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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.
Now, oddly enough, he felt like those bushes, like someone had taken shears to him and begun to shape him into something else. They were cutting out the dead bits, tossing them on the scrap heap and leaving holes.
He felt itchy inside, jumpy. He stood abruptly, to do what he didn’t know, but then Lia moved across his vision and he stopped in midmotion. She was strolling down the wide lawn in the early morning sunshine, her long hair streaming down her back, her lush form clad in leggings and a loose top.
He watched her move, watched the grace and beauty of her limbs, and felt a hard knot form in his gut. She went over to the gardener and started to talk. After a moment, the man nodded vigorously and Lia picked up a set of pruning shears. Zach watched in fascination as she began to cut branches and toss them on the pile.
He suddenly wanted to be near her. He wanted to watch her eyes flash and chin lift, and he wanted to tug her into his arms and kiss her until she melted against him the way she had last night in the art gallery.
CHAPTER NINE
“YOU DON’T NEED to do that.”
Lia looked up from the rosebush she’d been pruning to find Zach watching her. She hadn’t heard him approach. He stood there, so big and dark and handsome that her heart skipped a beat in response.
He was wearing faded jeans and a navy T-shirt, and his hands were shoved in his pockets. He looked … delicious. And somehow weary, too.
Lia frowned. Larry the gardener had moved farther down the row. He was whistling and cutting, whistling and cutting. If he knew Zach had arrived, he didn’t show it. Except that he moved even farther away, presumably out of earshot, and she knew he was aware of his boss’s presence, after all.
Lia focused on Zach again. “I know that,” she said. “I want to.”
Zach’s gaze dropped. “You don’t have any gloves. What if you scratch yourself?”
Lia glanced down at her bare hands holding the pruning shears. “I’m careful. Besides, I’m not in a race.”
She thought he might argue with her, but instead he asked, “Did you work in your grandparents’ garden?”
She lopped off a spent bloom and set the shears down to carefully extract it from the bush. “Yes. I enjoy growing things. I’m pretty good at it, too.”
“I don’t doubt that. But you shouldn’t be out here. It’s hot, and you’re pregnant.”
As if in response to his reminder about the heat, a trickle of moisture slid between her breasts. “It’s hot in Sicily, too. And the doctor said I should get some exercise. It’s not good to sit indoors and do nothing.”
“I have a gym, and a perfectly good treadmill. You can walk on it.”
“I want to be outside, Zach. I want to be in the garden.”
He frowned. “All right, fine. But not more than half an hour at a time, and not after nine in the morning or before five at night.”
Lia blinked at him. “Why, thank you, your majesty,” she said. “How very generous of you.”
“Lia.” Zach reached for her hand, took it gently in his. Instantly, a rush of sensation flooded her. She would have pulled free—except that she liked the feeling. “I’m not trying to be difficult. But you aren’t used to the heat here. It’s oppressively muggy in the summer, and it’ll get to you before you realize it. Besides, we have a busy schedule and I don’t want you to exhaust yourself.”
Lia reached for another bloom with her free hand, only this time she was rattled from his touch and she grasped it too low on the stem. A sharp thorn punctured her thumb and she cried out. Zach swore softly and grabbed her hand. Now, he held both her hands between his.
Blood welled in a bright round bubble on the fleshy pad of her thumb.
“It’s fine,” she said, trying to pull her hand away.
Zach’s grip tightened. “You’re coming inside and washing it.”
Lia sighed. She knew she wasn’t going to win this battle. Besides, it was kind of nice that he was concerned. She shook herself mentally. There was no sense reading more into his concern than there was.
“Fine.”
She called to Larry, who waved and smiled after she explained why she had to go. Then she followed Zach up to the house. He led her into the kitchen and slid on the taps. When the water was hot, he poured soap in her hand and made her wash.
“It’s a rosebush, Zach, not a used hypodermic needle.”
“Better safe than sorry,” was all he said.
She finished washing, and then frowned while Zach put a dab of antibiotic ointment on her thumb and covered it with a Band-Aid.
When she looked up at him, his dark eyes were intent on her, his brows drawn down as he studied her. Her heart skipped the way it always did. Angrily, she tamped down on the rising tide of want within her.
“Did you eat breakfast yet?”
“I had a cup of tea and some toast,” she said a touch breathlessly.
Zach frowned. “That’s not good enough,” he muttered, turning away from her and grabbing a pan off the hanging rack. “You need protein.”
Lia crossed her arms, bemused suddenly. “Are you planning to cook for me?”
He glanced up at her, still scowling. And then he grinned and she had to catch her breath at the transformation of his features. “I can, actually. I had to learn when I entered the service. The air force frowns on hired help in the bachelor officers’ quarters.”
A man from a rich family who’d grown up with chefs and servants suddenly having to cook for himself? What an adjustment that must have been.
“Allora,” she said. “It’s a wonder you didn’t starve.”
He winked. “I’m a quick learner.”
He retrieved eggs and cheese from the refrigerator. The housekeeper came in, took one look at the pan and him and shrugged. She retrieved whatever thing she’d come for—Lia didn’t pay attention—and was gone again.
Lia didn’t actually think she could eat anything else right now, but she was too fascinated to stop him from cracking the eggs and whipping them.
“So why did you join the air force? Couldn’t you have learned to fly planes anyway?”
His back was to her. She wasn’t sure what was on his face just then, but he stiffened slightly, the fork ceasing to swirl the eggs for half a second before he started again. She berated herself for injecting a note of discord into the conversation when it had seemed to be going so well.
“I wouldn’t have been able to fly fighter jets, no. I could have bought one, I suppose. The older ones come up for sale sometimes—but it’s not quite the same. Besides, I wanted to serve my country.”
“A noble cause.”
He shrugged. “Yes.” Then he stopped again, his broad shoulders tight. A moment later, he turned to her. His expression was troubled. “No, that’s not why I did it,” he said softly. “I joined the military because I wanted to get away from life as Zachariah J. Scott IV. I didn’t want the career at Scott Pharmaceuticals, the governorship of a state, the senate run and then maybe the presidency. Those are my father’s dreams, not mine. I wanted to do something that mattered.”
Lia’s heart felt as if it had stopped beating. Dear God, he was sharing something with her. Something important. She didn’t want to screw it up.
“You seem to have done that,” she said. She thought of the medal in her room and knew he’d gotten it for good reasons. But why had he thrown it away?
He sighed, his shoulders relaxing a fraction. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But here I am, and all that my time in the military did for me was set me up for even greater success if I were to follow the path my father wants.”
“I think those things matter, too, Zach. It takes a lot of sacrifice to serve your country in any manner, don’t you think?”
He glanced at her. “You’re right, of course. Still …”
“It’s not the path you want to take,” she said when he didn’t finish the sentence.
He slid the pan onto the stove and added a pat of butter. Then he turned on the burner. “No, I don’t.”
“What do you want, then?”
He looked at her for a long minute. “I want to fly. But I don’t get to do that anymore, no matter that I want to.” The butter started to sizzle. Zach poured in the eggs and swirled them in the pan.
“Surely there’s something else,” she said softly.
His gaze was sharp. “I want to help people returning from the war. It’s not easy to go back to your life after you’ve been through hell.”
Lia swallowed. He was talking from experience. And it suddenly made something clear. “Which is why you speak at these fundraisers.”
“Yeah.”
Yet he wasn’t comfortable doing it. That much she knew from watching the effect on him last night. Oh, he was good at it—but it took a toll on him each and every time. “That’s a good thing, then. I’m sure it makes a difference.”
He shrugged. “It helps fund programs to return vets to a normal life. It also keeps the public aware of the need.”
The eggs set in the pan, and Zach added the cheese. Soon, he was sliding the omelet onto a plate and carrying it to the kitchen island. He turned to look at her expectantly.
“Coming?”
How could she say no? She was ridiculously touched that he’d made her an omelet, and ridiculously touched that he’d shared something private with her. She walked over to the island and hopped onto the bar stool. Zach retrieved a fork and napkin, poured her a glass of juice and sat across from her, chin on his hand as he watched her take the first bite.
The omelet was good, creamy and buttery, with just the right amount of cheese. But it was hard to eat it when he was watching her. She could feel her face growing hot as she slid a bite between her lips.
“You have to stop staring at me,” she finally said when her heart was thrumming and her face was so hot that he surely must see the pink suffusing her skin.
“I want to make sure you eat it all.”
“I won’t be able to if you don’t stop watching me.”
He sighed. “Fine.” He sat back on the bar stool and turned to look out the window. “Better?”
“Yes. Grazie.”
Though she hadn’t thought she was hungry, the omelet was good enough that she took another bite. Lia glanced up at Zach, and her heart pinched in that funny way it did whenever she realized how very attractive he was. And how little she really knew him.
“Thank you,” she said after a minute. “It’s very good.”
“Hard to mess up an omelet,” he said. “But I’m glad you like it.”
“I could,” she said. “Mess up an omelet, that is.”
He turned to look at her. “You can’t cook?”
She shrugged. “Not really, no. Nonna tried to teach me, but I’m hopeless with the whole thing. I get the pan too hot or not hot enough. I either burn things or make gelatinous messes. I decided it was best to step away from the kitchen and let others do the work. Better for all involved.”
“How long have you lived with your grandparents?”
“Since I was a baby,” she said, her heart aching for a different reason now. The old feelings of shame and inadequacy and confusion suffused her. “My mother died when I was little and my father sent me to my grandparents. I grew up there.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a mother, but I can’t imagine it was easy.”
Lia shrugged. “I don’t remember her, but I know she was very beautiful. A movie star who fell in love with a handsome Sicilian and gave up everything to be with him. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.” She moved a slice of omelet around on the plate. “My father remarried soon after she died.”
She could see him trying to work it out. Why she hadn’t gone to live with her father and his new wife. Why they’d left a baby with her grandparents. Bitterness flooded her then. She’d often wondered the same thing herself, until she was old enough to know why they didn’t take her back. She was simply unwanted.
The words poured out before she could stop them. “My father pretended like his new family was the only family he had. He did not want me. He never sent presents or called or acknowledged me the few times he did see me. It was as if I was someone else’s child rather than his.”
Zach reached for her hand, enclosed it in his big, warm one. “Lia, I’m sorry that happened to you.”
She sniffed. “Yes, well. Now you know why I had to tell you about the baby. I didn’t have a father. I wanted one.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, “I understand.”
Ridiculously, a tear spilled down her cheek. She turned her head, hoping he wouldn’t see. But of course he did. He put a finger under her chin and turned her back again. She kept her eyes downcast, hoping that if she didn’t look at him, she wouldn’t keep crying. She didn’t want to seem weak or emotional, and yet that’s exactly how she felt at the moment.
Thinking of her childhood, and the way her father had rejected her, always made her feel vulnerable. Another tear fell, and then another.
Zach wiped them away silently. She was grateful he didn’t say anything else. He just let her cry.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a minute. “I don’t know why …” Her voice trailed off into nothing as she swallowed hard to keep the knot in her throat from breaking free.
Zach let her go and scraped back from the island. Another moment and he was by her side, pulling her into the warm solidness of his body.
She pressed her face against his chest and closed her eyes. Her arms, she vaguely realized, were around his waist, holding tight. He put a hand in her hair, cupping her head. The other rubbed her back.
“It’s okay, Lia. Sometimes you have to let it out.”
She held him hard for a long time—and then she pushed away, not because she didn’t enjoy being in his arms, but because she was enjoying it too much. Her life was confusing enough already.
“I haven’t cried over this in years,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m sure it’s the hormones.”
“No doubt.”
She swiped her palms beneath her cheeks and wiped them on her leggings. Dio, how attractive she must be right now, with puffy eyes and a red nose.
“It won’t happen again,” she said fiercely. “I’m over it.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I wonder—do we ever get over the things that affect us so profoundly? Or do we just think we do?”
Lia sniffled. “I’d like to think so. Not that the past doesn’t inform our experience, but if all we do is dwell on it, how will we ever have much of a present?”
She felt a little like a hypocrite, considering how often she’d felt unwanted and out of sync with her family. But she didn’t let it rule her. Or she was determined not to. Perhaps that was a better way of saying it. It crept in from time to time, like now, but that didn’t mean it was in charge.
His eyes glittered in the morning light. “Precisely. And yet sometimes we can’t help but dwell on a thing.”
She knew what he meant. “Your dreams.”
“That’s part of it.”
Lia closed her eyes for a moment. She was in over her head with this. How could what she’d been through compare to his ordeal? Shot down, injured, nearly killed, watching others be killed before your eyes. It made her shiver.
“I think maybe there’s something in our psyches that won’t let go,” she said. “Until one day it does.”