The Delicious De Campos. Дженнифер Хейворд

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       CHAPTER SEVEN

      LILLY STOOD ON the patio of Charles Greene’s very beautiful, very exclusive Barbados estate overlooking Heron Bay. The sparkling, water-soaked playground of the world’s rich and famous, the bay was dotted with luxury hotels and villas that sat on heavenly golden sand beaches and the most stunning clear turquoise water Lilly had ever seen.

      If you were the world’s most famous golfer you took over Heron Bay’s five-thousand-dollar-a-night marquee hotel for a sunset marriage featuring heads of state, rock stars and movie icons. If you were Charles Greene, British billionaire and heir to a heavy machinery fortune, you bought this gorgeous six-bedroom villa on the ocean and kept it for yourself.

      Charles and Riccardo had done business together on a few occasions, and had formed a close personal relationship in addition to their working one. With Charles away on business in the UK, the villa was theirs. A private oasis in paradise.

      At any other time in her life Lilly would have been ecstatic to be here. But not tonight. Not when she was about to learn the truth about her marriage.

      She kept her feet planted firmly on the concrete. Tonight was not about running. It was about facing her demons.

      She drank in the sheet of shimmering perfect blue sea in front of her, its color morphing from light to dark turquoise, then to a marine blue the further out the eye traveled. Were relationships like that? she wondered. Were there gradations and depths she and Riccardo had yet to explore? Or would this be the end for them?

      “I’m leaving now.”

      Mrs. Adams, the housekeeper who had greeted them and shown them to their rooms, appeared on the patio with a bottle of wine and a cooler in her hands. “Mr. De Campo thought you might enjoy a glass of wine while he showers.”

      Lilly forced a smile to her lips. “Thank you. He’s off the phone, then?”

      She nodded. “He said to tell you he’d be down in a few minutes.” She set the cooler down on the table and took some glasses out of a cupboard. “Did you say you’d been here before?”

      “Yes. A year ago.”

      Riccardo had come here on business and brought her with him. It had been right after news of his affair had surfaced and she’d spent the whole week trying to convince herself she shouldn’t doubt him. Trying to save her marriage.

      Until she’d seen the photos.

      “It’s a beautiful island,” she murmured, realizing the woman was waiting for her response. “We stayed further up the coast.”

      Her brief response had the desired effect. The housekeeper nodded and stuck her hands on her hips. “I’ll be back tomorrow to cook breakfast. Would you like me to pour you a glass of wine?”

      “No, thank you. I can pour it.”

      “Okay, see you tomorrow, then.”

      “Goodnight.”

      Lilly kept the plastic smile on her face until the housekeeper had disappeared into the house. Her body vibrated with a tension that hadn’t left her since they’d climbed aboard the De Campo jet and flown the five hours south to the island—a flight the entire duration of which Riccardo had worked. She pulled in a breath to steady herself, but the shallow pulls of air she managed to take in didn’t help much.

      She turned back to the sea and laced her hands together. “Stay in the moment. Allow yourself to feel and move through the pain...” Her therapist’s words were a grounding force when all she wanted to do was run. It had been her coping mechanism since she was a teenager and her parents had been having their no-holds-barred fights to run when she was in pain. To refuse to feel it.

      Making herself stand here was like being asked to walk over red-hot coals.

      “You haven’t had any wine.”

      Riccardo’s low, smooth observation contrasted sharply with the imminent hysteria she felt building within her. This had always been the pattern with them. Him handling everything with reason—with well-thought-out premeditation. Lilly shooting from the hip—driven by emotion.

      She turned around, a sharp condemnation on her lips. But he was so breathtakingly handsome in jeans and a navy polo shirt, his square-jawed, dark good looks only intensified by the casual attire, that the words fled her head.

      He was beautiful beyond the meaning of the word. Charisma oozed out of him like oxygen for the female race. And she knew then that this had been a big, huge СКАЧАТЬ