A Facade to Shatter (4 page)

His gaze was sharp, hot, and her skin began to prickle.

“Your Italian is perfect,” she said, casting about for something innocuous to say. Something that would give these butterflies in her belly a chance to settle again. “Where did you learn it?”

“My grandfather was from Sicily,” he said. “And I
learned it from my mother. She refused to teach me the Sicilian dialect her father spoke, but she did teach me Italian.”

Her gaze slid over him again. Now that she knew he had Sicilian blood in him, she could see it. He had the hot, dark eyes of a Sicilian. “Then you have been to Sicily before, yes?”

He inclined his head. “But not for many years.”

She went and perched on the edge of the sofa, facing him. His gaze slid over her, warmed her in ways she hadn’t known were possible before tonight. “You are friends with the bride’s family or the groom’s?”

He laughed. “Neither. I came with a friend.” He picked up the phone again and frowned as he glanced at the screen. “I can’t seem to find her, though.”

Her.
Lia swallowed as her stomach turned inside out. Of course a man who looked like this one was not alone. But where was his girlfriend, and why hadn’t she come searching for him? If it were Lia, she wouldn’t let him out of her sight.

But now she needed to do just that. Lia stood. “I should go,” she said. “It’s late, and you must be tired… .”

Words failed her. She turned away, blindly, fighting a sudden rush of ridiculous tears. But then he was there, a hand wrapping around her arm, pulling her
back against him so that she could feel the hot press of his body through the robe.

“Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said stiffly.

His mouth was on her hair, her temple. “I’m not here with another woman, Lia. Not like that. Taylor is a friend, and she’s here to work.”

“Taylor Carmichael?” Lia knew of only one Taylor who would be in Sicily to work right now, and that was the gorgeous former child star. She’d heard her grandmother talking about Santo’s film, and the troubled woman who was slated to star in it.

She heard Zach sigh. And then he turned her in his arms, put his hands on either side of her face and held her so he could look into her eyes. “Yes, Taylor Carmichael. Yes, she’s beautiful and desirable—but not to me. We’ve only ever been friends. She’s the sister I never had.”

Lia bit her lip. It was almost impossible to believe that two such gorgeous creatures weren’t sleeping together. “I think you need glasses, Zach.”

He laughed. “Hardly. I know when I have a beautiful woman in my arms.”

Lia flushed with pleasure. She’d never felt beautiful. Until tonight. Oh, she still worried that she was too fat and too awkward, but she could hardly deny the evidence of his desire for her. She was quite a good
dreamer, but she had definitely not dreamed what had happened in his bed only minutes ago.

What she hoped would happen again.

She closed her eyes. One time with him, and she was already becoming a woman of questionable morals.

He tipped her chin up with a long finger and pressed his lips to hers. Desire, so recently sated, still managed to lift a head and send a finger of need sliding down the pathways of her nervous system.

She stepped closer, her lips parting beneath his … and the kiss slid over the edge of polite and into the realm of hot and amazing. He was in the process of shoving the robe off her shoulders when there was a knock on the door.

He took a step back, breaking the kiss, and tugged the robe into place with a sigh of regret. “Food first,” he said with a wicked smile. “And then we play.”

Lia could only shudder in response.

They spent the night entangled together, their bodies craving the pleasure they found in each other. Lia learned more about sex, about her own body, than she’d dreamed possible.

They showered together in the morning, and then spent the day walking around Palermo, ducking into
churches and restaurants, stopping in ancient alleys to kiss and touch, drinking espresso and eating pasta.

It was a perfect day, followed by another perfect evening. They were strangers, and not strangers. It was as if they’d known each other forever. Zach’s smile made her heart throb painfully whenever he turned it on her. His laugh had the power to make her ache with raw hunger.

They talked, in Italian and in English, about endless things. She confessed that she was a Corretti. Zach didn’t seem to care, other than a brief lifting of the eyebrows as he connected her to the hotel owners.

She discovered that Zach lived in Washington, D.C., and that he’d met Taylor Carmichael at a clinic for military veterans. She didn’t ask about his scars because he’d grown tight-lipped when he’d told her that much.

They returned to the hotel, to his room, and spent the entire night wrapped in each other once more. He left the balcony doors open so that a breeze from the sea blew in. Church bells chimed the hour, every hour, but sanctuary was in this room, this bed.

And yet it was ending. They both knew it. Lia had to return to her grandparents’ estate, and Zach was going back to the States. He’d heard from Taylor, finally, and she’d told him everything was fine, though she was somehow now engaged to Lia’s brother Luca.
Zach didn’t seem too happy about that, but he’d accepted it after they’d talked a bit longer.

He did not, Lia noticed, tell Taylor about her.

Yet she kept hoping for more, for some sign this meant more to him than simply sex. It had to. She couldn’t be the only one affected by this thing between them. Could she?

But when she awoke early the next morning, Zach was gone. She hadn’t heard a thing. His suitcase was gone, everything in the bathroom, everything that indicated he’d once been here.

All that remained was a single rose in a vase and a hastily scribbled note propped beside it. She snatched it up and opened it. The military medal fell out and hit the floor with a plink.

Lia’s pulse throbbed as she read the note.

Be well, Lia.

Her heart crumpled beneath the weight of those words. Words that meant well, but ultimately meant nothing. She retrieved the medal, and then sank onto the bed and lifted his pillow to her face. It still smelled like him and she breathed it in, seeking calm.

Zach was gone, and she was alone once more. Like always.

T
HE EVENING WAS
hot and muggy, and Zach stood off to one side of the crowd gathered at the country club. He took a sip from his water glass, cleverly disguised as a mixed drink by the addition of a lime slice and a cocktail stirrer, and then set it on a passing tray.

He never drank at functions like this. It was something he’d learned growing up. Always keep your head and always be prepared for any eventuality. His father hadn’t made a career in politics out of being imprudent, and Zach had learned the lesson well.

These days, however, he was less concerned with the good impression than he was with the opportunity to escape. Once he’d done his duty—made the speech, shook the hands, accepted the honor, cut the ribbon, got the promised funding for the Scott Foundation’s causes—he was gone.

Tonight, he’d had to give a speech. And right now,
his father was holding court with a group of people he no doubt hoped would become campaign donors. His mother was circulating with the skill of a career politician’s wife, smiling and making polite small talk.

There were reporters in the room—there were always reporters—but the cameras were thankfully stowed at the moment. They’d come out during his speech, of course, and he’d had to work hard to concentrate on the crowd and not the flashes. A matron came over and started to talk to him. He nodded politely, spoke when necessary and kept his eye on the exit. The second he could excuse himself, he was gone. He’d already been here too long, and he was beginning to feel as if the walls were closing in.

He scanned the crowd out of habit, his gaze landing on a woman who made him think of Sicily. She was standing near the door, her head bowed so he couldn’t see her face. The crowd moved, closing off his view of her. His pulse started to thrum, but of course, she wasn’t Lia Corretti. Lia was in Sicily, no doubt making love to some other lucky bastard. A current of heat slid through him as he remembered her lush body arrayed before him.

If he’d been a different man, he’d have stayed in Sicily and kept her in his bed until they’d grown tired of each other. It’s what the old Zach would have done.

But the man he was now couldn’t take that chance.
He’d spent two nights with her and she’d made him feel almost normal again. Yet it was a lie, and he’d known it.

He didn’t know Lia at all, really, but he knew she deserved better than that. Better than him.

“Zach?”

His head whipped around, his gaze clashing with the woman’s who’d moved through the crowd unseen and now stood before him. Shock coursed through him. It was as if he’d blinked and found himself whisked back to a different party. Almost against his will, his body responded to the stimulus of seeing her again. He wasn’t so inexperienced as to allow an unwanted erection, but a tingle of excitement buzzed in his veins nevertheless.

Lia Corretti gazed up at him, her blue-green eyes filled with some emotion he couldn’t place. Her dark red hair was twisted on her head, a few strands falling free to dangle over one shoulder. She was wearing a black dress with high heels and a simple pair of diamond earrings.

She wasn’t dripping in jewels like so many of the women in this room, yet she looked as if she belonged. The woman who’d been talking to him had thankfully melted away, her attention caught by someone else.

“Hello, Lia,” he said, covering his shock with a blandness that belied the turmoil raging inside him.
He spoke as if it hadn’t been a month, as if they’d never spent two blissful nights together. As if he didn’t care that she was standing before him when what he really wanted to ask her was what the hell she was doing here.

But he was afraid he knew. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman he’d slept with had gotten the wrong idea. He was a Scott, and Scotts were accustomed to dealing with fortune hunters. She hadn’t seemed to be that type of woman, but clearly he’d been wrong.

He noticed that her golden skin somehow managed to look pale in the ballroom lights. Tight. There were lines around her lips, her eyes. She looked as if she’d been sick. And then she closed her eyes, her skin growing even paler. Instinctively, Zach reached for her arm.

He didn’t count on the electricity sizzling through him at that single touch, or at the way she jerked in response.

“I’m sorry,” she said in English, her accent sliding over the words. “I shouldn’t have come here. I should have found another way.”

“Why are you here?” he demanded, his voice more abrupt than he’d intended it to be.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and earnest. Innocent. Why did he think of innocence when he thought of Lia? They’d had a one-night—correction,
two-night—stand, but he couldn’t shake the idea that the woman he’d made love to had somehow been innocent before he’d corrupted her.

“I—I need to tell you something.”

“You could have called,” he said coolly.

She shook her head. “Even if you had given me your number …” She seemed to stiffen, her chin coming up defiantly. “It is not the kind of thing one can say over the phone.”

Zach took her by the elbow, firmly but gently, and steered her toward the nearest exit. She didn’t resist. They emerged from the crowded ballroom onto a terrace that overlooked the golf course. It was dark, but the putting green was lit and there were still players practicing their swings.

He let her go and moved out of her orbit, his entire body tight with anger and restlessness. “And what do you wish to say to me, Lia?”

He sounded cold and in control. Inhuman. It was precisely what he needed to be in order to deal with her. He’d let himself feel softer emotions when he’d been with her before, and look where that had gotten him. If he’d been more direct, she wouldn’t be here now. She would know that her chances of anything besides sex from him were nonexistent.

He would not make that mistake again.

Lia blinked. Her tongue darted out over her lower
lip, and a bolt of sensation shot through him at that singular movement. His body wanted to react, but he refused to let it. She was a woman like any other, he reminded himself. If sex was what he wanted, he had only to walk back in that ballroom and select a partner.

Her gaze flicked to the door. “Perhaps we should go somewhere more private.”

“No. Tell me what you came to say, and then go back to your hotel.”

She seemed taken aback at the intensity of his tone. She ran a hand down her dress nervously, and then lifted it to tuck one of the dangling locks of hair behind her ear. “You’ve changed,” she said.

He shook his head. “I’d think, rather, that you do not know me.” He spread his hands wide. “This is who I am, Lia. What I am.”

She looked hurt, and he felt an uncharacteristic pinch in his heart. But he knew how to handle this. He knew the words to say because he’d said a variation of them countless times before.

“Palermo was fun. But there can be nothing more between us. I’m sorry you came all this way.”

He’d expected her to crumple beneath the weight of his words. She didn’t. For a long moment, she only stared at him. And then she drew herself up, her eyes flashing. It was not the response he expected, and it
surprised him. Intrigued him, too, if he were willing to admit it.

“There can be more,” she said firmly. “There
must
be more.”

Zach cursed himself. Why, of all the possible women in the world, had he chosen this one to break his long sexual fast with? He’d known there was something innocent about her, something naive. He should have sent her back to her room. Unfortunately, his brain had short-circuited the instant all the blood that should have powered it started flowing south.

“I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea, sugar,” he began.

She didn’t let him finish. Her brows drew down angrily as she closed the distance between them and poked him hard in the chest with a manicured finger. He was too stunned to react. “The wrong idea?” she demanded.

She swore in Italian, curses that somehow sounded so pretty but were actually quite rude if translated. Zach was bemused in spite of himself.

“There were consequences to those two days,” she flashed. “For both of us,
bello.
”

Ice shot down his spine, sobering him right up again.

“What are you talking about?” he snapped.

Her lips tightened. And then she said the words that sliced through him like a sword thrust to the heart.

“I’m pregnant, Zach. With
your
baby.”

Lia watched the play of emotions over his face. There was disbelief, of course. Anger. Denial.

She understood all those feelings. She’d experienced each one in the past few days, many times over. But she’d also experienced joy and happiness. And fear. She couldn’t forget the fear.

“That’s impossible,” he said tightly. His handsome face was hard and cold, his eyes like chips of dark, burning ice as they bored into her.

Lia wanted to sit down. She was beginning to regret coming here tonight. She’d only just arrived in Washington today, and she’d hardly rested. She was suffering from the effects of too much air travel, too much stress and too many crazy hormones zinging through her system.

This was not at all how she’d pictured this happening. She hadn’t thought beyond seeing him, hadn’t thought he would force her to tell him her news standing in the darkness and watching men tap golf balls toward a little hole in the ground.

She also hadn’t expected him to be so hostile. So cold.

Lia swallowed against the fear clogging her throat.
She had to be brave. She’d already endured so much just to get to this point. There was no going back now.

“Apparently not,” she said, imbuing her voice with iron. “Because I am most assuredly pregnant.”

“How do you know it’s mine?”

His voice was a whip in the darkness, his words piercing her. “Because there has been no one else,” she shot back, fury and hurt roiling like a storm-tossed sea in her belly.

“We spent two nights together, Lia. And we used condoms.” His eyes were hard, furious.

“There was once,” she said, her skin warming. “Once when you, um, when we—”

She couldn’t finish the thought. But he knew. He looked stunned. And then he closed his eyes, and she knew he remembered.

“Christ.”

There’d been one time when they’d been sleeping and he’d grown hard against her as they slowly wakened. He’d slipped inside her, stroked into her lazily a few times, and then withdrew and put on a condom. It had been so random, so instinctive, that neither of them thought about it afterward.

“Exactly,” she said softly, exhaustion creeping into her limbs. Why hadn’t she just stayed at the hotel and slept? Her plan had always been to see him privately, but when she’d seen the announcement in the paper
about his speech tonight, she’d become focused on getting here and telling him the news. On sharing this burden with someone who could help her.

But that wasn’t the only reason.

For an entire month, she’d missed him. Missed his warm skin, the scent of soap and man, the way he skimmed his fingers over her body, the silky glide of his lips against hers.

The erotic pulse of his body inside hers, taking her to heights she’d never before experienced.

Lia shivered, though it was not cold. A drop of sweat trickled between her breasts. She felt … moist. And she definitely needed to sit down.

Zach stood ramrod straight on the terrace before her. “You may be pregnant, but that doesn’t make the baby mine,” he said. She swallowed down the nausea that had been her constant companion—it was lessening thanks to medication the doctor had prescribed—and tried to bring him into focus. “We were together two nights. How do I know you didn’t have another lover?”

Lia’s heart ached. She’d known he might not take the news well—what man would when a spontaneous encounter with a stranger turned life-altering in such a huge way?—but she hadn’t expected him to accuse her of having another lover. Of basically coming all this way to lie to him.

“I need to get out of this heat,” she choked out, turning blindly. She couldn’t stand here and defend herself when she just wanted to sit down somewhere cool. When her heart hurt and her stomach churned and she wanted to cry.

She’d only taken a few steps toward the door when she felt as if the bottom was dropping out from under her. Lia shot a hand out and braced herself on the railing near the door as nausea threatened to overwhelm her. She turned to lean against it, grateful for the solid barrier holding her up.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked up to find Zach standing over her, his stern face showing concern where moments ago it had only been anger.

Lia put a shaky hand to her forehead. “I’m hormonal, Zach. And you aren’t helping matters.”

He blew out a breath. And then his hand wrapped around her elbow as he pulled her to his side. “Come on.”

He led her away from the door and then in through another door farther down. It led into a dark bar with tables and chairs and only a few patrons. Zach steered her to a table in the corner, far from anyone, and sat her down.

“Wait here.”

She was too tired to argue so she did as he ordered,
propping her head against one palm as she fought her queasy stomach.

He returned with a glass and a bottle of San Pellegrino, opening it and pouring it for her. She took a grateful sip, let the cold bubbly water slide down her throat and extinguish the fire in her belly.

Zach sank into the chair across from her. His arms were folded over what she remembered was an impressive chest when it was bare. His stare was not in the least bit friendly as he watched her. She thought of the military medal she’d tucked into her purse and pictured him in a flight suit, standing tall and proud beside a sleek fighter jet.

“Better?” he asked shortly.

She nodded. “Somewhat, yes.”

“Good.” His eyes narrowed. “Why should I believe this baby is mine, Lia?”

Her heart thudded. There was no reason she could actually give him.
Because I was a virgin. Because you are the only man I’ve ever been with.
“A paternity test should clear it up,” she said coolly, though inside she was anything but cool. “I will submit the first moment it is safe to do so.”