A Scandal in the Headlines

“Corretti …” she breathed, the reality of what she was doing, the scope of her treachery, like concrete blocks falling through her one after the next.

He saw it, reading her too easily. His dark eyes flashed.

“You cannot marry him,” he said again, some kind of desperation beneath the autocratic demand in his voice. As if he knew her. As if he had the right. “He’ll ruin you.”

Elena would never know what might have happened then, had she not jerked her gaze away from Alessandro’s in confusion—and seen Niccolo there at the side of the dance floor, glaring at the two of them with murder in his black eyes.

Elena was amazed that it was possible to hate herself so much, so fully. And that the shame didn’t kill her where she stood.

“How dare you?” she ground out, all her horror at her own appalling actions in her voice. “I know who you are. I know what you are.”

“What I am?” As if she’d stabbed him.

“Niccolo’s told me all about you, and your family.”

Something like a laugh. “Of course he has.”

“The Correttis are nothing but a pack of violent thugs,” she threw at him desperately, quoting Niccolo. “Criminals. One more stain on our country’s honor.”

“And Niccolo is the expert on honor, I suppose?” His face went thunderous, but his voice stayed cool. Quiet. Somehow, it made him that much more formidable. And it ripped into her like a knife.

“Do you think this will work?” she demanded, furious, and she convinced herself it was all directed at him. All because of him. “Do you really think you’ll argue me into agreeing with you that my fiancé, the man I love, is some kind of—”

“You don’t strike me as naive,” he interrupted her, that fierce, dark edge in his voice, his gaze, even in his hands as he held her. “You must know better. You must.”

He shook his head then, and she watched as bitter disappointment washed over him, turning his dark green eyes black. Making that fascinating mouth hard, nearly cruel. Making him look at her as if there had never been that fire between them, as if she couldn’t still feel the flames, licking over her skin.

And she would never forgive herself, but she ached. She ached.

“Unless you like the money, the cars, the houses and the jewelry.” His gaze was a jagged blade as it raked over her, and she bled. “The fancy dresses. Why ask where any of it comes from? Why face so many unpleasant truths?”

“Stop it!” she hissed at him.

“Ignorance is the best defense, I’m sure,” he continued in that withering tone. “You can’t be a stain on Italy’s honor if you’re careful not to know any of the sordid details, can you?”

None of this should be possible. A look, a dance, a few words with a total stranger—how could it hurt? How could she feel as if her whole world was ripping apart?

“You don’t know what kind of woman I am,” she told him, desperate to reclaim herself. To fix this. “And you never will. I have standards. I can’t wait for Niccolo to do me the great honor of marrying me—to make me a Falco, too. I would never lower myself to Corretti scum like you. Never.”

He looked shattered for a moment, but only a moment. Then contempt moved over his fine, arrogant face, and made her stomach twist in an agony she shouldn’t feel. He led her to the edge of the floor, gazed at her for one last, searing moment and then walked off into the crowd.

Elena told herself that wasn’t grief she felt then, because it couldn’t be. Not for a stranger. Not for a dance.

Not for a man she’d been so sure she’d never see again.

“I don’t really remember,” Elena said now in desperation, standing out on his terrace with only the sea to hear her lies. “It was a long time ago.”

Alessandro only watched her, that wolf’s smile sharp-edged, digging deep into her and leaving marks. He was much too close, and she hadn’t forgotten a thing. Not a single thing.

“Then why are you blushing?” he asked, a knowing look on that battered, somehow even more attractive face—and her heart kicked hard against her ribs.

“I’m not spying on you,” she gritted out, trying to break through the tension that gripped her. Trying to pretend he couldn’t see into her so easily. “And if you really think I am, you should have let me leave with the boat.”

But something had changed. His dark eyes burned. She felt the flames licking at her, seducing her and scaring her in equal measure.

“Alessandro.” Saying his name was a mistake. She saw him react to it as if it was a caress, saw his intense focus on her sharpen, and it stole her breath away. “My being on your boat was a coincidence.”

“Liar.” Implacable. Fierce.

Elena’s stomach knotted. She felt a deep kind of itch work through her, from her neck to her breasts to her core, and she felt a terrible panic bite at her then, as if she was in danger of losing herself completely.

You’re supposed to be beating him at his own game! some last remnant of her self-control cried out inside her head.

“You can call me any names you like,” she threw at him, desperate to find her balance again—to claw her way back to solid ground. “It won’t change a thing. I met you once a long time ago. It wasn’t particularly memorable.”

That ruthless, cynical mouth kicked up in the corner, and his gaze turned jet black. It rolled through her, too hot to bear, shaking her apart from the inside out. Until there was nothing at all but this moment.

This. Him. Now.

“Such a liar,” he whispered.

He reached out as if to touch her, but she knew she couldn’t let that happen—she couldn’t—so she threw out her own hand to catch his.

Skin against skin, after all this time. The same way their hands had touched once before, on that glimmering dance floor far away.

And they both caught fire.

The sea and the sun and the whole bright world disappeared into the blaze of it. There was only this man, who she should have run from the moment she’d seen him six months ago. This man, who had eyes like thunder and saw straight through into the heart of her. This man, who had claimed her from across a crowded room with a single, searing glance.

There was only the riot inside of her, the electricity that roared between them. Skin to skin. At last.

Neither one of them moved. Elena wasn’t sure she breathed. This disastrous, unquenchable attraction seemed to swell and grow, radiating from his hand to hers, a hard, gnawing ache that every heartbeat only made worse. It penetrated every part of her, and made her want. Crave. Need.

“It haunts you,” he said, a dark, male hunger stamped across his face. “I haunt you. Believe me, Elena. I know.”

She jerked her hand from his. But as she did, she had a searing burst of clarity.

She wanted him. She always had. It didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense, that a single dance should never have affected her so much. It had. He had. And that wanting had ripped apart her world, changed everything. She’d been paying for it for six long months, in isolation and often in fear, moving from odd job to odd job across the whole of Italy, trying to keep herself out of sight and away from Niccolo.

All because of this. All because of Alessandro.

She had already been crucified for this crime. She paid for it every day. Why not commit it?

And if there was a part of her that knew that this was also the best way to prove to Alessandro that she was exactly the kind of woman he believed her to be, that this would cement his opinion of her, she told herself that only made the decision easier.

“This isn’t a haunting,” she whispered, watching the thunder roll through his eyes. “Neither one of us is a ghost.” She smiled then. “I can prove it.”

And then she indulged the roaring inside of her, that terrible hunger, and put her hands on him.