A Facade to Shatter(38)

“But your mother and I love you,” his father was saying. “We want to know what’s going on in truth.”

Zach’s jaw felt tight. “She’s pregnant,” he said, and then felt immediately guilty for saying it. As if he were betraying Lia. As if it were her secret and not his, too.

He could hear the intake of breath on the other end of the phone. No doubt his father was considering how to minimize the embarrassment of his only son making such a foolish mistake.

Except the idea it was a mistake made him angry. How could it be a mistake when there was a small life growing inside Lia now? A life that was one half of him.

“You are certain the baby is yours?”

Zach ground his teeth together. An expected question, one he’d asked, too, and yet it irritated him. “Yes.”

His father blew out a breath. “All right, then. We’ll do what we need to do to minimize the damage.”

“Damage?” Zach asked, his voice silky smooth and hard at the same time.

And yet had he not thought the very same thing? Had he not proposed this arrangement to Lia in order to minimize the damage to their families—most specifically his?

He had, and it infuriated him that he’d thought it for even a moment. What was wrong with him?

“You know what I mean,” his father said tightly.

“I do indeed. But Lia is not a commodity or a project to be managed. She’s an innocent young woman, she’s pregnant with my child and I’m marrying her just as soon as I get the license.”

His father was silent for the space of several heartbeats. “Very well,” he said softly. “Your mother and I will look forward to meeting her.”

It was the same sort of cool statement his father always made when he wasn’t pleased but knew that further argument would result in nothing changing. Zach felt uncharacteristically irritated by it. He knew how his father was, and yet he’d thought for the barest of moments that his parent might actually have a conversation about Lia and marriage instead of one based on how Zach’s choices would impact the family.

Zach didn’t bother to waste time with any further pleasantries. “If that’s all, I have things to attend to,” he said in clipped tones.

“Of course,” his father said. “We’ll be in touch.”

Zach ended the call and sat at his desk for several minutes. He’d never once had a meaningful conversation with his father. It bothered him. Instead of telling the older man what kind of hell he’d been through in the war, and how it really made him feel to be treated like a returning hero, he smiled and shook hands and did his duty and kept it buried deep inside.

Because that’s what a Scott did.

The gardener rolled a wheelbarrow full of something across the lawn outside. Zach watched his progress. The man stopped by a winding bed of roses and began clipping stems, pruning and shaping the bushes. He was whistling.

Two days ago, Zach had been going about his life as always, attending events, making speeches and feeling empty inside. It was the life he knew, the life he expected.

Now, oddly enough, he felt like those bushes, like someone had taken shears to him and begun to shape him into something else. They were cutting out the dead bits, tossing them on the scrap heap and leaving holes.

He felt itchy inside, jumpy. He stood abruptly, to do what he didn’t know, but then Lia moved across his vision and he stopped in midmotion. She was strolling down the wide lawn in the early morning sunshine, her long hair streaming down her back, her lush form clad in leggings and a loose top.

He watched her move, watched the grace and beauty of her limbs, and felt a hard knot form in his gut. She went over to the gardener and started to talk. After a moment, the man nodded vigorously and Lia picked up a set of pruning shears. Zach watched in fascination as she began to cut branches and toss them on the pile.

He suddenly wanted to be near her. He wanted to watch her eyes flash and chin lift, and he wanted to tug her into his arms and kiss her until she melted against him the way she had last night in the art gallery.





CHAPTER NINE



“YOU DON’T NEED to do that.”

Lia looked up from the rosebush she’d been pruning to find Zach watching her. She hadn’t heard him approach. He stood there, so big and dark and handsome that her heart skipped a beat in response.

He was wearing faded jeans and a navy T-shirt, and his hands were shoved in his pockets. He looked … delicious. And somehow weary, too.