the edge of her jaw, commanding her attention. “If we had disagreements about how our relationship worked, it didn’t mean I found you lacking—it meant we had issues to resolve. To say we didn’t do a very good job of that is an understatement.”

      She bit her lip, the salt tang of blood filling her mouth. She’d been convinced he’d wanted her because she’d been a politically viable Carmichael, as a wife who could open doors for him in alternate social circles. For what he’d thought he’d been signing on for. If it really had been more than that, if he had wanted her for her, what did that mean?

      Had she walked out on a marriage that had been reparable if she’d just stuck? It was an overwhelming, earth-shattering prospect to consider. She sucked in a deep breath and lifted her gaze to his. “Every time you withdrew I felt it as a rejection. It hurt, Lorenzo, badly.”

      “I know. I realize that now.”

      A long moment passed. His fingers slid to her cheek, thumb tracing over the tracks of her tears. The ache inside her grew until it was almost all-encompassing. The need for everything they’d had. Everything they’d never had. For this to be different this time as he was promising it would be. But she didn’t know if she could trust him, wasn’t sure she could go through another of his Jekyll-and-Hyde routines. Didn’t know if she could trust her own instincts anymore.

      Fear invaded her, coiled its way around her insides. She pushed a hand into the mattress to move before she did something she would regret. Something she wasn’t ready for. Before she did beg him to hold her. Lorenzo hooked an arm around her waist and tucked her into the warmth of his body before she could, her back nestled against his chest. “Go to sleep,” he murmured, brushing his lips over her