Proof of Their Sin

Which was a judgment she might have accepted if she had been the one incapable of fidelity, but Ryan was the adulterer, not her. That was the other reason she’d allowed herself to make advances on Paolo that night. Her marriage had been over months before Paolo confirmed Ryan’s death and made it official.

With a dignity she’d found somewhere between hating herself and feeling grateful to this man for the baby in her womb, she left off touching her hair, clutched her pocketbook to hide her nervous trembling, and said with a hint of challenge, “You look very nice, too. Thank you.”

His gaze slammed back to hers, sharp with disbelief at her subtle criticism of his manners.

Holding that hostile stare was hard, but she wasn’t as timid as she used to be. At least, she was trying not to be.

A light of reassessment altered his expression and she felt as though the charged air between them ramped up several notches.

With a lift of one brow that seemed to say, Is that how we’re playing? he offered his arm. “I didn’t see your name on the guest list. What a pleasant surprise to have you turn up anyway.”

By that she understood she was hideously unwanted here. It was almost enough to make her run barefoot back to Montreal.

“I’m making a point of doing a lot of things I barely dreamed of before,” she retorted lightly.

Avoiding the flash of warning in his gaze that asked, Before what? she set a tentative hand on an arm that felt as hard as banded steel.

“Traveling alone, trying new styles…” She would have gone on, but touching him again made heat coil through her.

This arm had held her in a dozen ways three months ago. Protective across her shoulders. Comforting behind her lower back. Soothing when it tightened across her stomach and drew her into his spooned strength. Resistant across her chest when he’d tried to refuse her sexual invitation, then vital and possessive when he’d draped her thigh over his forearm, making her his.

Physical need, stronger than any she’d experienced in her life, made her falter, tightening her hand on his sleeve, leaving her weak and quivering and fighting to hide it. They’d only taken two steps and she couldn’t prevent herself from swaying against him as she fought to regain control of herself.

His arm turned to marble beneath her touch and he glared down at her. Everything in him gathered with rejection, like she was a leper.

“May I?” A man with a camera stepped before them.

Lauren froze in a kind of preternatural fear while Paolo condensed into a statue of impatient tolerance, willing to put up with her closeness out of duty.

Appearances, she thought. Heavens yes, we can’t let down appearances.

Rather than smiling at the camera, she lifted her bitter gaze to Paolo’s, seeing yet one more person in a sea of them who hid authentic feelings behind a facade. How disappointing to find out he was like all the rest.

Incredulity flickered in his dark brown eyes. And challenge. He didn’t like being found wanting. Not at all. As their stare held, heat crept into his gaze, burning with knowledge. Intimate, sexual knowledge. He picked her apart and left her in pieces as the camera flashed, momentarily blinding her to Paolo’s final rebuff of all she offered.

“Beautiful,” the cameraman murmured, reviewing the camera’s screen.

“Grazie,” Paolo said dismissively, and drew her away. “Champagne?”

“After I’ve eaten,” she demurred, searching for a private corner where she could get this over with and disappear. Seeing him was far, far harder than she’d expected. He’d been incredibly remote the morning after as the press release was read. She’d been frozen herself, just trying to get through the days until the funeral. The Bradleys had closed ranks, creating a buffer that kept Paolo from approaching. At least, that’s what Lauren had thought at the time, when she’d spared a thought beyond her inward twisting of anguish, grief and guilt. She’d been grateful not to speak to Paolo after the shameless way she’d behaved.

Now, however, everything was different. Or was it? She was still dying inside at her brazen behavior. Part of her was second-guessing her decision to come here. She’d been a fool to imagine there’d been any emotion on his side that night. Obviously it had been nothing more than an exercise in physical gratification. He wasn’t showing any enthusiasm for seeing her. This was the same man who’d frozen her out most of the times she’d seen him. Best to cut to the chase and leave.

“Actually, I’m not here to wine and dine, Paolo. I need to speak to you. I tried to book an appointment through your assistant.”

He kept a bored look on his face while people around them cast curious glances their way. “With the death of your husband, cara, I thought my ties to you were finally severed and we’d never speak again.” Nice. He really did despise her to the core.

Because of Charleston? Or did it go back to her wedding day?

She had never understood Paolo except to liken him to Ryan: driven by his ego and masculine desires, slaying women without even trying because females eagerly set themselves up for the little death such potent men promised.

And delivered. She almost had to shut her eyes to beat back the memory of how beautifully Paolo delivered.

She reminded herself she was one of many women who wished they knew him better, but honestly, she’d had so few occasions to try. He’d bought her a drink in a bar despite being engaged to another woman then sat back while his friend pursued her. He’d kissed her with unexpected passion at her wedding reception then snubbed her when Lauren tried to speak to him a few years later at Ryan’s birthday.

In Charleston he’d been solicitous and tender, then ardent and insatiable.

Then cold. Subarctic cold.

She hadn’t exactly been impressed with herself at that point, making love to her husband’s best friend the night before his death was announced, so she ought to face his hostility without feeling as though a chisel was being hammered directly into her heart, but his enmity hurt. He didn’t have to be madly in love with her, but he did owe her a few minutes to tell him they had a tie between them that could never be severed.

A woman in midnight blue chose that moment to join them, forcing Paolo to drag his gaze with visible annoyance from trying to penetrate Lauren’s to the inquiring face of a woman with unmistakable Italian coloring.

“Isabella,” Paolo said in a tense tone. He slid a possessive arm around her and brushed her cheekbone with his lips, provoking a surprised widening of her eyes. “May I introduce Mrs. Ryan Bradley. An old friend.”

His tone was dismissive, emphasizing “old.” Former. A possession of his friend.

Isabella was twenty if she was a day, and Lauren felt ancient before her. She was acutely aware of her status as a widow. A cynical and jaded one.

Nevertheless she managed to offer a courteous, “Call me Lauren, please. Since no one else seems to.” She cast that at both Paolo and the world, accompanying the request with an offering of her hand.

It trembled. She hadn’t let herself think of Paolo with a woman in his life. Seeing him touch Isabella made sharp talons rip into her from the soles of her feet right up to the base of her throat. Of course he had women in his life. They all did.

Isabella cast a look between them, trying to read what may have happened between them during the infamous disappearance of Captain Ryan Bradley’s wife into the rarely used penthouse of his close friend Paolo the night before Captain Bradley’s death was revealed.

Paolo maintained a stoic expression. Nothing, his flat gaze said.

Lauren had perfected the same poker face and baldly showed it to Isabella.

While remaining burningly conscious that her waistline would soon reveal their big fat lie.

“I can only stay a few minutes,” Lauren declared, thinking that must sound bizarre considering she’d obviously spent as many hours on her appearance as every other woman here. “Would you be very offended if I claimed a dance? I only wished to say hello to Paolo as I was passing through New York. He’s been so kind.” She choked a little on the adjective.

Had it been pity that had prompted him to make love to her? The thought had been lashing her like a whip since he’d given in with a shudder and a curse. Her hand longed to go to her waistline in an attempt to protect her developing baby from such a pitiable start.

“Of course,” Isabella said magnanimously. “And please accept my sincere condolences.”

Appearances again. It seemed Lauren was just as guilty as the rest of the world. Sickly guilty, if she let herself dwell on it, which she tried not to. She woke in a cold sweat too often, worrying her husband’s death was her fault. Ryan hadn’t been happy about her request for a divorce. Had it made him extra reckless when foiling those terrorists?

Pressing the suspicion to the back of her mind, she accepted the condolences for the sake of Ryan’s family, squeezed Isabella’s hand with appreciation and avoided the delving look Paolo turned on her. Ten minutes, she swore to herself. Then she could wrestle herself out of this dress and all the other confines of her life. She would be a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, able to fly into places she’d never dreamed when she’d been a lowly silkworm tied by emotional threads to her grandmother’s estate of maple trees.

“Why here, then?” Paolo asked as he steered her toward the dance floor, his tone growling with disapproval. “If you only wanted a few minutes of my time?”

“I—” She had to pull herself together as he set confident hands on her, leading her into a waltz. It had been years since she’d taken the lessons, imagining dancing with Ryan in Vienna when she joined him there, but the trip had never materialized. Nothing truly exciting had ever happened to her.

Except discovering she was pregnant with this man’s baby.

Lauren faltered, probing her memory for the steps and searching for a clear thought in the haze that closed in with Paolo’s disconcerting presence.

Wide shoulders filled her vision. His clean-shaven jaw tempted her lips to lift and taste. He’d been stubbled and masculine and hot, so unquenchably, passionately hot. Demanding when he took control. Skilled and confident and ravenous. Like a wild animal let out of his cage, running her to ground and feasting on her.

Her breath shortened and sexual heat suffused her, making her quiver, filling her nostrils with his familiar scent. It had only been the one night. How could she know his dark, espresso scent so well she could find him blindfolded in this heavily-perfumed crowd?

“You’re making a fool of yourself,” he muttered.

The words sliced through her, withering a very sensitive nerve. She knew she lacked experience and sophistication. Why else had her husband cheated on her? Paolo didn’t need to rub it in, though.

Lauren flashed him a livid glance from eyes that burned, but he wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t aware she was melting under his touch.

“Be a merry widow for your next husband,” he said scathingly. “Ryan deserves better.”

Ryan had lived a double life.

“He had his mail delivered to his mother’s,” she said, shying at the last moment from shattering Ryan’s precious image. He was dead and he’d died with honor even if he hadn’t entirely lived so. “The invitation was forwarded in a packet they sent to me.”

It had been postmarked the day Ryan had gone missing. The engraved envelope was one she’d seen annually and always wound up throwing away because her husband had never been home to take her.

“Initially it only meant that you’d be in New York. I wanted an appointment to see you in your office, but your schedule was booked and my grandmother’s closet is full of dresses like this. When else would I wear one?”

Pride had made her do this. Pride and a perverse desire to thumb her nose at expectations and propriety. Frances Hammond had come home pregnant with her head held high. Lauren Bradley intended to leave the same way.

She lifted her chin, daring him to take that away from her.

Nothing. Not one iota of reaction. Only a disinterested, “Why did you want to see me?”

The moment of truth. She waited until he’d spun her so her back was to the majority of the crowd, making lip-reading from across the room less likely. “I needed to tell you that I’m…” She found the Italian word she’d looked up especially. “Incinta.”

If the language switch caused him any confusion, he didn’t show it. In fact, he showed little reaction at all, beyond one contemptuous glance down his nose.

“Congratulations. Whose is it?”

CHAPTER TWO

LAUREN HAD PREPARED herself for many reactions: anger, blame, suspicion that she was trying to trap him, even disbelief in the context that this could have happened to a pair of otherwise responsible adults. She had not imagined a denial of any involvement whatsoever.

Behind her burn of outrage raced a trail of humiliation. Did he really imagine she’d taken other lovers besides him and her husband? Well, why not, based on the way she’d made love with him as though she was starved for it? Her throat clogged and mortified pressure built behind her cheeks.

She stumbled out of sync with the music, forcing him to pull her a fraction closer to steady her. He was an iron cage around her, supporting her while trapping her in this farce of a dance.

She moved as though swimming in molasses, a bug caught in sap, soon to be immortalized in amber. Light-headedness combined with the spin of the dance made the room swirl around her while her stomach turned over. Whatever blood had been circulating through her drained into her toes, leaving her chilled to the core.

Somehow she reached through the miasma of shock to locate contempt for a man who dared to denigrate her when he’d been in that bed exactly as long as she had.

“You never struck me as lacking intelligence, Paolo.” Her voice was soft yet layered with frost, frigid as a Canadian winter. “You deserved to know, so I told you. Have a nice life.”

She pushed away from him, head high, tears thick in her throat.

No, Paolo thought. It was the only sound in ears pulsing with his boiling blood. Ryan’s? Another man’s? His?

No, no, no. He was not stupid enough to fall for that again. His ex had pulled this same trick for a direct line to his fortune, complete with another man’s baby conveniently conceived at an appropriate time to make it plausible. He’d unquestioningly done what was right for his child and the payback had been six months of melodrama, scheming and bitterness that kept his heart hard to this day.

He had vowed not to let any woman tear him to pieces again, but as Lauren left him on the dance floor, he felt like an actor who’d been abandoned on stage, the spotlight hot and white upon him, props gone, lines forgotten. He’d felt the same way after their night together, when she’d disappeared into the clutch of grieving Bradleys, leaving him to cope alone.

Despite his exceptional reflexes and honed instincts, he didn’t know how to react to something so unexpected and threatening to his carefully structured life. Especially when lust was clouding his vision and frying his mind. Dancing with her had been as erotic as making love to her.

Then it struck him. She hadn’t said it was his, only that he deserved to know. Because the perception would be that it was his.

A string of violent Italian curses fed through his psyche as he strode after her. To his irritation and disgust, Vittorio stopped her before either of them had wound very far through the crowd.

“I must confess, I didn’t recognize you from your photos,” Paolo heard as he came upon them. “I’m Paolo’s cousin, Vittorio. I knew your husband. I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”

Paolo couldn’t stop the territorial slide of his hand beneath the drape of Lauren’s silk wrap, fingers splaying over lithe back muscles that stiffened at his touch.

The tumultuous instinct to guard her, own her, while his brain reminded him she was the enemy, tangled his thoughts, making him say harshly to Vittorio, “She’s leaving.”

“So soon?” Vittorio was enjoying himself, aware something was afoot and determined to have a piece of it.

“I only wished to put in a brief appearance,” Lauren said with surprising solemnity. “Given this event benefits cardiac research. My grandmother had a heart condition so I wanted to show my support.”

The unexpected revelation set Paolo back on his heels. He was instantly sure the records would show a very generous donation next to her name and even though a string of zeros often meant nothing to people in a crowd of this financial rank, the catch in her voice underlined her sincerity. Her devotion to her grandmother had always been something he respected about her.

The phrase “had a heart condition” pinged inside his skull. The old woman was gone? He unconsciously gentled his touch, offering a caress of comfort.

Lauren shifted her weight, subtly removing herself from contact with Paolo’s fingertips, the only sign she was aware of him, while she continued speaking to Vittorio.

“She passed away earlier this year.” She controlled the hitch in her voice. “The loss was overshadowed by other events, but it does make a night like this quite difficult. I hope you’ll understand and excuse me?”

“Of course,” Vittorio said with a gallant bow before stepping aside.

Paolo slid his arm more securely around Lauren’s waist and tightened it, pinning her to his side before she could sweep herself away.

She flung him a look that lashed like a bolt of lightning, gilding him in an exciting sensation of pleasure-pain. It was completely at odds with the fading spirit and demure manner she’d been projecting seconds ago. No one else saw it, but he tasted the slap of challenge and the hot blood it left in the corner of his mouth.

Everything about this woman provoked a visceral reaction in him and Paolo had to temper a grin of exhilaration. If she wanted a fight, she’d come to the right place.

But she was pregnant, he reminded himself, fighting an impulse to grip her with hard, controlling hands the way he would anything that fought his will: a race car, a powerboat, a fighter jet. At the same time, he thought, Pregnant, and knew he should lift his red-hot palm right off her.

Despite knowing he should never have touched her in the first place, he kept her from moving with a flex of his superior strength. Whether she was actually naming him the father or warning him of the perception, he was facing a firing squad. Perhaps he owned some of the responsibility for that. He’d brought her into his home and made love to her. It had been foolhardy and wrong, but it had been the first time in five years that other spouses had not stood in the way. In his weakened state, he’d let long-suppressed desire overtake him.

It should have been a bittersweet aberration tucked away and forgotten, but she had decided to bring an infant in a basket to his doorstep. Having the baby turn out to be his was the only way he could forgive her for doing this, but he simply couldn’t let himself believe that she was telling the truth. Other motives were too quick to present themselves: his fortune, for starters.

They needed to talk.

“Play host while I escort Mrs. Bradley to her room,” Paolo said without looking at Vittorio, perversely pleased with the flush that poured into Lauren’s cheeks and the way her burgeoning breasts heaved against the line of her dress.

“That isn’t necessary,” she said through her teeth.

“Si, cara, it is. Very much so.”

Lauren refused to speak to him as he accompanied her to the elevator. Part of it was stubborn fury, the rest complete intimidation. She was catwalk height, like her grandmother, five-ten plus more in heels. Somehow Paolo’s looming six-three had never penetrated, probably because she’d rarely stood this close to him.

Threat radiated off him. Not physical threat, but the impression that he was on the prowl to crush her in some way and was merciless enough to do a fine job of it.

“So?” he demanded when the elevator doors enclosed them. “Whose is it?”

She dragged her gaze from his magnetic reflection and looked scathingly up at the man himself, mortified to acknowledge that desire still gripped her. It had always been there of course, sublimated, rejected and ignored. That’s why she’d so rarely stood near him or held a real conversation with him. That’s why, after trying to speak to him at Ryan’s thirtieth birthday and receiving nothing but disparagement, she’d told herself she hated him.

She had convinced herself she would never see him again, but three months ago she’d had nowhere else to turn. At best she’d hoped for a civil phone call that might or might not have shed light on Ryan’s disappearance.

Twenty-four hours after the pleading message she’d left on his voice mail, however, he had walked into the Bradleys’ cold, silent mansion like an avenging angel, eyes only for her. It was the last thing she had expected and inexplicably, despite all the turmoil around her, her inner freeze had thawed into a flood of warmth and relief. Her heart had begun to beat again.

Let me take you out of here, cara. He’d been like a mug of cappuccino, all coffee tones in a fawn leather jacket over dark chocolate pants. His jaw had been sprinkled with a sexy, overnight stubble and his brown eyes had been liquid with empathy and sorrow.

She’d gone with him because she had trusted him. The painfully awkward interactions in the past had fallen away and they’d been two people in the same crisis willing to cling to each other to survive it. She hadn’t gone to his penthouse because she was sexually attracted to him. She hadn’t wanted—

Well, that wasn’t true. She had always wanted on some level. Involuntarily.

She dropped her defiant gaze from his, swallowing back embarrassment over the way she hadn’t stopped herself reaching for him in the dark.

Forget it, she commanded herself, trying to ignore the clamor in her that said, I don’t want to forget. It was over. If he’d had a weak moment of desire then it was her good fortune. She had the baby she’d longed for. Every time she thought of the life growing in her, her heart expanded to fill her chest with the sweetest ache. All she was really concerned with now was proceeding with life as a mother.

“It’s yours, Paolo,” she said in a husky voice aimed at his shoes, then realized she was doing it again, hanging her head as though she had something to be ashamed of. Jerking her chin up, she set her jaw and braced herself against the feeling of teetering like a plate on a stick. “I don’t care whether you believe me,” she declared.

“Good,” he said as the car floated to a halt and the doors opened. “Because I don’t.”

She choked on offended fury. She cared. Of course she cared. This was their baby. All the maternal instincts she’d kept in stasis for years rushed forward to stand up for their child.

“How dare you call me a liar over something so important?” She made no move to exit the elevator.

He put out a hand to hold the doors, his scornful gaze flaying her into sandwich meat. “I’ve been down this road. How could you think I’d take your word for it?”

She didn’t know much about his marriage, only what Ryan had told her: that his ex-wife had plotted with her lover to con Paolo into child-support payments. The plan had backfired when he had insisted on marriage. He had unraveled the subterfuge right before Lauren’s own wedding to Ryan and the marks of being taken advantage of had been carved into his brutally handsome features while he’d stood next to Ryan at the altar. Ryan later admitted that just before the ceremony, Paolo had tried to talk Ryan out of marrying her.