A Facade to Shatter (13 page)

He groaned. “Please don’t let me find you out pruning the plumeria one morning, searching for the perfect blooms.”

Lia looked across at the single plumeria tree near
the side of the house. It was tall, at least twenty feet, and filled with blooms whose perfume wafted over to her even now. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It’s huge, and I’d need a ladder.”

“You are definitely not getting on a ladder,” he growled.

She laughed. “Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

His expression softened, his gaze raking over her. She got that warm glow inside that she always did. The words she’d not yet said to him welled behind her teeth, threatened to burst out into the open if she didn’t work to contain them.

How could she tell him she loved him when that would be the ultimate soul-baring act she could perform? She’d be naked before him, naked in a way she could never take back. And he would have the ability to crush her. A single word. A single look.

He could crush her beneath his well-shod heel and she’d never recover.

Dio.

His brows drew down. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked. “Do you need to see a doctor?”

Lia rolled her eyes. It was a screen to cover all her raw, exposed feelings, but it was also a true reaction. He was incessantly worried about her health, which was sweet, but also managed to exasperate her.

“Zach, I’m fine. I have an appointment with the doctor on Oahu next week, remember?”

He continued to study her like she was a bug under a microscope. “Would you tell me if you were unwell? Or would you hide it?”

She blinked. “Why on earth would I hide such a thing?”

He looked at her for a long minute. And then he shrugged. “I have no idea. I just get the feeling that sometimes you aren’t being completely honest about what you’re feeling.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Wow, he’d nailed it in one. But not for the reason he supposed. She reached out and grasped his hand. His skin was still cool from the pool. “I’m not used to sharing my life with anyone,” she said truthfully. “I’m used to being self-reliant in many ways, but if I felt truly ill, I would tell you. I don’t want anything to happen to this baby.”

“Or you,” he said, and her heart seemed to stop beating in her chest. A moment later, it lurched forward again, beating in triple time. She told herself not to read anything into that statement, but, oh, how her heart wanted to.

He turned away and reached for his tablet computer while her pulse surged and her heart throbbed. She wanted what he’d said to mean something. Wanted it desperately. But he sat there scrolling through his
tablet so casually, and she knew that it hadn’t meant a thing. Oh, he didn’t want her to hurt herself, certainly.

But not because he didn’t know what he’d do if she weren’t here. Not because the air he breathed would suddenly grow stale without her. Not because his life would cease to be bright if she were not in it.

Lia turned away from him, her eyes pricking with tears, and picked up the virgin mai tai he’d fixed for her before he slipped into the pool. The trade winds blew so gently across her skin, and the sun was bright in the azure sky above. It was so perfect here, and she’d let herself be lulled by it.

But she had to remember there was nothing about this situation that was permanent. It could all end tomorrow, if he so chose. Lia shivered and tried not to imagine what would happen when it did.

In the end she didn’t need to imagine a thing.

There was a storm in the middle of the night. It was a rare occurrence on Maui, because the trade winds and the air pressure didn’t usually allow for it, but tonight there was thunder and jagged lightning sizzling over the ocean.

Lia woke with a jerk when a crack of thunder sounded close by. Zach was beside her, sitting up, his eyes wide.

“Zach?”

He didn’t move. She reached for him. He jerked, then spun and pinned her to the bed. His eyes were wild, his skin damp. He growled something unintelligible.

“Zach,
caro
, it’s me,” she said. “It’s Lia.”

He was very still. “Lia?”

“Yes.”

The tension in his body collapsed. He rolled away from her with a groan and lay on his back, an arm thrown over his eyes. “Jesus,” he breathed. “I could have hurt you.”

She propped herself on an elbow and leaned over him. “You wouldn’t,” she said, utterly convinced.

The arm fell away and his dark eyes gleamed at her as he drew in deep lungfuls of breath. “How can you be so sure? I’m a mess, Lia.” He choked out something unintelligible. “A damn mess.”

Fear was beginning to dance along the surface of her psyche. He frightened her, but not physically. “I don’t believe that.”

He laughed bitterly. “You’re too damn trusting. Too naive. You have no idea what goes on in this world.”

He threw the covers back and got out of bed while she sat there with her heart pinching and her chest aching. He yanked on a pair of shorts and stalked outside, onto the balcony, oblivious to the rain coming down.

Lia’s first instinct was to stay where she was, to let him cool off. But she couldn’t do it. She loved him too much, and she hated when he was hurting.

She climbed from the bed and put on her robe. Then she went to stand in the open door and look at him.

The rain washed over him, soaking his hair, running in rivulets down his chest. He looked lonely and angry and her heart went out to him. She knew what it was like to be lonely and angry. She wanted nothing more than to fix it for him.

“Zach, please talk to me.”

He spun to look at her. “You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

She took a step toward him.

He held a hand up to stop her. “Don’t come out here. You’ll get wet.”

“It doesn’t seem to be hurting you,” she said, though she stopped anyway, folding her arms around her body. “And you’re wrong. I do want to hear what you have to say.”

He shoved his wet hair back from his face, but he didn’t make a move to come inside. Thunder rolled in the distance. A flash of lightning zipped along the sky, slicing it in two for a brief moment.

“I should have known better,” he said. “I should have known it was a mistake to think this could work between us.”

Her chest filled with chaotic emotion, tightening until she thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe. But she held herself firmly, arms crossed beneath her breasts, and refused to let him see how much he hurt her. He thought she was naive, trusting. Unworthy.

It stung. But, worse, the idea she was a mistake threatened to make her fold in on herself.

“You can’t mean that,” she said tightly, though her brain gibbered at her to be quiet. To detach. To roll into a ball and protect herself. “These past couple of weeks have been perfect.”

“Which is why it was a mistake,” he snapped. “There’s no such thing as perfect, not where I’m concerned.”

“Because you don’t deserve those medals?” she threw back at him, anger beginning to grow and spin inside her belly. “Because you have bad dreams and think you’re so terrible?”

He took a step toward her, stopped. His hands clenched into fists at his side. He was close enough he could have reached out and touched her. But he didn’t.

“You want to know the truth? I’ll tell you,” he grated. “The whole, sorry story.”

He turned his back on her, walked over to the railing. The rain was lessening, but it was still coming down. When he turned back to her, his expression was tight.

“You’ve heard part of it. I broke my leg during the ejection. It hurt like hell, and I couldn’t move much. But I’d landed near a protected ravine and hunkered down to wait. I expected the enemy to find me first. But they didn’t. The marines did. Only the enemy wasn’t far behind.”

Lia imagined him alone like that, imagined him waiting, and fear crawled up her throat, no matter that she’d heard him say this part before. She wanted to go to him, but she knew he didn’t want her to. It made her desperate inside, but all she could do was listen.

“The medic drugged me,” he said. “And I couldn’t help them defend our position when they most needed me. Hell, I think I drifted in and out of consciousness. I have no idea how long it went on, but it seemed to take forever. They hit us with grenades, small-arms fire. It was ceaseless, and air support wasn’t coming no matter how many times the marines called for it. One by one, the enemy picked off the marines, until it was one sergeant and me.”

He didn’t keep going, but she knew he wasn’t finished. He turned away again, and she could see the tightness in his jaw, his shoulders. Zach was on edge in a way she’d only ever seen him when he was in the grips of a dream.

“Zach?”

He turned his head toward her. “Here’s the part you
don’t know. The part no one knows. He gave me a pistol. Put it in my hand and removed the safety. And then he told me it was my choice when the enemy came. Shoot them, or shoot myself.”

“No,” she breathed as horror washed over her.

Zach’s gaze didn’t change, didn’t soften. “Obviously,” he said, “I didn’t shoot myself. I didn’t shoot anyone. Sometime in the night, the last marine died. And I wanted to shoot myself. I wanted it pretty badly.”

“Oh, Zach …” Her eyes filled with tears.

“What you need to know, Lia, is that I tried to do it. I put the gun under my jaw.” He put his finger just where he would have stuck the gun. Her heart lurched at the thought of him lying helplessly like that with so much death and destruction all around him. “But I couldn’t pull the trigger.”

The words hung in the air between them, like poison.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Lia said fiercely, her throat a tight, achy mess. How close had he come? How close had she been to never, ever knowing him? It didn’t bear thinking about.

“I can’t forget that night. I can’t forget how they all died, and how I could do nothing about it. I can’t forget that I should have died with them.”

Lia put a hand over her belly without conscious
thought. “You weren’t meant to die, Zach. You were meant to live. For me. For our baby.”

His laugh was bitter, broken. “God, why would you think that? Why, after everything I just said to you, after the way I attacked you tonight, would you want me within a thousand miles of a child?”

She was starting to quake deep inside. Something was changing here. Something she couldn’t stop. She was losing him. She’d begun to believe, over the past couple of weeks, that something was happening between them. Something good. She’d let herself be lulled by the sun and sea and the fabulous sex. Hadn’t she had a glimmering of it earlier today by the pool?

“You didn’t attack me. I startled you, but you have to remember that you let me go.”

“What if I hadn’t? You can’t trust me, Lia. I can’t trust myself.”

“Then get some help!” she yelled at him. “Fight for me. For us.”

He was looking at her, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and her hopes began to unfurl their wings. He could do this.

“It’s not that easy,” he said between clenched teeth. “Don’t you think I’ve tried?”

“Then try again. For us.”

He looked almost sad for a moment. “Why are you so stubborn, Lia? Why can’t you just accept the truth?
I told you I couldn’t be a husband or a father. Now you know why.”

Fear and fury whipped to a froth inside her. “Because I—”
I love you.

But she couldn’t say the words. They clogged her throat, like always, the fear of them almost more than she could bear. She’d worked hard not to love people who wouldn’t love her back. She’d hidden inside her shell and shut everyone out.

Until Zach. Until he’d walked into her life and opened her up, exposing her soft underbelly. He’d made her love him. He’d made her vulnerable to this horrible, shattering pain again.

“Because what?” he said.

Lia swallowed the fear. She had to say the words. If she expected him to face his fear, then she had to face her own.

“Because I love you,” she said, the words like razor blades. They weren’t supposed to hurt. But they did.

Raw emotion flared in his eyes. And then his face went blank. He was shutting down, pulling up the cold, cool, untouchable man who lived inside him. She wanted to wail.

“That,” he finally said, his voice so icy it made her shiver, “is a mistake.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said on a hoarse whisper. “I refuse to believe that.”

He came over to stand before her. She wanted to touch him, but she knew better than to try. Not now. Not when he was pushing her away. Not when her heart was breaking in two.

He put a finger under her chin and lifted until she had to look him in the eye. What she saw there eroded all her hopes.

“You’re a good woman, Lia. You deserve better than this.” His throat moved as he swallowed.

She feared what he would say, feared the look in his eyes. “Zach, no …”

He put his finger over her lips to silence her. “That’s why I’m letting you go.”

S
ICILY WAS JUST
as Lia had left it, though she was not the same as she’d been when she’d left Sicily. She was bitterly angry. Hurt.

But one thing she was not, not ever again, was pitiful. She’d told her grandmother about the baby, because she couldn’t hide it for much longer—and because she was no longer afraid of her family’s reaction. Yes, it helped that she’d married the father. But she was still having this baby alone, regardless of what her family thought about that.

Far from being scandalized, Teresa had been thrilled to have a great-grandchild on the way. If the head of the family was upset about it, Lia didn’t know it. Nor did she care.

Lia snipped lavender from the garden and dropped it into the basket sitting on the ground beside her. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her brow to remove
the sweat before it could drip into her eyes. It was hot outside, crackling. Perhaps she should be inside, but she was going a little crazy just sitting there and reading books.

She was still in her cottage on her grandparents’ estate, but she was in the process of purchasing an apartment of her own in Palermo. Once she’d returned to Sicily a month ago, she’d marched right into the family lawyer’s office and told him she wanted her money. He’d blinked at her in a slow, lazy way that she feared meant he was about to deny her request or refer her to Alessandro, but instead he’d turned to his computer and began bringing up the family accounts.

She’d discovered that she had far more money than she’d thought. She would not need Zach’s money to take care of their baby. It wasn’t a fortune, but it would do.

It gave her great satisfaction to refuse a meeting with Zach’s local attorney when he’d called to say he’d set up a bank account for her and needed her signature on some papers.

She would not take a dime of Scott money. Not ever.

The thought of Zach still had the power to make her feel as if someone had stabbed her with a hot dagger. She was so angry with him. So filled with rage and hate and—

No, not hate. Bitter disappointment. Hurt.

Her worst nightmare had come true when she’d given him her heart and he’d flung it back at her. He’d rejected her, just as she’d always been rejected by those to whom she wanted to mean something.

And it hadn’t killed her. That was the part she’d found amazing, once she stopped crying and feeling sorry for herself.

She was hurt, yes, but she was here. Alive. And she had a life growing inside her, a tiny, wonderful life that she already loved so much. Her child would have everything she had not had. Friends, love, acceptance.

But not a father, she thought wistfully. Her baby would not have a father. Oh, Zach didn’t want a divorce. He’d been very clear that she was still a Scott for as long as she wanted to be one, and that their child would have his name.

She’d met Zach’s parents before she’d left. They’d been nice, if a bit formal, and they’d told her they wanted to be involved in their grandchild’s life. So, her baby might not have a father, but he or she would have grandparents. She had agreed to return to the United States at least once a year, and they had indicated they would come to Sicily as often as she would allow it.

It had seemed far enough in the future that she figured she would have learned how to deal with her memories of Zach by then. She kept seeing him as he’d been that last night in Hawaii. Dark, tortured,
dripping wet and so stubborn she wanted to put her hands around his throat and squeeze until he would listen to sense.

But there was no talking to Zach when he made up his mind. And, in his mind, he was a dangerous, damaged man who had no hope for the future. They’d boarded a jet the next morning after the storm on Maui. By nightfall they’d been back in D.C and then he’d disappeared.

Finally, on the fifth day, she’d decided she’d had enough. She’d made travel arrangements to Sicily and then she’d informed Raoul when she was leaving for the airport.

Zach had appeared very quickly after that. It had been an awkward meeting in which he’d told her he didn’t want a divorce and that he would support her and their child. She’d sat through it silently, fuming and aching and wanting to throw things.

In the end, she’d left because it hurt too much to stay. Before she’d walked out the door the final time, she’d gone into his office and dropped the medal on his desk. He wasn’t there, but she’d known he would see it. If it made him angry, so be it. It was the final tie she needed to cut if she was to move on with her life.

Apparently, her leaving hadn’t fazed him in the least. It had been a month and she’d heard nothing from Zach, though she’d heard plenty from his local
attorney. A man who was beginning to leave increasingly strident messages. Messages she had no intention of returning.

She clipped off some rosemary a little more viciously than necessary and dropped it in the basket. Then she got to her feet and put her hand in the small of her back. Her back ached quite a lot these days, but the doctor said everything was normal. She hadn’t really started to show yet, though she’d had to get expansion bands for her pants and wear clothing that was loose around the middle. Soon, it would be time for maternity wear, but right now her maxi dress and sandals did just fine.

In the distance, the sea sparkled sapphire. It looked nothing like Maui, but it made her wistful nevertheless. She often found herself sitting on her little secluded terrazzo and gazing at the sea. She thought that if she did it enough, she would anesthetize herself to the pain.

So far, it hadn’t worked. It was like reopening a wound each and every time.

She turned to make her way back to her cottage. The grounds sloped upward and the walk in this heat made her heart pound until she began to feel light-headed. She stopped for a moment, the basket slung over her arm, and wiped her forehead again. Her vision was growing spotty and her belly was churning.
She groped in the basket for her water and came up with an empty bottle.

She could see her destination, see the terrazzo through the pencil pines and bougainvillea—and a man standing with his back to her. He had dark hair and wore a suit, and a swift current of anger shot through her veins, giving her the impetus she needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

She’d told Zach’s lawyer that she didn’t want to meet him. Yet he’d dared to come anyway, no doubt to try and force her to sign the documents that would make her the owner of a bank account with far too much money in it. She was not about to let Zach assuage his guilt that way. Let him choke on his millions for all she cared.

The man should not have made it through the estate’s security, but he’d obviously sweet-talked his way inside. A red mist of rage clouded her vision as she trod up the lawn. Her stomach churned and her vision swam, but she was determined to make it. Determined to tell this man to take his briefcase full of papers and shove them where the sun didn’t shine.

He might have sweet-talked Nonna into letting him onto the estate, but he wasn’t sweet-talking her.

She stepped onto the tiles, her heart pounding with the effort. “How dare you,” she began—but he turned around and the words got stuck in her mouth.

Her vision blurred and started to grow dark at the edges as bile rose in her throat. Too late, she recognized what was happening. Then everything ceased to exist.

Zach was miserable. He paced the halls of the local hospital where Lia had been taken. Her grandmother had promised to let him know what was happening, but she’d disappeared into the room with Lia and the doctor and hadn’t come out again.

Zach shoved a hand through his hair and contemplated bursting through the door to Lia’s room. This was not at all what he’d expected when he’d arrived today. He cursed himself for not being more cautious, for not calling her first. If he’d caused any harm to Lia or the baby, he would never forgive himself.

He stood with his fists clenched at his sides. He’d been such a fool, and now he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d come too late.

That night, when he’d stood in the rain and told Lia about what had really happened—what had nearly happened—in that trench, he’d felt like the lowest kind of bastard. The kind who didn’t deserve a sweet wife and a happy ending. He’d hated himself for turning on her during the storm—and earlier, in Palermo. He couldn’t control the beast inside him, the slavering animal that reacted blindly, lashing out in fear and fury.

When he’d shoved her back on the bed, he’d known he couldn’t take that risk ever again. He hadn’t hurt her, as she’d pointed out, but he didn’t trust that he was incapable of hurting her. He’d known then that he had to end it between them, and he had to do it immediately.

Letting her go had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. For days after she’d left, he’d walked around his house like a ghost, looking at the places she’d been, imagining her there within reach. Dying to touch her again and aching so hard because he couldn’t.

He told himself he’d done the right thing. He was a beast, a monster, a man incapable of tenderness and love. He’d sacrificed himself for her safety, her happiness, and he’d felt honorable doing it.

But he’d also been miserable. And once he’d walked into his office and found the medal she’d left, he’d had a sudden visceral reaction that had left him on his knees, his gut hollow with pain, his throat raw with the howl that burst from him.

That’s when he realized what he’d done. He’d sent her away, the greatest gift to come into his miserable life. In that moment, he knew what the hollowness, the despair, deep inside him was. He was in love with his wife. And he’d sent her away.

He’d wanted to go to her immediately, to beg her forgiveness—but he couldn’t. He had to get himself
straight first. He had to work on the things he’d shoved down deep. She’d told him to fight for her, and he’d been a coward.

Well, no more. He wasn’t ready to quit. He wasn’t going to quit. He’d done everything he could to come to her a changed man. Everything he could to deserve her.

He stared at the door to her room, ready to burst through it and see if she was all right. It was taking too long and he was about to go crazy with fear. But then the door opened and the doctor came out.

“How is she?”

The man looked up from the chart he was holding. “Signora Scott will be fine. But she needs rest,
signore.
A woman in her condition should not be working outside in the heat of the day.” He shook his head, then consulted the chart again. “She is dehydrated, but the fluids will take care of that. I want to keep her for observation, because of the baby, but she should be able to go home again in a few hours if all remains stable.”

Shuddering relief coursed through him, leaving his knees weak. He put a hand on the wall to hold himself upright. He was about to ask if he could see her when Teresa Corretti came out of the room. She was an elfin woman, but she had a spine of steel. He’d seen that the instant he’d met her. Right now, she was looking at him with a combination of fury and concern.

“She will see you,” she said. “But don’t you dare upset her, young man. If you do, I will not be responsible.”

He took her meaning quite well, especially since it was accompanied by a hard look that said she’d like to rip his balls off and feed them to him if he harmed a hair on her granddaughter’s head.

She jerked her head toward the door. “Go, then. But remember what I said.”

“Sì, signora,”
he replied. Then he took a deep breath and went inside.

His heart turned over at the sight of Lia in a hospital bed. She was sitting up, but her normally golden skin was pale, and her head was turned away from him as she gazed through the window at the parking lot beyond.

“Lia.” His throat was tight. His chest ached. He’d been through so much this past month, so many emotions. He hadn’t thought seeing her again would be so hard, but he should have known better. He’d done his best to destroy her feelings for him, hadn’t he?

“Why are you here, Zach?” she asked, still not looking at him.

He went over to the bed and sat in the chair beside it. He did not touch her, though he desperately wanted to. “To say I’m sorry.”

Her head turned. Bright blue-green eyes speared
into him. “You have come all this way to say you are sorry? For what? Breaking my heart? Abandoning your baby?” She waved a hand as if to dismiss him. “Take your apologies and leave. I do not need them.”

His chest was so tight he thought he might start to hyperventilate at any moment. But he swallowed the fear and looked at her steadily. He could do this. He
would
do this.

“I’m ready to fight,” he said.

She blinked. “Fight? I don’t want to fight, Zach. Go away.”

He took her hand this time. He had to touch her, needed to touch her. She flinched but did not try to pull away. Currents of heat swirled in the air between them, like always. It gave him hope.

“No, I want to fight for you. For us.”

She turned her head away again, and his heart felt as if someone had put it in a vise and turned the screws. Her lip trembled, and something like hope began to kindle again inside his soul. If she was affected by his words, maybe it wasn’t too late.

But it was a fragile hope. He’d done too much to her to deserve a second chance. He’d taken her love and thrown it away. He knew what kind of life she’d had, how she’d been deserted by her father and ignored by her family, and he’d pushed her away just the same as they had.

He’d discarded her when he should have fought for her. He’d figured it out finally. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

“You come here now and say this to me,” she said, her voice thready. “Why should I believe you? What has changed in the past month? Do you dare to tell me you realized you cannot live without me?”

She’d turned back to him then, her voice gaining in intensity until he could feel the heat of her anger blistering through him. Her eyes flashed and her red hair curled and tumbled over her shoulders and he was suddenly unsure what to say. What if he got it wrong? What if she sent him away?

He couldn’t let that happen. He’d do anything to prevent it.