Scandals Of The Rich: A Façade to Shatter

He sounded cold and in control. Inhuman. It was precisely what he needed to be in order to deal with her. He’d let himself feel softer emotions when he’d been with her before, and look where that had gotten him. If he’d been more direct, she wouldn’t be here now. She would know that her chances of anything besides sex from him were nonexistent.

He would not make that mistake again.

Lia blinked. Her tongue darted out over her lower lip, and a bolt of sensation shot through him at that singular movement. His body wanted to react, but he refused to let it. She was a woman like any other, he reminded himself. If sex was what he wanted, he had only to walk back in that ballroom and select a partner.

Her gaze flicked to the door. “Perhaps we should go somewhere more private.”

“No. Tell me what you came to say, and then go back to your hotel.”

She seemed taken aback at the intensity of his tone. She ran a hand down her dress nervously, and then lifted it to tuck one of the dangling locks of hair behind her ear. “You’ve changed,” she said.

He shook his head. “I’d think, rather, that you do not know me.” He spread his hands wide. “This is who I am, Lia. What I am.”

She looked hurt, and he felt an uncharacteristic pinch in his heart. But he knew how to handle this. He knew the words to say because he’d said a variation of them countless times before.

“Palermo was fun. But there can be nothing more between us. I’m sorry you came all this way.”

He’d expected her to crumple beneath the weight of his words. She didn’t. For a long moment, she only stared at him. And then she drew herself up, her eyes flashing. It was not the response he expected, and it surprised him. Intrigued him, too, if he were willing to admit it.

“There can be more,” she said firmly. “There must be more.”

Zach cursed himself. Why, of all the possible women in the world, had he chosen this one to break his long sexual fast with? He’d known there was something innocent about her, something naive. He should have sent her back to her room. Unfortunately, his brain had short-circuited the instant all the blood that should have powered it started flowing south.

“I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea, sugar,” he began.

She didn’t let him finish. Her brows drew down angrily as she closed the distance between them and poked him hard in the chest with a manicured finger. He was too stunned to react. “The wrong idea?” she demanded.

She swore in Italian, curses that somehow sounded so pretty but were actually quite rude if translated. Zach was bemused in spite of himself.

“There were consequences to those two days,” she flashed. “For both of us, bello.”

Ice shot down his spine, sobering him right up again.

“What are you talking about?” he snapped.

Her lips tightened. And then she said the words that sliced through him like a sword thrust to the heart.

“I’m pregnant, Zach. With your baby.”

Lia watched the play of emotions over his face. There was disbelief, of course. Anger. Denial.

She understood all those feelings. She’d experienced each one in the past few days, many times over. But she’d also experienced joy and happiness. And fear. She couldn’t forget the fear.

“That’s impossible,” he said tightly. His handsome face was hard and cold, his eyes like chips of dark, burning ice as they bored into her.

Lia wanted to sit down. She was beginning to regret coming here tonight. She’d only just arrived in Washington today, and she’d hardly rested. She was suffering from the effects of too much air travel, too much stress and too many crazy hormones zinging through her system.

This was not at all how she’d pictured this happening. She hadn’t thought beyond seeing him, hadn’t thought he would force her to tell him her news standing in the darkness and watching men tap golf balls toward a little hole in the ground.

She also hadn’t expected him to be so hostile. So cold.

Lia swallowed against the fear clogging her throat. She had to be brave. She’d already endured so much just to get to this point. There was no going back now.

“Apparently not,” she said, imbuing her voice with iron. “Because I am most assuredly pregnant.”

“How do you know it’s mine?”

His voice was a whip in the darkness, his words piercing her. “Because there has been no one else,” she shot back, fury and hurt roiling like a storm-tossed sea in her belly.

“We spent two nights together, Lia. And we used condoms.” His eyes were hard, furious.

“There was once,” she said, her skin warming. “Once when you, um, when we—”

She couldn’t finish the thought. But he knew. He looked stunned. And then he closed his eyes, and she knew he remembered.

“Christ.”

There’d been one time when they’d been sleeping and he’d grown hard against her as they slowly wakened. He’d slipped inside her, stroked into her lazily a few times, and then withdrew and put on a condom. It had been so random, so instinctive, that neither of them thought about it afterward.

“Exactly,” she said softly, exhaustion creeping into her limbs. Why hadn’t she just stayed at the hotel and slept? Her plan had always been to see him privately, but when she’d seen the announcement in the paper about his speech tonight, she’d become focused on getting here and telling him the news. On sharing this burden with someone who could help her.

But that wasn’t the only reason.

For an entire month, she’d missed him. Missed his warm skin, the scent of soap and man, the way he skimmed his fingers over her body, the silky glide of his lips against hers.

The erotic pulse of his body inside hers, taking her to heights she’d never before experienced.

Lia shivered, though it was not cold. A drop of sweat trickled between her breasts. She felt … moist. And she definitely needed to sit down.

Zach stood ramrod straight on the terrace before her. “You may be pregnant, but that doesn’t make the baby mine,” he said. She swallowed down the nausea that had been her constant companion—it was lessening thanks to medication the doctor had prescribed—and tried to bring him into focus. “We were together two nights. How do I know you didn’t have another lover?”

Lia’s heart ached. She’d known he might not take the news well—what man would when a spontaneous encounter with a stranger turned life-altering in such a huge way?—but she hadn’t expected him to accuse her of having another lover. Of basically coming all this way to lie to him.

“I need to get out of this heat,” she choked out, turning blindly. She couldn’t stand here and defend herself when she just wanted to sit down somewhere cool. When her heart hurt and her stomach churned and she wanted to cry.

She’d only taken a few steps toward the door when she felt as if the bottom was dropping out from under her. Lia shot a hand out and braced herself on the railing near the door as nausea threatened to overwhelm her. She turned to lean against it, grateful for the solid barrier holding her up.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked up to find Zach standing over her, his stern face showing concern where moments ago it had only been anger.

Lia put a shaky hand to her forehead. “I’m hormonal, Zach. And you aren’t helping matters.”

He blew out a breath. And then his hand wrapped around her elbow as he pulled her to his side. “Come on.”

He led her away from the door and then in through another door farther down. It led into a dark bar with tables and chairs and only a few patrons. Zach steered her to a table in the corner, far from anyone, and sat her down.

“Wait here.”