The Innocent's Secret Baby(31)

     



 

She would not walk out on him again.

"Oh, but I'm not finished." His quiet words stopped her in her tracks.  "You didn't think I came here empty-handed did you? Without some  bargaining power?"

His wife turned to face him, blue eyes apprehensive. "The Carmichael  Company is bleeding money," he told her. "Has been for quite some time.  I've given your father two large loans to keep things afloat."

She blinked. "That's impossible."

That had been his reaction when Angie's father had come to him for help.  That the Carmichael Company, an over two-hundred-year-old textile  dynasty, an American icon with its name on the main campus of one of New  York's most prestigious design schools, could be in the red, deeply in  the red, had been inconceivable to him.

He watched the color drain from his wife's face. "If you bothered to go  home, you would know. So many countries are in the mix now, producing  high-tech fabrics. Things haven't been good in some time."

She shook her head. "If this is true," she said faintly, "why would you help my family?"

His lips curled. "Because I am loyal to the relationships I form, unlike  you. I don't run when things get rocky. Who do you think is  underwriting your studio?"

She frowned. "I pay the rent on my studio."

"You pay one quarter of the rent. It's my building, Angie."

Her mouth slackened. "I hired that real estate agent. Found the space..."

"You found what I wanted you to." He waved a hand at her. "It made me  sleep better at night knowing you were in a safe part of town."

Her face crumpled as realization set in. "What are you insinuating? That  you will pull the plug on the aid you're giving to my family, toss me  out on the street if I don't agree to come back to you?"

"I prefer to think of it as incentive. We owe our marriage a fair shot  before we relegate it to the history books. You come back to me, we try  and make it work, I pull Carmichael out of its financial difficulties  before it becomes a footnote in a list of great American dynasties. It's  a win-win."

A win-win? She stared at him, disbelieving. "You would really hold that over my head?"

"You didn't play fair when you walked out on me, tesoro. You just cut  and ran. So yes, I will use whatever means required to make you see the  light. To do the right thing."

"I asked you to go to counseling. I begged you to. I tried to save our marriage and then I left."

He ignored the stab of guilt that piece of truth pushed through him.  "You expected us to solve things overnight. It doesn't happen that way."

Her fingers curled tight around the delicate stem of her champagne  flute. "Putting the two of us back in a marriage where we'll destroy one  other is not doing the right thing."

"We are both older and wiser. I think we can make it work."

She shook her head. "That's where you're mistaken. That's where you've  played the wrong card, Lorenzo, because I will never become your wife  again."

She turned on her heel and left. He let her go, because he knew she'd be back. He'd never gambled on a deal he couldn't win.