Modern Romance March 2017 Books 5 -8. Natalie Anderson
A warning pulse rocketed through him. That was exactly what he intended to do—certainly the Bavaros had been smart enough to figure that out?
“We’ll have to see what our assessment says,” he said coolly. “But since I am offering to pay you a fortune for this chain, more than half again what it’s worth, I would think it would keep you from lying awake at night worrying about it.”
“It’s not always about money,” Diego responded. “It’s about family pride. National pride. Spaniards look up to Belmont as a symbol of international success. It is bad enough to have it eaten up by a foreign entity, but to have its name extinguished along with it? It negates a hundred-year-old legend.”
“It’s always about the money,” Lorenzo rejected. “Nothing lasts forever. You wait a few more years and you’ll get half what I’m offering.”
“Perhaps.” Diego lifted a shoulder. “You want to make my father happy? Put a clause in the deal that you will keep the name.”
Heat surged through him. He kept the fury off his face. Just. “What sense would that make?” he countered. “This deal will make Ricci the number one luxury hotel chain in the world. To split the brands would be counterproductive.”
Silence fell over the table. Lorenzo eyed the younger Bavaro brother. “May I ask why this is coming up at the eleventh hour?”
“My father’s feelings have grown stronger on the issue.” Diego pursed his lips. “I’m not saying it’s a deal breaker. I’m saying it’s a major twist in the road.”
Lorenzo’s brain buzzed. His own father would do the same, he knew—would refuse to see his legacy destroyed. He couldn’t necessarily blame the Bavaros. What infuriated him was that this hadn’t come up earlier. It changed the entire landscape of the deal.
“This acquisition needs to happen,” Lorenzo said evenly. “If this is the issue, you need to get your father onside. There will be no postsale conditions attached to it. It is what it is.”
Diego’s eyes flashed. “It was never our intention to sell, as you know.”
That was when Lorenzo knew he had a big, big problem on his hands.
* * *
Angie paced the suite while she waited for her husband, who was having an after-dinner cognac with the Bavaro brothers. After the tension-filled end to the meal, she was glad to have escaped, but now she had a much bigger issue on her hands than her combustible spouse.
Penny had driven her to the local pharmacy on the pretext of finding some allergy pills. She’d shoved two pregnancy tests on the counter instead, two positive pregnancy tests that now lay in the bathroom garbage can, irrefutable evidence that fate had once again taken a hold of her life in the most indelible way.
How could this possibly have happened? What were the odds? What was she going to do?
Unable to breathe, she crossed to the windows and stood looking out at the dark mass of the mountains. She knew this baby was a gift. Even as sure as she’d been at twenty-two she hadn’t been ready to have a child, as terrified as she’d been she wouldn’t be a good mother given her own history, she’d developed a bond with her unborn child, a wonder at the life she and Lorenzo had created together.
She felt the same way now. But she was also scared. Terrified. The timing was all wrong. There was no way she could run her business, be a mother and juggle her and Lorenzo’s busy social schedule all at the same time. And then there was the thought of losing another baby that sent panic skittering through her bones.
It was too soon. Too much.
Anxiety clawed at her throat, wanting, needing to escape. The click of the suite door brought her spinning around. The look on her husband’s face kept all the anxiety buried inside.
“What happened?”
He walked to the bar, threw ice in a glass and poured himself a drink. “Preserving the Belmont name is going to be an issue.”
“You don’t think they’ll give on it?”
He took a long gulp of the Scotch. Leaned back against the bar. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you need to talk to the father? He seems to be the roadblock.”
“I’d have to go over Marc and Diego’s heads. It would be a last resort.”
She frowned. “They didn’t mention any of this before? Surely they knew it might be an issue?”
“I’m fairly sure I would remember if they had.”
The biting sarcasm in his voice straightened her spine. She absorbed the incendiary glow in his eyes, the flammable edge to him she remembered so well from the past. This was the old Lorenzo—the one who could transform into a remote stranger in the blink of an eye, focused only on the end goal and to hell with anyone in his path.
Tension knotted her insides, the need to know this wasn’t devolving into the old them burning a hole in her insides. Not now, not with the news she was holding inside.
She wrapped her arms around herself, fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms. “It was a rhetorical question,” she said quietly. “I know this deal is important to you, Lorenzo, but it either works or it doesn’t. You need to be able to find a way to walk away from these things and not let them get to you like this. Consume you.”
He gave her a scathing look. “It’s a fifteen-billion-dollar deal, Angelina. Ricci’s reputation rides on it.”
“And yours,” she said quietly. “Isn’t that the real issue here? You losing face? You becoming anything less than the unbeatable Lorenzo Ricci, king of the blockbuster deal?”
“This is not about me,” he growled, voice sharp as a blade. “It’s about my family’s reputation. Rumors about the deal are running rampant...investors are getting antsy. It is my responsibility to close this acquisition.”
“And if you don’t?” She shook her head. “One of these days you will lose. You are only human. Then what? Would it be the end of the world? You have fifty of these deals you have landed, Lorenzo. Isn’t that enough to command the confidence of your investors?”
His jaw turned to stone. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe not,” she agreed. “But I do know how I feel. You like this—I’ve seen it before. This always marks the beginning of one of your binges—it scares me where it will end.”
“I’m good,” he said harshly. “We are good. Stop trying to make problems where there aren’t any.”
Was she? The jet lag was killing her, her head too achy and full, her emotions all over the place. But now was not the time to tell Lorenzo about their baby. To make him understand why getting this right was so important to her.
“You wanted us to be an open book,” she said, lifting her gaze to his. “Here I am, telling you how I feel.”
He prowled over to her and pressed a hard kiss to her lips. “And I’m telling you, you don’t need to worry. We are fine. I just need a few minutes to take the edge off.”
She sank her teeth into her lower lip. Nodded. He ran a finger down her cheek, his eyes softening. “You’re exhausted. You need rest. Go to bed. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
“You should come, too. You didn’t sleep at all last night.”
He nodded, but it was an absentminded nod that told her he wouldn’t be coming for a while. She went to bed, but it was hard to sleep, empty in the beautiful bed without him, the intimacy that had wrapped itself around them the past few weeks missing, leaving her chilled and scared to the bone about what lay ahead.
* * *
Lorenzo went to bed at two. Extinguishing the lights, he slid into