A Scandal in the Headlines(49)

But it was too late. The damage was already done.

Elena’s head had spun wildly. She’d let him lead her out of the elevator bank and into his opulent home, and as soon as he’d closed that heavy penthouse door behind them she’d grabbed hold of the nearest wall and sunk down to the floor. Six months of fear and adrenaline and grief had coalesced inside of her and then simply … broken open. Flooding her.

“Don’t you understand?” she’d cried. “Niccolo will see those pictures! He’ll know exactly where I am! It will take him, what? A matter of hours to get to Palermo?”

Alessandro had gazed down at her, an enigmatic expression on his hard face.

“He won’t go through me to get at you,” he’d said. “He’s a coward.”

“I’m thrilled for you that you don’t have to take him seriously,” she’d thrown at him. “But I do. Believe me, Alessandro. I do.”

“Elena.”

She’d hated the way he said her name then, the way it coiled in her, urging her to trust he’d somehow make this go away. To have faith.

“You can’t make this disappear simply because you command it,” she’d told him, caught between weariness and despair. “You have no idea how devious he is, or how determined.”

“If you must insult me,” Alessandro had said then, “please spare my security detail. Aside from today’s disaster, they’re very good at their jobs.”

“For how long?” she’d demanded. “A week or two? Another forty days? When will you tire of this—of me?” She’d stared up at him, daring him to contradict her. Daring him to argue. “Because when that day comes, as we both know it will, Niccolo will be waiting. If I have faith in anything, it’s that.”

Alessandro’s expression had shuttered, but he’d only held her gaze for a strained moment before turning on his heel, murmuring something about unavoidable paperwork and walking out. Leaving her there on his floor to drive herself out of her head with worry and the cold, hard fear that had spurred her on all this time.

The fear she’d set aside when she’d been on Alessandro’s island. When she’d been safe.

She had to leave, she thought now, frowning out the towering windows at the coming dark. She had to run while she still could. That was the obvious conclusion she’d been circling around and around, not wanting to admit it was the only thing that made sense.

Because he’d been right. She didn’t want to leave him. She loved him. It was that simple and that complicated. It always had been.

She turned to look at him then. He was so impossibly, powerfully beautiful. He’d stunned her from the start. And now she knew how that proud jaw tasted. She could lose herself for hours in his hard, cynical mouth. She knew what he could do with those elegant hands of his, with every part of his lean, hard frame. She knew that he felt deeply, and darkly, and that there were mysteries in him she desperately wanted to solve. She knew he’d comforted her, soothing something in her she’d thought ripped forever raw. She knew what it was like when he laughed, when he teased her, when he told her stories. She wanted all of this to be real, for him to be the man she so desperately wanted to believe he was.

She wanted to have faith. She wanted to stay.

God, how she wanted to stay.

He’d thrown off his jacket when he’d returned to the penthouse, lost his tie and loosened the top buttons of his shirt. He looked like what he was. The infinitely dangerous, ruthless and clever CEO of Corretti Media. A man of great wealth and even greater reach. The man who’d taken her body, her painful history, her heart and even her soul. And would take much more than that, she had no doubt. If she let him. If she stayed.

But he didn’t love her. She didn’t kid herself that he ever would. He spoke only of want.

This was sex. Need. A shockingly intense connection mixed with explosive chemistry. Clear all of that away and Elena was as on her own as the day she’d realized even her parents’ home wasn’t safe for her, and had gone on the run. The past forty days had been nothing but consuming lust, blinding fireworks, and all of it a distraction from that ugly little truth.

He looked up then, his dark green eyes searing and too incisive.

“They’ve been posted,” he said without inflection. That was it, then. The paparazzi pictures were online. The clock had started ticking. She had to assume Niccolo was on his way even now. Which meant she was standing here on borrowed time.