Maisey Yates - Scandals Of The Rich - A Façade to Shatter

She didn’t miss that women slanted their gazes toward her. Some were appraising while others were downright hostile. Zach kept her at his side. Periodically, he would drape an arm around her, or slide his hand into the small of her back to guide her through the crowd. His touches made her jumpy yet she found herself craving them.

Soon they were seated at a large round table toward the front of the gathering. Lia wasn’t intimidated by the array of cutlery and plates before her. She might not be any good at the socializing part of this, but she’d been brought up by Teresa Corretti, the most elegant woman in all of Sicily. Lia knew which fork to use, and which bread plate was hers. She also knew how to sit through a multicourse meal and how to pace herself so that she wasn’t too full before the last course arrived.

But tonight she was finding it hard to concentrate on her food. She was still tired from the trip, and the stress of everything was starting to overwhelm her. She’d left Sicily on impulse, and now she was here with Zach, and he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was.

He was an automaton, an aristocrat, a man who did what he had to do because he cared about things like social standing and reputation. While it wasn’t a foreign concept to her, coming from the Corretti family, it wasn’t what she’d thought she was fleeing toward when leaving Sicily.

She could hardly reconcile the man he was here—dressed in a bespoke tuxedo and sporting an expensive watch—with the stiff military man who’d thrown a medal at her feet. The two did not seem to go together, and it confused her.

“You aren’t eating.”

His breath ghosted over her ear and a shiver of something slid down her backbone. She turned her head, discovered that he was frowning down at her, his dark eyes intense.

“I’m tired,” she said. “My schedule is all messed up. In a couple of hours, I would be waking up and having breakfast, were I still home.”

“You need to eat something. For your health.”

She knew what he meant. And why he didn’t say it. “I’ve eaten the soup and some of the bread.”

“Beef is good for you. There’s iron in there.”

“I’ve had a bite of it.”

“Eat more, Lia.”

“I can’t eat just because you order me to,” she snapped quietly.

Zach glanced at someone across the table and smiled. Then he lifted his hand and slid it along her jaw, turning her head as he did so. To anyone else, the gesture looked loving and attentive. But she knew what it really was. He was attempting to keep her in line.

His eyes held hers. She couldn’t look away. His mouth was only inches away, and she found herself wanting to stretch toward him, wanting to tilt her face up and press her lips to his.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, and one corner of his beautiful, sensual lips lifted. “Yes, precisely,” he murmured. She felt her face flood with heat. “And I am not ordering you to eat, Lia. I’m concerned about your health.”

She dropped her gaze from his. “ Grazie. But I will not let my health suffer, I assure you.”

“Excellent,” he said. “Because you are mine now, and I take care of what is mine.”

A shiver slid through her. And a flash of anger. “Are you certain about that? What if the test results aren’t what you want them to be?”

His eyes sparkled with humor that she sensed was at her expense. “I’ve already had the result. And it is precisely what you said it was.”

Lia wanted to jerk herself out of his grip, but she knew this was not the place to show a bit of temper. “You could not have told me this earlier?”

He shrugged. “Why? You already knew the answer.”

“Perhaps I would like an apology. You did suggest I was lying, as well as exceedingly promiscuous.”

“My mistake.”

“You consider that an apology?”

“I do. You must realize, sugar, that you aren’t the first to try and trap me this way. You’re just the first to succeed.”

Lia shoved her chair back, uncaring how it looked to the other guests at their table. The murmur of conversation ceased and all eyes were on her. She swallowed and stood, hoping the trembling didn’t show.

“If you will excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “I believe I must freshen up.”

Then she turned and marched away without waiting for a response. She was certain the fashionable ladies were appalled with her. The gentlemen probably shrugged it off as foreign eccentricity. Nevertheless, she didn’t quite care what they thought. She wasn’t about to sit there and let Zach talk to her like that.

She found the ladies’ room and went inside to perch on one of the settees and calm down. She refreshed her lipstick in the mirror and smoothed a few stray hairs into place. As she gazed at her reflection, it hit her how unusual her reaction just now had been. She’d sat through enough humiliating Corretti functions in her life to know how to be invisible for the duration.

She also knew how to be a lady whenever any attention happened to turn on her, and she knew that marching away in a huff was not a part of the training her grandmother had instilled in her. Teresa Corretti would be disappointed at that display of temper just now.

Lia curled her hands into fists on her lap and took a deep breath. Damn Zach, he had a way of getting beneath her skin and irritating her so much that she simply reacted without thinking. It wasn’t like her to draw attention to herself, or to argue, but she couldn’t help it with him.

Still, she should not have let him get to her like that. But he’d suggested she’d purposely set out to trap him into marriage, and it made her furious. What kind of God’s gift to women did he think he was anyway? It was ludicrous. And she planned to tell him so just as soon as they were alone and she could give him a proper piece of her mind.

Lia stood and smoothed her dress. She studied herself in the mirror and was pleased with what she saw. Oh, she was still too plump—and too tall—but she cleaned up quite nicely when she was able to wear designer dresses someone had picked out specifically for her shape and coloring.

When she left the ladies’ room, Zach was standing across from the door, leaning against the wall in a sexy slouch that made her heart kick up. He really was spectacular. Tall, broad and intensely handsome. The kind of man that, yes, would have women falling all over him.

“You’ve been gone awhile,” he said.

Lia tilted her chin up. “Yes. I needed to get my temper under control.”

Zach laughed. She didn’t like the way the sound slid beneath her skin. Curled around her heart. Warmed her from the inside out.

“I wasn’t aware you had a temper, Lia.”

“Of course I do. And you know just how to aggravate it.” She’d never really realized precisely how furious another person could make her until she’d met Zach. He had an ability to make her feel things she’d never quite felt before—and to say things she would have never said to another person. Usually, she hid her emotions down deep.

Except with him. With him, she couldn’t help but say what she was feeling.

It was that or burst.

She crossed the hall and stood right in front of him, nearly toe to toe. She was tall in her heels, five-eleven, but she still had to tilt her head back to look up at him. “You might think you are some sort of priceless gift to womankind, Zach Scott, but I’ll have you know that I would much prefer to be back home and for none of this to have happened.”

It wasn’t quite true, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She wasn’t sorry for the two nights they’d spent together. She wasn’t even sorry about her baby. She was sorry for the way it had happened, and for the man it had happened with. Why couldn’t she have chosen a good Sicilian man for her night of rebellion? A single, sexy Sicilian who had no hang-ups about women and their motives.