A Scandal in the Headlines by Caitlin Crews Read Free Book Online Page A

loose, soft trousers, low on his narrow hips. That lean, smoothly muscled body was even more beautiful from a distance and now, of course, she knew what he could do with it.
She knew
. She snapped her attention back to his face—and went still.
    He was watching her with an expression that made her breath catch in her throat. She recognized that look. This was the Alessandro Corretti she remembered, brooding and dark.
    And it seemed he’d remembered that he hated her.
    Elena steeled herself. It was better this way. This was what she’d wanted. She ran her hands down the front of the silk robe, but then stopped, not wanting him to see any hint of her agitation.
    “Sit down,” he said, indicating the table before him and the selection of platters spread out across its inlaid mosaic surface. His voice was cold. Impersonal. A slap after what they’d shared, and she was sure he knew it. “You must be hungry.”
    The moment he said it she realized she was ravenous, and she told herself that was the only reason sheobeyed him and sat. Alessandro seethed with a dark menace, lounging there with such studied carelessness, watching her with a slight curl to his lip.
    She’d expected this, she reminded herself. She’d known sleeping with him would make him despise her, would confirm his low opinion of her, when he believed her still engaged to Niccolo and all manner of other, horrible things. But it shocked her how much it hurt to see it, how it clawed into her, threatening to spill out of her eyes. She blinked it away.
    And then she settled herself in the seat across from him as if she hadn’t a care in the world, and gazed down at the food spread out before her. A plate of plump, ripe cheeses, tangy cured meats and an assortment of thick, lush spreads—an olive tapenade, a fragrant Greek-style taramasalata—next to a basket of fresh, golden semolina bread. A serving dish piled high with what looked like an interesting take on the traditional Sicilian caponata, a cooked aubergine salad laden here with succulent morsels of seafood, rich black and green olives and sweet asparagus spears.
    Elena took the wine he poured for her, a rich and hearty red, and sipped at it, letting the mellow taste wash over her, wash her clean. She tried to match his seeming insouciance, leaning back in her chair and holding her glass airily, as if she spent most of her evenings with her various lovers in their magnificentisland estates. As if this—as if he—was nothing but run of the mill.
    “It’s quite good,” she said, because she thought she should say something.
    Not for the first time, she was painfully aware of how deeply unsophisticated she really was—how categorically unsuited to playing in these deep, dark waters with men like him. Niccolo had dressed her up and taught her how to play the part, but here, now, she was forcefully reminded that she was only Elena Calderon, a nobody from a remote village no one had ever heard of, descended from a long line of mostly fishermen. She was out of her league, and then some.
    Alessandro only watched her. Something about that cold regard, that dark, silent fury, made her feel raw. Restless.
    “Alessandro Corretti with nothing to say?” She attempted a smile. “Shocking.”
    “Tell me,” he said in that calm, easy way that only emphasized the deadly edge beneath. “When you run back to your fiancé and tell him what you did here, how detailed a picture will you paint for him? When you tell him you slept with a man he loathes, will you also tell him how many times you screamed my name?”
    Elena paled, even though she knew she shouldn’t—that she should have expected this. That she
had
expectedthis. Her fingers clenched hard on the stem of her glass.
    “Or perhaps that’s how he likes it. Perhaps he enjoys picturing his woman naked and weeping with ecstasy in another man’s arms.” His eyes were like coals, hot and black. “Perhaps this is a game the two of you play, and I am only