or at least agonized hurt, expecting to have to explain that he hadn’t cheated on her, of course not, that this had all happened months before they’d met. But Anne’s beautiful face was carefully blank.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I need a moment.”
“Take all the time you want.”
Vin went slowly down the aisle toward Scarlett. The people watching from the pews seemed to fall away, their faces smearing into mere smudges of color.
His heart was pounding as he stopped in front of the woman he’d almost convinced himself didn’t exist. Looking at her belly, he said in a low voice, “You’re pregnant?”
She met his eyes. “Yes.”
“The baby’s mine?”
Her chin lifted. “You think I would lie?”
Vin remembered her soft gasp of pain when he’d first taken her, holding her virgin body so hot and hard and tight against his own in the darkness of his bedroom. Remembered how he’d kissed her tears away until her pain melted away to something very different...
“You couldn’t have told me before now?” he bit out.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t...” Then she glanced behind her, and her expression changed to fear.
Three men were striding up the aisle, the leader’s face a mask of cold fury.
“There you are, you little...” He roughly grabbed Scarlett’s wrist. “This is a private matter,” he snarled at Vin, barely looking at him. “Return to your ceremony.”
Vin almost did. It would have been easy to let them go. He felt the pressure of his waiting bride, of the pending merger, of her family, of the cathedral and the archbishop and the many guests, some of whom had flown around the world to be here. He could have told himself that Scarlett was lying and turned his back on her. He could have walked back to calmly speak the vows that would bind his life to Anne.
But something stopped him.
Maybe it was the man’s iron-like grip on Scarlett’s slender wrist. Or the way he and his two goons were dragging her back down the aisle, in spite of her helpless struggles. Maybe it was the panicked, stricken expression on her lovely face as all those wealthy, powerful guests silently watched, doing nothing to intervene.
Or maybe it was the ghost of his own memory, long repressed, of how it had once felt to be powerless and unloved, dragged from his only home against his will.
Whatever it was, Vin found himself doing something he hadn’t done in a long, long time.
Getting involved.
“Stop right there,” he ordered.
The other man’s face snapped toward him. “Stay out of this.”
Vin stalked toward him. “The lady doesn’t want to leave with you.”
“She’s distraught. Not to mention crazy.” The man, sleek and overfed as a Persian cat, yanked on her wrist. “I’m taking her to my psychiatrist. She’s going to be locked away for a long, long time.”
“No!” Scarlett whimpered. She looked up at Vin, her eyes shining with tears. “I’m not crazy. He used to be my boss. He’s trying to force me to marry him and give our baby away.”
Give our baby away.
The four words cut through Vin’s heart like a knife. His whole body became still.
And he knew there was no way he was going to let this man take her.
His voice was ice-cold. “Let her go.”
“You think you can make me?”
“Do you know my name?” Vin said quietly.
The man looked at him contemptuously. “I have no...” His voice trailed off, then he sucked in his breath. “Borgia.” He exhaled the two syllables through his teeth. Vin saw the fear in the man’s eyes. It was a reaction he’d grown accustomed to. “I...I didn’t realize...”
Vin glanced at his own bodyguards, who’d entered the cathedral and surrounded the other men with surgical precision, ready to strike. He gave his chief of security a slight shake of his head, telling them to keep their distance. Then he looked at the man holding Scarlett. “Get. Out. Now.”
He obeyed, abruptly releasing her. He turned and fled, his two bodyguards swiftly following him out of the cathedral.
Noise suddenly rose on all sides. Scarlett fell with a sob into Vin’s arms, against the front of his tuxedo.
And a young man leaped up from a middle pew.
“Anne, I told you! Don’t marry him! Who cares if you’re disinherited?” Looking around the nave, the stranger proclaimed fiercely and loudly, “I’ve been sleeping with the bride for the last six months!”
Total chaos broke out then. The father of the bride started yelling, the mother of the bride wept noisily and, faced with such turmoil, the bride quietly and carefully fainted into a puffy heap of white tulle.
But Vin barely noticed. His world had shrunk to two things. Scarlett’s tears as she wept in relief against his chest. And the tremble of her pregnant body, cradled beneath the protection of his arms.
OUT OF THE frying pan, into the fire.
Scarlett had escaped Blaise, but at what price?
For the last hour, she’d tried to calm the fearful beat of her heart as she sat in a faded floral chair next to a window overlooking a private garden. Vin had brought her to the private sitting room in the rectory behind the cathedral and told her to wait while he sorted things out. A kindly old lady—a housekeeper of some sort?—had pushed a hot cup of tea into her trembling hand.
But the tea had grown cold. She set the china cup into the saucer with a clatter.
Scarlett didn’t know which scared her more. The memory of Blaise’s snarling face. Or the fear of what Vin Borgia might do now to take over her future—and her baby’s.
She should run.
She should run now.
Running was the only way to ensure their freedom.
Growing up, Scarlett had lived in over twenty different places, tiny towns hidden in forests and mountains, sometimes in shacks without electricity or running water. She’d rarely been able to go to school, and when she did, she’d had to dye her red hair brown and use a different name. Things that normal kids took for granted, such as having a real home, friends, going to the same school for a whole year, were luxuries Scarlett had only dreamed of. She’d never played sports, or sung in the school choir, or gone to prom. She’d never even gone on a real date.
Until she was
