A Facade to Shatter(45)

Zach came closer, his brows drawn together. “Is everything all right?”

“I needed space,” she said. “The crowd was too much.”

It wasn’t entirely untrue. She wasn’t accustomed to so many people. Her life in Sicily had rarely involved crowds or massive gatherings. Her grandparents entertained, and quite frequently, but she hadn’t been expected to attend. Now she’d been to three events in as many days, and it was tiring.

“Do you feel well? Should we sit down somewhere?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly.

“Lia.” He stopped in front of her, so close she could feel his heat. Her head tilted back to stare up at him. Her breath shortened in her chest as their eyes caught and held. His hands came up to settle on her shoulders, and she felt a deep throbbing note roll through her at that simple touch. “Don’t lie to me, cara mia.”

She loved it when he spoke to her in Italian.

“Fine, I will tell you,” she said. “I feel overwhelmed, Zach. I feel as if I don’t really know you, and I won’t know you so long as we are constantly putting on a public face. I miss the man I spent time with in Palermo, the one who didn’t say or do anything he didn’t mean. There were no masks there, no appearances to maintain.”

She dropped her gaze, focused on the buttons of his deep blue shirt. He’d worn a gray pinstripe suit, no tie, and Italian loafers. His jacket was open, and his shirt molded to the hard muscles of his chest. It was custom fit, of course—and the effect was mind-blowing on her already addled brain. He was perfect, beautiful.

For the life of her, she still didn’t know what he’d ever seen in her. Or what he ever would see.

“This is my life,” he said. “The way it really is. Palermo was an anomaly.”

“Yes, well, I choose not to believe that is entirely true. You were more you because you weren’t worried about being Zach Scott. You were freer there. You know it’s true.”

His head dropped for a second. And then he was looking at her again, his gaze dark and mysterious. “Yes.”

“That’s it? Just yes?”

He sighed. His hands on her shoulders were burning a hole in her. He slid them back and forth, back and forth, and the tension in her body bent like a bowstring. When he slid them to her upper arms, it wasn’t a relief.

“You’re right. What more do you want me to say?”

She couldn’t believe he’d admitted it. But it made something inside her soar that he had. “About which part?”

“That I felt freer in Sicily. I wasn’t the main attraction, and I knew it. The press might hound me here, they might follow me if I make a well-publicized trip abroad, but Sicily was unexpected. And too quick to matter much, though of course, they now wish they’d pursued me.”

“Why?”

He laughed softly. “Because of you, Lia. Because the confirmed bachelor went to Sicily and came back with a fiancée.”

“Thank heavens they didn’t,” she said, imagining a photographer lurking outside the Corretti Hotel. Or, worse, somehow learning they’d spent two nights together and contriving to get a photo through the open window. Lia shuddered.

“If they had, I doubt any of this would have happened,” he said, and her heart twisted in pain. She knew what he meant.

“Perhaps you wish that had been the case.” She lifted her chin, trying to hide the hurt she felt deep inside. He was so close. Too close. All she could smell was his delicious scent—a hint of spice and hard masculinity. She wanted to step in, close the distance between them and wrap her arms around him.

Her body ached with the need to feel him inside her again. To be needed by him.

Dio, she was pathetic.

She expected him to agree, to step away, put distance between them and tug her toward the house and the party.

He did not do any such thing. Instead, he slid one of those electric hands up to her jaw, cupped her cheek. The other went to the small of her back, brought her that short step closer, until her body was pressed to his, until she could feel the heat and hardness of him emanating through the fabric of his clothes.

“I should wish it,” he said. “But I don’t.”

Her head was tilted back, her eyes searching the hot depths of his. “I don’t know what that means, Zach.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered. And then his lips spread in the kind of wicked smile that made her heart flutter. “I think I’m about to show you, bella mia… .”