Chapter Five
THE HISTORIC CASTELLI palazzo was small by Venetian standards, set on the stately Grand Canal in the shadow of far loftier residences once inhabited by the great and noble families of old Venice.
But no matter how many times Lily told herself that, no matter how she reminded herself of the offhanded way her former stepfather had referred to this place as a pile of sentiment and rising tides as if it was beyond him why anyone would come here, her first sight of it from the water of the Grand Canal made her breath catch in her throat.
Catch, then hold too tight, as if that much beauty in one place might damage her heart within her chest.
She told herself it was the view. The rise of the old stone building from the depths of the canal as if it was floating there, the quality of the pure gold light that beamed out from within and spilled across the water, like a dark dream made real on this cold, breezy evening.
It was the view, she assured herself, not the man who stood so tall and brooding and forbiddingly silent beside her in the private water taxi, as if the wind that ruffled at her hair and made her wrap herself even more tightly in her winter coat was yet one more detail that was far beneath his notice.
He looked like a dark prince, she thought then, as if she was channeling the teenaged poet she’d never been. Made of shifting shadows and the graceful lights that moved over the water like songs. He looked otherworldly. More fable than man.
You need to get a grip, she told herself sternly. Lose control with this man and you lose everything.
“It is beautiful, is it not?” Rafael’s voice was silky, like the falling night in this nearly submerged city of echoes and arches, mysteries and dreams, and there was no reason at all that it should shiver down the length of Lily’s spine like that, then pool too hot at its base. “And not yet sunk into the sea.”
“It’s lovely, of course, as I’m sure you’re well aware,” she replied, sounding stiff and unfriendly to her own ears. “I’m sure every guidebook printed in the last three hundred years agrees. But I still don’t understand why we’re here.”
“I told you.” He shifted his position against the polished hull of the small, sleek boat that cut through the water as efficiently as he seemed to slice deep into her with that dark look he kept trained on her.
Lily wished she’d sat down in the sheltered interior, away from him.
But she’d wanted to see Venice more than she’d wanted to avoid him, and contending with Rafael was the price of that decision.
“It is the Christmas season. I must make my annual appearance at our neighbors’ ball or the world as we know it will come to a shuddering halt.
My ancestors will rise from their graves in protest and the Castelli name will ring in infamy throughout the ages.
Or so my father has informed me in a series of theatrical voice mail messages. ”
Her hands clenched tight deep inside her pockets against a certain warmth that threaded its way through her chest and would be her downfall, she knew it. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with me. Or why I had to leave my son with strangers to accompany you on some family errand.”
Rafael’s hard mouth moved then, into that little crook that undid her.
“Do you not? You are the mother of my child—who could not be happier where he is, with a veritable army of nannies to tend to his every whim, as I think you are well aware. Where else should you be but at my side, for all the world to see and marvel at your resurrection?”
Lily didn’t know what scraped at her more—that he’d called her the mother of his child with such matter-of-fact possessiveness it made her head spin, or that he claimed he wanted her with him, as if that was the most natural thing in the world.
When the Rafael she’d known had refused, point-blank, to ever keep her anything but his own dirty secret.
Of course, she wasn’t supposed to remember that. And for a taut moment, she let herself imagine what it might have been like if she truly couldn’t remember him. If she could take all of this—him—at face value. If she could believe him this time around.
But that way lay nothing but madness. Heartbreak and betrayal. She tried to shake it off.
“When you say, ‘for all the world to see,’ I hope you don’t mean that whole paparazzi thing.” She frowned, and shook her head. “I work in a kennel in Virginia. I don’t want strangers looking at me.”
She couldn’t read that dark gleam in his gaze then, or the way his hard, lean jaw moved as if he was biting something back.
“You can wear a mask if you like, even if it is not yet Carnevale,” he said, after a moment. “Many do, though perhaps not out of the same misplaced sense of modesty you seem to feel. Given that you are but a kennel worker. From Virginia.”
Lily looked sharply at him at that too-dry tone, then away, as the boat reached the palazzo’s low dock and the driver leaped out to pull the ropes taut and bring the sleek vessel in close so they could disembark.
Though it seemed Rafael’s voice was the tighter noose, wrapped like a hand around her throat.
“But make no mistake, Lily. I will always know who you are.”
His voice was like a touch, and she hated that traitorous part of her that wished it really was.
More than wished it—longed for him in all those ways she was afraid to admit, even to herself.
Afraid that once she did, it would be the emotional equivalent of hurling herself off the side of a cliff for real this time, and then what would become of her?
But of course, she already knew. Maybe you don’t want to know the truth, he’d accused her the other night, and he was right.
She really didn’t want to know it. Because she’d already seen exactly where it led.
She already knew exactly what loving him made her do.
At the very least, the fallout of those feelings had turned her into someone she despised.
“It’s a clear day,” Rafael had said on a bright morning this past week, walking into the private salon in the family wing of the old house where Lily and Arlo had become accustomed to having their breakfast.
Lily had glanced up and lost her breath for a moment at the unexpected hit of him.
That rangy body of his that he’d dressed that morning in the kind of deceptively casual clothing she knew only appeared to be simple and straightforward.
The stretch of exquisite luxury wools across his perfect chest, the way those trousers clung to the lean muscles in his thighs.
He looked like some kind of infinitely powerful adventurer, some modern-day Italian prince, as likely to leap over one of the looming mountains outside as he was to take to the nearest throne—
Maybe, she’d thought then, all those ridiculous lies he told you about your absurd and overdramatic teenaged behavior weren’t so far off the mark.
“Thank you,” she’d said, with as little inflection as she could manage, as if maintaining an even tone could repel him.
As if anything could have. She’d looked past him toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, where she could see what kind of day it was all by herself, then back. “I appreciate the weather report.”
Rafael’s mouth had moved in that same curve, not quite a smirk, that had lit her on fire no matter how she’d tried to tell herself that was simply the old house’s unwieldy heating, not him at all.
“Your appreciation is overwhelming,” he’d murmured, and she didn’t understand how he could make that sound like sex. How he could make anything sound like sex when he said it in that voice of his.
Arlo, meanwhile, appreciated all things Rafael in a pure and straightforward way that made Lily’s heart squeeze too tight in her chest. And something like shame form a thick, oily slick deep in her belly.
That morning, Arlo had tossed his arms above his head and started singing at the top of his lungs, completely unaware of all those dangerous undercurrents swirling through the room.
Lily had forced a smile when Rafael raised a querying brow at her.
“That is the hello song,” she’d told him with as much dignity as she could muster while sitting next to a five-year-old who was singing and dancing and wriggling madly in his seat. “He learned it in his preschool. They sing it every morning.”
“I’m honored,” Rafael had said, smiling at his son. A real smile, she’d noted. One of those pure Rafael smiles she remembered from before that could have knocked them straight into spring, it had been so bright.
And Lily had officially hated herself, then.
Because the smile he’d used when he’d looked at Arlo had been genuine.
It had been beautiful. It was lit with pride and longing and a sweetness she’d have said Rafael Castelli could not—did not—possess.
Arlo had catapulted himself off the side of his chair and raced around the table at the sight of it, tossing himself at Rafael’s legs to bestow one of his heedless, reckless full-body hugs.
Lily hadn’t known whether to smile or cry. Especially when Rafael had looked so stunned for a second. He’d put his hand on his son’s head as if it belonged there and then he’d smiled down at the little boy as if Arlo was a burst of pure summer sunshine on such a chilly December morning.
And so she’d ruined it.
“He does that to every man he meets,” Lily had heard herself say, ugly and sharp.
The words had hung there in the air of the salon between them. They’d seemed to grow louder with every second, as if they were amplified off the graceful old walls. If she could have reached into the air and plucked them back, thought better of them and kept them to herself, she would have done it.
But there was no repairing the kind of damage she’d always done to this man, and him to her. There was only the living with it.