to go away?”
He turned back to her, his expression cool. “I’ve encountered this situation before, yes. It has never been true, by the way.” He spread his hands wide. “But my family name encourages the deception.”
Lia stiffened. “I really don’t care who your family is,” she said tightly. “I did not come here for them.”
“Then what do you want, Lia?”
She swallowed. She’d thought—naively, of course—there had been something between them in Palermo. Something more than just simple animal attraction. She’d thought he might be glad to see her. God, she was such a fool.
The only thing she had was the truth.
“My family will be very angry when they find out,” she said softly. “And Alessandro will likely marry me off to one of his business associates to prevent a scandal.” She dropped her gaze and smoothed her hand over her belly again. “I suppose I could deal with that if it were only me. But I’m afraid for my baby. A Sicilian man won’t appreciate a wife who is pregnant with another man’s child.”
She could feel his gaze on her and she lifted her head, met the tortured darkness of his eyes. And the heat. It surprised her to find heat there, but it was indisputable. The heat of anger, no doubt.
“You know this to be true,” she said. “You are part Sicilian yourself.”
“A small part, but yes, I know what you mean.”
She could have breathed a sigh of relief—except she didn’t think he’d changed his mind about anything. “Then you will not want your child raised by another man. A man who will not love him or her, and who will resent the baby’s presence in his household.”
Zach was still. “You should have chosen better,” he said.
She blinked. It was not at all the response she’d anticipated. “I beg your pardon?”
“That night. You should have chosen to leave instead of stay.”
She’d bared her fears to him and this was what he had to say. Anger spiked in her belly. “It takes two, Zach. You were there, too.”
He took a step toward her, stopped. His hands flexed at his sides. “Yes, and I tried to send you away, if you will recall. Considering how we first met, you should have run far and fast.”
Her skin was hot—with shame, with anger, with self-recrimination. “It’s not all my fault. Perhaps you should have tried harder.”
As if anything would have induced her to leave after the way he’d looked at her: as if he wanted to devour her. It had been such a novel experience that she’d only wanted more.
“I should have,” he said. “But I was weak.”
“This baby is yours,” she said, a thread of desperation weaving through her. If he walked out now, if he sent her back to Sicily, what would become of her and the baby? She couldn’t face her cousin’s wrath. Her grandmother would do what she could, but even Teresa Corretti would do what the head of the family dictated in the end. And he would dictate that she not have a child out of wedlock. Or he would throw her out and cut her off without a cent.
For a moment, she contemplated that option. It would be … heavenly, in a way. She would be free of the Correttis, free of the pain and anger that went along with being the outsider in her family.
Except she knew it wouldn’t happen that way. Salvatore Corretti had ruled his family with an iron fist. And no wayward granddaughter would have ever brought shame on the family name in such a way. A Corretti grandson could father illegitimate children all day long, and he would not have cared. Let one of his granddaughters get pregnant, with no man in sight, and he most certainly would have come unglued.
Alessandro was a Corretti male and would be no different. He’d learned at their grandfather’s knee how to run this family and she could not take the risk he was somehow more enlightened. He’d never been enlightened enough to pay attention to her in all these years, which told her a lot about how he already felt about her. Add in the humiliation of his aborted wedding, and she was certain he was in no mood to be sympathetic.
“How can you be sure, Lia?”
She had to give herself a mental shake to retrieve the thread of the conversation. He wanted to know how she could be sure the baby was his, as if she was the kind of woman who had a different sexual partner every night.
“Because I am. Because I’ve been with no one else.”
He swore softly.
Her cheeks heated. Hot emotion whipped through her. She was tired of feeling guilty, tired of feeling as if she was the one who’d done something wrong. She felt snappish.
“This isn’t ideal for me, either, you know. I didn’t ask to get pregnant, especially not my first time ever having sex—”
She broke off as she realized what she’d said. His face grew thunderous. He closed the distance between them, stopped just short of grabbing her. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “What did you say?”
Lia’s heart pounded. Adrenaline roared through her veins. She felt light-headed. “Nothing,” she whispered as his eyes darkened. “It was nothing.”
“You told me that night it had been a long time… .” His voice was diamond-edged.
“I thought if I told you the truth, you’d send me away.”
He swallowed, hard. “I would have. I should have anyway.” His gaze dropped, his dark lashes dipping to cover his beautiful eyes. “I thought something was … different with you. But it had been so long since I’d been with anyone that I dismissed my intuition. You didn’t act like a virgin, but you felt like one when I …”
He swore again, his eyes meeting hers once more. “I’d have done things differently if I’d known. Been more gentle. You should have told me.”
Lia couldn’t stop herself from lifting a hand and sliding it along the bare skin of his arm. It was the first time she’d touched him, really touched him, in a month. And the electric sizzle ricocheting through her body told her just how little had changed for her.
“I should have. I know it. But everything was so surreal, and I was afraid it would end. You were the first person to make me feel wanted in a very long time. I liked that feeling.”
He moved away from her, went over and sank down on a chair. Then he sat forward and put his head in his hands. Lia didn’t say anything. She didn’t move, though her heart throbbed at the sight of him looking so overwhelmed.
“This is not what I expected to happen at this point in my life,” he said to the floor.
“I don’t think either of us did,” she replied, swallowing. “And though I could make it all go away with a visit to a doctor, as you intimated earlier, I can’t do that. It’s not who I am or what I want.”
He lifted his head. “No, I know that.” He blew out a breath, swore. And then he stood again, his presence nearly overwhelming her as his eyes flashed fire. “The press will have a field
