A Hint of Scandal by Tara Pammi Read Free Book Online

Alexander’s army of high-tech security men in front of her and behind her. She licked her dry lips and set her mouth into a semblance of plea. “And the chances of you lending me your security guys so that I can reach the airport unscathed...?”
    “Zero.”
    Bending his head, he kissed her temple, his warm mouth a searing brand against her sensitized skin. She struggled—purely a reflex. Only he pulled her closer. She opened her mouth to demand that he release her. But the words never formed. His hands crept into her hair and pulled her head back. His mouth hovered a few inches from hers. Her toes curled inside her sneakers. Every nerve ending inside her was crying for his touch even as another part of her screeched a warning. This is wrong.
    Held still by his unrelenting grip, she stared at him. And felt a strange satisfaction flow inside. No, she wasn’t going to kiss him. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t revel in the fact that he was just as susceptible to the treacherous desire between them. It was in the darkening of his crystal-blue eyes, in the thundering beat of his heart, in the sudden gentling of his fingers in her hair.
    Yet Alexander did nothing without thought. Every move was a calculation in the big scheme of his perfect life. She was even more of an idiot if she thought he was as without control as she. She let her body go slack, willing movement into her trembling muscles. “You’re pretending for them, ” she said, the truth a cold blanket over her heated skin.
    His thumb traced a path over her cheek. “That should keep them happy for at least a day.”
    The fact that she was right was no comfort. “How did you know I was going to leave?”
    “You’re nothing if not predictable. And, just so we’re clear, you pull that stunt again and I’ll throw you to the wolves myself.”
    She averted her gaze from the hungry press, the horror of what she had been about to walk into sending a shiver down her spine. “For how long?”
    His feet on the steps, he turned around. “Do you argue just for the heck of it? All I’m asking you to do is to spend a few days in the lap of luxury. Is that so hard?”
    “If it means spending another minute with you— yes. ”
    “You’re at least unique in that,” he threw at her arrogantly. “You have no choice until Kim’s back. Then you could disappear to the North Pole for all I care.”
    His arrogant dismissal, the personal hit, let loose a fury in her. She hated the media, too, not hated, she feared them. Because they never let the world forget, never let her move on from her horrible mistake. Everything she had done since then, every choice of hers had already been forecast to doom, because her template was already preset to fail. And the moron that she was, she always delivered right into their hands. But it didn’t mean she was going to stop trying, didn’t mean she was going to rearrange her life to avoid them. “You’re letting them control your actions, control your life.”
    His jaw clenched. “Don’t push it, Olivia.”
    His dark warning only incensed her more. “This is about your pride, your image, isn’t it? You can’t be seen as the man who married the wrong woman, the less-than-perfect twin. God forbid that the world find out that you’re prone to mistakes just like the rest of us normal mortals.”
    A smile, sharper than cut glass, curved his mouth as he pulled her toward him, two hundred pounds of intensity scorching her. “I’ve spent every waking moment of my life as a child haunted by the press. At seven, when my parents left me behind at a movie screening, at seventeen, when I was part of a criminal investigation. My childhood was like one of those bizarre reality shows based on Hollywood where nothing is sacred, nothing is left alone. Only it was my life that everybody was watching. I’ve been dragged through courts, have been studied like I was an exhibit at a zoo, have had stories written about me since I could barely