Proof of Their Sin

“I didn’t hear anything about love. That was the problem with your first marriage, wasn’t it?” She kept her attention on the orange she was separating into sections, holding it well away from her gown.

He stared at the top of her head, willing her to look up at him and dare to say that. At the same time, his gut twisted with guilt. It was true, he’d had very little affection for his ex, but she’d still managed to devastate him. It was one reason he was determined to pin his future on Isabella and not a woman he truly loved. To be betrayed was one thing, to love and be betrayed would be impossible to bear.

“Love is for fools,” he muttered.

With a snort of cynicism, Lauren chortled, “Ain’t that the truth.”

Hearing her echo the sentiment irritated him. The way she had turned to him in Charleston had proved to him she wasn’t as devoted to Ryan as she’d portrayed through her marriage. This was further evidence she had scorned a man who had worshipped her.

“I guess that makes Ryan a fool, marrying for love,” Paolo said scathingly.

“Are you serious?” Her amber gaze flashed up like a splash of bourbon, stinging with hot-cold. “If he loved me so much, why did he spend all his time on the other side of the world taking insane chances with his life? He married me because I was raised to wait until I had a ring on my finger and he wanted bragging rights.”

“A clever ploy on your part, seeing as his family is quite well off,” he shot back, while a flash of Ryan’s smug victor’s grin hit him square between the eyes. There could be some truth to her claim. He had another suspicion about his friend’s motives, one that was even less complimentary. They had always been competitive with each other, he and Ryan. It was usually good-natured, but there were times it had been cutthroat and Ryan had been in no doubt that Paolo found Lauren attractive.

No doubt.

“It wasn’t a ploy, it’s the truth,” Lauren bit out defensively, pulling Paolo’s thoughts from a dark place he rarely visited.

It was a place of bitterness he barely understood because he never examined it, but it filled him with enough acrimony to challenge, “You married for sex then?”

Disbelief dropped her jaw before her outrage fell away to wounded pride.

Her stunned silence pricked his conscience. He almost began forming an apology for crossing a line, but a self-conscious flush flooded into her cheeks. She looked naked and culpable, but her expression carried an edge of defiance that gave him a tingle of premonition. He unconsciously braced himself.

With her blush firmly in place, but a disconcertingly frank look sweeping over her, she sat straighter and said defiantly, “Perhaps I did marry for sex. I was curious and not confident enough to believe any other man would be interested, but I did love Ryan, in my immature way.”

That was too much honesty. He looked away, wanting to refute what she was saying by pointing out he had been interested, but that would only muddy already dark waters. Immature he would accept, while the rest he held in reserve. He needed to view her as deceitful to keep his distance. Otherwise he’d have to believe everything she was saying about this baby she was carrying and where would that leave him? Not upholding the honor of his family name the way he’d sworn to do after so disgracing it with his ugly divorce.

He would have to believe that when Lauren had woken him from the first sleep he’d had in forty-eight hours by sliding her caressing hand into his shirt, it had been from genuine desire, not ulterior motives.

The pulse of desire that hit with that possibility was a sledgehammer straight into his gut, bathing him in heat. His hungry gaze moved restlessly to eat up the way her shorn head revealed her slender neck and the graceful slant of her nude shoulders. Her deshabille gave off a sexy, yet ingenuous appearance.

Don’t fall for it, he cautioned himself, but couldn’t help thinking that no matter whose baby grew in her belly, she was still a woman without a husband to provide for her. She was susceptible and he was, at his core, a protective man.

He was duty-bound to protect his family, though. And what did it matter whether she had married for love or not? She was also admitting to resentment that her husband had been away a lot. What she’d done during those long absences was very much up for scrutiny. Perhaps he should take her at her word that she wasn’t asking him to be a father, only wanted to warn him about an impending media storm.

“Where are you planning to go?” he asked, hitching the knees of his pants as he sank into the sofa opposite her.

“I told you. To my room.” She darted out her tongue to catch the juice from the orange that ran down her finger.

She might as well have stroked that tongue where he’d feel it most. His loins were still pooled with simmering heat and he reacted as though she had licked him, the strain turning into an erection so swiftly, he stifled a grunt of pain. If he could have stood, he would have walked out on her.

“You said you were leaving the country,” he reminded in a hostile clip that caused the brightness in her gaze to dim. Good. There was no room for sensuous picnics between them.

“Italy,” she replied stiffly.

He choked, certain he’d misheard. “Like hell you are. That’s my home.”

“I’m sorry, do you own the entire country? The brochures didn’t say.” That sexy mouth had a quick motor behind it, didn’t it?

“Did I misunderstand what you said about minimizing damage? Or do you only intend to be discreet where it affects your interests?” he asked.

“It’s not like I’m going to call up your family and introduce myself! I want to look up my own, if you must know.”

He leaned back, stretching his arms across the sofa so he wouldn’t lean forward and throttle her. A ferocious sensation accosted him each time he came back to her assertion that the baby was his, like poking an abscessed tooth with his tongue. He dismissed it, focusing on the more immediate problem.

“This is the first I’ve heard that you have Italian relatives. Who are they? Where do they live?”

“My mother’s father was Italian, not that she’d admit it.” She broke off a piece of banana and carefully nibbled. “My grandmother came home pregnant. Mom was her love child.”

Lauren’s lashes flickered as her gaze dropped and her brows tugged together. He heard her thoughts. Her baby wasn’t a love child. What was it then? A mistake? The product of a one-night stand? His?

The questions carved an ever-deepening hollow behind his breastbone, one that he pitilessly ignored.

“The man who would be my grandfather was married,” she continued. “His wife was very sick. They had a daughter and he didn’t feel he could leave either of them. That’s what he told Mamie. I don’t know if it was the truth, but Mamie loved him.” A smile of wistful affection quirked her lips. “Until the last day of her life.”

“Odd that you didn’t inherit her sense of loyalty, given how much she meant to you.” It was a nasty thing to say, but he didn’t like how easily she was drawing him into her poignant little web.

She took the insult with a tiny sniff of hurt, then opened guileless eyes and responded, “My Italian blood must have led me astray.”

He ground his teeth. “You have no concept what kind of lion you’re riling, do you, cara? I may wear bankers’ suits, but I know how to scrap.”

She paled a bit as she carefully wiped her fingers on the cloth napkin he’d provided, but she didn’t intimidate. Her gaze was level when she met his.

“Honestly, Paolo? There’s only one thing you could do to truly hurt me. That would be to take this baby away from me. I don’t think you’d harm either of us and it doesn’t sound like you want to fight me for it, either. You’d have to admit it’s yours, and you hate me too much to do that.” Her lips went bloodless as she pronounced that. Her eyelashes flickered as though she didn’t quite understand how that could be.

While he caustically wondered how she imagined it could be otherwise.

For five years she’d been tossing shimmering ropes of curiosity at him even as she attached herself to Ryan. When he’d met her, he’d been days away from his own marriage, but unable to let the wolves prowling the bar they’d been in to consume her. He’d pulled her and her cousin into his booth while he waited for Ryan, entranced by Lauren’s shy, understated wit and killer legs. When Ryan had arrived, Paolo had expected his friend to remove with her cousin to Ryan’s hotel room, but no. His friend had turned his good-ol’-boy charm on Lauren and she had blushed under the attention of two men.

Engaged, there was nothing Paolo could do but warn his friend against being cavalier with an obvious virgin. He’d been shocked six months later when Ryan had announced he was marrying her, partly because Paolo hadn’t realized they’d kept in touch. By then he’d been so deeply entrenched in the loss of his father and minimizing the damage of his marriage imploding, he’d convinced himself that whatever attraction he’d felt toward Lauren had been a bachelor’s last hurrah.

Then he’d glimpsed her arriving at the church and the magnetism had been even stronger than he’d remembered. Unbalanced by it, he’d blurted out a hasty are-you-sure lecture to Ryan that had gone nowhere. Inexplicably, Paolo had been filled with rage as the vows were spoken. The entire ceremony had become a living hell, his abominable desire for Lauren growing like a snowball careening down a hill. He’d tried to drink it away, unable to make sense of his reaction while longing for the evening to be over.

Then Lauren had followed him outside, looking like the most delectable innocent ever sacrificed to a man’s basest hunger. Ryan’s hunger. Paolo had kissed her. The hard, passionate kiss they’d shared burned on his lips and conscience to this day.