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“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble,” he said.
Lia swallowed. What could she say? I had no choice? My family will be furious? I’m afraid?
“A baby needs two parents,” she said. “And a man should know if he’s going to be a father.”
“And just what did you expect me to do about it, sugar?”
Irritation zipped through her like a lash. Sugar wasn’t an endearment, spoken like this; it was a way of keeping her at a distance. Of objectifying her. “You know my name. I’d prefer you use it.”
His eyes flashed. “Lia, then. Answer the question.”
She folded her arms and looked toward the windows. She could see the white dome of the Capitol building sitting on the hill. Why had she chosen this hotel? It was far too expensive. If her grandmother cut off her credit cards, she’d be doing dishes in the hotel kitchen for the next ten years just to pay for one night.
“I thought you would want to know.”
“You could have called.”
She swung back to look at him. “Are you serious? Would you want this kind of news over the phone?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled something from his rear pocket and tapped it on his palm. “How much money do you want, Lia?”
Her heart turned to stone in her chest as she realized he was holding a checkbook. And though she needed money—desperately—it hurt that he thought all he needed to do was buy her off.
And it hurt that he didn’t want this child growing inside her. That he could so easily shove aside that connection and have nothing to do with a person who was one half of him.
My God, she’d really chosen well, hadn’t she?
“You think I came here for money?” It would solve her most immediate problem, but it wouldn’t really solve anything. She’d still be single and pregnant, and her family would still be furious—and the Correttis had a long arm.
“Didn’t you?”
Lia stood. She had to fold her arms over her middle to hide their trembling. “Get out,” she said, fighting the wave of hysteria bubbling up inside her.
He took a step toward her and then stopped. The checkbook disappeared in his jeans again. He looked dark and broody and so full of secrets he frightened her. And yet a part of her wanted, desperately, to slide into his arms and experience that same exhilaration she had back in Sicily.
“You expect marriage,” he said, almost to himself. “That’s why you came.”
It seemed so silly when spoken aloud like that, but she couldn’t deny the truth of it. She had thought she would race to D.C., tell Zach she was pregnant and he would be so happy he’d want to take care of her and the baby forever.
Lia closed her eyes. What was wrong with her? Why was she always looking for acceptance and affection where there was none? Why did she think she needed a man, any man, in her life anyway?
“This is your baby in here,” she said, spreading her hand over her abdomen. “How can you not want it?”
He raked a hand through his hair and turned away from her. Once more, she was studying his beautiful, angry profile.
“Assuming what you say is true, I’m not good father material.” He said it quietly, with conviction, and her heart twisted in her chest.
Still, she couldn’t allow sympathy for the pain in his voice to deflect her from the other part of what he’d said. “If you don’t believe me, why are you here? Do you usually offer to pay women to get them to go away?”
He turned back to her, his expression cool. “I’ve encountered this situation before, yes. It has never been true, by the way.” He spread his hands wide. “But my family name encourages the deception.”
Lia stiffened. “I really don’t care who your family is,” she said tightly. “I did not come here for them.”
“Then what do you want, Lia?”
She swallowed. She’d thought—naively, of course—there had been something between them in Palermo. Something more than just simple animal attraction. She’d thought he might be glad to see her. God, she was such a fool.
The only thing she had was the truth.
“My family will be very angry when they find out,” she said softly. “And Alessandro will likely marry me off to one of his business associates to prevent a scandal.” She dropped her gaze and smoothed her hand over her belly again. “I suppose I could deal with that if it were only me. But I’m afraid for my baby. A Sicilian man won’t appreciate a wife who is pregnant with another man’s child.”
She could feel his gaze on her and she lifted her head, met the tortured darkness of his eyes. And the heat. It surprised her to find heat there, but it was indisputable. The heat of anger, no doubt.
“You know this to be true,” she said. “You are part Sicilian yourself.”
“A small part, but yes, I know what you mean.”
She could have breathed a sigh of relief—except she didn’t think he’d changed his mind about anything. “Then you will not want your child raised by another man. A man who will not love him or her, and who will resent the baby’s presence in his household.”
Zach was still. “You should have chosen better,” he said.
She blinked. It was not at all the response she’d anticipated. “I beg your pardon?”
“That night. You should have chosen to leave instead of stay.”
She’d bared her fears to him and this was what he had to say. Anger spiked in her belly. “It takes two, Zach. You were there, too.”
He took a step toward her, stopped. His hands flexed at his sides. “Yes, and I tried to send you away, if you will recall. Considering how we first met, you should have run far and fast.”
Her skin was hot—with shame, with anger, with self-recrimination. “It’s not all my fault. Perhaps you should have tried harder.”
As if anything would have induced her to leave after the way he’d looked at her: as if he wanted to devour her. It had been such a novel experience that she’d only wanted more.
“I should have,” he said. “But I was weak.”
“This baby is yours,” she said, a thread of desperation weaving through her. If he walked out now, if he sent her back to Sicily, what would become of her and the baby? She couldn’t face her cousin’s wrath. Her grandmother would do what she could, but even Teresa Corretti would do what the head of the family dictated in the end. And he would dictate that she not have a child out of wedlock. Or he would throw her out and cut her off without a cent.
For a moment, she contemplated that option. It would be … heavenly, in a way. She would be free of the Correttis, free of the pain and anger that went along with being the outsider in her family.
Except she knew it wouldn’t happen that way. Salvatore Corretti had ruled his family with an iron fist. And no wayward granddaughter would have ever brought shame on the family name in such a way. A Corretti grandson could father illegitimate children all day long, and he would not have cared. Let one of his granddaughters get pregnant, with no man in sight, and he most certainly would have come unglued.
Alessandro was a Corretti male and would be no different. He’d learned at their grandfather’s knee how to run this family and she could not take the risk he was somehow more enlightened. He’d never been enlightened enough to pay attention to her in all these years, which told her a lot about how he already felt about her. Add in the humiliation of his aborted wedding, and she was certain he was in no mood to be sympathetic.
“How can you be sure, Lia?”
She had to give herself a mental shake to retrieve the thread of the conversation. He wanted to know how she could be sure the baby was his, as if she was the kind of woman who had a different sexual partner every night.
“Because I am. Because I’ve been with no one else.”
He swore softly.
Her cheeks heated. Hot emotion whipped through her. She was tired of feeling guilty, tired of feeling as if she was the one who’d done something wrong. She felt snappish.
“This isn’t ideal for me, either, you know. I didn’t ask to get pregnant, especially not my first time ever having sex—”
She broke off as she realized what she’d said. His face grew thunderous. He closed the distance between them, stopped just short of grabbing her. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “What did you say?”
Lia’s heart pounded. Adrenaline roared through her veins. She felt light-headed. “Nothing,” she whispered as his eyes darkened. “It was nothing.”
“You told me that night it had been a long time… .” His voice was diamond-edged.
“I thought if I told you the truth, you’d send me away.”
He swallowed, hard. “I would have. I should have anyway.” His gaze dropped, his dark lashes dipping to cover his beautiful eyes. “I thought something was … different with you. But it had been so long since I’d been with anyone that I dismissed my intuition. You didn’t act like a virgin, but you felt like one when I …”
He swore again, his eyes meeting hers once more. “I’d have done things differently if I’d known. Been more gentle. You should have told me.”
Lia couldn’t stop herself from lifting a hand and sliding it along the bare skin of his arm. It was the first time she’d touched him, really touched him, in a month. And the electric sizzle ricocheting through her body told her just how little had changed for her.
“I should have. I know it. But everything was so surreal, and I was afraid it would end. You were the first person to make me feel wanted in a very long time. I liked that feeling.”
He moved away from her, went over and sank down on a chair. Then he sat forward and put his head in his hands. Lia didn’t say anything. She didn’t move, though her heart throbbed at the sight of him looking so overwhelmed.
“This is not what I expected to happen at this point in my life,” he said to the floor.
“I don’t think either of us did,” she replied, swallowing. “And though I could make it all go away with a visit to a doctor, as you intimated earlier, I can’t do that. It’s not who I am or what I want.”
He lifted his head. “No, I know that.” He blew out a breath, swore. And then he stood again, his presence nearly overwhelming her as his eyes flashed fire. “The press will have a field day with this.”
Lia bit the inside of her lip. In all the drama, she’d never considered the press. It was true the paparazzi flocked around her family like piranha. But she’d never been their target, probably because she was so humdrum and uninteresting in her family of brilliant swans.
But this baby was a game changer, especially considering who Zach was. His family was even more famous than hers. American royalty, if there was such a thing. A family with incredible wealth and power. She’d read all about the Scotts on her way across the Atlantic.
And she’d read about their heroic son, a man who’d returned from the war after a dramatic plane crash behind enemy lines. Her gaze drifted to where she’d set her purse. Inside, in a little zippered pocket, she still had Zach’s medal. A medal he hadn’t cared about.
She thought of him flat against the ballroom wall in the Corretti Hotel, his eyes tightly closed as he fought against something, and knew there was more to the story than had been reported.
“We’re the only ones who know,” she said. “And I have no plans to inform them. I think the secret is safe for now.”
His gaze was steady, cool, and she realized he didn’t entirely trust her. It stung.
“There are always leaks.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “There’s only one way to deal with this. One way to keep everything from exploding into an even bigger problem than it already is.”
Her heart thundered in her chest. And it hurt, too. Hurt because he’d called her—and their baby—a problem.
“Congratulations, Lia,” he said, his voice chilling her. “You’ve won the jackpot, after all. You’re about to become a Scott.”
“This is not how I wanted this to happen,” she said on a throat-aching whisper. Tears pressed the backs of her eyes. She couldn’t let them fall.
“You came here,” he said, his voice hard. “What did you expect? Did you think I would be happy?”
She dropped her gaze. A single tear spilled free and she dashed it away, determined not to cry in front of him. Not to be weak.
“I had hoped you might be, yes.” She lifted her chin and sucked back her tears. “Clearly, I was mistaken.”
“We’ll marry,” he said. “Because we must. But it’s an arrangement, do you understand? We’ll do it for as long as necessary to protect our families, and then we’ll end it when the time comes.”
Anger started to burn in her, scouring her insides. He was no better than her father had been. He didn’t care about his child any more than Benito Corretti had cared about her. He was making a deal, nothing more. It made her sick. And furious.
“Fine,” she said tightly. “I accept. But if we are having an arrangement, as you so nicely put it, then I want it understood that this arrangement is in name only.”
She didn’t know what made her say that, but once she said it she knew it was right. Because this situation was so out of her power that she needed something she could control. Something she could have a say about.
He stared at her for a long moment. And then his sexy lips curled up in a smile, surprising her after he’d been so hard and cold. “I can’t guarantee that, sugar. But we’ll try it your way to start. Just know that when you do surrender to me, I won’t be saying no.”
Lia pulled herself erect and looked at him with all the haughtiness she could muster. Which wasn’t much, she was sure. But damn if he hadn’t infuriated her. “There will be no surrender, Zach. Not ever again.”
“We’ll see,” he said with all the arrogant surety of a man who was accustomed to getting his way. And then he headed toward the door. “I’ll let you know when the arrangements are made.”
“How long will this take?” she asked as he opened the door.
He turned back to her. “Eager, Lia?”
She sucked in a breath. No, she was just worried about her ability to stay in this hotel. And about her family sending someone to fetch her if they figured out where she was. “No, but I have no idea how long these things take in America. I can’t stay in this hotel for weeks, Zach.”
His eyes slipped over her. “No, you can’t. The media will descend soon enough. You’ll move in with me. I’ll send someone for you later.”
He closed the door before she could say another word. She stood there for a long time, uncertain whether she’d found salvation by coming to D.C.
Or whether she’d damned herself instead.
CHAPTER SIX
ZACH LIVED IN a sprawling house in Virginia. It was gated, with manicured green lawns and a view of the Potomac River. Here, the Potomac was still close to the source and was wilder and freer than it had been in Washington. It tumbled over huge boulders, rushing and gurgling toward the city where it would become wide, placid and subject to Chesapeake tides.
Lia stood in a room that overlooked the backyard and the cliffs of the Potomac. Glass doors opened onto a wide stone balcony that ran the length of the house. Immediately outside was a small seating area, with a chair and a table. Perfect for reading.
The gardens weren’t overly ornate, but there were a lot of gorgeous flowering plants in manicured beds. Roses bloomed in profusion along two stone walls, red and pink and white. Fat flowering hydrangeas, blue and pink, sat in the shade beneath tall trees, and a host of bright annuals bloomed in beds that ran down toward the river.
Lia’s fingers itched. She wanted to lose herself in the garden, to go dig into the dirt and forget all about Zach Scott and the Correttis for a while.
But that was impossible right now.
She hadn’t seen Zach since she’d arrived. A chauffeur had come to get her at the hotel earlier, after a terse call from Zach informing her to be ready. Once she’d arrived, a uniformed maid had showed her to this room and offered to put her things away. Lia only had one suitcase and a carry-on, so she didn’t really have much with her. She’d declined and hung everything herself.
Now she felt like she was in stasis. Just waiting for something to happen. The garden called to her, but she resisted. What would Zach think if he came looking for her and she was on her knees in the dirt?
As the minutes dragged by, she resolved to go out on the balcony and run her fingers through the potted geraniums and lavender, just for something to do, but a knock at her door stopped her. “Yes?” she called.
The door opened and Zach stood there, tall, handsome and brooding as ever. Lia folded her arms over her chest and waited.
“If you’ve no objection, I’ve brought a doctor who is going to take a blood sample.”
“Why?”
Zach came into the room, his hands shoved into the pockets of his faded jeans. Dio, he was sexy. Lia shook herself and tried not to think about him that way. She failed, naturally. Her heart thumped and pumped and her bones loosened in the shell of her skin.
“There is a paternity test that will isolate the baby’s DNA from your blood. Just to be certain, you realize.”
Lia lifted her chin. “I have nothing to hide.”
It hurt, of course, that he didn’t believe her. But if a test would erase all doubt, she was for it. Not only that, but she also looked forward to the apology he would have to make when the test proved he was this baby’s father.
“I’ll bring her up, then.”
“Yes, do.”
He left and then returned a few minutes later with a smiling woman who took Lia’s blood and asked her questions about how she was feeling. Once it was over, and the woman was gone, Lia was left with Zach.
“I have an important dinner to attend tonight,” he told her. “You will accompany me.”
Lia swallowed. She wasn’t accustomed to large gatherings. Aside from the wedding-that-wasn’t, and a few family things that happened once a year, she spent most of her time alone or with her grandmother.
“I don’t have anything to wear,” she said. She didn’t even know what kind of dinner it was, but if it was anything like that gathering she’d crashed last night, she knew she didn’t have anything appropriate. She’d put on the nicest thing she had for that event.
Zach didn’t look perturbed. “There is time. I’ll send you to my mother’s personal shopper.”
“That is not necessary,” she said, though in truth she wouldn’t begin to know where to start in this city.
“I think it is, Lia. It’ll go much faster if you simply let her help you pick out what you need. For tonight, you’ll need formal wear. But select a range of clothing appropriate for various events.”
“And do you attend many events?” she asked, her heartbeat spiking at the thought of being out among so many people so frequently.
Plants she understood. People not so much.
His eyes were flat. “I am a Scott. And a returning war hero. My presence is in demand quite often, I’m afraid.”
She didn’t miss the way his voice slid over the words war hero. It was like they were oily, evil words for some reason. As if he hated them.
“You don’t sound as if you enjoy it.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “No, I don’t. Not anymore.”
She wanted to ask what had changed, but she didn’t. “Then why do it?”
“Because I am a Scott. Because people depend on me. And if you are going to be a Scott, too, then you’d better get used to doing things because you have to instead of want to.”
Lia nibbled the inside of her lip. She was no good at the social thing. She had no practice at it. But, for tonight, she would have to try and be something she wasn’t. She would have to navigate the social waters without falling flat on her metaphorical face.
“I’m no good at this, Zach,” she told him truthfully. “I don’t have any experience.”
Not to mention she was awkward and grew tongue-tied around too many people. She’d always been so self-conscious, so worried about whether or not others liked her.
Because she’d never felt very wanted and she didn’t know how to fix it.
“Then you’ll learn,” he said. “Because you have no choice.”
Zach slipped into his tuxedo jacket and tugged the cuffs of his shirt until they were straight beneath the jacket arms. Tonight was another event, another speech, where he would be speaking to some of Washington’s elite about the need for funding for veterans’ causes. Everyone tended to think, because the military worked for the government, that returning vets’
care was assured. It was to a point. Where that point ended was where Zach stepped in.
But tonight was different in a way he had not expected. For the first time since he’d returned from the war, he was taking a woman with him. A woman who was his date.
His fiancée, for God’s sake. An unsettled feeling swirled in his gut at the notion, but it was too late to back out now. He’d had the call from the doctor. They’d rushed the results—because he’d paid them a great deal of money to do so—and he knew the truth.
Lia Corretti was pregnant with his child.
He wasn’t quite sure how that made him feel. He was still stunned at his reaction to her earlier today, in her hotel room, when he’d suddenly decided that marrying her was the thing to do. It had been a preemptive strike, because though he’d fully intended to get an answer to the child’s paternity before proceeding, he’d also known on a gut level that she was telling him the truth.
She’d been a virgin. He’d realized something was different about her that night in Palermo, but she’d distracted him before he’d puzzled out precisely what it was. Not that being a virgin made someone truthful, but he imagined it was highly unlikely she’d turned around and taken a new lover so quickly.
His gut had known what his head hadn’t wanted to admit. And now he had a fiancée. A fiancée he didn’t quite know how to fit into this life of his. She hadn’t wanted to accompany him tonight, but he’d insisted she would anyway.
He’d been angry and resentful toward her all day. But now he felt a twinge of guilt over his reaction. Still, he’d told her the truth. She would learn to deal with her responsibilities as his wife because she had no choice.
They had appearances to maintain and commitments to keep. If he was going to have a wife, then she was going to be at his side. It’s the way it worked in his world. The way it had always worked.
He went downstairs and into his office, where he opened the wall safe and extracted a box. He’d told Lia to shop for clothing, but he’d not thought of jewelry. He had no idea what she would wear tonight, but he knew what would look good with her coloring. He opened the box and slid a finger over the art deco rubies and diamonds. These had belonged to his grandmother. She’d left them to him on her death and he’d put them away, certain it would be years before he found a woman to give them to.
He flipped the box closed after a long moment and held it tight. His life was changing in ways he hadn’t expected. Ways he wasn’t quite sure how to cope with. He resented the changes, but he would deal with them the way he dealt with everything else in his life these days.
By hiding his feelings beneath a mountain of duty and honor.
She was learning, or trying to. Lia stood beside Zach at a posh gathering being held in the National Gallery of Art. It was past closing time, and the museum was only open for this exclusive party.
She’d chosen a gown in a rich cream color, and swept her dark hair off her shoulders and pinned it up. She’d applied her makeup carefully, slid into her heels—not too high because she was already self-conscious about her height—and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. Her jewelry had consisted of her simple diamonds, until she’d arrived downstairs and found Zach waiting for her in the foyer of the big house.
His gaze had flicked over her appreciatively, and she’d felt warmth spread through her limbs. She liked the way he looked at her. And she wasn’t happy about that. After the way he’d behaved since she’d arrived, she didn’t want to like anything about him. She kept telling herself that the man she’d spent two days with was gone—except she couldn’t quite convince herself when he looked at her the way he had earlier.