LITMIR.BIZ

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Women naturally gravitated to him. Used his shoulder to cry on far too much, in Riccardo’s opinion.

      “It’s so good you’re here,” Lilly said, pulling back and flashing his brother a warm smile. She gave Riccardo’s boots and jeans a brief glance, her gaze staying well away from his glowering face, then looked back at Matteo. “Maybe I’ll see you when you’re back?”

      Riccardo’s shoulders shot to his ears. Where did she get off, giving his brother a smile like that when she hadn’t offered him one in days?

      He glanced at her purse and sunglasses. “You’re going out?”

      “I need to buy a dress for tonight.”

      “You have hundreds upstairs.”

      Her mouth tightened. “They don’t fit.”

      He couldn’t understand how at least one of those dresses didn’t fit. Yes, she’d put on a few pounds since they’d been together, but they were undoubtedly in all the right places. Women. He lifted his shoulders. “You do still have the credit card?”

      She flashed him a sweetly apologetic look. “Cut it into a million little pieces... But I have my own.”

      The urge to put her over his knee glowed like a red neon sign in front of him. Gritting his teeth, he dug in his pocket and fished the keys to his Jag out. He handed them to her. “Take the car. We’ll go in Gabe’s.”

      Her fingers curled around the keys, a hesitant look crossing her face. She loved driving that car. He knew it as surely as he knew where to kiss her to make her crazy. At the base of that beautiful long neck of hers, and most definitely between—

      “Okay, thanks.” She gave Gabe a kiss on the cheek and left, the car keys jangling from her fingers. Fury swept through him, raging through his veins. She might not think she had to put on a show for his brothers, but by God she was going to start acting the part—or she had a serious lesson coming her way.

      Gabe gave him an amused look. “Glad to see you have everything under control.”

      “I can’t believe you gave her the Jag,” Matteo added, leading the way outside. “She looked like she might drive it into a wall just for the fun of it.”

      Riccardo muttered something under his breath and took the front seat of the Maserati beside Gabe.

      “She looks fantastic, though,” Matteo said, sliding into the back. “Being away from you agrees with her.”

      “We all know you’re in love with my wife,” Riccardo shot back. “Why don’t you spend your time finding one for yourself rather than drooling over mine?”

      “Lilly needs someone in her corner with you as a coniuge,” his brother returned, unperturbed. “You haven’t exactly been husband of the year material.”

      Riccardo turned in his seat as Gabe backed out of the driveway. “What, exactly, does that mean?”

      “You work fourteen-, sixteen-hour days and you treat Lilly as an afterthought,” Matteo said belligerently. “I can’t believe she put up with two years of it.”

      Riccardo was halfway into the backseat when Gabe threw up his hand. “Sit the hell down. I’m going to drive into a wall if you keep this up.”

      Riccardo sat back, pulling in a deep breath. “Keep your mouth shut until you know all the facts.”

      “You never talk so how would I know them?”

      “Try living with the Ice Queen.”

      “She wasn’t always like that,” Matty murmured. “Maybe you should ask yourself what happened.”

      “Maybe you should mind your own business.”

      That set the tone for the forty-five-minute drive north of the city to Westchester. Riccardo kept his gaze on the scenery while Gabe and Matty caught up. Suburban New York blurred into a continuous stream of exclusive green bedroom communities. But if the scenery was tranquil, his mood was not.

      What did they think? He was going to make the De Campo name a player in the North American restaurant business by being home for dinner at six every night? That he was going to claim his birthright by being any less driven and focused than his father Antonio? He rubbed his hand across his unshaven jaw and shook his head.

      “You never wanted to hear what I had to say,” Lilly had lashed out at him the other night. “I’m through groveling at your feet, begging for your attention...”

      Dio. Was he really that bad?

      There’d been a time when he’d been much more laidback. When he’d been driving a racecar for one of Italy’s top teams and all he’d been focused on was winning. The shockingly alive feeling of driving a car at one-hundred-eighty miles an hour finally free of his father’s iron grip. He had eaten up life with the appetite of a man determined to savor every minute.

      And every beautiful woman who came along with it—like the froth on top of his espresso.

      But Lilly had not been one of those easy-to-attain women who had chased him from track to track. Lilly had been the ultimate challenge. The one woman he could never have enough of. Her sharp wit, her loving nature—before she’d turned cold—and her bewitching sensuality had made her the hottest woman he’d ever touched. He had been consumed with the need to possess her, body and soul. And it had almost made him make the biggest mistake of his life.

      He shifted in his seat. The sheer stupidity of what he’d almost done was something that would haunt him forever. He had kissed Chelsea Tate with the intent of taking her to bed at the absolute lowest point of his marriage. When Lilly wouldn’t talk to him and he’d felt so alienated in his own home he hadn’t been thinking straight. He’d wanted to prove he didn’t need her, that he didn’t love her so much that it was sending him straight to hell. But all it had done was backfire on him when he’d kissed Chelsea and realized Lilly was the only woman for him.

      A bitter taste that had nothing to do with the espresso he was consuming filled his mouth. Lilly, on the other hand, seemed to have moved on as easily as if she was shifting to the next course at dinner.

      His fingers dug into the flimsy paper cup. If he had to sleep in that bed with her one more night with her freezing him out—warning him away from those sweet, soft curves that were his and his alone—he wasn’t going to be responsible for his actions.

      The tension in the car spilled out into the brisk morning as they parked in front of the Westchester house and stepped from the car. Riccardo took a big breath of the clean, woodsy air and felt the tension seep away as the soul-restoring properties of his home on the lake kicked in. He’d fallen in love with the beautiful rolling countryside on his first visit here, to a business associate’s home on the Hudson River. When this estate had come up for sale he’d snapped it up as an escape for him and Lilly. But he’d been so busy they’d rarely ever made it out here.

      Another promise to her he hadn’t kept.

      To hell with Matty.

      Locating the chainsaw, he applied his frustration to the tree and they managed to take the huge old American white oak down without hitting the house—which was a good thing, since it had to be ninety feet tall and at least three feet in diameter.

      Afterward they sat beside the huge old tree, now sprawled in front of them, drinking cold beer out of the can. As different as they all were—Gabe, the intense, serious one, obsessed with the craft of winemaking, who’d known what he’d wanted to do from the time he’d been a little boy; Riccardo, the rebel oldest son; Matty, the in-touch-with-his-feminine side youngest—they were as close as three brothers could be. Even scattered around the globe, with Gabe spending most of his time in Napa Valley, where their vineyards were located and Matty in Tuscany, where he oversaw the company’s European operations.

      Maybe it was because their mother Francesca, who had come from one of Europe’s oldest families, hadn’t been the nurturing type.

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