A Facade to Shatter (12 page)

He led her through the gorgeous house with the soaring ceilings, the koa wood floors and overstuffed couches and huge open sliding doors, to a bedroom with a king-size bed and a breathtaking view of the ocean, with its white sand beaches, jagged black volcanic rocks and rolling surf.

The bed was on a platform, clothed in pristine white, and there was a television mounted on the opposite
wall. She wondered who would ever want to watch television in a house like this, but then Zach stopped and tugged her into his arms again.

He kissed her softly, sweetly—too softly and sweetly to mean he was actually planning to make love to her, she realized, and then he stepped away.

“Take a bath, Lia. Have a nap. We’ll have dinner on the lanai and watch the sunset. After that—” he shrugged “—anything goes.”

Anything goes.

Lia couldn’t get that thought out of her mind as she bathed and dressed. In spite of her insistence she’d slept on the plane, she had managed to fall into that giant king bed and drift off to sleep after she’d stared at the ocean for several minutes. It had surprised her to wake sometime later, when the sun was sliding down the bowl of the sky.

The doors to the outside were still open, and the ocean rolled rhythmically against the shore. A gentle trade wind blew through the room, bringing with it the scent of plumeria trees.

Now, Lia gazed at the ocean again as she stood in the open doors and gathered her courage before she went to meet Zach. Why, when she’d been ready earlier,
did she suddenly feel as if a thousand hummingbirds were beating their wings in her belly?

Finally, she turned and strode from the bedroom, down the stairs and into the main living area. Zach wasn’t on the lanai, and he wasn’t in the living room. She continued to the kitchen, a huge room with koa wood cabinets and stainless-steel appliances. Zach was standing at the kitchen island, slicing fruit.

Lia blinked. It was such a domestic picture, and a surprising one. He looked up and smiled, and her body melted.

“You are fixing dinner?” she asked.

“It’s nothing terribly exciting,” he told her. “My repertoire is limited. But I can broil a fish, and I can make salad and cut up some fruit for dessert.”

“You are a man of many talents,” she said.

One eyebrow lifted. “I am indeed. I look forward to showing you some of those talents in detail.”

Lia blushed and a grin spread over Zach’s face. “You like embarrassing me,” she said.

He walked over with a piece of pineapple and handed it to her. She popped it in her mouth, nearly moaning at the juicy sweetness.

“Not at all,” he said as he went back over to the island. “I find it charming that you blush over such things.”

“Charming,” she repeated, as if it were a foreign
word. Her family had never found her charming. They’d never thought she was anything but a nuisance. Except for Nonna, of course.

He picked up the platter. “Come out to the lanai and I’ll bring everything,” he told her.

“I can take the fruit.”

He handed it to her and then went back for the salad. When they reached the table on the lanai—a table set with simple dishes and silverware—he set the salad down and took the fruit from her. Then he tugged her into his arms and kissed her.

“Yes, charming,” he said. “I’ve never known anyone as innocent about such things as you are.”

He let her go and pulled out her chair for her. As she sat, she looked up at him, her chest tightening at the emotions filling her. Emotions she really didn’t want to spend much time analyzing. She already knew she cared too much. Did she need to know more than that?

“I don’t like blushing like a nun in a locker room,” she said. “It’s ridiculous.”

He laughed. “Like I said, charming.”

He went and retrieved the rest of the food, and then they sat on the lanai with a view of the blue, blue ocean, and a big orange ball sinking into it. They ate fresh fish and talked about many things, none of them singularly important, but all important in the bigger picture of getting to know each other.

Lia learned that Zach liked to read biographies and military treatises, and that he’d defied his father by going to the Air Force Academy rather than Harvard. She also learned that he managed his family’s charitable foundation, and that he’d met Taylor Carmichael in his work supporting veterans’ causes.

“Why did you drop the medal?” she asked, and then wanted to kick herself when he stiffened slightly.

But he took a sip of his wine and relaxed. “It’s something the military does automatically, writing you up for medals when you’ve been in combat. But I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any of them.”

Her heart pinched at the darkness in his tone. “But why?”

He kept his gaze on the ocean for a long time, and her pulse thrummed hot. She berated herself for pushing him, and yet she felt like she would never know him if she didn’t ask these things. He was her husband, the father of her child, and she wanted to know who he was inside.

He turned to her, his dark eyes glittering hot. “Because six marines died saving me, Lia. Because I was drugged and I didn’t do anything but lay there while they fought and died. They worked so damn hard to save me, and I couldn’t help them. They died because of me.”

Lia swallowed the lump that had formed in her
throat. “I’m sorry, Zach,” she said. She reached for his hand, squeezed it. She was encouraged when he didn’t snatch it away. “But I think they died because they were doing their job, not because of you.”

“You aren’t the first to say that to me,” he said, rubbing his thumb against her palm. “Yet I still have trouble believing it. I’m treated like a hero, and yet I haven’t earned the right to be one. They were the heroes.”

She hurt for him. He looked stoic, sitting there and staring out at the ocean beyond, and she wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight. She fought herself, fought her natural inclination not to reach for him because of her fear of being rejected. In the end, the fear won.

“I doubt anyone thinks they weren’t heroes,” she said hotly, because she was angry with herself and angry with him, too. “They had jobs to do, and they did them. But they died because the enemy killed them. No other reason.”

His expression was almost amused when he turned it on her. Except there was too much pain behind that gaze to ever be mistaken for amusement. “How fierce you are,
cara.
One wonders—do you have a limit? Would you, for instance, stop defending me if I crossed the line?”

S
HE WAS LOOKING
at him curiously, her brows drawing down over her lovely eyes. He could tell she was grappling with herself, with the things he was saying. Did she want to run? Did she want to lock herself in her room, away from him?

He almost wished she would. It would make things so much easier.

Because he was enjoying this too much, sitting here on the lanai with her and talking about their lives while they ate and watched the sun sink into the sea. He couldn’t remember ever enjoying a woman’s company the way he did hers. He loved women, loved sex, but companionship? He’d never thought of that before. Never cared. The old Zach changed women the way he changed clothes—frequently and as the situation dictated.

But, with Lia, he enjoyed the simple pleasures of
spending time with her. It was a dangerous thing. Because she made him feel as if he could be normal again, when he knew he never could. He’d changed too much to ever go back to what he’d been before.

In the beginning, he’d thought it was possible. He’d thought the dreams would go away with time. That’s what everyone said he needed: time. Time was the great healer. Time made everything better. Time, time, time.

He’d had time. More than a year’s worth, and nothing was the same. He had to accept that it never would be. He might always be plagued by dreams and fears, the same as he was plagued with unpredictable headaches. Those had changed his ability to fly forever, so why did he think time could fix the other stuff?

It couldn’t. She couldn’t.

“What line?” she asked, her voice soft and strong at once. As if she was challenging him. As if she didn’t believe him. His chest felt tight as emotions filled him. This woman—this sweet, innocent woman—had faith in him. It was a stunning realization. And a sobering one.

He didn’t want to fail her. And he didn’t want to fail their child.

Another paradigm-shifting realization.

“It’s nothing,” he said, surprised at the trembling in his fingers as he reached for his wine. “Forget it.”

She kept staring at him, her eyes large and liquid. “You are a man of integrity and honor,” she said. “I do not doubt that at all.”

“I tried to pay you off and send you away, Lia. Or have you forgotten?”

She picked up her glass. “I have not. But I understand why you did it.”

“Because I’m an arrogant bastard with an unhealthy sense of self-importance?” He meant it to be self-deprecating, but he recognized the truth in it, too. He’d had his family consequence drummed into him from birth, after all.

“I wouldn’t have put it that way,” she said carefully, and he laughed.

She looked at him in confusion, and he didn’t blame her. Just a moment ago, the conversation had been so serious, so dramatic. Now that it had moved away from the deeply intense and dark things residing in his soul, he could find humor in her reaction.

“Because you are too sweet,” he said. He reached for her hand. The heat that sparked inside him was always surprising.

She frowned. “I don’t feel particularly sweet. I feel quite cross at the moment, actually.”

He brought her hand to her mouth, nibbled the skin over her knuckles. “I think I know how to change that,” he murmured.

Lia’s insides were melting. She didn’t want to melt just yet, but she realized she had no choice in the matter. Sparks were zinging and pinging inside her like a fireworks display on New Year’s eve.

She was still concerned about the things he’d said, about the self-loathing beneath his mask, but it seemed the subject was now closed. She’d been allowed a peek at the raw, tormented nature of Zach Scott, but now he was wrapped up tight again and she wasn’t getting in.

She wanted to know the man who dreamed, who worked hard to make those speeches and ignore the triggers that could send him spiraling out of control. She wanted to touch the heart of him, she realized.

The way he’d touched hers.

He tugged her toward him until she got up and went to his side. Then he was pulling her down on his lap, tilting her back in his arms. His eyes gleamed with heat, and a hot wave of longing washed through her with the same kind of relentless surge of the ocean beyond.

“No more talking, Lia,” he said, his fingers gliding over the skin beneath her collarbone.

When his lips replaced his fingers, her head fell back against the chair. His mouth moved over her, teasing, tormenting. The ocean pounded the shore a
few yards away, and the trade winds blew, and Lia shuddered and gasped and knew she’d found heaven.

Her heart hurt with everything she felt: passion, hot and bright; fear, cold and insidious; and love, warm and glowing, like the sun as it had been right before it sank into the sea. There was a rightness about this, a rightness that felt like destiny and perfection.

She was meant to be here, and Zach was meant to be the man she shared her life with. She shivered again as he unbuttoned her shirt and peeled it back to reveal her shoulders and the soft swell of her breasts against the silk of her bra.

“Bellissimo,”
he said, his voice a silky purr.
“Ho bisogno di te, Lia.”

I need you.

Lia shivered again, her entire body on fire from tip to toes as his gaze raked her with that naked hunger she’d come to crave.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

His mouth came down on hers, and she was lost to anything but this molten hot fire between them. She wrapped her arms around him and shifted in his lap—and felt the hard evidence of his arousal pressing against her bottom.

His body tightened beneath her—and then all that beautiful power was lifting her, carrying her into the
house while she clung to him and pressed kisses to his jaw, his neck, the delicious skin of his collarbone.

Soon, she was on her feet in the master suite. The doors were still slung open to let in the breezes, but they were completely alone out here on this remote stretch of beach. Zach stripped away her silky top and tailored trousers until she stood before him in nothing but her bra and a tiny scrap of silk that covered her sex.

His eyes darkened as they drifted over her, and a thrill shot through her.

“You look good enough to eat, Lia,” he purred.

A fresh wave of heat pulsed inside her. She was wet, hot, and she wanted him.

But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t take those three steps to him, couldn’t wrap her arms around him and be a wanton, seductive woman. Always she feared she wouldn’t do it right, that he’d disapprove, or that he’d push her away and tell her she wasn’t good enough, after all.

She knew better, she really did. But when you’d believed something your entire life, it was difficult to suddenly stop in a moment where every gesture, every touch, every look, set off firestorms inside. You’d do anything to keep the storm happening, anything to keep feeling the sweet heat. You would not take a risk.

He took a step toward her, his big body menacing—but
in a good way. In a hard, protective, thoroughly delicious way.

“Do you want to touch me?” he asked.

She could only nod her head.

“Do it, then,” he told her. “Touch me wherever you want. However you want.”

“You have too many clothes on,” she said, and blushed.

His laugh was deep, sexy, sinful. “Take them off, then.”

She moved toward him, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt until she could finally push it free. It fell off his shoulders and landed in a pile at his feet. The shorts he’d changed into hung low on his body, revealing ridges of hard muscle and the perfect slash of hip bones.

She wanted to run her tongue along those bones. Wanted to dip it into the hollow of his abdomen, and then slide it down to the thick, hard length of his penis. But she didn’t. She just stood and gaped like a kid in a candy store.

Zach swore, and then he was unbuttoning his shorts and shoving them down. His underwear went with them until he stood before her gloriously naked. His penis jutted out proudly, and his warrior’s body made her mouth water.

She forgot herself. She reached for him.

But he reached for her, too, and soon they were lost in each other, kissing and touching and feeling what they’d missed for the past few weeks.

Lia wrapped herself around him until he put his hands on her bottom and lifted her. Her legs scissored around his waist as he carried her the few steps to the bed and tumbled her backward onto it.

“I wanted to seduce you slowly. But I can’t wait, Lia,” he managed finally, the hard ridge of his erection riding against the silk of her panties.

“Me, neither,” she said—panted, really.

He rose up above her, jerked her panties down her legs and discarded them—and then he was back, pushing inside her until they were joined completely.

This, she thought, eyes closed, back arched, this utter perfection of his body so deeply within hers. This was what she wanted. What she needed.

His mouth fused to hers as he began to move. He wound his fingers into hers, pushed her arms above her head and proceeded to devastate her utterly with his lovemaking.

Days passed. Glorious sex- and sun-drenched days. They didn’t talk about the military again, didn’t talk about Zach’s dreams. He slept with her at night, though she hadn’t believed he would. The first night, when they’d made love and she was so thoroughly languid
that she couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it, he’d alarmed her by climbing from the bed and gathering his clothes.

When she’d asked him where he was going, he’d informed her he was going to his room. She’d sat up, the sheet tucked around her still-naked and glowing body, and wanted to cry. He’d told her it was best for them both, and that it wasn’t her. It was him. She knew what he meant, but it still hurt to see him willing to walk away when she would have gladly walked across a room of broken glass just to be by his side.

He’d left her alone, and she’d turned to stare out at the ocean glowing beneath a full moon. The waves crashed against the shore, broke against the jagged rock cliffs that dotted the shoreline, and she felt as if her heart was broken and jagged, too.

Fifteen minutes later, Zach had returned. When he’d slipped into bed with her, she’d been unable to contain the small cry that erupted from her. He’d pulled her close, his mouth at her throat, and told her he wanted to try to stay with her.

She’d put her arms around him, threaded her fingers into that silky hair and nearly wept with relief and fierce joy.

They had not slept. Not at first. No, within minutes, Zach was inside her again, his body taking hers
to heights that made the peak of Mount Everest look like an afternoon trek up a tiny foothill.

Finally, they crashed to the bottom again and fell asleep, entangled in each other’s arms.

The days began to pass, each one as perfect and heartbreaking as the last. They spent hours making love, hours in the sunshine—floating in the pool, lying on the beach—and didn’t leave the house to go anywhere. A service did the shopping and cleaning for them, so all they had to worry about was fixing their meals.

Zach did a great job at that, so there was nothing lacking in their self-imposed isolation. He’d been right, too, about the paparazzi. There were none on this lonely stretch of beach. They were opportunists, and opportunity was easier elsewhere.

The papers were filled at first with news of their hasty marriage and tropical honeymoon. Zach merely laughed and said it had all gone perfectly to plan. Eventually, though they were still news, they weren’t on the front pages of the gossip rags anymore. Some Hollywood starlet and her latest drunk-driving conviction were taking center stage at the moment.

Lia spoke with her grandmother. The older woman seemed happy for her, though sad as well that she hadn’t been at the wedding. Lia gave her some story about wildly beating hearts and true love being impatient,
and her grandmother accepted it. Her cousin, apparently, was currently preoccupied with his own issues and wasn’t inclined to worry about her fate at all.

She’d married a rich, influential man and that was good enough for the family. As for Rosa, Lia had been emailing back and forth with her sister quite frequently. They were both still wary, but there was a budding relationship that Lia thought might eventually grow into something she cherished.

Right now, however, she cherished Zach. She looked up from her book and let her gaze slide over him where he stood in the infinity pool, having just emerged from his swim. He was so very beautiful, hard and lean and fit in ways that made her mouth water.

And virile. She couldn’t forget that one. The man did not tire out in the bedroom, or not until he’d exhausted himself pleasing her.

It was a good trait in a husband, she thought wickedly.

She was growing bolder in her experiments with his body. At first, she’d been afraid to try anything, afraid she would get it wrong and he’d not tell her because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

But if she was getting it wrong, then he was a superb actor, because his gasps and groans and urgent touches and kisses spurred her to even greater experiments.

Like last night, when she’d taken him in her mouth as they sat out here on the lanai in the dark and listened to the ocean.

“Lia,” he’d gasped as she’d freed him and then swirled her tongue around the head of his penis. And then he’d grabbed fistfuls of her hair and held her gently but firmly while she took him into her mouth. Her heart had beat so hard, so loud in her ears, but she could still hear him making those sounds of pleasure in his throat.

Before he’d orgasmed, however, he’d pulled her up and made her straddle him. She’d been wearing a silken nightie, no panties, and she’d sunk down on him while he held her hips and guided her.

She didn’t remember much after that, except for the frantic way she’d ridden him until they’d both collapsed on the chaise longue. Much later, he’d carried her to bed and repeated the performance.

“What are you reading?” he said now, arraying his splendid form on the lounge beside her.

She held up her book. “I’m learning about the flowering plants of Hawaii. And how they make leis. Quite fascinating.”