Postcards From…Verses Brides Babies And Billionaires. Rebecca Winters

meant the acquisition was still in limbo.

      Resisting the temptation to drown his frustration in a potent shot of something strong because it would also dull his brain with hours of work ahead of him, he fixed himself a cappuccino in Constanza’s steel marvel of a kitchen, returned to his study and picked up a report he had to review before his morning meeting, but the numbers blurred before his eyes.

      His thoughts were consumed, instead, by his wife’s haunted face as he’d put her to bed. With the fact that he had clearly never known her. Far from being the spoiled young woman he’d thought he’d married who was incapable of compromise, she was instead a vulnerable, emotional woman he’d never looked deep enough to see. A woman who had gone through hell under the purview of parents who had, in reality, been nothing of the sort.

      That his wife had been strong enough at fifteen to police her mother at parties, to keep up a facade for as long as she and Abigail had, to take her mother to rehab not once but twice, by the time she was twenty, little more than a girl herself, boggled his mind. It was courage on a scale he couldn’t imagine. Made him feel as if he’d just taken a hard shot to the solar plexus.

      He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, guilt twisting his insides. Twice now he’d failed to react when the most important women in his life had cried out for help. Failed to recognize what they’d been trying to tell him. Failed to protect them.

      It shamed him on the most visceral of levels, raked across the dark presence that seemed to lurk just beneath the surface of his skin, searching for a way to the top.

      Angie had always believed Lucia had his heart, that he wasn’t over her and that was what had caused him to hold back with her. Instead the truth was something far worse. If he’d listened to Lucia, if he’d been present for her as Angelina liked to cite as his greatest fault, then she would still be alive.

      Agitation drove him to his feet and to the window, where he stood looking out at a floodlit view of Central Park. The darkness pressed against his edges—relentless, hungry. He would never forgive himself for what had happened to Lucia because he didn’t deserve it. But he could do things differently with Angelina this time.

      He pressed a palm against his temple. If there was guilt for not being able to give his wife the love she so clearly craved, deserved, the love she’d never been shown, he would have to appease himself with the promise he would give her everything else. He would be there for her this time.

      Because to allow his marriage to descend into the emotionally addictive union it had once been? To allow himself to feel the things for Angelina he once had? To experience more loss? Not happening.

      Emotion had destroyed them the first time around, rationality and practicality would save them. That and the combustible chemistry he had slammed the breaks on in the Hamptons.

      The lush, heady, spellbindingly feminine taste of his wife as she’d begged him to take her filled his head. He wanted to dull the edge, kill the need that drove him whenever he was within five feet of her. With a clean slate ahead of them, an agreement from Angelina to leave their ghosts behind them, he intended to accomplish that goal in short order.

      He would have his delectable wife back in his bed, in every sense of the word. Would make this marriage into what it always should have been.

       Chapter Seven

      “DAMN.” ANGIE SCOOPED the bracelet off the bedroom floor and attempted to refasten it around her wrist. She had been late coming home from the studio, where she’d been putting the final touches on Faggini’s collection, which would debut at Fashion Week next week, not an ideal night to be running behind with Lorenzo’s parents coming for dinner.

      The clasp slipped from her fingers again. She grimaced. Was she that unnerved by the thought of a visit from Octavia the Great or did it have more to do with the fact she’d agreed to give her marriage a real shot? She suspected it was a combination of both.

      “Need help?” Lorenzo emerged from the dressing area, rolling up the sleeves of the crisp white shirt he’d put on.

      “Yes.” She handed him the bracelet. “Please.”

      He slid it around her wrist, making quick work of the clasp. His gaze met hers. “Are you stressing about tonight? You have to stop doing that. Everyone wants us to work, including my parents.”

      “I’m not stressed, I’m late.”

      “You’re not late. They’re not even here yet.”

      He slid an arm around her waist and tugged her close. Smoking hot in dark pants and the white shirt, he made her heart thud in her chest. “I appreciate the fact that they are late, however,” he drawled, “since I have not had time to greet you properly.”

      Her stomach clenched, heat radiating through her insides. He had a distinctly predatory look in his eyes tonight, one that suggested their adjustment period was officially over.

      “Your parents will be arriving any minute,”

      “Plenty of time.” He slid his fingers into her hair, cupped her scalp and kissed her. A long, slow shimmer of a connection, it was leisurely and easy, a magic dancing in the air between them that stole her breath. Her palms settled on his chest, grabbed handfuls of shirt as her knees melted beneath her.

      “Lorenzo,” she murmured when they came up for air, “you are ruining my hair, not to mention my lipstick.”

      “Mmm.” He slid his mouth across her jaw, down to the hollow of her throat. Pressed his lips to her pulse. It was racing like a jackhammer, revealing every bit of the tumult raging inside of her. He flicked his tongue across the frantic beat, his palms clamping on her hips to draw her closer.

      He was all hard, solid muscle beneath her hands. The most exciting man on earth to her—always had been. She swayed closer, molding herself to his hard contours. He returned his attention to her mouth, each nip countered by a soothing lave of his tongue over tender flesh.

      Drowning. She was drowning.

      The doorbell rang. Jolted out of her pheromone-induced haze, Angie stiffened and dragged herself out of his arms. Lorenzo watched her with a satisfied look as he straightened his shirt. “Now you look like a proper wife.”

      She ignored him, walked to the mirror to straighten her hair and reapply her lipstick. It took several deep pulls of air to get her breath back. Her equilibrium.

      Hand at her back, he guided her out to the foyer, where Constanza was greeting his parents. Lorenzo shook his father’s hand, kissed his mother’s cheeks, then drew Angie forward. She opted for the less threatening target first, Lorenzo’s father, Salvatore.

      Graying at the temples, shorter than his son by a couple of inches and stockier in middle age, Salvatore Ricci had always been much more approachable than his wife despite his fearsome business reputation.

      “Buonasera, Angelina,” he murmured, bending to brush a kiss against both of her cheeks. “È bello rivederti.”

      It’s good to see you again. She forced a smile to her lips. “Altrettanto.”

      She turned to Lorenzo’s mother, perfectly turned out as usual in an eggplant silk wrap dress that came to the knee and sleek Italian heels on her dainty feet. With her short, silver hair and her son’s dark, dark eyes, she was still a stunningly beautiful woman. “Buonasera, Octavia.”

      “Buonasera.” Octavia brushed a kiss to both her cheeks. “Thank you for having us.”

      “It’s so lovely you are in town.” Angie summoned the perfect manners she’d been taught since birth as she ushered Lorenzo’s parents into the salon and offered them a drink. She had bemoaned all those social niceties as a teenager, finding them false and disingenuous, but right now, in this