âCongratulations, Lia,â he said, his voice chilling her. âYouâve won the jackpot after all.
âYouâre about to become a Scott.â
âThis is not how I wanted this to happen,â she said, on a throat-aching whisper. Tears pressed the backs of her eyes. She couldnât let them fall.
âYou came here,â he said, his voice hard. âWhat did you expect? Did you think I would be happy?â
She dropped her gaze. A single tear spilled free and she dashed it away, determined not to cry in front of him. Not to be weak.
âI had hoped you might be, yes.â She lifted her chin and sucked back her tears. âClearly, I was mistaken.â
âWeâll marry,â he said. âBecause we must. But itâs an arrangement, do you understand? Weâll do it for as long as necessary to protect our families and then weâll end it when the time comes.â
ZACH SCOTT DIDNâT do parties. Not anymore.
Once, heâd been the life of the party. But everything had changed a little over a year ago. Zach shoved his hands into his tuxedo trouser pockets and frowned. Heâd thought coming to Sicily with a friend, in order to attend a wedding, would be an easy thing to do. Thereâd been no wedding, it had turned out, but the reception was taking place anyway. And he stood on the edge of the ballroom, wondering where Taylor Carmichael had got to. Wondering if he could slip away and text his regrets to her.
His head was pounding after a rough night. Heâd been dreaming again. Dreaming of guns and explosions and planes plummeting from the sky.
There was nothing like a fight for survival to rearrange a manâs priorities. Since his plane had been shot down in enemy territory, the kinds of things heâd once doneâfund-raisers, public appearances, speeches, political dinnersâwere now a kind of torture heâd prefer to live without.
Except it was more impossible to get out of those things now than ever before. Not only was he Zachariah James Scott IV, son of an eminent United States senator and heir to a pharmaceuticals fortune, he was also a returning military hero.
Zachâs frown deepened.
Since his rescueâin which every single marine sent to extract him had perishedâheâd been in demand as a sort of all-American poster boy. The media couldnât get enough of him, and he knew a big part of that was his fatherâs continual use of his story in his public appearances.
Zachariah J. Scott III wasnât about to let the story die. Not when it could do him a world of political good.
His son had done his duty when he could have chosen an easier path. His son had chosen to serve his country instead of himself. It was true that Zach could have sat on the Scott Pharmaceuticals board and moved mountains of money instead of flying jets into a war zone. But the jets were a part of him.
Or had been a part of him until the crash had left him with crushing, unpredictable headaches that made it too dangerous to fly.
Yes, everyone loved that heâd bravely gone to war and survived.
Except he didnât feel brave, and he damn sure didnât feel like heâd done anything extraordinary. He didnât want the attention, didnât deserve the accolades. Heâd failed pretty spectacularly, in his opinion.
But he couldnât make them stop. So he stood stiffly and smiled for the cameras like a dutiful military man should, and he felt dead inside. And the deader he felt, the more interested the media seemed to get.
It wasnât all bad, though. Heâd taken over the stewardship of the Scott Foundation, his familyâs charitable arm, and he worked tirelessly to promote military veteransâ causes. They often came back with so little, and with their lives shattered. The government tried to take care of them, but it was a huge jobâand sometimes they fell through the cracks.
It was Zachâs goal to save as many of them as he could. He owed it to them, by God.
He made a visual sweep of the room. At least the media attention wasnât directed at him right now. The Sicilian media was far more interested in the fact the bride had jilted the groom at the altar. Zach was of no interest whatsoever to this crowd. That, at least, was a bonus.
It wasnât often he could move anonymously through a gathering like this one.
Still, he was on edge, as if he were being followed. He prowled the edges of the crowd in the darkened ballroom, his headache barely under control as he searched for Taylor. She wasnât answering his texts, and he was growing concerned. Sheâd been so worried about this trip, about her return to acting, and about the directorâs opinion of her.