A Scandal in the Headlines(9)

What was her self-respect next to that? She’d given up her right to it when she’d been silly and flattered and vain enough to believe Niccolo’s lies. There were consequences to bad choices, and this was hers.

“I should tell you,” he said casually, as if he was commenting on the weather. The temperature. “I have no intention of letting you go this time. Not without a taste.”

That was not anticipation that flooded through her then. And certainly not a knife-edge excitement that made her pulse flutter wildly in response. She wouldn’t allow it.

“Is that an order?” she asked, her voice cool, as if he didn’t get to her at all.

“If you like.” He laughed. So arrogant, she thought. So sure of her. Of this. “If that’s what gets you off.”

“Because most people consider a boss ordering his employee to ‘give him a taste’ a bit unprofessional.” She smiled pure ice at him. She did not think about what got her off. “There are other terms for it, of course. Legal ones.”

He angled himself so he was leaning one hip against the rail, looking down at her. A faintly mocking curve to his mouth. Bruised and bad, head to foot. And yet still so terribly compelling. Why couldn’t what she knew rid her of what she felt?

“Are we still maintaining that little bit of fiction?” He shrugged carelessly, though his gaze was hot. “Then consider yourself fired. Someone will find another stewardess for my yacht. You, however.” His smile then made her blood heat, her traitorous body flush. “You, I think, have a different purpose here altogether.”

Elena had to fight herself to focus, to remember. Alessandro Corretti was one of the notorious Sicilian Correttis. More than that, he was the oldest son of his generation, the heir to the legend, no matter how they’d split up the family fortune or the interfamily wars the press reported on so breathlessly. He was who Niccolo aspired to become—the real, genuine article. Corrupt and wicked to the marrow of his bones, by virtue of his blood alone.

He should have disgusted her to the core. He should have terrified her. It appalled her that he didn’t. That nothing could break this hold he had on her. That she still felt this odd sense of safety when she was near him, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“Oh, right,” she said now. “I forgot.” She sighed, though her mind raced as she tried to think of what she would do if she really was the woman he thought she was. If she was that conniving, that amoral. “You think I’m a spy.”

“I do.”

No man, she thought unsteadily, should look that much like a wolf, or have dark green eyes that blazed when he looked at her that way. It turned her molten, all the way through.

“And what do you think spying on you would get me?”

“I know it will get you nothing. But I doubt you know that. And I’m sure your lover doesn’t.”

That he called Niccolo her lover made her skin crawl. That she’d had every intention of marrying Niccolo—and probably would have, had fate and this man and Niccolo’s own temper not intervened—made her want to curl up into a ball and wail. Or tear off her own skin. But she tacked on a little smile instead, and pretended.

She got better at it all the time.

“You’ve caught me,” she said. “You’ve unveiled my cunning master plan.” She lifted her eyes heavenward. “I’m a spy. And I let myself be caught in the act of … stewardessing. Also part of my devious mission! What could I possibly want next?”

He looked amused again, which only made the ferocity he wore like a shield around him seem that much more pronounced.

“Access,” he said easily. “Though I should warn you now, my computers require several layers of security, and if I catch you anywhere near them or near me when I’m having a private conversation, I’ll lock you in a closet. Believe that, Elena, if nothing else.”

He said that so casually, almost offhandedly, that smile playing around his gorgeous, battered mouth—but she believed him.

“You’ve clearly given my imaginary career in espionage a great deal of thought,” she said carefully, as if she was appeasing a raving lunatic. “But ask yourself, why would I risk this? Or imagine you’d let me?”

His expression of amusement edged over into something else, something voracious and dark, and her pulse jumped beneath her skin.

“Your fiancé was not blind, all those months ago,” he said softly. She felt him everywhere, again, as if he was touching her the way she knew he wanted to do. The way she couldn’t help but wish he would. “Nor was I.”