Unwrapping the Castelli Secret

by Caitlin Crews

“I don’t love you,” Rafael said. “If I can love anything at all, if I’m capable of such a thing, I love that ghost.”

  Lily was dimly surprised that she was still in one piece after that. That the building hadn’t sunk into the water all around them. That there was still a sun to peek in the windows on this cold, ruined day. That she hadn’t simply turned to a column of ash and blown off into nothingness in the next breath.

  And he wasn’t finished.

  “I will always love that ghost,” he said, very distinctly, so there could be no mistake. So she could not misunderstand. “She’s in my head, my heart, as selfish and as worthless as I might be. Yet it’s the flesh and blood woman I can’t forgive, Lily. If I’m honest with you, I don’t know that I ever will.” His smile then was a razor, sad and lethal at once. “But don’t worry. I doubt I’ll forgive myself.”

  * * *

  Rafael watched her take that in, a kaleidoscope of emotion moving over her expressive face, and told himself it wasn’t a lie. Not quite. It was the truth—a truth. It was just that there was a greater truth he had no intention of sharing with her.

  Because he couldn’t trust her, no matter the temptation to do exactly that. He knew her better than any other person alive, and he knew her not at all, and he’d understood over the course of that long, blisteringly hot night that he thought was branded into his very flesh that this was exactly the kind of heaviness he’d spent his life avoiding. For good reason.

  There were other words for all those weighty things that rolled over him, pressing down on him like some kind of pitiless vise. He wasn’t afraid of them any longer. But he’d succumbed to his vulnerabilities last night. He wouldn’t do it again. There was Arlo to consider now.

  And Rafael would be damned if he would ruin his son’s life the way his parents had so cavalierly wrecked his, by betting on feelings when it was the practical application of reason and strength that got things done. He’d spent the past five years proving exactly that in his business affairs. He could do no less for his only child.

  He wouldn’t live his life for the ghost he hadn’t saved. He couldn’t.

  “We are going to have to decide what story we wish to tell,” he said coolly, when it looked as if Lily had wrestled her reactions under control. She was wrapped up in that gold thing she must have pulled from his bed, her hair a glorious halo of strawberry blond all around her and falling over her shoulders, and he felt like a saint for maintaining his distance when it was the last thing he wanted to do. But it was necessary. No matter that her blue eyes looked slicked with hurt and it caused him physical pain to know he’d done that to her. Again. “Whatever the version, I have no intention of hiding the fact that I’m Arlo’s father. From the world or from him. You need to come to terms with that.”

  She blinked, and then she rose somewhat stiffly to her feet, and he couldn’t tell if that was a remnant of the night they’d shared or if it was an emotional response to the things he’d told her. Or both.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, and the gaze she fixed on him was blue and cool, no hint of any hurt or wetness. He was tempted to think he’d imagined it. “I’m in Italy, aren’t I? If I hadn’t come to terms with it, I imagine I’d still be back home in Virginia, knee-deep in dogs.”

  “You are in Italy, yes,” Rafael said quietly. “Hidden away in a house off in the mountains where no one has seen you or him except a handful of villagers who would never question the family. And then masked in public here, so no one could recognize you. You can’t have it both ways for too much longer, I’m afraid.”

  Lily yanked her gaze from his and moved over to the side table, where she poured herself a cup of coffee with a hand that looked perfectly steady—and a good man, he was aware, would not want to see this woman, the mother of his child, so upset she shook. He understood that once again, he’d proved he could never be anything like good. Especially not where Lily was involved.

  “I don’t know why you think a certain reticence is trying to have it both ways,” she said after a moment. She glanced at him over her shoulder, looking as though she belonged in the paintings that graced the walls, draped in gold and her own wavy hair. “What story do you think we ought to tell, Rafael? The one you just bludgeoned me with?”

  He acknowledged the truth in that with a shrug. “You can’t imagine that you can rise from the dead unremarked, can you?”

  “I don’t see why not,” she said, blowing on her coffee and then taking a sip before she turned to face him again. “It’s not anybody’s business.”

  “Perhaps not. But the media attention will be unavoidable.” He sounded impatient even by his own reckoning, but that coverlet was sliding down her upper arm, now, coming perilously close to shifting just far enough to expose the rosy tip of her breast. He needed to focus. “You died tragically and very young. That you are alive and well and in possession of the heir to the Castelli fortune will make it all that much more irresistible.”

  She’d become that stranger again, cool and unreadable—or maybe she, too, had grown up in these intervening years. Become less raw, less emotional. Or at least less likely to show her every thought on her face. It was his own curse that he should feel that like a loss. Like one more thing to grieve.

  “It sounds like you already know what they’ll say,” she said mildly. It was her turn to shrug. “Why can’t we let them say it?”

  “The real story here isn’t your unexpected resurrection, as exciting as that might be,” he replied after a moment, after he’d had to force himself to look away from her almost-yet-not-quite-revealed breast. “It’s the question of what happened five years ago.”

  “And here I thought rising from the dead would be sufficient,” she said, cool and dry, though he did not mistake that edge beneath it. “The media really is voracious these days.”

  “It depends on the story. Did you deliberately hide yourself away all this time? Or did you hit your head and forget who you were?” He kept his gaze trained on hers. “The former leads to all manner of unpleasant inquiries about why you might have felt it necessary to do such an irrevocable thing and who might have been responsible. The latter, meanwhile, is a special interest story that will no doubt capture the public’s interest for a while, as these things do, but will then fade away.”

  “So to be clear, we’re not talking about the truth right now, despite how many times you’ve called me a liar in the past two weeks.” She raised a challenging brow. “We’re talking about manipulating the media for your own murky ends.”

  “No, Lily.” His tone was harsh. He made no attempt to soften it. “We’re talking about Arlo.”

  She looked shocked by that. “What does this have to do with Arlo?”

  “He will eventually be able to read all about this,” Rafael pointed out. “Assuming someone doesn’t share the whole of it with him on a playground, as children are wont to do. It will be part of the very public story that he and anyone else can access at will. I’d prefer that story not be about his mother thinking so little of his father that she pretended to kill herself and then hid herself away for half a decade. What good could possibly come of his knowing that?”

  Something glittered in that too-blue gaze of hers. “I’m not going to lie to him. I can’t believe you’d really think I would.”

  “Please spare me the moral outrage. You’ve already lied to him. You’ve lied to everyone you’ve ever met, before and after that accident. At least this time, the lie would be in his best interests.”

  “You’re assuming a lot,” she said in a clipped tone, that glitter in her gaze even more hectic and a dark thing in her voice besides. “You barely know him. And one night with me after five years hardly gives you the right to make any kind of decision about what’s in his best interests.”

  “I’m not assuming anything,” Rafael said, soft and harsh, giving absolutely no
quarter. “Arlo is my son. You either hid him away from me deliberately, in which case any court in the land is likely to award me custody in the face of such a contemptible parental act—or you didn’t know what you were doing until I found you, which suggests a brain injury that hardly sets you up as mother of the year. I’d think long and hard about that, if I were you. I don’t want to treat you like a business rival and take you down by any available means necessary. But if I have to, I will.”

  She eyed him as if she’d never seen him before and didn’t much like what she saw now.

  “Is that what last night was about?” There was no particular inflection in her voice, though he could see all manner of shadows in her gaze as she set her coffee back down on the nearby side table with a bit too much precision. “Trying to sneak your way beneath my defenses so you could better knock me flat today?”

  “Lily.” He said her name the way he heard it in his head, delicate and light, that same song that had been torturing him for all these years. “I have no reason whatsoever to think anything I did could reach you. Ever.”

  He saw her hands shake then, very slightly, before she clenched them into the fabric slipping and sliding around her. And it made him feel worse, not better. Hollow.

  “So the fact it sounds a lot like you’re threatening me is what, then?” she asked, her voice crisp, as if he’d imagined that small, telling tremor. “My overactive imagination? A remnant of that convent school poet you made up for your own amusement?”

  “I wasn’t threatening you. I’m merely pointing out the realities of the situation we find ourselves in.”

  “A man standing half-naked in a Venetian palazzo passed down through his family line for centuries maybe shouldn’t set himself up as the last word on reality,” she retorted. “It makes you sound silly.” She lifted a hand when he started to respond to that. “I understand that your feelings are hurt, Rafael. That sex only made it all that much more raw, and maybe that much worse.”

  “You have no idea.” He hadn’t meant to say that. But he had, and so he thought he might as well keep going. “I want you, Lily. I can’t deny that. It doesn’t go anywhere, no matter how many times I lose myself in you. But that doesn’t change what we did to each other. How we behaved and what came of it. As you said yourself last night.”

  “Neither does using my son—our son—as a weapon.” She held his gaze. “What does that make you?”

  “Determined,” he retorted, a little more temper in his voice than he liked. As if he still had absolutely no control over himself where she was concerned. “I lost five years of his life. I won’t lose a moment more.”

  “I haven’t denied you access to him,” she said stiffly. “I won’t. We can work something out, I’m sure. People who can’t manage to spend three seconds in a room together without drawing blood can do it. So can we.”

  “You’re not understanding me.” He waited for her to focus on him again. “There will be no split custody, no separate homes. He stays with me.”

  Lily’s mouth actually dropped open. “You must have lost your mind.”

  “That leaves you with a very few options, I’m afraid, and I’m sorry for that,” he said, and there was a part of him that hated that she’d gone pale, that this clearly surprised and hurt her. But not enough to stop. “You can stay with him, with me. But that will require we make this official—and while I won’t pretend I’ll manage to keep my hands off you, I can’t promise I’ll ever give you more than sex. I can’t imagine I’ll ever trust you.” He shrugged as if that was of no matter to him. “Alternatively, you can go back to your life in Virginia or come up with a new one if you prefer, and you can call yourself any name you like until the end of time. But if you choose that option, you’ll do so alone.”

  She didn’t move, though he had the impression she swayed on her feet, and he wished this was different. He wished he could gather her in his arms, make her smile. Make all of this all right. But the saddest truth of all was that he didn’t know how. Theirs was the high drama, the angst and the deeply thrust knife of betrayal. He didn’t know how to make her smile. He only knew how to bring out the worst in her—and how to make her cry.

  He’d done nothing but that, over and over again.

  She’s not the only one who needs forgiving, a tiny voice inside him suggested then, like a chill through his body. There are monsters enough in both of you, more than enough to go around.

  But he didn’t know how to stop this. How to fix it. How to save either one of them.

  “I’m not leaving Arlo with you,” she said, very precisely, as if she was worried she might scream if she didn’t choose each word that carefully. “That will never happen, Rafael.”

  “My son will have my name, Lily,” he warned her, yielding to his temper rather than that other voice that whispered things he didn’t want to hear. “One way or another. You can be a part of this family or not, as you choose. But you’re running out of time to decide.”

  “Running out of time?” She stared at him as if he’d grown a monster’s misshapen head as he stood there, and he wouldn’t have been particularly surprised if he had. “Arlo didn’t know you existed two weeks ago. You thought I was dead. You can’t make these kind of ultimatums and expect me to take you seriously.”

  “Here’s the thing, cara,” he murmured, feeling that familiar kick of ruthlessness move in him, spreading out and taking over everything. It felt a lot like peace. He crossed his arms over his chest and told himself she was the enemy, like all the rivals he’d decimated in his years as acting CEO of the family business. He assured himself she was his to conquer as he chose. And more, that she’d earned it. “I’m sorry that this is hard for you. I feel for you, I do. But it won’t change a thing.”

  Though it might have changed things if that glitter in her gaze had spilled over into tears. It might have reminded him that he could be merciful. That he really had loved her all along. But this was Lily, stubborn to the bitter end. She blinked, then again, and then those blue eyes were clear and hard as they met his. She tipped up that chin and she looked at him almost regally, as if there was nothing he could do to touch her, not really.

  The same way she’d looked at him in that hallway when she was nineteen.

  And he had the same riotous urge now as he had then: to prove that he damn well could. That he could do a great deal more than touch her. That he could mess her up but good.

  He told himself that this time, at least, it was far healthier than it had been then, because it wasn’t about either one of them. It was about their son.

  Which was why he kept his distance. The way he hadn’t done then.

  And so what if it was killing him? That was the price. He assured himself Arlo was worth paying it.

  “You have until Christmas,” Rafael told her matter-of-factly. “Then you will either marry me or you’ll get the hell out of my life, for good this time. And his.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “HAVE YOU DECIDED what you’ll do?” Rafael asked her the first morning after their somewhat subdued return from Venice later that frigid morning, smiling at her in that mocking way of his over the breakfast table. “The Dolomites themselves await your answer, I’m sure. As do I.”

  It was the feigned politeness, Lily thought, that made her want to fling the nearest plate of sausages at his head, if not at the mountains themselves. As if he was truly interested in her answer instead of merely needling her for his own amusement.

  “Go to hell,” she mouthed over Arlo’s head, and only just managed to restrain herself from an inappropriate hand gesture to match.

  But that only made his smile deepen.

  It didn’t help that Lily didn’t know what she was going to do. There was no way she could ever leave Arlo, of course. Surely that went without saying. The very idea made her stomach cramp up in protest. But h
ow could she marry Rafael? Especially when the kind of marriage he’d mentioned in Venice was a far cry indeed from the sort she’d imagined when she’d been young and silly and still thought things between them might work out one day.

  Well, this was one day, and this was not at all what she’d call worked out, was it? This was, she was certain, pretty much the exact opposite of that.

  “Perhaps we should make a list of pros and cons,” he suggested on another afternoon even closer to Christmas, coming to stand beside her. She was on the warm and cozy side of the glass doors overlooking the garden, where Arlo and two of his nannies were building a legion of snowmen in what little gloomy light there was left at the tail end of the year. “Maybe a spreadsheet would help?”

  Again, that courteous tone, as if she was deciding on nothing more pressing than which one of his wines she might choose to complement her dinner. It set her teeth on edge.

  “Is this a game to you?” Lily asked him then, amazed that she could keep her voice so even when she wanted to take a swing at him. When she thought she might have, had that not involved touching him—which she knew better than to do, thank you. That way led only to madness and tears. Hers. “This isn’t only my life we’re talking about, you know. I get that you don’t care about that. But it’s Arlo’s life, too, whom you do claim to care about, and you’re messing with everything he holds dear.”

  She didn’t expect him to touch her—much less reach over and take her chin in his hard hand, forcing her to look deep into his dark, dark eyes. Lily had to fight back that sweet, deep shudder that would have told him a thousand truths she didn’t want him to know, and all of them things she’d already showed him in detail in that bed in Venice.

  “We both made the choices that led us here,” Rafael said softly, his hard fingers like a brand, blistering hot and something like delicious at once, damn him. “I can’t help it if you don’t like the way I’m handling the fallout, Lily. Do you have a better solution?”