A Facade to Shatter

Chapter TWELVE

SHE WAS LOOKING at him curiously, her brows drawing down over her lovely eyes. He could tell she was grappling with herself, with the things he was saying. Did she want to run? Did she want to lock herself in her room, away from him?

He almost wished she would. It would make things so much easier.

Because he was enjoying this too much, sitting here on the lanai with her and talking about their lives while they ate and watched the sun sink into the sea. He couldn’t remember ever enjoying a woman’s company the way he did hers. He loved women, loved sex, but companionship? He’d never thought of that before. Never cared. The old Zach changed women the way he changed clothes—frequently and as the situation dictated.

But, with Lia, he enjoyed the simple pleasures of spending time with her. It was a dangerous thing. Because she made him feel as if he could be normal again, when he knew he never could. He’d changed too much to ever go back to what he’d been before.

In the beginning, he’d thought it was possible. He’d thought the dreams would go away with time. That’s what everyone said he needed: time. Time was the great healer. Time made everything better. Time, time, time.

He’d had time. More than a year’s worth, and nothing was the same. He had to accept that it never would be. He might always be plagued by dreams and fears, the same as he was plagued with unpredictable headaches. Those had changed his ability to fly forever, so why did he think time could fix the other stuff?

It couldn’t. She couldn’t.

“What line?” she asked, her voice soft and strong at once. As if she was challenging him. As if she didn’t believe him. His chest felt tight as emotions filled him. This woman—this sweet, innocent woman—had faith in him. It was a stunning realization. And a sobering one.

He didn’t want to fail her. And he didn’t want to fail their child.

Another paradigm-shifting realization.

“It’s nothing,” he said, surprised at the trembling in his fingers as he reached for his wine. “Forget it.”

She kept staring at him, her eyes large and liquid. “You are a man of integrity and honor,” she said. “I do not doubt that at all.”

“I tried to pay you off and send you away, Lia. Or have you forgotten?”

She picked up her glass. “I have not. But I understand why you did it.”

“Because I’m an arrogant bastard with an unhealthy sense of self-importance?” He meant it to be self-deprecating, but he recognized the truth in it, too. He’d had his family consequence drummed into him from birth, after all.

“I wouldn’t have put it that way,” she said carefully, and he laughed.

She looked at him in confusion, and he didn’t blame her. Just a moment ago, the conversation had been so serious, so dramatic. Now that it had moved away from the deeply intense and dark things residing in his soul, he could find humor in her reaction.

“Because you are too sweet,” he said. He reached for her hand. The heat that sparked inside him was always surprising.

She frowned. “I don’t feel particularly sweet. I feel quite cross at the moment, actually.”

He brought her hand to her mouth, nibbled the skin over her knuckles. “I think I know how to change that,” he murmured.

Lia’s insides were melting. She didn’t want to melt just yet, but she realized she had no choice in the matter. Sparks were zinging and pinging inside her like a fireworks display on New Year’s eve.

She was still concerned about the things he’d said, about the self-loathing beneath his mask, but it seemed the subject was now closed. She’d been allowed a peek at the raw, tormented nature of Zach Scott, but now he was wrapped up tight again and she wasn’t getting in.

She wanted to know the man who dreamed, who worked hard to make those speeches and ignore the triggers that could send him spiraling out of control. She wanted to touch the heart of him, she realized.

The way he’d touched hers.

He tugged her toward him until she got up and went to his side. Then he was pulling her down on his lap, tilting her back in his arms. His eyes gleamed with heat, and a hot wave of longing washed through her with the same kind of relentless surge of the ocean beyond.

“No more talking, Lia,” he said, his fingers gliding over the skin beneath her collarbone.

When his lips replaced his fingers, her head fell back against the chair. His mouth moved over her, teasing, tormenting. The ocean pounded the shore a few yards away, and the trade winds blew, and Lia shuddered and gasped and knew she’d found heaven.

Her heart hurt with everything she felt: passion, hot and bright; fear, cold and insidious; and love, warm and glowing, like the sun as it had been right before it sank into the sea. There was a rightness about this, a rightness that felt like destiny and perfection.

She was meant to be here, and Zach was meant to be the man she shared her life with. She shivered again as he unbuttoned her shirt and peeled it back to reveal her shoulders and the soft swell of her breasts against the silk of her bra.

“Bellissimo,” he said, his voice a silky purr. “Ho bisogno di te, Lia.”

I need you.

Lia shivered again, her entire body on fire from tip to toes as his gaze raked her with that naked hunger she’d come to crave.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

His mouth came down on hers, and she was lost to anything but this molten hot fire between them. She wrapped her arms around him and shifted in his lap—and felt the hard evidence of his arousal pressing against her bottom.

His body tightened beneath her—and then all that beautiful power was lifting her, carrying her into the house while she clung to him and pressed kisses to his jaw, his neck, the delicious skin of his collarbone.

Soon, she was on her feet in the master suite. The doors were still slung open to let in the breezes, but they were completely alone out here on this remote stretch of beach. Zach stripped away her silky top and tailored trousers until she stood before him in nothing but her bra and a tiny scrap of silk that covered her sex.

His eyes darkened as they drifted over her, and a thrill shot through her.

“You look good enough to eat, Lia,” he purred.

A fresh wave of heat pulsed inside her. She was wet, hot, and she wanted him.

But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t take those three steps to him, couldn’t wrap her arms around him and be a wanton, seductive woman. Always she feared she wouldn’t do it right, that he’d disapprove, or that he’d push her away and tell her she wasn’t good enough, after all.

She knew better, she really did. But when you’d believed something your entire life, it was difficult to suddenly stop in a moment where every gesture, every touch, every look, set off firestorms inside. You’d do anything to keep the storm happening, anything to keep feeling the sweet heat. You would not take a risk.

He took a step toward her, his big body menacing—but in a good way. In a hard, protective, thoroughly delicious way.

“Do you want to touch me?” he asked.

She could only nod her head.

“Do it, then,” he told her. “Touch me wherever you want. However you want.”

“You have too many clothes on,” she said, and blushed.

His laugh was deep, sexy, sinful. “Take them off, then.”

She moved toward him, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt until she could finally push it free. It fell off his shoulders and landed in a pile at his feet. The shorts he’d changed into hung low on his body, revealing ridges of hard muscle and the perfect slash of hip bones.

She wanted to run her tongue along those bones. Wanted to dip it into the hollow of his abdomen, and then slide it down to the thick, hard length of his penis. But she didn’t. She just stood and gaped like a kid in a candy store.

Zach swore, and then he was unbuttoning his shorts and shoving them down. His underwear went with them until he stood before her gloriously naked. His penis jutted out proudly, and his warrior’s body made her mouth water.

She forgot herself. She reached for him.

But he reached for her, too, and soon they were lost in each other, kissing and touching and feeling what they’d missed for the past few weeks.

Lia wrapped herself around him until he put his hands on her bottom and lifted her. Her legs scissored around his waist as he carried her the few steps to the bed and tumbled her backward onto it.

“I wanted to seduce you slowly. But I can’t wait, Lia,” he managed finally, the hard ridge of his erection riding against the silk of her panties.

“Me, neither,” she said—panted, really.

He rose up above her, jerked her panties down her legs and discarded them—and then he was back, pushing inside her until they were joined completely.

This, she thought, eyes closed, back arched, this utter perfection of his body so deeply within hers. This was what she wanted. What she needed.

His mouth fused to hers as he began to move. He wound his fingers into hers, pushed her arms above her head and proceeded to devastate her utterly with his lovemaking.

Days passed. Glorious sex- and sun-drenched days. They didn’t talk about the military again, didn’t talk about Zach’s dreams. He slept with her at night, though she hadn’t believed he would. The first night, when they’d made love and she was so thoroughly languid that she couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it, he’d alarmed her by climbing from the bed and gathering his clothes.

When she’d asked him where he was going, he’d informed her he was going to his room. She’d sat up, the sheet tucked around her still-naked and glowing body, and wanted to cry. He’d told her it was best for them both, and that it wasn’t her. It was him. She knew what he meant, but it still hurt to see him willing to walk away when she would have gladly walked across a room of broken glass just to be by his side.

He’d left her alone, and she’d turned to stare out at the ocean glowing beneath a full moon. The waves crashed against the shore, broke against the jagged rock cliffs that dotted the shoreline, and she felt as if her heart was broken and jagged, too.

Fifteen minutes later, Zach had returned. When he’d slipped into bed with her, she’d been unable to contain the small cry that erupted from her. He’d pulled her close, his mouth at her throat, and told her he wanted to try to stay with her.

She’d put her arms around him, threaded her fingers into that silky hair and nearly wept with relief and fierce joy.

They had not slept. Not at first. No, within minutes, Zach was inside her again, his body taking hers to heights that made the peak of Mount Everest look like an afternoon trek up a tiny foothill.

Finally, they crashed to the bottom again and fell asleep, entangled in each other’s arms.

The days began to pass, each one as perfect and heartbreaking as the last. They spent hours making love, hours in the sunshine—floating in the pool, lying on the beach—and didn’t leave the house to go anywhere. A service did the shopping and cleaning for them, so all they had to worry about was fixing their meals.

Zach did a great job at that, so there was nothing lacking in their self-imposed isolation. He’d been right, too, about the paparazzi. There were none on this lonely stretch of beach. They were opportunists, and opportunity was easier elsewhere.

The papers were filled at first with news of their hasty marriage and tropical honeymoon. Zach merely laughed and said it had all gone perfectly to plan. Eventually, though they were still news, they weren’t on the front pages of the gossip rags anymore. Some Hollywood starlet and her latest drunk-driving conviction were taking center stage at the moment.

Lia spoke with her grandmother. The older woman seemed happy for her, though sad as well that she hadn’t been at the wedding. Lia gave her some story about wildly beating hearts and true love being impatient, and her grandmother accepted it. Her cousin, apparently, was currently preoccupied with his own issues and wasn’t inclined to worry about her fate at all.

She’d married a rich, influential man and that was good enough for the family. As for Rosa, Lia had been emailing back and forth with her sister quite frequently. They were both still wary, but there was a budding relationship that Lia thought might eventually grow into something she cherished.

Right now, however, she cherished Zach. She looked up from her book and let her gaze slide over him where he stood in the infinity pool, having just emerged from his swim. He was so very beautiful, hard and lean and fit in ways that made her mouth water.

And virile. She couldn’t forget that one. The man did not tire out in the bedroom, or not until he’d exhausted himself pleasing her.

It was a good trait in a husband, she thought wickedly.

She was growing bolder in her experiments with his body. At first, she’d been afraid to try anything, afraid she would get it wrong and he’d not tell her because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

But if she was getting it wrong, then he was a superb actor, because his gasps and groans and urgent touches and kisses spurred her to even greater experiments.

Like last night, when she’d taken him in her mouth as they sat out here on the lanai in the dark and listened to the ocean.

“Lia,” he’d gasped as she’d freed him and then swirled her tongue around the head of his penis. And then he’d grabbed fistfuls of her hair and held her gently but firmly while she took him into her mouth. Her heart had beat so hard, so loud in her ears, but she could still hear him making those sounds of pleasure in his throat.

Before he’d orgasmed, however, he’d pulled her up and made her straddle him. She’d been wearing a silken nightie, no panties, and she’d sunk down on him while he held her hips and guided her.

She didn’t remember much after that, except for the frantic way she’d ridden him until they’d both collapsed on the chaise longue. Much later, he’d carried her to bed and repeated the performance.

“What are you reading?” he said now, arraying his splendid form on the lounge beside her.

She held up her book. “I’m learning about the flowering plants of Hawaii. And how they make leis. Quite fascinating.”

He groaned. “Please don’t let me find you out pruning the plumeria one morning, searching for the perfect blooms.”

Lia looked across at the single plumeria tree near the side of the house. It was tall, at least twenty feet, and filled with blooms whose perfume wafted over to her even now. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It’s huge, and I’d need a ladder.”

“You are definitely not getting on a ladder,” he growled.

She laughed. “Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

His expression softened, his gaze raking over her. She got that warm glow inside that she always did. The words she’d not yet said to him welled behind her teeth, threatened to burst out into the open if she didn’t work to contain them.

How could she tell him she loved him when that would be the ultimate soul-baring act she could perform? She’d be naked before him, naked in a way she could never take back. And he would have the ability to crush her. A single word. A single look.

He could crush her beneath his well-shod heel and she’d never recover.

Dio.

His brows drew down. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked. “Do you need to see a doctor?”

Lia rolled her eyes. It was a screen to cover all her raw, exposed feelings, but it was also a true reaction. He was incessantly worried about her health, which was sweet, but also managed to exasperate her.

“Zach, I’m fine. I have an appointment with the doctor on Oahu next week, remember?”

He continued to study her like she was a bug under a microscope. “Would you tell me if you were unwell? Or would you hide it?”

She blinked. “Why on earth would I hide such a thing?”

He looked at her for a long minute. And then he shrugged. “I have no idea. I just get the feeling that sometimes you aren’t being completely honest about what you’re feeling.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Wow, he’d nailed it in one. But not for the reason he supposed. She reached out and grasped his hand. His skin was still cool from the pool. “I’m not used to sharing my life with anyone,” she said truthfully. “I’m used to being self-reliant in many ways, but if I felt truly ill, I would tell you. I don’t want anything to happen to this baby.”

“Or you,” he said, and her heart seemed to stop beating in her chest. A moment later, it lurched forward again, beating in triple time. She told herself not to read anything into that statement, but, oh, how her heart wanted to.

He turned away and reached for his tablet computer while her pulse surged and her heart throbbed. She wanted what he’d said to mean something. Wanted it desperately. But he sat there scrolling through his tablet so casually, and she knew that it hadn’t meant a thing. Oh, he didn’t want her to hurt herself, certainly.

But not because he didn’t know what he’d do if she weren’t here. Not because the air he breathed would suddenly grow stale without her. Not because his life would cease to be bright if she were not in it.

Lia turned away from him, her eyes pricking with tears, and picked up the virgin mai tai he’d fixed for her before he slipped into the pool. The trade winds blew so gently across her skin, and the sun was bright in the azure sky above. It was so perfect here, and she’d let herself be lulled by it.

But she had to remember there was nothing about this situation that was permanent. It could all end tomorrow, if he so chose. Lia shivered and tried not to imagine what would happen when it did.

In the end she didn’t need to imagine a thing.

There was a storm in the middle of the night. It was a rare occurrence on Maui, because the trade winds and the air pressure didn’t usually allow for it, but tonight there was thunder and jagged lightning sizzling over the ocean.

Lia woke with a jerk when a crack of thunder sounded close by. Zach was beside her, sitting up, his eyes wide.

“Zach?”

He didn’t move. She reached for him. He jerked, then spun and pinned her to the bed. His eyes were wild, his skin damp. He growled something unintelligible.

“Zach, caro, it’s me,” she said. “It’s Lia.”

He was very still. “Lia?”

“Yes.”

The tension in his body collapsed. He rolled away from her with a groan and lay on his back, an arm thrown over his eyes. “Jesus,” he breathed. “I could have hurt you.”

She propped herself on an elbow and leaned over him. “You wouldn’t,” she said, utterly convinced.

The arm fell away and his dark eyes gleamed at her as he drew in deep lungfuls of breath. “How can you be so sure? I’m a mess, Lia.” He choked out something unintelligible. “A damn mess.”

Fear was beginning to dance along the surface of her psyche. He frightened her, but not physically. “I don’t believe that.”

He laughed bitterly. “You’re too damn trusting. Too naive. You have no idea what goes on in this world.”

He threw the covers back and got out of bed while she sat there with her heart pinching and her chest aching. He yanked on a pair of shorts and stalked outside, onto the balcony, oblivious to the rain coming down.

Lia’s first instinct was to stay where she was, to let him cool off. But she couldn’t do it. She loved him too much, and she hated when he was hurting.

She climbed from the bed and put on her robe. Then she went to stand in the open door and look at him.

The rain washed over him, soaking his hair, running in rivulets down his chest. He looked lonely and angry and her heart went out to him. She knew what it was like to be lonely and angry. She wanted nothing more than to fix it for him.

“Zach, please talk to me.”

He spun to look at her. “You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

She took a step toward him.

He held a hand up to stop her. “Don’t come out here. You’ll get wet.”

“It doesn’t seem to be hurting you,” she said, though she stopped anyway, folding her arms around her body. “And you’re wrong. I do want to hear what you have to say.”

He shoved his wet hair back from his face, but he didn’t make a move to come inside. Thunder rolled in the distance. A flash of lightning zipped along the sky, slicing it in two for a brief moment.

“I should have known better,” he said. “I should have known it was a mistake to think this could work between us.”

Her chest filled with chaotic emotion, tightening until she thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe. But she held herself firmly, arms crossed beneath her breasts, and refused to let him see how much he hurt her. He thought she was naive, trusting. Unworthy.

It stung. But, worse, the idea she was a mistake threatened to make her fold in on herself.

“You can’t mean that,” she said tightly, though her brain gibbered at her to be quiet. To detach. To roll into a ball and protect herself. “These past couple of weeks have been perfect.”

“Which is why it was a mistake,” he snapped. “There’s no such thing as perfect, not where I’m concerned.”

“Because you don’t deserve those medals?” she threw back at him, anger beginning to grow and spin inside her belly. “Because you have bad dreams and think you’re so terrible?”

He took a step toward her, stopped. His hands clenched into fists at his side. He was close enough he could have reached out and touched her. But he didn’t.

“You want to know the truth? I’ll tell you,” he grated. “The whole, sorry story.”

He turned his back on her, walked over to the railing. The rain was lessening, but it was still coming down. When he turned back to her, his expression was tight.

“You’ve heard part of it. I broke my leg during the ejection. It hurt like hell, and I couldn’t move much. But I’d landed near a protected ravine and hunkered down to wait. I expected the enemy to find me first. But they didn’t. The marines did. Only the enemy wasn’t far behind.”

Lia imagined him alone like that, imagined him waiting, and fear crawled up her throat, no matter that she’d heard him say this part before. She wanted to go to him, but she knew he didn’t want her to. It made her desperate inside, but all she could do was listen.

“The medic drugged me,” he said. “And I couldn’t help them defend our position when they most needed me. Hell, I think I drifted in and out of consciousness. I have no idea how long it went on, but it seemed to take forever. They hit us with grenades, small-arms fire. It was ceaseless, and air support wasn’t coming no matter how many times the marines called for it. One by one, the enemy picked off the marines, until it was one sergeant and me.”

He didn’t keep going, but she knew he wasn’t finished. He turned away again, and she could see the tightness in his jaw, his shoulders. Zach was on edge in a way she’d only ever seen him when he was in the grips of a dream.

“Zach?”

He turned his head toward her. “Here’s the part you don’t know. The part no one knows. He gave me a pistol. Put it in my hand and removed the safety. And then he told me it was my choice when the enemy came. Shoot them, or shoot myself.”

“No,” she breathed as horror washed over her.

Zach’s gaze didn’t change, didn’t soften. “Obviously,” he said, “I didn’t shoot myself. I didn’t shoot anyone. Sometime in the night, the last marine died. And I wanted to shoot myself. I wanted it pretty badly.”

“Oh, Zach …” Her eyes filled with tears.

“What you need to know, Lia, is that I tried to do it. I put the gun under my jaw.” He put his finger just where he would have stuck the gun. Her heart lurched at the thought of him lying helplessly like that with so much death and destruction all around him. “But I couldn’t pull the trigger.”

The words hung in the air between them, like poison.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Lia said fiercely, her throat a tight, achy mess. How close had he come? How close had she been to never, ever knowing him? It didn’t bear thinking about.

“I can’t forget that night. I can’t forget how they all died, and how I could do nothing about it. I can’t forget that I should have died with them.”

Lia put a hand over her belly without conscious thought. “You weren’t meant to die, Zach. You were meant to live. For me. For our baby.”

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.”