A Scandal in the Headlines - By Caitlin Crews Page 0,65
her.
It seemed to take a thousand years to lift her gaze to his, to confirm what she already knew.
What her body was already celebrating, with an insistent ache in her heart and core alike.
“What are you doing here?” she gasped out.
Alessandro’s wicked brows rose in arrogant amazement.
“You left me.”
“I had to come home,” she blurted out in a rush, the strangest urge to apologize to him, to offer him comfort, working its way through her. Proving, she thought, her terrible weakness. “And what does it matter to you?”
“You left me,” he said again, each word distinct and furious.
Elena ignored the things that clamored in her then, all of that fear and despair that she’d lost him, all of her desperate, foolish love for a man she couldn’t have. Not really. Not the way she wanted him.
“Is this about the land?” she asked baldly. “Because you didn’t have to come all the way here for that. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”
His eyes blazed, so lethally hot she took a step back, and then cursed herself for it. Alessandro was a lot of things, but he wasn’t Niccolo. She knew he would never hurt her—not like that.
“It turns out,” Alessandro bit out, betrayal and accusation in those dark green eyes, “that I am sick and tired of being discarded on my wedding day.”
Elena paled, then reddened.
“Not here,” she managed to get out.
She ducked into one of the ancient passageways that wound around behind a few of the shops and deposited them on a lonely stretch of the rocky cliffs overlooking the small harbor. And then she faced him.
He stood there, dark and furious, dressed in one of those impossibly sleek suits that made him look terrifying and delicious all at once, a symphony of powerful, wealthy male beauty. It reminded her that she was only a village girl in old clothes and messy hair, no doubt smelling again of fish.
“What exactly are you doing, Elena?” he asked, his voice clipped.
“This is where I belong,” she said defiantly. “This is who I am.”
He only watched her, his dark green eyes narrow and fierce.
“I brought you something,” he said after a moment. He reached into an inside pocket of his suit jacket and she was sure, for a dizzy moment, that he was going to pull out those torn panties and then what would she do? But instead, he handed her a thick envelope.
Elena took it, her fingers acting of their own accord, a miserable, sinking sensation washing through her, from her throat to her heart to her belly.
“Is this—?” Her throat was so dry she could hear the words scrape as she formed them. “Are these divorce papers?”
This was what she wanted, she tried to tell herself. This was a good thing. But she wanted only to curl up somewhere and cry.
His hard mouth curved into something far too angry to be a smile.
“It’s a legal document,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “It relinquishes any claim I might have had to your family’s land, and hands it back to you.” Elena made a small noise, her fingers clutching almost convulsively at the envelope. “And I suggest you take note of the date. It was signed three days ago.”
Meaning, it took her a confused moment to understand, that he had signed the land over to her before their wedding.
“I don’t …” she whispered.
“In case there is any lingering confusion,” he said in that deadly way of his, “I never wanted the goddamn land. I wanted you.”
Which meant he really was the man she’d wanted him to be—but Elena couldn’t process that. There was nothing but a roar of thunder inside her, loud and overwhelming.
He didn’t love her, she reminded herself then, cutting through all the noise. No matter what kind of man he was.
The envelope shook in her hand. “I don’t know what to say.”
“What a surprise.” His voice was cool, but his eyes burned hot, and she burned with them. “And here I thought your silent defection was so eloquent.”
He reached out for her other hand, taking it in his, and Elena watched in stunned silence—as if it was not her hand at all, as if it was connected to someone else—as he reached into a different pocket and slid the rings she’d left in the penthouse back onto her finger.
“I don’t want those,” she croaked out. His hand closed around hers then, and she felt that electric charge sizzle all the way up her arm.
“They’re yours,” he bit out,