Tara Pammi - A Hint of Scandal

His jaw clenched. “Don’t push it, Olivia.”

His dark warning only incensed her more. “This is about your pride, your image, isn’t it? You can’t be seen as the man who married the wrong woman, the less-than-perfect twin. God forbid that the world find out that you’re prone to mistakes just like the rest of us normal mortals.”

A smile, sharper than cut glass, curved his mouth as he pulled her toward him, two hundred pounds of intensity scorching her. “I’ve spent every waking moment of my life as a child haunted by the press. At seven, when my parents left me behind at a movie screening, at seventeen, when I was part of a criminal investigation. My childhood was like one of those bizarre reality shows based on Hollywood where nothing is sacred, nothing is left alone. Only it was my life that everybody was watching. I’ve been dragged through courts, have been studied like I was an exhibit at a zoo, have had stories written about me since I could barely talk. Enough fodder to last the press a lifetime. I don’t intend to give them any more.”

His face set into unyielding granite, he stood looking down on her. His words sounded as though they were coming from a dark place that warred with the cool exterior he presented to the world. His blue gaze glittered with pain. It robbed her of speech, questions she wanted to ask submerged beneath the overwhelming need to comfort him. “I walked away from that, made a different life for myself. But you know what? The shadow of it is never far behind. Do you know what that feels like? To have your every decision, every action studied, dissected under a microscope for even the smallest of mistakes, to know that the whole world, including your own damn parents, is waiting for you to fall.”

She laughed, her bitterness spilling over into that sound. “Obviously, you don’t know everything about me.”

“I do. But you bring it on yourself with your reckless, indiscriminate behavior.”

She flinched, each word a sharp twist in her side.

A hint of softness entered his eyes, and he moved closer to her. As though he regretted his remark. Yet whatever she had imagined, it was gone in a fleeting second. A mirage.

What was she doing? She was seeing things she wanted to see in him, letting her mind pull her down into an alternate reality. For some reason, she wanted to find a chink in him, something that would level the field between them. She was instantly at a disadvantage with anyone she met, her past a sword hanging over her head. And she didn’t care, or at least she had painstakingly trained herself to not care. But with Alexander, she realized with a sinking sensation, all bets were off.

“Why do we have to go anywhere?” she said, hating the note of anxiety in her voice. She grabbed his wrists, ready to beg. She didn’t know which haunted her more. The prospect of going back to Paris, or the looming pretense that she was his wife. Only a few hours in his company and she already felt as if she was coming apart at the seams, her armor already cracking. At least, here in his vast mansion, she needn’t see the man unless absolutely necessary. “Why can’t we just stay here until she’s back and then you two can jet off to wherever you want?”

It was the hint of pleading in Olivia’s words that hauled Alexander out of his own private hell. Until now, she had been all fire and lightning, like a Caribbean thunderstorm. Yet now, with her lush mouth pinched, she seemed anything but.

Reluctant concern sliced through him. No one wanted to re-visit their scene of crime. He understood that better than anyone. But he didn’t have a choice, either. For more than ten years, he had kept himself out of the trash rags, taken care of his sister, and forged a different life. He didn’t intend to let anyone wreck his life or his sister’s, not the press, not his mother. “Because I have obligations, Olivia, people who can’t wait to see me in Paris with my loving wife in tow.

“If word leaks out that you stood next to me instead of Kim at the ceremony, we’ll become exclusive features on every damn channel, on every social media site. Not only will they hound me, but they will make your sister’s life and yours, a living hell. So, if I have to endure your company until I can do damage control, I’ll do it. And seeing the countless number of times your sister has saved your delectable ass, I would think you can bear my company a few more days, for her.”

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