Family Love

“I gathered that,” I said, while panic skittered up and down my spine. What in the hell did I have now, if I wasn’t Mrs. Marco Lucanza? Where would I go?

I’d left school yet again. I highly doubted they’d have me back. And the thought of moving home brought on a serious bout of dizzy dread. “So, who exactly is working out for you now, Marco?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. I pondered his too-handsome-for-its-own-good face for the millionth time as he parsed his answer. “What difference does that make? I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”

Unwanted, angry tears spilled down my cheeks. He slumped against the counter. The man was a sucker for crying women. That much was certain. I should let the next potential baby vessel know that.

“Cara,” he said. “Si prega di non essere arrabbiato con me.”

I glared at him. “Don’t go Italian on me, mister. I’m immune, remember?” He held out an arm. Usually my signal to tuck into his side and wrap my arms around his waist. I stayed put on the opposite side of the giant, mostly unused kitchen. We went out for most meals, on the rare occasions we were home at the same time.

“Why me? I mean … did you …”

“I loved you, yes,” he insisted. “I do. It’s …” He rubbed the back of his neck again—a nervous tick I’d learned to interpret as guilt. His gaze hardened and he straightened to his full, impressive, six-foot-five inches. “It was you who never loved me. You loved what I did for you, I’m sure. But …” He shrugged. “Your heart, it’s with another.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said, throwing up my hands even as I knew he spoke the God’s truth.

“Don’t curse, my love. It’s unbecoming.” He leaned against the granite counter, arms crossed, face neutral. “It’s all right. I understand.”

“No, you’re full of shit. You’re compartmentalizing and making excuses for whatever you’ve been doing outside our marriage.” I walked up to him and went up on my tiptoes to stare him in the eyes. “Who. Is. She?”

He gripped my arms and pushed me away. “Collette,” he said. “And she’s already pregnant so …” He gestured at my uncooperative body. “There you are.”

I stepped away, unprepared for the rush of sickening jealousy that rose up from my toes in a hot wave until it hit my brain.

“I’m leaving,” I said, not really stopping to think where I might go at that point.

His eyes narrowed. “No, you aren’t. Stay here. I’m going. There will be papers for you to sign in the morning. If you expect to reap anything from these last few years, I suggest you sign them fast.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Fuck you and reaping anything from this … this …” I waved my arms around, fury leaving me almost speechless, “… this farce.”

“Ah, the truth. It always will out.” He thumbed my chin, kissed my nose, picked up his watch and pen again and walked out of the house.

Without a thought in my head but to remove myself from this empty, echoing nightmare of a life, I grabbed my purse, threw a few things into one of the many designer suitcases in my closet, and got behind the wheel of my expensive German sports car. As I gu

Luckily, I’d kept a few bucks of my own money in my New York bank. It had gone untouched and gathering a bit of interest over the past few years, so I dug out my old debit card and used the machine inside the station.

Glancing down at the key fob in my hand, I closed my fingers around it, and then tossed it to the cashier. “Enjoy it,” I said on my way out the door. “But it needs gas.”

Once I’d checked into a half-decent hotel near the airport, I bought a bottle of cheap wine and drank it all, staring at the fumes and the dust and catching a whiff of what I’d loved so much about Florida under all the stench of failure filling my room. Gardenias, mixed with the tang of the ocean … if I closed my eyes I could even smell the pool chemicals and the expensive coffee that would be ready every morning for me … and for Marco of course.

He sent me one text: “The papers will be sent to your home in Kentucky. I assume that is where you’re headed.”

The scream tore at my throat when I heaved my phone against the wall, before I cried myself to drunken sleep. A muffled buzzing noise woke me. Confused by my surroundings and wondering why I couldn’t smell the morning coffee, I leaned over the side of the bed and retrieved the phone, noting the word “Lindsay” on the incoming call. With a sigh, I put the thing to my ear.

“Angel,” she said. “Honey, are you all right?”

“No, Mama, I’m not.” I burst into useless tears again. She waited me out. When I could form words I said, “He left me. I couldn’t have a baby. Or I was getting too old, I don’t know. Shit.” I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and caught sight of my reflection in the mirror over the cheap chest of drawers. My hair was straggly, my face puffy. I looked like a loser—pretty much exactly what I was, I supposed.

“Come on home, then.”

“No.” I got up and started pacing. “I can get work down here. I need to stay here.”

“Well, that’s your choice, of course,” she sounded distant, yet nosy at the same time. The complexity of this tone put me in familiar territory. “But I have to tell you …”

A sharp knock on the door made me frown. “Mama,” I said, trying to peer through the peephole. “What have you done?”

“Just what I think is right for my children.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said, slumping against the wall. “How did you find out where I am?”

“Your husband called Kieran and told him you’d run off and where you were—did you know he tracks your location from your phone? Amazing. Anyway, Kieran told Dom. Dom told Diana. Diana told her sister. She told Cal. It’s the way of our world, or have you forgotten? Anyway, Cal apparently wondered out loud why it was any of his business where you were anymore, and rightly so. But Kieran somehow convinced him to come down there to get you, the poor man.”

I hung up on her. “Go away, Cal,” I said to the closed door. “Go back home. I don’t need saving.”

“Let me in, Angelique,” he said.

The sound of his voice, something I thought I’d long discarded as no longer relevant for me, made something in my chest give way. I slapped a hand over my mouth to keep from saying anything else.

He knocked again. “Your brother made me come all this way. At least let me in to take a piss.”

I jerked the door open. Calvin stood there, looking travel-rumpled but perfect in his ubiquitous khakis and button down shirt. He had new, deeper, worry lines on his forehead. And a wedding ring on his left hand. I blinked at it, cursing myself for even imagining that fine catch such as this man would sit around pining and waiting for me to get over myself and realize what I had right in front of me.

“Come on in,” I said, relieved and jealous and furious with myself all over again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

New York City

Two Years Later

“Come on, Angel, I told you what time to be here.” Aiden’s voice grated on my nerves, but I forced a smile, reminding myself that at least one of the Love family members had a right to be a diva. His fourth book had just been released, and he was in New York for a book signing.

He’d brought the whole damn family, and I’d promised them tickets to one of the big shows, thanks to my co

I sighed and spun my chair, wishing I had the nerve to open my own dance studio, and recalling the conversation I had with Gayle about her pla