A Scandal in the Headlines(40)

“A few days after the ball,” she said. “After …”

“Yes,” he said in a low voice with too many deep currents. “After.”

She let go of her iron grip on her legs before her hands went numb, and used them, shaky and cold, to scrape her hair back from her face.

“He said it was bad enough he had to marry me to get the land, but now he had to do it after I’d made him a laughingstock with his sworn enemy?” She didn’t see the sea in front of her then. She only saw Niccolo’s face, twisted in a rage. She saw the way he’d stood over her, so cruel, so cold, while she lay there too stunned to cry. “He told me that if I knew what was good for me, I’d shut my mouth and be thankful the land was worth more than I was. And then he walked out of the villa and left me there on the floor.”

“Elena.”

But she had to finish. She had to get it out or she never would, and she didn’t want to think about why it was suddenly so important to her that the man she’d never thought she’d see again know every last detail. Every last way she’d made such a fool of herself.

“I left, of course,” she said, ignoring the wobble in her voice and the constriction in her throat. And all of his heat and power beside her. “But I didn’t really mean it. I thought there was some kind of misunderstanding. He couldn’t have meant to hit me, to say those things to me. Maybe he’d been drinking. I went home to my parents, as I always did.” She swallowed, hard. “And they hugged me, and told me that they loved me, and then they told me they blamed themselves that I’d turned out so spoiled, so high-strung. So selfish.”

She shook her head when he started to speak and he stilled, frowning.

“They were so kind. Niccolo was going to be my husband, they told me, and marriages took work. Commitment. I was going to have to grow up and stop telling terrible stories when I didn’t get my way.” She laughed again, and it sounded broken to her own ears. “Niccolo was a good man, they said, and I believed them. I wanted to believe them. It was easier to believe that I’d made up the whole thing than that he was the person I’d seen that night.”

Alessandro shifted, and put his arm around her, then gathered her close to his side. Holding her again. Holding her close, as if he could fight off all her demons that easily. She wondered if he could, if he even wanted to bother, and her eyes slicked over with a glaze of heat.

“He laughed when I rang him,” she whispered. “He told me that I was a stupid bitch. A whore. He told me I had twenty-four hours to get back to the villa and if I didn’t he’d come get me himself, and I would really, truly regret it. That he didn’t care if he had to marry me in a wheelchair.”

Alessandro’s arm tightened around her, and she allowed herself the comfort of his heat, his strength, even though she knew it was fleeting at best. That it wasn’t hers, no matter how much it felt as if it was. That he was far more dangerous to her now, armed with all of the knowledge she’d given him, even if he really was the man he claimed he was.

Neither one of them spoke for a long while. His hand moved over her hair, stroking her as if she was something precious to him. She accepted that she wished she was. That she always had. That she’d wanted too much from him from the start, and had been paying for it ever since.

“And that time,” she said when she could speak again, giving him everything he’d asked for, everything she’d been hiding, everything, “I believed him.”


Alessandro stood on the balcony outside his bedroom long after midnight, staring out into the dark.

He couldn’t sleep. He could hardly think straight. Once again, she’d shoved his world off its axis, and he was still reeling.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he’d asked her as the light began to change, still holding her on the swinging chair, pulling her closer as the wind picked up.

“You would never have believed me.”

“Perhaps,” he’d said, but she’d only smiled. “Perhaps, in time, I might have.”

But she’d been right. He would have thought it was another game. He would have laughed at her. Hated her all the more. He would have treated her exactly the same—worse, even. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.

He balled his hands into fists against the rail now, scowling.

He should have known. He had been too busy concentrating on the darkness in him, too busy nursing his wounded pride. The truth had always been there, staring him in the face. In every kiss, every touch. In the way she’d given herself to him so unreservedly.