Bound By Their Nine-Month Scandal

Who was he?

His black tricorn hat had simple white trim. She glanced down to his black-on-black brocade vest over a black shirt, his snug black pants tucked into tall black boots.

A pirate, she thought, and looked back to his porcelain mask, white, blank and angular. It cast a shadow onto his stubbled jaw, his beard as black as the short hair beneath his hat.

She couldn’t tell what color his eyes were, but as he looked straight into hers, her pulse shot up with the race of a prey animal. She held that inscrutable stare, arms in his talon-like grip, skin too tight to contain the soar of emotion that rose in her.

Most people skipped past her in favor of more interesting folk, which she preferred. Sustained eye contact was never comfortable, but her mask gave her the confidence to stare back. To stare and stare while her whole body tingled in the most startling and intriguing way.

Sexual attraction? He possessed the attributes that typically drew female interest—height and broad shoulders, a firm physique and a strong jaw. She was stunned to learn she was human enough to react to those signals. In fact, as the seconds ticked by, the fluttering within her grew unbearable.

“Excuse me.” Someone spoke behind her, jolting her from her spell.

A woman wanted to place a bid on Poppy’s framed, black-and-white photo.

The black satin lining of the man’s cloak disappeared as he dropped his hands from her arms. The noise around them rushed back, breaking her ears.

Pia moved out of the way. When she looked back, the man was leaving the tent.

Still trying to catch her breath, she moved to the bidding sheet where he’d left his pencil. She knew all the names on the list and none of those men had ever provoked a reaction like that in her.

At the bottom, in a bold scratch, was a promise to quadruple the final bid. It was signed Anonymous.

“How does this work?” Pia pointed to it as her mother finished speaking to someone and caught up to her. Pia’s hand was trembling and she quickly tucked it into the folds of her skirt.

“It happens occasionally,” her mother dismissed. “When a man wants to purchase something to surprise his wife.”

Or didn’t want his wife to know at all, Pia surmised. She wasn’t a cynic by nature, but nor was she naive about the unsavory side of arranged marriages.

“He’ll leave his details with the auctioneer,” her mother continued. “It’s a risky move that becomes expensive. Other guests will drive up the bid to punish him for securing the item for himself.”

“The price one pays, I suppose.” Pia’s witticism was lost on La Reina.

“This is one of the paintings from the attic,” La Reina said. “A modest artist. Deceased, which always helps with value, but not the sort of investment I would expect to inspire such a tactic.”

Pia studied the portrait. The young woman’s expression was somber. Light fell on the side of her round features, highlighting her youth and vulnerability.

“Do you know who she is?” Pia picked up the card.

“Hanging pictures of family is sentimental.” Her mother plucked the card from her hand and set it back on its small easel. “Displaying strangers in your home is gauche.”

“The final bid is sewn up,” Pia pointed out. “I was merely curious.”

“We have other priorities.”

A husband. Right. Pia bit back a whimper.

Angelo Navarro nursed a drink as he clocked the rounds of the security detail, picking his moment for the second half of his mission.

He could have sent an agent to bid on the portrait, but along with not trusting anyone else with the task—loose lips and all that—the opportunity to slip onto the estate undetected had been far too tempting.

He hadn’t expected such a bombardment of emotions as a result of visiting his birthplace, though. Anger and contempt gripped him; fury and injustice and a thirst for vengeance that burned arid and unquenchable in the pit of his belly.

These people prancing like circus clowns, making grand gestures with extravagant bids to benefit victims of violence, were the same ones who had ignored a young woman’s agonizing situation. They hadn’t interfered when her child had been taken from her and had continued to revere her persecutors.

Angelo felt no compunction whatsoever at infiltrating this private fund-raiser with the intention of retrieving what his mother had stolen. Or been given. He’d never been clear on how she had obtained the jewelry or exactly which pieces had gone missing. That part didn’t matter. He would happily have gone to his grave with the knowledge that she’d fought back in her own way.

However, when this chance to add a fresh blow had arisen, he hadn’t been able to resist it.

Did it make him as soulless as his father that he was willing to commit a criminal act to continue her retaliation? So he could show his half brothers how it felt to be toyed with and abandoned to poverty?

Perhaps.

The thought didn’t stop him. He casually made his way to the corner of the house, waited for the guard’s attention to turn and slipped into the dark beyond.

He came up against a Family Only sign on the first step of the spiral staircase and smirked with irony as he slipped past it to climb to the rooftop patio.

The stairs gave a nostalgically familiar creak as he reached the top—where he discovered someone had arrived ahead of him.

The sound and light from the party were blocked by the rise of the west wing of the house, casting the space into deep shadow. He could only see a silhouette and the lighter shadow of her mask as she turned from gazing across the moonlit Mediterranean. Even so, he recognized her as the woman who had careened into him as he was bidding on the portrait of his mother.

For one second as he’d steadied her, he had forgotten everything—his thirst to punish, his purpose in coming here. Something in her uninspired costume gave him the impression she didn’t belong here any more than he did. That she was hiding in plain sight. His male interest had been so piqued, he had nearly asked her to dance.

“Oh.” The lilt in her voice told him she had identified him from their brief encounter as well, which also told him she had found it as profound as he had.

“Were you expecting someone else?” He adjusted his mask to peer harder into the shadows. The rickety bench where his mother used to read to him was gone, replaced by a dark shape that suggested a comfortable, L-shaped sectional.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

That was good news. On many levels.

“Did you follow me?” she asked.

“No.” He would like to think he would have timed things differently if he had known she was up here, but he wasn’t sure. Nor was he as dismayed as he ought to have been that she was now an obstacle to his goal.

“Did you invite someone to join you?” she asked, vaguely appalled.

He should have said, Yes. She sounded so uncomfortable at intruding, she probably would have hurried away, but something in him balked at letting her think he was involved with anyone.

He heard himself say a throaty and inviting, “Not yet.”

Her silhouette grew more alert. The air crackled between them.

“Who are you?” Her voice sharpened and her mask tilted as she cocked her head.

It struck him that he couldn’t tell her. Damn.

“I think the purpose of a night like this is to maintain the mystery.”