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Tears pricked Lia’s eyes. Teresa Corretti was the only one in the family who had ever been kind to her. Her grandfather hadn’t been unkind, precisely, but he’d always frightened her. She still couldn’t believe he was gone. He’d loomed so large in her life that she’d started to think him immortal. He’d been intense, driven, the kind of man no one crossed. But now he was dead, and the family wasn’t any closer than they’d ever been. Not only that, but Lia wasn’t certain that her cousin Alessandro wasn’t to be more feared as the new head of the family.
Lia screwed up her courage and reentered the ballroom. A glance at her watch told her she’d put in enough time to call it an evening. She was going to find her grandmother and tell her she was leaving. No one would care that she was gone anyway.
The music pumped and thumped as it had before, and the crowd surged. But then another sound lifted over the din. It took Lia a minute to realize it was Carmela, shrieking drunkenly.
Lia despised her late uncle’s wife, but thankfully she hardly ever had to be around the woman. She didn’t care what Carmela’s problem was tonight. She just wanted to go back to her room and get out of this awful dress. She’d curl up with a book or something inane on television and try to forget the humiliations of the day.
But, before she could find her grandmother, the music suddenly died and the crowd parted as if Moses himself were standing there.
Everyone turned to look at Lia. She shrank instinctively under the scrutiny, her heart pounding. Was this yet another ploy of Carmela’s to embarrass her? Did she really have to endure another scene? What had she ever done to the woman?
But it wasn’t Carmela who caught her attention. It was Rosa. Carmela’s daughter stood there, her face pale, her eyes fixed on her mother’s face.
“That’s right,” Carmela said gleefully, her voice rising over the sudden silence of the gathered crowd, “Benito Corretti is your father, not Carlo! That one is your sister,” she spat, pointing a red-tipped finger at Lia as if she were a particularly loathsome bug. “Be thankful you did not turn out like her. She’s useless—fat and mousy and weak!”
Rosa looked stricken. Lia’s heart stuttered in her chest. She had a sister? She wasn’t close with her three half-brothers. She wasn’t close with anyone. But a sister?
She’d never had anyone, not really. She’d often longed for a sister, someone she might get to know in a way she couldn’t get to know brothers. Her three half-brothers had one another. Plus they were men. A sister, however—that felt different somehow.
A surge of hope flooded her then. Perhaps she wasn’t really alone in this family, after all. She had a sister.
A sister who was every bit as lost at this moment as Lia had been her entire life. She could see it on Rosa’s face, and she wanted to help. It was the one thing she had to offer that she knew was valuable. But suddenly, Rosa was storming away from Carmela, coming across the room straight for Lia. She reached out instinctively to comfort her when she came near. But Rosa didn’t stop. The look she gave Lia could have frozen lava. Lia’s heart cracked as Rosa shoved her hands away with a growled, “Don’t!”
A throb of pain ricocheted through her chest where her heart had been. Rejection was nothing new to her, but the freshness of it in the face of her hope was almost too much. She stood there for long moments after Rosa had gone, aware of the eyes upon her.
Aware of the pity.
Soon, before she could think of a single pithy remark, the crowd turned away, their attention waning. Self-loathing flooded her. No wonder Rosa hadn’t wanted her comfort. She was so pitiful. So naive.
How many times had she let her heart open? How many times had she had the door slammed in her face? When was she going to learn to guard herself better?
Shame and anger coiled together inside her belly. Why couldn’t she be decisive? Brave? Why did she care how they treated her?
Why couldn’t she just tell them all to go to hell the way her mother would have done?
Grace Hart had been beautiful, perfect, a gorgeous movie star who’d been swept off her feet by Benito Corretti. She’d had no problem handling the Correttis, until she’d accidentally driven her car off a cliff and left Benito a lonely widower with a baby. Soon after that, Benito had sent Lia to live with Salvatore and Teresa.
She knew why he’d done it. Because she wasn’t beautiful and perfect like her mother. Because she was shy and awkward and lacking in the most basic graces. She’d grown up on the periphery, watching her cousins and half-siblings from a distance. Wanting her father’s love but getting only cool silence.
No, she wasn’t beautiful and perfect, and she wasn’t decisive. She hated crowds, and she hated pretending she fit in when everyone knew she didn’t. She was a failure.
She wanted to go home, back to her small cottage at Salvatore and Teresa’s country estate, back to her books and her garden. She loved getting her fingers in the dirt, loved creating something beautiful from nothing more than soil and water and seeds. It gave her hope somehow that she wasn’t as inconsequential as she always felt.
Useless. Fat and mousy and weak.
Lia turned and fled through the same door Rosa had stormed out of. This was it. The final straw in her long, tortured life as a Corretti. She was finished pretending to fit in.
She meant to go to her room, but instead she marched out through the courtyard and found herself standing in front of the swimming pool.
There was no one in it tonight. The hotel had been overrun with wedding guests, and they were all at the reception. The air was hot, and the blue water was so clear, the pool lit from below with soft lights. For a moment Lia thought of jumping in with her dress on. It would ruin the stupid thing, but she hardly cared.
She stood there for a long time, hot feelings swelling within her. She wanted to be decisive. Brave. She wanted to make her own decisions, and she didn’t want to let anyone make her feel inferior or unneeded ever again.
She took a step closer to the edge of the pool, staring down into the depths of the water. It would ruin her dress, her shoes, her hair.
So what?
For the first time in a long time, she was going to do what she wanted. She was going to step into the pool and ruin her dress, and she damn well didn’t care. She was going to wash away the pain of the day and emerge clean. A new, determined Lia.
Before she could change her mind, she kicked off her shoes and stepped over the edge, letting the water take her down. It closed over her head so peacefully, shutting out all the sounds from above. Shutting out the pain and anger, the humiliation of this day.
She didn’t fight it, didn’t kick or struggle. She was a strong swimmer, and she wasn’t afraid. She just let the water take her down to the bottom, where everything was still. She’d only sit here a moment, and then she’d kick to the top again.
Above her, she heard some kind of noise. And then the water rippled as someone leaped into the pool with her. It annoyed her. She wasn’t finished being quiet and still.
Guests from the reception, no doubt. Drunk and looking for a good time.
Lia started to kick upward again, her solace interrupted now. She would get out of the pool and drag her sodden body back to her room. But her dress was heavier than she’d thought, twisting around her legs and pulling her back down again.
She kicked harder, but got nowhere. And then she realized with a sinking feeling that the suction of the drain had trapped part of her skirt. Panic bloomed inside her as she kicked harder.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She couldn’t cry for help, couldn’t do anything but try to rip herself out of the pink mess.
The dress didn’t want to come off. Her lungs ached. Any minute and they would burst.
She kicked harder—but she was caught by her own folly.
No, by Carmela’s folly, she thought numbly. Carmela’s folly of a dress. Wouldn’t everyone laugh when they discovered her bloated body in the pool tomorrow?
Poor, pitiful, stupid Lia. She’d been decisive, all right. She’d made a decision that was going to kill her. She wondered if her mother had thought the same thing in those seconds when her car had hung suspended over the cliffs before plunging onto the rocks below… .
CHAPTER TWO
LIA WOKE SLOWLY. She coughed, her throat and chest aching as she did so. She remembered being in the pool, remembered her dress getting caught. She pushed herself up on an elbow. She was in a darkened room. She sat upright, and the sheet slid down her body. How had she gotten out of the pool? And why was she naked? She didn’t remember going back to her room, didn’t remember anything but that last moment where she’d thought of the Correttis finding her pink-clad body trapped at the bottom of the pool.
She pushed the sheet back, intending to get out of the bed, but a movement in the darkness arrested her.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a deep male voice said.
Lia grabbed the sheet and yanked it back up. How long had he been standing there?
“Who are you? And why are you in my room?”
His laugh was dry. “I’m Zach. And you’re in my room, sugar.”
Sugar. “You’re American,” she said, her heart thumping steadily. The same American as earlier?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“You sound disappointed.”
She shook her head, stopping when her brain couldn’t quite keep up. She felt light-headed, as if she’d been drinking, when she hadn’t had more than a single glass of champagne all evening.
“How did I get here?”
“I carried you.”
“Impossible,” she scoffed. She was tall and awkward and fat. He couldn’t have done it without a cart and a team of horses to pull her.
“Clearly not,” he told her. “Because you’re here.”
“But why?” The last thing she remembered was water and darkness.
Wait, that wasn’t right. There’d also been light, a hard surface under her back and the scalding taste of chlorine in her throat.
“Because you begged me not to call anyone when I pulled you out of the pool.”
She vaguely recalled it. She remembered that she’d been worried about anyone seeing her, about them laughing and pointing. About Carmela standing there, slim arms folded, evil face twisted in a smirk, nodding and laughing … fat and mousy and weak.
“It was the only thing you said. Repeatedly,” he added, and Lia wanted to hide.
She put a hand to her head. Her hair was still damp, though not soaked. And she was naked. Utterly, completely naked. Her face flamed.
He sat beside her on the bed, holding out a glass of water. “Here, take this,” he said, his voice gentle.
She looked up, met his gaze—and her heart skipped several beats in a row. It was the same man. He had dark eyes, a hard jaw and the beginnings of a scruff where he hadn’t shaved in hours. His hair was cropped short, almost military style, and his lips were just about the sexiest thing she’d ever seen in her life.
She took the water and drank deeply, choking when she’d had too much. He grabbed the glass and set it aside, no doubt ready to pound her on the back if she needed it. She held a hand up, stopping him before he could do so.
“I’m fine,” she squeaked out. “Thank you.”
He sat back and watched her carefully. “Are you certain?”
She looked at him again—and realized his expression was full of pity. Pity! It was almost more than she could bear to have one more person look at her like that tonight.
“Yes.”
“You were lucky tonight,” he said, his voice hardening. “Next time, there might not be anyone to pull you out.”
She knew he was trying to say something important, but she was too weary to figure out what it was. And then his meaning hit her.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” she protested. “It was an accident.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I saw you step into the water. You just decided to go swimming while fully dressed?”
She dropped her gaze from his. “Something like that.” What would he know of it if she told him the real reason? He was beautiful, perfect. She’d thought they had something in common earlier tonight, but she’d been wrong.
Of course.
She usually was. It disappointed her more than she could say. And made her feel lonelier than ever. This man, whatever his flaws, had nothing in common with her. How could he?
“What’s your name?” he asked, his voice turning soft.
“Lia. And I hated my dress, if you must know. That’s why I jumped in the pool.”
His bark of laughter surprised her. “Then why did you buy it in the first place?”
“I didn’t. It was a bridesmaid dress, and it was hideous.”
“Pink is not your color, I’m sorry to say.” His voice was too warm to take offense. “Definitely not.” She was slightly confused, given his reaction to her earlier, and more than a little curious about him. It occurred to her she should be apprehensive to be alone with a strange man, in his room, while she was naked beneath his sheets.
But she wasn’t. Paradoxically, he made her feel safe. As if he would stand between her and the world if she asked him to. It wasn’t true, of course, but it was a nice feeling for the moment.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t save the dress,” he said. “It tore in the drain, and the rest rather disintegrated once I tried to remove it.”
She felt heat creeping into her cheeks again. “You removed everything, I see.”
“Yes, sorry, but I didn’t want you soaking my sheets. Or getting sick from lying around in cold, clammy clothing.”
What did she say to that? Did you like what you saw? Thank you? I hope you weren’t terribly inconvenienced?
Lia cleared her throat and hoped she didn’t look as embarrassed as she felt. “Did you find your medal?”
It was the most benign thing she could think of. She’d tucked it into her cleavage when she’d returned to the ballroom. She would regret it if it were lost. Something about it had seemed important to her, even if he’d cast it aside so easily.
“I did.”
“Why did you drop it?” It seemed a harmless topic. Far safer than the subject of her body, no doubt.
“I have my reasons,” he said coolly.
Lia waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “If you intend to throw it away again, I’ll keep it.” She didn’t know where that had come from, but she meant it. It seemed wrong to throw something like that away.
“It’s yours if you want it,” he said after a taut moment in which she thought she saw regret and anger scud across his handsome face.
She sensed there were currents swirling beneath the surface that she just didn’t understand. But she wanted to. “What did you get it for?”
He shoved a hand through his hair. She watched the muscles bunch in his forearm, swallowed. He’d been in a tuxedo the last time she’d seen him, but now he wore a dark T-shirt that clung to the well-defined muscles of his chest and arms, and a pair of faded jeans. His feet, she noted, were bare.
So sexy.
“Flying,” he said.
“Flying? You are a pilot?”
