“I never suspected your grandmother would do something like that. She seemed to be happy about our marriage at the wedding.”
“It doesn’t matter. We can never get back the last four years.”
Dante kept his tone light. “But it does prove I wanted this marriage to work. I wanted you.” When she didn’t respond, he pushed. “Will you at least listen tomy proposition? Although I can’t offer you my heart, you’ve always had my respect, admiration, and desire. There is no other woman I’d prefer to stand by my side as my wife.”
Abby’s fingers stroked the phone as if willing it to ring and offer her another solution.
“I need to think. I need to get my head around this.”
Dante sat beside her and reached for her hand. She couldn’t hide her trembling. “I swear it’s the truth, Abby.”
“I’m sure it is. It’s just such a shock,” she said, her throat thickening. “I wish I’d known.”
“Mio Fiore,” he whispered as he lifted her into his lap. She resisted, but he held her tightly, one hand slinking under her T-shirt to stroke down her spine.
“Am I such an ogre that you had to run?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps not, but you were nothing like the man I fell in love with. Once we married you were different, so preoccupied with business affairs. You had no time for me and I felt us drifting apart. That’s why I pushed so hard for the business development role, and when you gave it to Elena it was as if you were pushing me further away.”
“Yet, here we are almost as close as two people can be.” He lightly kissed her lips. “Come home to me, Abby. We need each other. You need money to help your grandmother, and I need you and a son to save my business and family home. I can’t let Katarina lose the only place that holds the memories of my father.”
She tried to ignore the heat from his hand on her bare skin. “I don’t understand.”
“I tried to explain last night. If I do not have a legitimate son by the age of thirty-eight, I lose control of the Lombardi Group and the family villa. It goes to my father’s cousin. I can’t do that to the family, not after all my grandfather and father did to ensure our heritage. I can’t fail them or my mother and sisters.”
She looked at him in silence for so long Dante became restive.
“I’m offering you everything I can give a woman. I can give you my name, security, and a loving family. Can that be enough for you?”
Abby pondered his words. She did want a family, more than anything. He was right about security too. Her grandmother would be well cared for, and this time she would go into the arrangement with her eyes wide open. How could he break her heart if she didn’t give it to him?
With the scent of him filling her senses, his hard body beneath her, and his chiseled face in reach, she was hard-pressed to deny him.
“I have some conditions of my own. If this is to be a business arrangement, as you put it, then I want an equal partnership.”
“What are your demands?”
She took a quick breath. “If, after I fulfill my obligations to this deal, I wish to leave and return to England, you’ll let me, and you’ll grant me my divorce.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “What about any children we have?”
“They come with me until the age of fifteen, when, if they so choose, I’ll send them to you.”
She watched Dante’s fists clench and unclench.
“I’ll consider your request with an amendment. You cannot leave me until our youngest son turns five, and our children spend every school holiday here with me at the villa.”
Victory speared with pain. He had agreed to her being allowed to divorce him. He must want to eventually be free of her as much as she wanted to be free of a loveless marriage.
“In addition, you’ll leave me to deal with my grandmother. You’ll not bring up her deception. You’ll treat her with respect. Is that clear?”
Dante took her face in his hands. “I’d neverdisrespect the woman who raised you as her own.” He brushed a butterfly kiss over her lips.
She swallowed back the longing his words and actions invoked.
“There is one further condition,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow.
