A Scandal in the Headlines - By Caitlin Crews Page 0,36

he was still boiling over with all the frustration he’d unloaded on his assistant over the past few hours. He made a mental note to increase the man’s annual bonus.

“One more week, Giovanni,” he’d snapped when yet another Corretti family crisis had been trotted out as if it was a critical business issue that required his immediate attention. Because Alessandro was expected to care, to be responsible. To handle everyone else’s mess. “I’m on holiday. Tell them to sort it out themselves, or wait.”

“But, sir …” His assistant had cleared his throat. “They grow more insistent by the hour!”

“Then I suggest you earn your outrageous salary,” Alessandro had growled, ending the call. But it hadn’t done much for the restless agitation that still coursed through him, making him feel edgy.

He slowed as he drew closer to Elena, tucked up in the shade of an umbrella, paging through foreign magazines with every outward appearance of lazy contentment. For some reason, that flipped a kind of switch in him.

One more week to forty days. One more week until he and Elena were finished—or bound together in a way he’d tried not to think about too closely. One more week, and he wasn’t ready.

He didn’t want the life he’d left behind when he’d fled Sicily a month ago. He didn’t want to slip back into that same old role that had brought him nothing but grief for the whole of his adult life. He didn’t want to dance to the tune of a dead man, or fight these losing battles against his family’s bad reputation. He was as tired of it as he’d been the day he’d left.

Just as he was fed up with Elena’s stubborn determination to keep him at arm’s length.

He knew what she was doing, with her mysterious smiles and the sex she doled out as if she was nothing more than a sensual buffet and he a mindless glutton. She was giving him what she thought he wanted. Soothing the savage beast.

But he knew there was more to her, and he wanted it. He was so damned tired of half measures, of almost. He wanted everything she had. Every last secret. He wanted to know her better than he knew himself.

He wanted her.

Alessandro was sick and tired of settling for less.

“It’s been thirty-three days, Elena,” he said when he reached her side. He waited until she looked up from her magazine, and then smiled. “Does that mean we already have our answer?”

“Good morning to you, too,” she said in her usual way, arch and arid, but this time he sensed her temper beneath it. And he couldn’t have said why he wanted to see it so much, so badly. “And no. There are a few days left before I’d jump to any conclusions.”

For a moment, they only gazed at each other, and he could feel what flowed between them. That wild electricity, as always, but there was something else beneath it. Something real. He was sure of it.

She shifted position, and smiled in a way she knew by now was guaranteed to poke at his hunger. Her fingers plucked at the ragged hem of the denim shorts she wore beneath an open-necked, nearly sheer shirt that flowed all around her in bright reds and deep blues, hinting at the delectable curves beneath. Her smooth legs went on forever, sun-kissed and shaped so beautifully. She patted the lounger beside her, and it caused him physical pain not to put his hands on her. Not to wrap those legs around his waist, throw them over his shoulders, revel in all the ways he wanted her.

But it wasn’t enough, and he didn’t care that she wanted it that way. That she was using their explosive chemistry to hide in. He couldn’t allow it any longer.

“I wonder what would happen if we kept our clothes on,” he said then, quietly, and her eyes widened. “What then, Elena? What do you think we’d discover?”

“That we are perfect strangers,” she replied coolly, but her clear eyes darkened. “Who never should have met in the first place.”

“I’m not convinced.” He held her gaze, saw the hint of panic in hers. “What are you hiding?”

He was sure he saw her flinch, then control it. Almost too fast to track.

“What could I possibly be hiding?” she retorted. “You’ve taken everything. You know everything. There’s nothing left.”

“I’ve taken your body, yes,” he agreed. “I know it very well, just as you intended. But what about the rest of you?”

He