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He swung to look at her. “Who said I was dreaming of the war?”
She thought of the wild look in his eyes when he’d first looked at her, at the way he’d seemed to be somewhere else instead of here, and knew she was right. Just like that night in Palermo, though he had been wide awake then.
“Is it the same as what happened when I first met you? Or different?”
He didn’t say anything at first. He simply stared at her. The moonlight limned his body, delineating the hard planes and shadows of muscle. She had an overwhelming urge to touch him, but she clenched her hands tightly at her sides instead.
She would not reach for him and have him push her away. She’d done that too many times in her life, when she’d reached out to family and been shunned instead.
“You don’t quit, do you?” he asked.
“You can deny it if you like,” she said. “But I think we both know the truth.”
“Fine.” He blew out a breath. “It’s different than Palermo. When I dream, it’s much worse.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He laughed suddenly. A broken, rusty sound. “God, no. And you don’t want to hear it, Lia. You’d run screaming back to Sicily if you did. But thanks for trying.”
Lia bristled at his presumption. “I’m tougher than I look.”
He shook his head. “You only think you are. Forget it, kitten.”
Kitten. She didn’t know whether to be insulted or warmed by that endearment. “The photographer did bother you.”
“Yes.”
There was a warning in his tone. But she couldn’t leave it, not now.
“Why do you do these things if you’re worried about your reaction?”
He growled. “Because I have no choice, Lia. I’m a Scott, and Scotts do their duty. And you’d better get used to it because soon you’ll be one of us.”
It suddenly made her angry. Why should people do things that hurt them just to please other people? “So you’re saying I must put myself in situations that cause me stress for the sake of the Scotts?”
His eyes flashed. “Something like that.”
She lifted her chin. “And if I refuse?”
“Too late to back out now, babe. I told Elizabeth Cunningham you were my fiancée. Tomorrow, the papers will be filled with you and me. The whole city will be interested in the woman who captured my heart. And you will be at my side for every damn event I have to attend. Like it or not.”
A tremor slid through her. “You’re no different than my grandfather was,” she said bitterly. “It’s all about appearances. The family. What will people think? What will they do if they know we’re human, too?” Lia cursed in Italian. “We can’t have that, can we? Because the family reputation is everything.”
So long as you didn’t shame the family, so long as you kept your mouth shut and your head down, you could stay. But, oh, don’t expect them to care about you.
Don’t ever expect that. She put her hand over her belly and vowed with everything in her that her child would never for one minute think public façades were more important than feelings. It was untenable, no matter the importance of the family.
She started to turn away, but Zach gripped her arms. She tried to pull out of his hold, but he wouldn’t let her go. His face was so close to hers. And, in spite of her fury, her body was softening, aching. She hated that he did that to her. Especially when she did no such thing to him in return.
“Some things are bigger than our own desires,” he said. “You know that.”
Lia sucked in a breath that shook with tears. “And some things are more important than appearances.” She thought of him at the podium, of the way he’d looked when he’d started to fight the demons in his head, and then of the way he’d rushed out onto the terrace tonight, and she couldn’t stand that he would have to face the same issue again and again, and all for the sake of his family reputation. “Maybe you should talk to someone—”
He let her go and shoved back, away from her. Then he swore. Explosively.
A second later he was back, one long finger inches from her nose. It trembled as he pointed. If not for that single detail, she would have been frightened of his temper.
“Leave it, Lia. It’s none of your business,” he growled. The finger dropped and he spun away, put both hands on the railing and stood there, drawing in breath after breath after breath.
She didn’t know quite what to say. She hadn’t thought her suggestion would cause him such pain, but clearly it had. She hated that it did. And she hated that he wouldn’t share with her. That he lost his cool, but wouldn’t tell her what she so desperately wanted to know to help him.
She closed her eyes and swallowed, and then closed the distance between them until she was beside him. He didn’t move or speak, and neither did she.
“I’ll do my duty, Zach,” she said softly. “I’ll be at every event you are. And I won’t let them get to you.”
No matter what she’d said about refusing to go along, she wouldn’t leave him to face those situations alone. Not after tonight. He needed someone with him, and she would be that someone.
He turned toward her, his brows drawn down in a question.
She lifted her chin and tumbled onward. She felt silly, but it was too late to turn back.
“The photographers. The flashes. The crowds. Whatever it is, I won’t let them derail you or trigger a reaction. You can count on me.”
His expression didn’t change, but his nostrils flared. “You’re offering to protect me?”
Oh, it did sound so ridiculous when he put it like that. On impulse, she reached for his bare arm, squeezed the hard muscle encouragingly while trying to ignore the heat sizzling into her.
“Whatever it takes,” she said. And then, because her cheeks were hot with embarrassment and she didn’t want to hear what he might say in response, she turned and walked away.
“Lia.”
She was to her door when he called out. She turned to face him, her hands at her sides, trying for all the world to seem casual and calm. “Yes?”
“Grazie, cara mia.”
Her heart skipped. “You’re welcome,” she said. And then she stepped into her room and closed the door with a quiet, lonely click.
The day did not promise to be a good one. Zach turned up the speed on the treadmill, forcing himself to run faster. He needed to reach that Zen moment of almost total exhaustion before he could consider himself in any shape to deal with everything coming his way today.
The sun hadn’t yet peeked over the horizon, and the sky was still gray and misty from the river. Soon, however, all hell would break loose.
As if the hell of his dream hadn’t been enough to endure. He squared his jaw and hit the speed button. He’d been back in the trench, immobile from the drugs the medic had given him, and listening to the shouts and rat-a-tat-tats of gunfire. The marines had been cool, doing their job, but they’d known air support wasn’t coming in time.
He’d wanted to help so badly. He could still see the last marine, still feel the pistol grip in his hand as the man gave him a weapon. He’d lifted it, determined to do what needed to be done—
But he always woke at the moment he pulled the trigger.
Terrified. Angry. Disgusted.
Sweat poured down his face, his naked torso. He ran faster, but he knew from experience he couldn’t outrun the past.
No, he had to focus on today. On what was coming his way after last night.
First, there would be the papers. Then there would be an angry phone call from his father, Senator Zachariah J. Scott, demanding to know who Lia was and what the hell was going on.
Zach almost relished that confrontation. Except he didn’t want Lia hurt. He should have chosen a better way to announce her role in his life, but he’d been too angry to think straight once Elizabeth Cunningham had looked at her like she was another piece of flotsam moving across his orbit. He’d simply reacted. Not the way he’d been trained to deal with things, but too late now.
She would handle it, though. He pictured her last night when he’d cornered her before his speech. She’d been fierce, angry, determined.
Sexy.
God, she was sexy. Something about Lia’s special combination of innocence and fierceness was incredibly sexy to him. Addictive.
She wasn’t like the women he’d been linked with in the past. They had always been polished, smooth, ready to step in and become the perfect society wife. Oh, he’d had his flings with unsuitable women, too. Women who were wild, fun, completely inappropriate.
Lia fit none of those categories. She wasn’t smooth and polished, but she wasn’t inappropriate, either. He doubted she was wild, though she’d certainly been eager and willing during their two-night fling.
Zach gritted his teeth and resolved not to think about that. Not right now anyway.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about last night on the terrace when she’d said she would protect him. He’d wanted to laugh—but he hadn’t. It had been incongruous, her standing there in her silky pajamas, looking all soft and womanly, staring up at him and telling him she would be at his side, making sure he didn’t have a meltdown because of a camera flash or a nosy reporter.
He’d been stunned and touched at the same time. Yes, he’d nearly growled at her. He’d nearly told her she was too naive and to mind her own business. But her eyes had been shining up at him and she’d looked so grave that he’d been unable to do it.
He’d realized, looking at her, that she really was serious. That she cared, on some level, and that if he was nasty to her, she would crumple inside.
So he’d swallowed his anger and his pride and he’d thanked her. It had been the right thing to do, even if the idea of her protecting him was ridiculous.
Except that she had intervened during his speech, coughing when he’d stumbled on the words. At the time, he’d thought little of it, though he’d been grateful to have something to focus on besides the photographer.
Now he wondered if she’d done it on purpose.
Zach finished his workout, showered and dressed, and went into his office to read the papers. The phone call came at seven. He let it ring three times before he picked it up.
“Care to tell me what’s going on, Zach?” His father’s voice was cool and crisp, like always. They’d never had a close relationship, though it was certainly more strained since Zach had come home from the war.
He knew his father loved him, but feelings were not something you were supposed to let show. They made you weak, a target to those who would exploit them.
And there wasn’t a single aspect of his father’s life that hadn’t been thought out in triplicate and examined from all angles—except for one.
The only thing he hadn’t been able to control was falling in love with his wife. It was the one thing that made him human.
“I’m getting married,” Zach said, his voice equally as cool.
He heard the rustling of the newspaper. The Washington Post, no doubt. “I see that. The question is why.”
“Why does anyone get married?”
His father snorted softly. “Many reasons. Love, money, comfort, sex, children. What I want to know is which reason it is for you. And what we need to do on this end.”
A thread of anger started to unwind inside him. It was his life they were talking about, and his father was already looking at it like it was something to be handled and packaged for the world to digest. “For the spin, you mean.”
“Everything needs to be spun, Zach. You know that.”
Yes, he certainly did. From the time he was a child and his father had decided to step away from Scott Pharmaceuticals and put his hat in the political ring, their lives had been one big spin job. He’d grown sick of the spin. He’d thought going into the military and flying planes would be authentic, real, a way to escape the fishbowl of his powerful family’s life.
He’d been wrong. It had simply been another chance for spin. Hero. All-American. Perfect life. Doing his duty. Father so proud.
How proud would his father be if he knew Zach hated himself for what had happened out there? That he wished he’d died along with the marines sent to rescue him? That he was no hero?
“But your mother and I love you,” his father was saying. “We want to know what’s going on in truth.”
Zach’s jaw felt tight. “She’s pregnant,” he said, and then felt immediately guilty for saying it. As if he were betraying Lia. As if it were her secret and not his, too.
He could hear the intake of breath on the other end of the phone. No doubt his father was considering how to minimize the embarrassment of his only son making such a foolish mistake.
Except the idea it was a mistake made him angry. How could it be a mistake when there was a small life growing inside Lia now? A life that was one half of him.
“You are certain the baby is yours?”
Zach ground his teeth together. An expected question, one he’d asked, too, and yet it irritated him. “Yes.”
His father blew out a breath. “All right, then. We’ll do what we need to do to minimize the damage.”
“Damage?” Zach asked, his voice silky smooth and hard at the same time.
And yet had he not thought the very same thing? Had he not proposed this arrangement to Lia in order to minimize the damage to their families—most specifically his?
He had, and it infuriated him that he’d thought it for even a moment. What was wrong with him?
“You know what I mean,” his father said tightly.
“I do indeed. But Lia is not a commodity or a project to be managed. She’s an innocent young woman, she’s pregnant with my child and I’m marrying her just as soon as I get the license.”
His father was silent for the space of several heartbeats. “Very well,” he said softly. “Your mother and I will look forward to meeting her.”
It was the same sort of cool statement his father always made when he wasn’t pleased but knew that further argument would result in nothing changing. Zach felt uncharacteristically irritated by it. He knew how his father was, and yet he’d thought for the barest of moments that his parent might actually have a conversation about Lia and marriage instead of one based on how Zach’s choices would impact the family.
Zach didn’t bother to waste time with any further pleasantries. “If that’s all, I have things to attend to,” he said in clipped tones.
“Of course,” his father said. “We’ll be in touch.”
Zach ended the call and sat at his desk for several minutes. He’d never once had a meaningful conversation with his father. It bothered him. Instead of telling the older man what kind of hell he’d been through in the war, and how it really made him feel to be treated like a returning hero, he smiled and shook hands and did his duty and kept it buried deep inside.
Because that’s what a Scott did.
The gardener rolled a wheelbarrow full of something across the lawn outside. Zach watched his progress. The man stopped by a winding bed of roses and began clipping stems, pruning and shaping the bushes. He was whistling.
Two days ago, Zach had been going about his life as always, attending events, making speeches and feeling empty inside. It was the life he knew, the life he expected.
