A Facade to Shatter(58)

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.”





CHAPTER THIRTEEN



SICILY 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.