Rising Stars

CHAPTER TEN

ALESSANDRO’s jaw dropped when he first saw his wife at the top of the stairs.

After five weeks of planning, he’d known she was choosing her gown with care for their wedding reception at their palazzo tonight. She’d insisted on picking her dress herself, in utmost secrecy. Now he saw why. Lilley was wearing a ball gown of watered silk in blending swirls of purple and fuchsia, with a snug corset tight beneath her breasts and loose over her swelling belly. Pink flowers adorned her long, flowing brown hair which tumbled over her shoulders.

She paused at the top of the landing, waiting for his reaction. “Well?” she asked with a deep breath. “What do you think?”

Alessandro opened his lips to tell her she must change, to tell her she couldn’t wear such an outrageous gown, not when they’d be surrounded by the critical eyes of the most stylish citizens of the most stylish city in the world. He opened his mouth to tell her that fitting in was the only way to survive.

Then Alessandro saw the hope in Lilley’s vulnerable brown eyes. He realized what a risk she’d taken, choosing a dress like this for the night of the reception she’d spent weeks planning.

She was, quite deliberately, taking a risk.

And the truth was she looked beautiful. Looking at her face, Alessandro suddenly didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought. He didn’t care about anyone but her.

He held up his hand with a smile. “You look beautiful.”

Relief and gratitude rushed across Lilley’s beautiful face before she gave him a mischievous grin. “Grazie,” she said, swishing her skirt as she came down the stairs. She adjusted his tie with a dimpled smile. “You don’t look so bad in that tuxedo yourself.”

Then, standing on her tiptoes, she reached up and kissed him so long and hard that if guests for the reception hadn’t already started to arrive, he would have taken her straight upstairs and ripped the colorful ball gown right off her.

As they went to the ballroom to greet their guests, Alessandro marveled at the changes Lilley had made in the palazzo. In the two months they’d been in Rome, Lilley had tossed out all his elegant, creaky antiques and replaced them with furniture that was both comfortable and warm. His palazzo had once been a showplace. Now it was a home.

And it had never looked better than it did tonight. It was early December, and there was a fire in every fireplace, white twinkling lights on the trees outside and holly and pine boughs on all the mantels, to celebrate the upcoming season.

Looking across the ballroom, Lilley gave a sudden intake of breath. “Uh-oh. The ambassador is hitting on Monica Valenti.” He followed her gaze to see the gray-haired ambassador clearly invading the personal space of the nineteen-year-old starlet. Lilley threw him an apologetic glance. “Mi scusi.”

As he took a flute of champagne from a passing waiter, Alessandro watched his wife with admiration. Their ballroom was packed. Lilley had invited everyone: aristocracy, government officials and entrepreneurs, from the highest circles of Roman society. She’d even invited Lucretia and Giulia.

His wife had a forgiving soul. He did not.

Alessandro had called both women and disinvited them in no uncertain terms. Now they were missing this reception, which somehow—he wasn’t sure quite how—had turned into the social event of the year. The humiliation would teach the two women to show his wife a little more respect. His lips curled. The next time Lilley saw them, he suspected they would be in a far friendlier mood.

Finishing the glass of St. Raphaël champagne, he placed his empty flute on a silver tray and watched as his beautiful wife disengaged Monica Valenti from the ambassador with such friendly, warm charm, that instead of taking offense, the gray-haired man smiled at her, clearly enchanted.

And who wouldn’t be enchanted? Surrounded by skinny women who wore drab designer gowns of beige and black, Lilley stood out like a bird of paradise. Guests followed her, waiting to speak with her, and Alessandro suddenly remembered how shy and terrified Lilley had been when he’d taken her to the Preziosi di Caetani ball. That was just a few months ago. So much had changed since then.

Lilley’s eyes met his across the crowded ballroom, and he gave her a wicked half smile, thinking of what he intended to do to her later. Her brown eyes widened, and her cheeks turned a charming shade of pink. Ah, she was so adorable, his wife. So innocent and easy to read.

She looked away, their eye contact broken as a man came to speak with her, blocking Alessandro’s view of her face.

He scowled as he recognized Vladimir Xendzov talking to Lilley, touching the bulky necklace around her neck. It was her newest strange concoction, created from gold and sapphire gem clusters she’d found in an antique shop in Venice. He wondered what they were talking about. He trusted his wife, but he didn’t trust Xendzov. Setting his jaw, he grabbed a glass of bubbly pink champagne, then gaped at the raspberry in the bottom. He’d look like a fool drinking that. Setting the flute back on the tray, he barked at the waiter, “Get me a Scotch.”

The man bowed and backed away, and Alessandro looked slowly around the crowded ballroom. Lilley had thrown herself into planning this reception as if her life depended on it, finding caterers and musicians and florists. The end result was as unique and offbeat as Lilley’s jewelry. No one was dancing yet, but the mood was lively with a brash, lilting Irish rock band Lilley had hired from Dublin, just for fun. Dinner was being served buffet-style, with exotic dishes representing every country where Caetani Worldwide owned a subsidiary. The hodgepodge of cultures should have been a disaster. Instead … He looked around and saw powerful men laughing, saw their beige-clad wives giggling like schoolchildren. It was a hit.

Lilley was a hit.

Emotion rose in Alessandro’s heart.

Why had he never realized it before? Lilley was perfect as she was. She didn’t need to change. She didn’t need to fit in. She was born to stand out.

The feeling in his heart expanded to his throat, choking him, and suddenly he had to tell her. He had to take her in his arms and tell her how proud he was of her, how much he cared about her, how much he … that he …

His feet moved across the marble floor, beneath the twinkling lights of the multicolored, sparkling glass chandeliers she’d bought in Venice. Alessandro moved faster, pushing through the crowds. His view of Lilley’s face was still blocked by the people clustered around her, by the Russian who called himself a prince. Alessandro needed his wife in his arms. Now.

“Darling.” Olivia suddenly stood in front of him, blocking his way. Skinny and pale, dressed in a black sheath that showed her complete lack of décolletage, she looked like an angel of death.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I was invited.” Her lips curled up on the edges, reminding him of a cat, although that seemed disrespectful to cats. “By your wife.”

She spoke the word as if it left her mouth with a foul taste. He set his jaw, glaring at her. “Lilley is too generous.”

“Of course she is generous,” Olivia’s smile widened. “She can afford to be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s rich.”

Alessandro snorted. “Lilley doesn’t come from money. That’s one of the things that makes her so trustworthy. So different from you,” he said pointedly.

She gave a tinkling little laugh. “Oh, this is delicious. Do you truly not know?” She walked slowly around him, running one red-painted fingertip along the shoulder of his tuxedo jacket. Her thin face was smug as she leaned forward to whisper, “She’s Walton Hainsbury’s daughter.”

Alessandro stared at her. As if from a distance, he heard the lilting rock music, heard the laughter and low conversation of the Italian guests around him, the crème de la crème of Roman society. Then the marble floor seemed to move beneath his feet.

Walton Hainsbury’s daughter. The man who owned the huge discount jewelry chain that had tried to seize control of Caetani Worldwide in a hostile takeover last spring. He shook his head fiercely.

“You’re insane,” Alessandro said. “Lilley comes from a little town in the midwest.”

Olivia threw back her head and laughed. “You mean Minneapolis? Oh, darling.” She made a show of wiping her eyes. “It’s a large city. The headquarters of many international corporations.” She lifted a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Including …”

Including Hainsbury Corporation, he remembered with a sickening twist of his gut. And Walton Hainsbury lived nearby. An icy chill went down his spine. He lifted his chin. “Lilley is not his daughter.”

“Not just a daughter, but his only child. His heir.”

My father threatened to disinherit me, her voice whirled through Alessandro’s brain, if I didn’t come back to Minnesota and marry one of his managers.

She’d had that platinum Hainsbury watch, which her mother had had especially made. How? How had she done that?

My father’s a businessman.

He owns a restaurant? Perhaps a laundromat?

Um. Something like that.

Alessandro ignored the sudden pounding of his heart. He wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t. “When we met, Lilley was working in my file room. My file room, Olivia.”

She looked down at her finely sharpened red fingernails. “What better place for a corporate spy?”

A strangled noise escaped Alessandro’s throat. He remembered finding Lilley alone in his private office that first night. I just wanted to work for a few hours in peace and quiet. Without anyone bothering me, she’d said.

His throat closed. And most damning of all. She’d known. She’d known about his plans for the Joyería deal. She could have given that information to Théo St. Raphaël.

Impossible, he told himself harshly. Lilley had no connection to the French count. Perhaps she’d had a motive to hate Alessandro back then, after he’d seduced and abandoned her in Sonoma. But she’d had no opportunity to …

“I’m surprised your company even hired her,” Olivia said thoughtfully. “Considering her last employer.”

Alessandro tried to remember the job Lilley had mentioned, the most recent one, which for some reason she’d left off her résumé. It all seemed like a million years ago. “She worked as a maid. In Minneapolis. And she worked for a relative …”

She looked at him in disbelief. “I’ve never seen you so stupid and slow. Until six months ago, she was Théo St. Raphaël’s housekeeper in the South of France. He’s her cousin, you know. She left his employ just days before she started working for you.”

It felt like getting hit in the face. Alessandro staggered back. “Théo St. Raphaël?” he said faintly. “The Count of Castelnau is Lilley’s cousin?”

“She’s lied to you all along.” Olivia regarded him. “But you expected that, didn’t you? You always expect women to lie to you. Surely you had her background checked before you married her?”

His heart hammered in his chest, so hard and fast he thought it might break through his ribs. “No.”

“Prenup?”

The ballroom, the noise of the guests, seemed to be spinning around him. The crowds parted, and he saw Lilley’s face. She smiled at him across the room, her face shining, as honest and bright and beautiful as ever. He turned his head away, feeling sick. “No.”

“Clever girl,” Olivia murmured. “I wonder what else she’s lied to you about.” She gave him a sideways glance. “How well do you really know her?”

His jaw was tight. “I know she’s pregnant with my child.”

“Do you?” Her eyes were steady and cold. “Do you really?”

It felt like an ice pick through Alessandro’s brain. He heard the echo of Heather’s voice from long ago. The baby’s not yours. I lied.

He tightened his hands to fists. “Of course the baby is mine,” he ground out. “Lilley wouldn’t lie about that.”

“You know how conniving and ruthless people can be.”

“I know how conniving you can be,” he said harshly.

“Me? I’m an amateur.” Olivia laughed, covering her mouth with her hand. “All this time you believed her to be some small-town innocent, didn’t you? And she probably planned this from the start. Perhaps her goal is full control of Caetani Worldwide, split equally between her father and her cousin.”

He stared at her. “I don’t believe you,” he choked out.

But that was a lie. He did believe her. That was the problem.

Olivia’s eyes met his. “So ask her.”

With a low curse, Alessandro pushed past her. Shoving through the crowd, Alessandro stalked towards his wife. Just moments before, he’d felt such reckless joy, a strange breathless certainty about Lilley. Now, that feeling had evaporated as if it had never existed. All that was left was cold despair.

And fury. As he walked towards her, blood started to pound through his body, boiling hot, thawing him out limb by limb. He welcomed the anger. Stoked it.

He’d given Lilley everything, and she’d made a fool out of him. She’d lied to him from the beginning. Faked her name. Her résumé. And perhaps even—

No. He cut off the thought savagely, his hands clenching at his sides. Guests saw his face and backed away, the crowd parting for him like magic.

Lilley was laughing as she talked to Vladimir Xendzov, and the man’s eyes caressed her face with admiration. Was Lilley flirting with him? Toying with him? Using him, as she’d used Alessandro?

Lilley looked over Xendzov’s shoulder and blanched when she saw Alessandro. “What’s happened?” she breathed. “What’s wrong?”

“Tell me your name,” Alessandro said in a low voice.

The other guests clustered around Lilley glanced between them, suddenly uneasy at his tone of voice. Looking bewildered, she answered, “Lilley Caetani.”

“No.” He set his jaw, hating her soft, deceptive beauty that had lured him into trusting her. And more. “Tell me your name.”

More guests fell silent, turning to look. The Irish rock music abruptly stopped. Suddenly, amid hundreds of people, it was quiet.

His wife swallowed, looking to the right and left. Then with a deep breath, she whispered, “Lilley Smith.”

“Tell me!” He thundered. “Your name!”

She suddenly looked as if she was going to cry. “Alessandro, I was going to tell you.”

“When?” he bit out. “After you’d stolen my company for Hainsbury and your cousin to pick through?”

“No!” she gasped. “I tried to tell you before our wedding. You said you already knew. You always know so much. I believed you!”

“You believed I would actually marry you, knowing that? You lied from the start, even about your name!”

She flinched. He saw the tremble of her eyelashes. “I changed my name three years ago, when my father divorced my mother while she was dying. I didn’t want to be a Hainsbury anymore. So I took her maiden name—”

“You knew Caetani Worldwide would never hire you with either Hainsbury or Théo St. Raphaël’s name on your résumé.”

“Yes,” she admitted in a small voice.

“You came as a spy.”

“No! I was just desperate for a job while I tried to start my business!” She shook her head tearfully. “I went to San Francisco to follow my dream—”

“Bull,” he said brutally. “You went to San Francisco to seduce Jeremy Wakefield into giving you information about Preziosi designs, so your father could have them copied in China in advance. Until I took you to the Preziosi ball and you realized a greater prize was possible for you.” He gave a hard laugh. “You decided to become my mistress, so you could funnel information to your family.”

“I would never betray you!” she said with a sob. “I was going to tell you everything! I swore it to myself, when I finally realized you didn’t know about my family. All this time, I thought you did, until the day I first told you I loved you.”

Her voice trembled, but her tears weren’t going to work on him, not this time. “That was weeks ago.” He grabbed her by the shoulders, looking fiercely into her weepy eyes. “All this time, I thought I could trust you. And you were waiting to stab me in the back. What was your goal? How are they going to work against me? Are your father and cousin planning a hostile takeover of my company?”

“You know me better than that!” She hiccupped, and her eyes became huge as she looked up at him. Unchecked tears streaked her rosy cheeks as she whispered, “Don’t you?”

“I wish to God I’d never met you.” Alessandro’s pulse hammered in his ears, and he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even think. “There’s just one last thing I need to know.”

“What?”

He gently touched her full bottom lip, the lip he’d once thought could only speak the truth. “How deep do your lies go?”

Her lips parted beneath his touch. His hand slowly traced down her neck, skimming over the breasts and corset to the bright pink-and-purple skirts that covered her swollen belly. “Is the baby mine?”

Her eyes widened as she gasped.

“Tell me the truth, Lilley,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Did you sleep with another man?”

A sob came from the back of her throat. As he stared down at Lilley’s beautiful, tortured face, Alessandro suddenly forgot about the crowded ballroom, forgot Caetani Worldwide, forgot Olivia behind him. All he could think was that he’d loved Lilley. That had been the feeling swelling in his heart moments before. That had been what he’d wanted to tell her. He loved her.

But now he knew the woman he’d loved was a lie. Lilley had deceived him from the beginning. He’d asked for a paternity test, and she’d talked him out of it. She’d lured him into loving her, so she could rip out his heart. Just like all the rest.

Unwilling memories rushed through him. Lilley’s teasing smile as she tried to get him to play. Lilley naked in the pool in Sardinia. Lilley defending everyone, even people who didn’t deserve it. Lilley clinging to him for comfort and strength. Lilley’s deep, loving eyes that promised eternity. All a lie.

She stood in front of him now, swaying on her feet, looking as if she might faint. “You really think I would do that?” she whispered. “That I’d sleep with another man, then marry you and spend the rest of my life lying to you? How can you think that? I love you!”

“Nice,” he murmured. Touching her cheek, he tilted her face towards the light of the chandelier. “The tears in your eyes, the catch in your voice.” He dropped his hand and said acidly, “You’d almost have me believe that you cared.”

“I do care!” she choked out. “I love you—”

“Stop saying that,” he said harshly, then set his jaw, glaring at her with hatred. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I wouldn’t believe a word you said anyway.”

Lilley clasped her hands together, looking pale and small in her vivid ball gown, flowers tumbling from her long brown hair. Then she glanced at Olivia behind him.

“She did this, didn’t she? She took my white lie and twisted it into evidence of a black heart.” A tremble filled her voice as she looked back at him. Tears were streaking her face. “And you believed her. You never thought I was good enough to be your wife. You never wanted to love me. And this is your easy way out.”

“I despise you,” he said coldly.

She gave a sob, and Vladimir Xendzov placed a hand on his shoulder. “Enough. You’ve made your point.”

Alessandro twisted out of the man’s grasp, barely restraining himself from punching his face. “Stay out of this.” He suddenly hated Xendzov, Olivia and every other vulture in his colorful, festive ballroom. Setting his jaw, he looked around the ballroom and shouted, “All of you—get the hell out!”

“No,” Lilley said behind him. “Stop it, Alessandro.”

Her voice was harder and colder than he’d ever heard from her lips before. Surprised, he turned back to face her.

Lilley’s eyes were still grief-stricken but her shoulders were straight, her body rigid. “Our guests haven’t done anything to deserve your abuse. And neither have I.” She squared her shoulders and said, “Either tell me, right now, that you know this baby is yours, or I will leave you. And never come back.”

An ultimatum. He stiffened. “I’m just supposed to trust your word, am I?”

Lilley’s face turned pale, almost gray. “I’m not going to stay in a marriage you don’t know how to fight for.” She glanced back at Olivia bitterly. “She’s the one you always wanted. A woman as perfect and heartless as you.”