A Scandal in the Headlines (8 page)

“I told you,” he said, a kind of ferocity in his voice, all that ruthlessness and demand gleaming in his dark green eyes. He touched her then, reaching over to tuck a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear, that hard mouth curving when goose bumps rose along her neck, her shoulder. “I want everything.”

And Elena understood then that she was open and vulnerable to this man in ways she’d never been before. This really was everything. This was all she had left inside of her, all she’d had left to hold, laid out before
him because she’d finally given in. She’d finally let go. This was everything lost, her whole world ruined, and nothing left to hope for but the possibility of his mercy.

This was surrender. Everything else had been games.

“I didn’t think I was particularly naive,” she said then, because he was looking at her in that too-incisive way of his, and she was afraid of what he might see. And of what he might do when she was finished. “I’d been to university. I have a law degree. I was starting to take on all the duties and responsibilities of the family business. The land. The money. The constant development proposals.” She shook her head, scowling at her own memories. Her own stupidity. “I wasn’t just some silly village girl.”

And that was the crux of it. She felt new tears prick at the backs of her eyes, and hurriedly blinked them back. She’d thought she was better than where she came from. She’d thought very highly of herself indeed. She’d been certain she
deserved
the handsome, wealthy stranger who had appeared like magic to sweep her off her feet.

Such vanity
.

She only realized she’d said it out loud when Alessandro said something else in his brash Sicilian, so little of which she understood even after her time there.
He shifted in his seat, making it swing with him as he did.

“I told you before,” he said. “It was a con.”

“I believed him,” Elena said simply, shame and regret in her voice, moving in her veins like sludge. She felt it all over her face, and had to stop looking at him before she saw it on his, too. “I believed every single thing he told me. All of his big dreams. All of his plans. That he and I were a team.” Her voice cracked, but she kept going. “That he loved me. I believed every word.”

“Elena,” he said in a voice she’d never heard him use before. She had to close her eyes briefly against it. As if her name was an endearment she couldn’t believe a man so hard even knew. “You were supposed to believe him. He set you up.”

She didn’t know why she wanted to weep then, again.

“I knew you were lying to me in Rome,” she said fiercely, hugging her knees tight, keeping her eyes trained on the sea, determined to hold the tears back. “About everything. You had to be lying, because Niccolo couldn’t possibly be the man you described, and because, of course, you were a Corretti.”

“Of course.” His tone made her wince. She didn’t dare look at his expression.

“I went looking for things to prove you were a liar.
One night while Niccolo slept, I got up and decided to search the laptop he took everywhere with him.”

She heard Alessandro’s release of breath, short and sharp, but she still couldn’t look at him. Especially not now.

“He caught me, of course, but not until after I read far too many emails that explained in detail his plans for my family’s land.” She frowned, as horrified now as she had been then. “He wanted to build a luxury hotel, which would transform my forgotten village into a major tourist destination. We’re fishermen, first and foremost. We don’t even have a decent beach. We like to visit Amalfi, but we don’t want to compete with it.”

She shook her head, remembering that night in such stark detail. She’d only thrown on a shirt of Niccolo’s and a pair of socks, and had snuck down to the kitchen to snoop on his computer while he snored. It had been cold in his villa, and she remembered shivering as she sat on one of the stools, her legs growing chillier the longer she sat there.

And she remembered the way her stomach had lurched when she’d looked up to see him in the doorway.

He hadn’t asked her what she was doing. He’d only stared at her, his black eyes flat and mean, and for a terrifying moment Elena hadn’t recognized him.

She’d told herself she was only being fanciful. It had
been well after midnight and she hadn’t heard him approach. But he was still her Niccolo, she’d assured herself. He was in love with her, he was going to marry her, and while they were probably going to fight about his privacy and all these emails she couldn’t understand, it would all be fine.

She’d been so sure.

“I asked him what it meant, because I was certain there had to be a reasonable explanation.” She let out a hollow laugh. “He knew we wanted to conserve the land, protect the village. He’d spent hours talking to my father about it. He’d promised.”

“I imagine he did not have a satisfying explanation,” Alessandro said darkly.

“He slapped me.” Such a funny, improbable word to describe it. The shock of the impact first, then the burst of pain. Then she’d hit the cold stone floor, and that had hurt even more.

Alessandro went frighteningly still.

Elena’s heart raced, and she felt sick. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her own legs, and she still wanted to curl up further, disappear. But it didn’t matter if he believed her, she told herself staunchly. Her own parents hadn’t believed her. It only mattered that she told this truth, no matter what he thought of it.

“He slapped me so hard he knocked me down. Off my stool. To the floor.” She made herself look at Alessandro
then, burning there in his quiet fury, his dark green eyes brilliant with rage.

Directed at Niccolo, she understood. Not at her. And maybe that was why she told him something she’d never told anyone else. Something she’d never said out loud before.

“He called me a whore,” she told him quietly. “Your whore, in fact.”

Alessandro swore, and his hand twitched along the back of the swing as if he wanted to reach through her memories, through her story, and respond to Niccolo in kind.

“When was this?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“A few days after the ball,” she said. “After …”

“Yes,” he said in a low voice with too many deep currents. “After.”

She let go of her iron grip on her legs before her hands went numb, and used them, shaky and cold, to scrape her hair back from her face.

“He said it was bad enough he had to marry me to get the land, but now he had to do it after I’d made him a laughingstock with his sworn enemy?” She didn’t see the sea in front of her then. She only saw Niccolo’s face, twisted in a rage. She saw the way he’d stood over her, so cruel, so cold, while she lay there too stunned to cry. “He told me that if I knew what was good for me, I’d shut my mouth and be thankful
the land was worth more than I was. And then he walked out of the villa and left me there on the floor.”

“Elena.”

But she had to finish. She had to get it out or she never would, and she didn’t want to think about why it was suddenly so important to her that the man she’d never thought she’d see again know every last detail. Every last way she’d made such a fool of herself.

“I left, of course,” she said, ignoring the wobble in her voice and the constriction in her throat. And all of his heat and power beside her. “But I didn’t really mean it. I thought there was some kind of misunderstanding. He couldn’t have meant to hit me, to say those things to me. Maybe he’d been drinking. I went home to my parents, as I always did.” She swallowed, hard. “And they hugged me, and told me that they loved me, and then they told me they blamed themselves that I’d turned out so spoiled, so high-strung. So selfish.”

She shook her head when he started to speak and he stilled, frowning.

“They were so
kind
. Niccolo was going to be my husband, they told me, and marriages took work. Commitment. I was going to have to grow up and stop telling terrible stories when I didn’t get my way.” She laughed again, and it sounded broken to her own ears. “Niccolo was a good man, they said, and I believed
them. I
wanted
to believe them. It was easier to believe that I’d made up the whole thing than that he was the person I’d seen that night.”

Alessandro shifted, and put his arm around her, then gathered her close to his side. Holding her again. Holding her close, as if he could fight off all her demons that easily. She wondered if he could, if he even wanted to bother, and her eyes slicked over with a glaze of heat.

“He laughed when I rang him,” she whispered. “He told me that I was a stupid bitch. A whore. He told me I had twenty-four hours to get back to the villa and if I didn’t he’d come get me himself, and I would really, truly regret it. That he didn’t care if he had to marry me in a wheelchair.”

Alessandro’s arm tightened around her, and she allowed herself the comfort of his heat, his strength, even though she knew it was fleeting at best. That it wasn’t hers, no matter how much it felt as if it was. That he was far more dangerous to her now, armed with all of the knowledge she’d given him, even if he really was the man he claimed he was.

Neither one of them spoke for a long while. His hand moved over her hair, stroking her as if she was something precious to him. She accepted that she wished she was. That she always had. That she’d wanted too
much from him from the start, and had been paying for it ever since.

“And that time,” she said when she could speak again, giving him everything he’d asked for, everything she’d been hiding,
everything
, “I believed him.”

Alessandro stood on the balcony outside his bedroom long after midnight, staring out into the dark.

He couldn’t sleep. He could hardly think straight. Once again, she’d shoved his world off its axis, and he was still reeling.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he’d asked her as the light began to change, still holding her on the swinging chair, pulling her closer as the wind picked up.

“You would never have believed me.”

“Perhaps,” he’d said, but she’d only smiled. “Perhaps, in time, I might have.”

But she’d been right. He would have thought it was another game. He would have laughed at her. Hated her all the more. He would have treated her exactly the same—worse, even. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.

He balled his hands into fists against the rail now, scowling.

He should have known. He had been too busy concentrating on the darkness in him, too busy nursing his wounded pride. The truth had always been there,
staring him in the face. In every kiss, every touch. In the way she’d given herself to him so unreservedly.

In what he’d known about her the moment he’d seen her in Rome.

He should have tried to reach her then. Instead, he’d stormed off that dance floor and left her to be brutalized. He’d put her through hell all on his own. And he couldn’t blame his family for that. That had been all him.

He was no different from them at all. He couldn’t imagine how he’d ever believed otherwise.

He sensed her behind him a moment before she stepped to the rail beside him, hugging herself against the cool night air.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.

She smiled, but she didn’t look at him. “You didn’t.”

He watched her, feeling something work through him, something powerful and new and all about that tilt to her jaw, that perfect curve of her hip, the way she squared her shoulders as she stood there. Her lovely strength. Her courage.

He didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with any of it. Or with her.

Alessandro couldn’t help but touch her then, his hands curving over her bare shoulders and turning her to face him. She was as beautiful in the shadows as she was in the light, though the wariness in her gaze
made his chest ache. He wanted to protect her, to keep her safe. From Niccolo. From the world.

Even from himself.

He stroked his fingers down her lovely face, and felt the way she shivered, heard the way she sighed. He thought of that first touch, so long ago now, that glorious heat. He thought of that marvelous glow between them. That easy, instant perfection.

And all of it was true.

Everything he’d felt. Everything he’d imagined. Everything he’d wanted then, and thought impossible.

“What happens now?” she asked softly, her eyes searching his.

He smiled then, over the rawness inside of him, the dangerous, insidious hope.

“Now?” he asked, his voice gruff. As uneven as he felt. “I apologize.”

And then he kissed her, gently, and she melted into him. Like the first time all over again. Better.

Real
.

Elena woke in his wide bed, safe and warm.

She lay on her side and gazed out at the morning light, the blue sky, and the previous afternoon came back to her slowly, drip by drip. Then the night. The way he’d picked her up so gently and carried her back to bed. The way he’d moved over her, worshipping
every part of her, taking his time and driving her into a sweet, wild oblivion, before curling around her and holding her close as they fell asleep together.

It had been so different, Elena thought now. She smiled to herself. It had felt like—

But she pushed that thought away, afraid to look at it too closely. Her stomach began to ache, and she cursed herself. Things were precarious enough already. There were any number of ways Alessandro could use what she’d told him against her. No need to tangle her emotions any further. No need to make it that much worse.

No need to walk straight into another disaster as blindly as she had the first.

She climbed from the bed and started for the bathroom, aware with each step that she didn’t feel well—as if her body was finally taking all of the past weeks’ excesses out on her. As if it was punishing her. She had a slight headache. Her stomach hurt. Even her breasts ached. And she felt heavy, all the way through. Almost as if—

She stopped in her tracks and, for a moment, was nothing at all but numb. Then she walked into the bathroom, confirmed her suspicion and had only just come back out again and pulled on the first thing she could find—the long-sleeved shirt he’d been wearing the night before, as it happened—when Alessandro walked through the bedroom door.