A Scandal in the Headlines(46)

But he couldn’t do it.

“I won’t hold you against your will. I won’t even beg.” His voice was low, but all of their history was in it. That dance. This island. All the truths they’d finally laid bare. “Come with me anyway.”

“This isn’t fair,” she whispered, and he shouldn’t have taken it as a kind of harsh victory that she sounded as agonized as he felt. As torn apart. “We agreed.”

“Just this once,” he said fiercely, “just this one time, admit what’s happening here. What’s always been happening here. For God’s sake, Elena—come with me because you can’t bear to leave me.”

Whole worlds moved through her gaze then, and left the overbright sheen of tears in their wake. And it wasn’t enough, that he knew she wanted him, too, that he knew exactly how stark her need was. That he could feel it inside of him, lighting up his own. That he knew he could exploit it, with a single touch.

He needed her to admit it. To say it. He needed all of this to matter to her. And the fact that he was uncomfortable with the intensity of that need—that it edged into territory he refused to explore—didn’t make it any less necessary.

A moment dragged by, too sharp and too hard. Then another.

“I’m not a good person,” she said finally. Her hands opened and closed fitfully, restlessly, at her sides. “And neither are you. A good person would never have allowed what happened between us in Rome to happen at all. I was engaged. And you knew I was with Niccolo when you approached me.” Her gaze slammed into his. “All we do is make mistakes, Alessandro. Maybe that’s all this is. Maybe that’s what we should admit.”

He started toward her, watching her face as he drew closer. He had never been so uncertain of anything or anyone in his life, and yet so oddly sure of her at the same time. So sure of this. He didn’t understand it. But like everything with Elena, from that very first glance, it simply was. Undefinable. Undeniable. But always and ever his.

“I know that you don’t trust me,” he said when he reached her, looking down into her troubled blue gaze. “I know what the name Corretti means to you. I know you think all manner of terrible things about me, and I know you’re waiting for the next blow.” He reached over to trace the vulnerable curve of her mouth with his thumb, making her tremble. “Come to Palermo. Have faith.”

He read the storms in her eyes, across her pretty face. And he forced himself to do nothing at all but wait it out. Wait her out.

“I don’t believe in faith anymore.” A great cloud washed over her, across her face and through those beautiful eyes, and left them shadowed. She pulled in a deep, long breath, then let it out. “But I’ll do it,” she said finally, as if the words were wrenched from her. “I’ll come with you.”

Satisfaction and intense relief ripped through him, making him feel bigger. Wilder. Edgy with a ferocious kind of triumph.

But he wasn’t finished.

“Tell me why.”

Her eyes darkened, and she started to shake her head, started to retreat from him. He slid his hand along her jaw, and held her like that, forcing her to look at him. Keeping her right there in plain sight. Her lips parted slightly, and her breath came hard, as if she was running away the way she no doubt wished she was.

“Tell me,” he said quietly. “I need to hear you say it.”

She gazed back at him. He could feel her pulse against his hand, could see it wild and panicked in her throat. “Because …” she began, and had to stop, as if her throat closed in on her. Her eyes were filled with heat and damp. She swayed on her feet as if there was a great wind howling around them, and it threatened to knock her flat.

But she didn’t fall.

He brushed the knuckles of his other hand over her soft cheek, her distractingly elegant cheekbone.

“Say it,” he whispered.

“Because I can’t leave you,” she said finally, in a broken, electrifying rush. He felt it from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, as if he’d been struck by lightning, by her, all over again. As if she’d shone that bright light into all of that darkness within him, chasing it away at last. “Not yet.”


The helicopter ride was bumpy and noisy, despite the bulky headphones she’d been given to wear, but Elena was happy enough to stay silent while Alessandro and the assistant who’d flown out to meet him discussed Corretti Media business concerns. She soaked in the beckoning Mediterranean blue far below, and pretended the only thing in her head was the sea. The golden sun. The lovely view.