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Lia curled her hands into fists on her lap and took a deep breath. Damn Zach, he had a way of getting beneath her skin and irritating her so much that she simply reacted without thinking. It wasn’t like her to draw attention to herself, or to argue, but she couldn’t help it with him.
Still, she should not have let him get to her like that. But he’d suggested she’d purposely set out to trap him into marriage, and it made her furious. What kind of God’s gift to women did he think he was anyway? It was ludicrous. And she planned to tell him so just as soon as they were alone and she could give him a proper piece of her mind.
Lia stood and smoothed her dress. She studied herself in the mirror and was pleased with what she saw. Oh, she was still too plump—and too tall—but she cleaned up quite nicely when she was able to wear designer dresses someone had picked out specifically for her shape and coloring.
When she left the ladies’ room, Zach was standing across from the door, leaning against the wall in a sexy slouch that made her heart kick up. He really was spectacular. Tall, broad and intensely handsome. The kind of man that, yes, would have women falling all over him.
“You’ve been gone awhile,” he said.
Lia tilted her chin up. “Yes. I needed to get my temper under control.”
Zach laughed. She didn’t like the way the sound slid beneath her skin. Curled around her heart. Warmed her from the inside out.
“I wasn’t aware you had a temper, Lia.”
“Of course I do. And you know just how to aggravate it.” She’d never really realized precisely how furious another person could make her until she’d met Zach. He had an ability to make her feel things she’d never quite felt before—and to say things she would have never said to another person. Usually, she hid her emotions down deep.
Except with him. With him, she couldn’t help but say what she was feeling.
It was that or burst.
She crossed the hall and stood right in front of him, nearly toe to toe. She was tall in her heels, five-eleven, but she still had to tilt her head back to look up at him. “You might think you are some sort of priceless gift to womankind, Zach Scott, but I’ll have you know that I would much prefer to be back home and for none of this to have happened.”
It wasn’t quite true, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She wasn’t sorry for the two nights they’d spent together. She wasn’t even sorry about her baby. She was sorry for the way it had happened, and for the man it had happened with. Why couldn’t she have chosen a good Sicilian man for her night of rebellion? A single, sexy Sicilian who had no hang-ups about women and their motives.
Even as she thought it, she knew she didn’t really want that, either.
“For your information,” she continued, “I did not set out to ‘trap’ you. That is the most arrogant, conceited, unbelievable thing you have said yet. No one forced you to do what you did in Palermo. No one forced you to take that risk.”
His expression was dark. “No, you’re right about that. No one forced me. It was a mistake, and I was stupid enough to make it.” His eyes slid over her, came to rest on her face again. “Everything about those two days was a mistake.”
Lia tried not to let that hurt her, but she didn’t quite succeed. It stung her in places she’d thought she’d locked away long ago. “Well, now that we have that out of the way, I think it must be time for the dessert course.”
She turned her back on him and started down the hall, back toward the dinner. Tears pricked her eyes. Angry tears, she told herself.
Zach’s hand on her elbow brought her up short. She whirled around and jerked out of his grip.
He was a dark, brooding presence. “Look, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” He shoved a hand through his hair, blew out a breath.
Lia glared at him steadily. “I did not trap you, Zach. I’d like you to admit that.”
His expression remained dark. “Fine. You didn’t trap me.”
“And what about not believing I was telling the truth? Are you going to admit you were wrong about that, too?”
His eyes gleamed. “No.”
She stiffened. “Of all the rude, arrogant—”
“What reason did I have to believe you?” he said heatedly. “We’re strangers, Lia, regardless of what happened in Palermo.”
She swallowed against the knot of anger and pain clogging her throat. But she knew what he said was true. Would she have believed a story like hers if she were Zach? Considering his previous experience of women, perhaps not.
“I will concede that point,” she said coolly, though her heart beat hot at the admission. “But I don’t like it.”
He reached for her hand, slipped it into his. Her entire body went on red alert just from that simple touch. She wanted more of him, more of what they’d had in Palermo. And yet she knew that was the last thing she should want. The very last. They had an arrangement in name only, to protect their families, until such time as they could go their separate ways and not cause a scandal.
She had to remember he didn’t truly want this child. Or her.
She tried to pull her hand away, but he held it tight.
“Darling, we’re returning to the event,” he chided her. “We have to look happy together if they are to believe our whirlwind romance.”
“I’m not very good at pretending,” she said stiffly.
He tugged her closer. “Then I will have to give you a reason to smile,” he said, slipping his hand around to the small of her back and pressing her against him. He pulled the hand he’d trapped up to his chest, pressed her palm against the smooth fabric of his tuxedo.
“There is nothing you can do to make me smile, Zach,” she said, though her heart beat harder and faster as the look in his eyes changed. Heat flared in their dark depths and her body responded by softening, melting. She held herself rigid, unwilling to give in to the feelings swirling inside her. Feelings that wanted her to tilt her head back and offer her lips up for him to claim. “I want you to let me go.”
His eyes were hooded as they dropped to her mouth, and a shot of adrenaline pulsed into her veins.
“I will,” he murmured. “But not quite yet.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ub40964f3-e8bf-5151-b32a-54d4e0bcb38a)
ZACH WAS ON the edge of control. Not in a way that made him sweat as helpless panic rose in his throat and threatened to squeeze the life from him. But he had a need to dominate. A need to take this infuriating woman to his bed and not let her out of it for several hours.
Not until she sighed her pleasure into his ear. Not until she gasped out his name the way she had in Palermo. Sweet, innocent Lia. He wanted to taste her again. Wanted to know if she was as sweet as he remembered. As intoxicating.
She stood very still in his grasp. He didn’t hold her tight. She could have broken free with a single tug. Oh, not when he’d first gripped her hand. Definitely not then. At that moment, he’d been intending to saunter back into the gathering with his woman at his side, looking happy and enraptured for the world to see.
He knew how this game was played. He could have a fast romance and marriage, but first he had to be seen with Lia. And they needed to appear as if they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. So far, they’d looked as if they might prefer to touch anyone else rather than each other.
He had to change that perception, especially since there were at least three reporters circulating at this party tonight. Tomorrow, on the society pages of the local papers, they’d mention his date. By tomorrow evening, they’d know everything about Lia Corretti.
And what he wanted them to know was that she was mad for him.
Except she didn’t look so much mad for him as mad at him at the moment. Furious, with her snapping blue-green eyes and dark auburn hair that caught the light like a flame. Her lips parted slightly as he stared at them. Her breathing grew shallow, her creamy breasts rising and falling more rapidly.
He could see the pulse thrumming in her neck. A very male sort of satisfaction slid through him. Lia was not immune, no matter how she bristled and glared.
Zach reached up and ran his thumb over the pulse at her throat. She gasped, but she didn’t pull away.
“We were good together,” he purred. “We could be again.”
Her eyes were wide as she gazed up at him. “This is an arrangement, Zach,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. “An arrangement that does not include sex.”
He was beginning to regret that he’d used that word with her. She was intent on keeping it strictly business since he’d told her this was a temporary solution to protect their families from the media.
He’d fully intended it to be temporary when he’d said it. It had seemed the perfect solution. He didn’t know the first thing about being a father, wasn’t sure he could even do it. If he married Lia, gave their child a name and a legacy, they could go their separate ways in a few months and everything would be fine.
Except, strangely, since the moment the doctor had given him the test results earlier, he’d felt a sense of duty that warred with those thoughts.
And more than duty. When Lia had come downstairs tonight, he’d felt the same shot of lust he’d experienced in his room in Palermo. The same hard knot of desire had coiled inside his gut and refused to let go.
He bent toward her, breathed in her scent. “What is your perfume, Lia?” he asked, his breath against her ear. A shudder rolled through her. He could feel it in his fingertips where they pressed into her back and throat.
“It’s my own,” she said, her voice husky. “I went to a perfumer in the village. She made it for me.”
Zach breathed again. “Vanilla. A hint of lavender. Perhaps even a shot of lemon. For tartness,” he finished.
“I—I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I didn’t ask.”
Zach couldn’t stop himself from what he did next. He touched his tongue to her throat, glided to the sweet spot beneath her ear. The sound that came out of her made him hard.
Her hands were on his lapels, clutching him. “Zach, stop …”
“Do you really want me to?” he said against her sweet flesh.
She shuddered again, and he reacted with animal instinct, pushing her into an alcove where they were hidden from prying eyes. Unless someone was standing right in front of the opening, they would not be visible from down the corridor.
It was appalling behavior for a public event, but right now Zach was operating on a pure shot of desire.
“I definitely taste lemon,” he said, tilting her chin up and back until her eyes were on his. “You are so beautiful, Lia. So hot.”
“You are trying to seduce me,” she said, closing her eyes. “You would say anything to further your purpose.”
His hand slid around her back, up her rib cage. He shaped her breast, his thumb caressing her nipple beneath the fabric. He was gratified when it pebbled beneath his touch.
“Why do you say such things? Why don’t you want to believe the truth? If you weren’t hot, I wouldn’t be unable to control myself with you. Don’t you remember how it felt? How we burned together?”
“I remember it every day,” she said, still not looking at him. “I carry a reminder.”
He let his hand fall to her belly, pressed gently against her there. She uttered a little protest, but he didn’t take his hand away. He knew it bothered her that her belly wasn’t hard and lean. No, she was soft and pliable, womanly. Her body was curvy, not angular and hard from exercise. He liked it just the way it was.
“Maybe we should alter the arrangement,” he said, his tongue suddenly feeling thick in his mouth. As if he didn’t know the right thing to say. As if he were so new at this game of seducing a woman that the outcome could be in doubt.
She turned her head toward him, as if she was going to speak, and he knew the answer wouldn’t be what he wanted to hear from the way she stiffened at his words.
But he wasn’t going to give her a chance to say a thing. He brought his mouth down on hers, trapping her body between him and the wall. His heart was thundering in his chest, the way it did when he’d gotten that adrenaline rush after he’d aimed his jet straight up and climbed the sky like it was a mountain. Once he’d stopped climbing and starting racing toward earth again, only to pull up before it was too late, the g-forces holding him tight to his seat, he’d gotten another huge rush that made him laugh out loud at the sheer joy of flight.
Kissing Lia was similar to that feeling. Her lips were soft beneath his, though he sensed she didn’t want them to be. Her hands curled into fists on his lapels—but she didn’t push him away. He ghosted a thumb over her nipple and she gasped, letting his tongue inside her mouth.
Another shot of unfiltered desire ricocheted into his groin, making him painfully hard. He’d not been with a woman since he’d been with her. And before that, he’d not been with a woman in months. Lia had been the one to break the drought—and, strangely, he still desired her the way a man desired cool water after a hot trek in the desert.
Zach slid his tongue along hers, coaxed her into responding. She made a little noise in her throat—desire, frustration, he didn’t know which—but she stroked him in return. He tightened his grip on her, pulled her in closer to his body.
And then he assaulted her mouth more precisely, more urgently, taking everything she had to give him and demanding yet more. Her arms went around his neck, and then her body was arching into his, her hips pressing ever closer to that hardness at the core of him.
He cupped her ass with both hands, pulled her tightly to him, so tightly there could be no doubt what he wanted from her. He flexed his hips, pressing his hardness into her, finding that precise spot that made her gasp and moan.
He could make her come this way. He would make her come this way. He needed to hear her pleasure, needed to be the one to make her feel it.
Dimly, the click of heels against tile registered in his brain. The sound was coming closer, closer. With a frustrated groan, Zach broke away from the sweet taste of Lia. She looked up at him, blinking dazedly, her eyes slightly unfocused and distant, her lips moist and shiny. By degrees, her features changed, set, hardened into a cool mask.
“I’m sorry,” he said right before the heels clicked to a stop in front of the alcove. Except he didn’t know what he was sorry for.
“Mr. Scott?”
Zach closed his eyes for a brief moment. Then he turned to greet the socialite who stood there. “Yes, Mrs. Cunningham?”
Elizabeth Cunningham’s gaze darted past him to Lia, then back again. He didn’t miss the tightening of Elizabeth’s mouth, or the disapproving gleam in her eye. It pissed him off. Royally. Elizabeth Cunningham was thirty years younger than her husband, and much too judgmental for one who’d reached the pinnacle of society by marrying into it.
Zach reached for Lia’s hand, pulled her to his side. Claimed her. He thought she might move away from him, but she didn’t. She seemed to grasp the importance of appearances, after all.
“It’s time for your speech,” the other woman said, her gaze settling on his face once more.
Zach made a show of looking at his watch. “Ah, yes, so it is. I lose track of time when I’m with my lovely fiancée, I’m afraid.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. They darted to Lia. To Lia’s credit, she didn’t flinch or give away by look or gesture that she was anything other than what he’d said she was.
“Come, darling,” he told her, tucking her hand into his arm and leading her back toward the gathered crowd. Another speech, another event to tick off his social calendar.
Afterward, he would take Lia home … and then he’d finish what he’d started here tonight.
Lia was shell-shocked. She sat through the rest of the evening in a daze. Her mouth still tingled where Zach had kissed her. Her body throbbed with tension and need. She’d been so furious with him, so convinced she would never, ever be susceptible to his charms again.
She’d been wrong. Woefully, pitifully wrong.
She was still the same lonely girl she’d always been, the same girl looking for acceptance and affection. She despised herself for that weakness, despised Zach for taking advantage of it. She took a sip of her water and let her gaze slide over the crowd before turning back to Zach.
He stood at a podium close to their table, talking about his father, about the war, about the night he was shot down over enemy territory. He said the words, but she wasn’t convinced he felt any of them.
He was detached. Cold. The crowd was not. They sat rapt. And Lia couldn’t help herself. She was rapt with them. She learned about how his plane took a hit and he’d had to bail out. How he’d broken his leg in the landing, and how he’d had to drag himself to shelter before the enemy found him.
Then she listened to him talk about the six marines who’d been sent in to extract him after several days. They had all died trying to save him. He was the only survivor. It sent a chill down her spine and raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
He’d suffered much, she thought. So much that she couldn’t even begin to understand. She wanted to go to him, wanted to wrap her arms around him and lower his head to her shoulder. And then she just wanted to hold him tight and listen to him breathe.
Toward the end of his speech, a photographer started to take photos. His flash snapped again and again. Zach seemed to stiffen slightly, but he kept talking, kept the crowd in the grip of his oratory. The photographer moved in closer. No one seemed to think anything of it, but Lia remembered that night in Palermo and her palms started to sweat.
Zach gripped the sides of the podium, his knuckles white. The flash went off again and again and she didn’t miss the way he flinched in reaction. It was so subtle as to seem a natural tic, but something told Lia it was not. Then he seemed to stumble over his thoughts, repeating something he’d just said. Panic rose up in Lia’s chest, gripped her by the throat.
She couldn’t watch him lose his way like he had in Palermo. She couldn’t let him suffer that kind of public meltdown. She didn’t know that he would, but she couldn’t get past the memory of the way she’d met him, plastered against that wall with his eyes tight shut and the flashing and booming of lights and bass all around.
She didn’t have to look at this crowd any longer to know it would be disastrous if he did.
Right now, everyone seemed to be paying attention to Zach. She didn’t quite know what to do, or how to deflect their attention—and then she did. She coughed. Loudly. After a moment, Zach’s gaze slid in her direction. She kept coughing, and then she reached for the water, took a swallow as if she were having trouble. Zach’s attention was firmly on her now. He darted his eyes over the crowd, but they inevitably came back to her.
