A Night of Living Dangerously(58)
Pushing the papers aside, he rose to his feet. From the window, he saw St. Raphaël carry a large box out through the gate. His limousine soon disappeared back into the streets of Rome.
Alessandro looked up. The bright-blue sky seemed smeared violet. As if the world were going dark.
I love you, Alessandro.
I’m yours. Forever.
He closed his eyes, pressing his hot forehead against the cold glass of the window. But even with his eyes closed, even if he covered his ears with his hands, he could still hear Lilley’s shaking voice, still see the grief in her eyes. I’m done trying to make you love me. Done.
And the truth hit Alessandro like a blow.
Lilley hadn’t betrayed him.
He had betrayed her.
His eyes flew open. He’d told her she wasn’t good enough to be his wife, or good enough to be liked by his friends. He’d insisted on buying her clothes. He’d told her why her jewelry would never sell, then insisted that she give up her own dreams in order to sit alone in their palazzo, waiting for him to come home.
He’d let her love him without offering her anything in return, except coldly expensive jewels, which he should have realized long ago, she would never, ever want.
No wonder when he’d turned on her so viciously at their reception, Lilley had finally given up. For months, she’d bent over backwards trying to please him. She’d convinced herself he was worthy of her love. That night, even her romantic, loyal heart had been forced to see the truth.
He’d finally proven that he wasn’t her knight in shining armor, and never could be.
She was right. He’d been afraid to love her, terrified to let himself be vulnerable again. For sixteen years, he’d kept his heart locked up. When Olivia had given him an escape, his cowardly heart had taken the first chance at the exit door.
Lilley was right. Cold rage filled him. Rage at himself.
Alessandro turned back to the window, staring at the early twilight of December. The blue sky was streaked with pink and orange, like a brilliant fire on the horizon.
We all must choose in this life, he’d told her once. The safety of a prison. Or the terrible joy that comes with freedom.
He’d thought of her as a timid little mouse. But all along, she was the one with the courageous heart. He was the one who’d been hiding.
But not anymore. Not anymore.
Whirling around, he grabbed the phone off his desk so fast he nearly it knocked to the floor.
He would bring the laughter and trust back to her eyes, even if it made him look like the biggest fool on the face of the earth. If he couldn’t even do that … then that bastard St. Raphaël was right. Lilley and his child really would be better off without him.
Alessandro would find her. Win her.
Squaring his shoulders, he set his jaw.
He would deserve her.
After six hours, Lilley’s backside was well and truly sore.
She shifted on the hard cushion of her father’s reproduction Louis XIV couch as she sat in his fancy parlor. She looked down at her watch. Six hours he’d made her wait now. Six. It was her first visit in three years, and he’d just left her here, alone and unwelcome in the sprawling house he’d built for his mistress, a forty-thousand-square-foot mansion on a sprawling estate near Minneapolis.
Clearly this was her punishment for not coming home in June to marry his employee, as he’d demanded.
Her lower back gave a sudden stab of pain, and she rose to her feet. The parlor had beautiful views of snowy Lake Minnetonka through the black, bare trees, but it still felt like an office, not a home. There were no personal photographs, just posters from various Hainsbury’s advertising campaigns. The closest framed poster showed a happy young couple embracing on a park bench with the image of an engagement ring superimposed around them. Beneath it in big letters was the tagline, Hainsbury Jewelers. When Only Perfection Will Do.#p#分页标题#e#
Perfection. Engagement rings. Love in general. Lilley hated them all right now. But most of all, she hated her knack for loving men who did not have the capacity or desire to love her back.
Her father’s abandonment had left a hole in her heart. But Alessandro had done far worse. He’d cut through that hole with a machete, leaving one side of her heart drenched in acid, the other smashed with a meat mallet.
She’d given her husband everything, and it still hadn’t been enough. Alessandro hadn’t even tried to hear her side. He’d just taken Olivia’s every word as gospel—even believing it was possible Lilley might have slept with another man!
Well, she had slept with another man. Without thinking, she reached up and touched the brass-and-pink-rock-crystal necklace hanging around her throat, a gesture she’d repeated many times over the last week. A tragedy that the man she’d loved, the man she’d been so sure Alessandro could be, had been entirely a figment of her imagination.