Postcards From…Verses Brides Babies And Billionaires. Rebecca Winters

before agreeing to stay. But, somehow, with Lorenzo at her side, it wasn’t as much of a nightmare as she’d expected. Her husband was endlessly patient with her mother, commanding when he needed to be, caring when Della required a softer touch. Where had this man been, she wondered, during their marriage?

      By the time they’d boarded the jet, headed for home, she felt numb.

      “You okay?” Lorenzo looked at her from the seat beside her, his laptop conspicuously absent on the console.

      She nodded. “I hate leaving her there. Please let this be the last time we have to do this.”

      He closed his fingers over hers. “Hopefully it is. If it’s not, we’ll keep doing it until she’s better. You’re strong, Angie. You can do this.”

      She looked down at his hand curved around hers. Warm and protective, as he’d been all day. Her confusion heightened until it was that thick gray cloud, blanketing her brain. “Thank you,” she murmured huskily, “for being there for me this week. I swore I’d never do this again because it hurts too much. But I’m learning running doesn’t solve anything.”

      “No, it doesn’t,” he agreed, eyes darkening. “But sometimes we need to do things in our own time. Allow ourselves the space to heal.”

      Lucia. He was talking about Lucia again. A tight knot formed in her stomach. She couldn’t ignore it any longer—this ghost that had always lain between them. She knew it was at the heart of figuring them out.

      She pulled her hand out from under his. “What you said the night before the party—that you had worked through some things. Was one of them Lucia?”

      A guarded expression moved across his face. “Yes. When I met you, I thought I had moved on, gotten through the worst of the grieving process. But after you left, I realized I hadn’t left that process behind as fully as I’d imagined. That perhaps I had carried some of that baggage into our marriage—baggage which did make me emotionally unavailable at times.”

      She frowned. “You told me it was my issue with Lucia that was the problem.”

      His mouth twisted. “Because you made me furious. Pointing fingers at the ghost of Lucia was your favorite card to play when you were angry with me, cara.”

      Her eyelids lowered. She couldn’t deny that. She’d lashed out in whatever way she could to get a response out of him. Something, anything to show he’d cared. She’d known it was wrong to use Lucia as a weapon against him, but their fights hadn’t exactly been rational ones.

      “Tell me about her,” she said quietly. “Tell me about what happened. I need to understand, Lorenzo. Maybe if I had, things would have been different.”

      He sat back. Rubbed a palm against his temple. “Where to start? Lucia and I were childhood sweethearts. We spent the summers together in Lake Como. Eventually our childhood crush developed into an adult romance. Our families were all for it, it seemed…predestined, in a way.”

      Her stomach clenched. She had felt that way about him when they’d met, their connection had been so strong, so immediate. But Lorenzo’s heart had belonged to someone else.

      “We didn’t marry right away,” he continued. “I needed to sow my wild oats. I wasn’t sure I could marry the first girl I fell in love with. But after a few years, I knew it was her. We married when I was twenty-six. I was in New York by then, she joined me here.” His dark lashes arced over his cheeks. “She was like a fish out of water, missing her family, missing Italy. I did the best I could to make her happy. She kept saying once she had a baby, once we started a family, everything would change. We were trying for that when she…”

      Died. Her chest seized tight. She curled her fingers over his. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it.”

      “No—you’re right. You need to know what happened. It’s…a part of me.” He palmed his jaw, dragging his fingers over dark stubble. “The incident at the town house happened when I was in Shanghai on business. We had an excellent security system there. Impenetrable—like the one we have now. But the men who broke in were professionals—violent professionals. They knew how to talk their way into someone’s home, knew the stories to tell. Lucia was so innocent—she never stood a chance.”

      Her stomach curled in on itself. “She let them in.”

      He nodded. “They put her in my den. Told her to stay there while they went and cleaned out the place. They left her alone for a few moments and she called for help on her cell. One of them came back, saw what she was doing and hit her with the blunt end of the gun.” His fingers flexed on his thigh, his knuckles gleaming white. “The blow to the head caused a severe bleed on her brain. She never regained consciousness.”

      Angie pressed her fingers to her mouth in horror. “How do you know all of this?” she whispered.

      “Surveillance video.”

      Her stomach dropped, a sick feeling twisting her gut. “Please tell me you didn’t watch it.”

      “I had to. I had to know what happened.”

      The raspy note in his voice, the raw emotion in his dark eyes, tore a piece of her heart loose. What would it do to a person to go through that? To lose someone you love like that? It would change you forever.

      “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, a sinking feeling settling through her for all the wrongs they’d done each other. “For being so insensitive. I knew what happened to Lucia was horrible. I knew I should make allowances for it. But every time you retreated, every time you turned off, I hurt so badly, I just wanted you to hurt like I was hurting. It became instinctual, reflexive. But it didn’t make it right.”

      He shook his head. “We were both experts at slinging arrows. It became easier than dealing with what was in front of us.”

      She caught her lip between her teeth. Stared out the window at a sea of blue, her ragged emotions begging her to stop. But to do that would stall them where they stood, suspended in a state of perpetual animation. It would not fix them.

      “I know Lucia will always be in your heart,” she said quietly when she turned back to him. “I wouldn’t expect any less. The issue between us was the emotional distance it caused, the emotional distance you put between us. I need to know you are over her, Lorenzo.”

      His cheeks hollowed. “I have let her go. I have moved on. That’s what this is all about, Angelina—moving forward. I’m asking you to do that with me.”

      Her chest went tight. She knew they needed to let go of the past if they were going to make this work. But could she do it? Could she trust her instincts where Lorenzo was concerned? Could she trust that he had changed? Or was she setting herself up for an even greater fall than she’d taken the first time?

      “Maybe what we need,” he said quietly, a contemplative look on his face, “is a fresh start. A blank slate. No ghosts, no animosity, just us.”

      Her heart contracted on a low, painful pull. It was so tempting to believe they could recapture the good they’d had. That she could claim that piece of his heart she’d always craved. Because when it had been good between them, it had been good in a way nothing else could touch. And when it had been bad, he had eviscerated her.

      Blood pumped through her veins, her breath caught in her throat. Suddenly her baby steps seemed like a heart-pumpingly, scary big leap.

      “All of you,” Lorenzo said evenly, eyes on hers. “That’s what I’m asking for. A real shot at this. Can you give me that?”

      She swallowed past a paper-dry throat. Took the leap. “I can try.”

      Lorenzo put his emotionally exhausted wife to bed after a light dinner, then headed to his study to work. The logistics with Angelina’s