Unwrapping the Innocent's Secret/Bound by Their Nine-Month Scandal

by Caitlin Crews

He brooded and drank until he landed. Then he walked through a house with a corner blown out where he and Pia had sat for their engagement photo. Plastic sheets hung over the space. The open plan interior had been stripped down to subfloor and studs, but there were still scorch marks on the ceiling.

  The rest of the house was intact. Angelo went up to the room where Pia had joined him for only a few short days, but the whole villa felt imbued with her presence. He instantly knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep in that bed without her. Wouldn’t be able to live here without thinking of her every minute of every day.

  He would think of her regardless, no matter where he ended up.

  How was he going to live without her? Without their baby?

  He nearly went to his knees as he realized what he had done. Pushing her away had been the right thing to do, though. Hadn’t it?

  Eyes wet, breath rattling in his chest, he left the room and was drawn into the next one, the nursery. Sea-green walls were decorated with shells and seahorses and tropical fish. The crib was assembled with a mobile of starfish dangling over one end.

  All of this had been chosen by Pia. He had watched her browse and light up with quiet glee as she found the different items and sent links to their decorator.

  She loved their baby—he knew she did—yet he hadn’t believed her when she had spoken the words to him. He’d still been seeing the stark guilt in her expression when her brother had hurled his accusations. Angelo knew what they all thought of him. He had been reeling and devastated that his wife believed any of it.

  How could she love him and doubt him?

  What did he expect, though? He hadn’t been completely honest with her. He hadn’t admitted to his own love, even though it was such a force in him he was pulsing in agony at being apart from her.

  He hadn’t allowed himself to say it or acknowledge it or even fully feel it because, deep down, he’d been convinced he wasn’t good enough for her. He had been biding his time until she realized it and rejected him. He had expected to lose her.

  She had promised that if his truth came to light, it wouldn’t change her commitment to him or their marriage, but he hadn’t given her a chance to prove that she would stand by him. In fact, he’d sent her to her mother’s, then thrown her declaration of love back in her face. And left her. Like a fool.

  “Pia,” he groaned with anguish.

  He couldn’t stay here. There was a giant hole in the side of his house and a bigger one in his heart.

  Two days later, Angelo sought out Rico at the Montero corporate headquarters.

  He had told Pia once that he was willing to risk all that he had for something he wanted badly enough. That included his pride, but his wife and child were worth it.

  He was shown into Cesar’s office, where both brothers stood in solidarity, Cesar behind the massive mahogany desk, Rico beside it.

  Angelo eschewed handshakes and the empty chair in favor of stating his business.

  “Tomas and Darius have been neutralized. Not like that,” he added with swift, arid sarcasm when two pairs of brows shot up. “In exchange for them signing a binding promise not to talk to the press, I have agreed to let them keep what they have left. If they step out of line, I will finish them and make no apologies for it. You caught me on a bad day,” he said to Rico. “I am capable of rational behavior.”

  “Tell your wife. She wants to sell her house to finance my legal bill.”

  “That’s ridiculous. No,” Angelo dismissed the idea. “Invoice me for any inconveniences you’ve suffered.”

  “I will,” Cesar said bluntly. “Including the prenup negotiations and the wedding. You could have saved us a lot of time, money and trouble.”

  Cesar’s words were a kick to the chest, but Angelo managed to stay on his feet. “We’re staying married.”

  “You’re not taking another round out of her. Do you understand how sensitive she is?” Cesar set his knuckles on his desk. “How cruel it was to target her like that?”

  “I didn’t target her! I didn’t know who she wa—” He cut himself off, angry with himself for saying too much, but Rico swore in comprehension.

  “When you made that remark about the rooftop the other day, I didn’t want to believe it. Are you telling me you two only met that night? That you—”

  “I am not discussing our private life with you,” Angelo said firmly, pointing a finger in warning. He personally didn’t care one iota. His sense of modesty was very low. Pia, however? “Do you understand how sensitive your sister is? How shy? How smart? Don’t stand here and act concerned about her when she’s out there earning doctorates two years before you did and you can’t even be bothered to show up and give her a round of applause.”

  Rico lost some of his bluster. He sent a disgruntled look toward Cesar.

  “Poppy wanted to organize something. Lily got sick and it slipped our mind.”

  “Sorcha called Mother to set up a lunch. You’d think she pitched overthrowing the government.” Cesar straightened off his desk and sighed. He folded his arms as he regarded Angelo. “I’m smart enough to know how smart my sister is, yes. I’ve asked her to join our research team several times. She’s always preferred fieldwork and biology, but I hoped once the baby was born, she might finally consider my offer more seriously.”

  “Did you get her pregnant on purpose?” Rico demanded.

  “Wow.” Angelo tilted him an affronted glare. “Delightful as Pia’s family has turned out to be, no, I didn’t resort to time-tested methods to become a member. You could bowl tenpins with those balls, asking a question like that when you didn’t plan your family.”

  Rico narrowed his eyes while Cesar deadpanned, “I’ve seen them. Five pins, tops.”

  Madre de Dios.

  “I married Pia because we’re expecting a baby. Because I want to be a better father than I had.” Angelo had briefly lost sight of that, but never would again. “I’m staying married to her because I’m in love with her. That means, for her sake, we’re going to learn to play nice.” He drew a small circle in the air. “I thought cleaning up my mess with my brothers was a good start. Now, you have a pleasant evening, gentlemen. Convey my regards to your infinitely more charming wives.”

  “Same,” Rico shot at his back.

  Angelo had texted Pia while he was on the island, telling her the security team had deemed it safe to move back into her home. He checked there first, but the housekeeper said she had packed a bag and left instructions to ready the house for sale.

  Angelo reversed that order and presumed Pia had decided to stay at her mother’s.

  He went there and was informed that Pia had left two days ago for her own house. When he expressed his dissatisfaction with that information, he was forced to wait twenty minutes before La Reina deigned to see him.

  He gave her the report he’d given her sons. “Aside from lingering speculation in the press, which should die off fairly quickly, this should all be over.”

  “Thank you for informing me.” With a smile of pressed civility, she rose.

  “Your staff tells me Pia isn’t here,” he said, preventing her from leaving. “She’s not in her home and not answering my texts.”

  “That’s to be expected.”

  “What do you mean?” Angelo bristled, suspecting she was deliberately punishing him, but he couldn’t read anything malicious in her expression. No enjoyment of his frustration, only a vague puzzlement with his continued presence.

  “I mean that she does this. She travels out of range, thereby taking a few days to respond to messages. It’s something you should expect of her as common behavior.”

  “So you don’t know where she went? Aren’t you concerned?”

  “She’s a grown adult. She makes her own schedule.”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “She’s not foolish.” Her mouth twitch
ed slightly as if she heard the irony in her own words, given her daughter’s choice in husband. “Do you have reason to believe there would be a medical issue?”

  “No, but…” Angelo clenched his teeth, wondering how Pia had withstood a lifetime of this stonewalling. “Did she—” He could barely bring himself to ask. “Is she avoiding me? Seeking a legal separation?”

  La Reina frowned. “I should think you’d be the first to know that, not me.”

  “So she didn’t say anything like that to you?”

  La Reina rang for her assistant and asked with exaggerated patience, “Do we know where my daughter is?”

  Clearly “we” didn’t.

  “A research trip, señora,” was the unhelpful answer.

  “There you are. She’ll turn up when she’s finished her fieldwork,” La Reina said.

  “Where did she go? When is she coming back?” Angelo asked the assistant.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have that information, señor. She books her own travel.”

  Frustrated, he returned to her home and went into her office to see if he could figure out where she’d gone. Why had she left without telling anyone where she was going? It didn’t portend well and left a sick knot in his gut.

  It made him think she really was fine with ending their marriage so she could go back to the life she’d led before.

  He had a quick peek at her social media profiles, half thinking he would approach some of the people he’d met during their goodwill tour before their wedding. He quickly realized none of them were on there. Her friend list consisted of her immediate family and her privacy settings were locked down. Her only public content was the photographs he’d once thought proved she lived a globe-trotting life in exotic locations.

  Now he knew her better, which cast a fresh light on the remoteness in her snapshots. While they’d been in Australia, he’d taken several photos of her, and she’d said, “I’m usually alone and I hate taking selfies so I’m never in my photos.”

  Until this moment, he hadn’t heard the deep loneliness in that statement. Now he saw it clearly in the beautiful places she visited without having anyone with her to share her experience.

  He looked more closely at her home office. Every wall was covered in bookshelves. Three of the nonfiction titles were written by her—where the hell had those come from? Why had she never mentioned that she understood economics well enough to write investment strategies for non-professionals?

  There were dozens of textbooks on a range of subjects, a handful of self-help tomes on public speaking and networking, two shelves of dog-eared romance novels and a shelf stuffed to the gills with journals. They were all neatly labeled with dates.

  He took one out at random and saw nothing but numbers and dates and Latin names. So much information gathered and filtered through that sharp brain of hers, distilled and shared on her terms.

  Because she found human interactions so difficult? Or because she had no one with whom to share her discoveries?

  His heart truly began to ache, then. She had admitted to feeling lonely most of her life. He’d seen how she struggled to connect. All this time, he’d feared that she would never feel anything genuine toward him when maybe all he’d had to do was let her know how much she meant to him. How much he loved her.

  He loved her and missed her and not knowing where she’d gone was torture.

  But finding her turned out to be as simple as checking their joint credit card statement. The Faroe Islands. Where the hell was that?

  He called his pilot and was soon headed in the direction of Iceland.

  Over a lifetime of nursing loneliness and scorn, Pia had discovered there was a strangely comforting symmetry in being physically miserable when she was emotionally miserable.

  There was also something reassuring in returning to familiar routines. She set her trusty, well-worn, gel cushion on a suitable rock, propped her journal on her crooked knee while balancing an umbrella with the same hand and used her free hand to begin making notes on the colony of seals below her.

  The wind blew the rain into her face and onto her page, but that was why she wore a rubber coat and used pencil instead of ink. The damp sank into her bones, but she had brought a cushion and a thermos of hot tea as consolation. The man she loved would never love her, but that was why she was here. Even forsaken souls could be useful to humanity if they didn’t mind a little tedium and isolation.

  The bark of the seals and rush of the waves drowned out the sound of footsteps until the boots appeared in her peripheral vision.

  She gasped and looked up, telling herself it was a local who had tramped out to ask her what she was doing, but she already knew it was Angelo. Her body knew it before her eyes confirmed it.

  He scanned the small harbor below, but looked at her as she tilted the umbrella back so she could see him. His brows pulled into a frown.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Working.”

  “I thought you wanted to set up a pregnancy study?”

  She glanced down, almost saying that what she studied only mattered to her and she was beginning to think she didn’t matter to anyone.

  She slanted the umbrella over herself again. “I told you I like to collect data when I need to think.”

  “You could have told me where you were going.”

  “You didn’t tell me where you were going.”

  “Touché.” Beside her, she saw his hand give a restive flex. “I went to the island. The house is a mess, but the nursery looks good. It should all be repaired and ready for us by the time the baby arrives.”

  “Us?” She bobbled the umbrella and her nerveless fingers nearly shot the pencil across the pebbly ground. “You and the baby?”

  “All of us.”

  “You ended our marriage, Angelo. You left.” Her chest locked up and she could only blindly stare at the chop of white beards on the gray scroll of waves. She had come away because she couldn’t face that he’d abandoned her so unceremoniously.

  “You said you wouldn’t let my past change your commitment to our marriage.”

  “It didn’t.”

  His hand caught the fabric of her umbrella and shoved it back so he could see her. Rain had soaked into his hair and was running down his face. The spitting drops peppered her face as she looked up at him.

  “Then why are you here?” he growled.

  “You said we were over. I needed to feel like myself again. To do something I know how to do well instead of…” Faking it. Banging into walls. Falling in love and failing at marriage.

  “I was worried about you.”

  “The baby is fine. I spoke to the doctor before I came away. She said it was okay to come.”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “No one ever worries about me.” She tried to shove her umbrella back into place.

  He didn’t let her. “I worry about you.”

  “The baby—”

  “You,” he nearly shouted.

  She was so startled, she let go of the handle. He lost his own grip and the umbrella tumbled away in the wind.

  Pia didn’t move, only tugged her woolen hat more firmly onto her head.

  “I’m still one of the blue bloods you love to hate,” she reminded him.

  “You’re the only blue blood I can stand,” he muttered. “My own included. Hopefully our baby will have more of yours than mine.”

  “You’ll love it either way?”

  “I will.” His tortured gaze shifted to the water. “I can’t change what I am, Pia. Sometimes I hate myself for existing. For causing so much pain to someone I loved.”

  “I can’t speak for her, Angelo, but it sounds like she loved you exactly as you were, despite the blood you carry. That blood doesn’t change how I feel about you or how I’ll feel about our baby.”

 
; “How do you feel about me?”

  Her eyes welled. She looked down at the page that was growing soaked.

  “Do you want to hear how I feel? Angry,” he said, sounding incensed. “I’m angry on your behalf. I hate that your father doesn’t see how special you are and that your mother values her wealth and standing over the suffering she causes you.”

  “It doesn’t—”

  “Don’t say it doesn’t matter. It matters. You matter, Pia. You matter to me. But I understand that she won’t change. Neither of them will. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  She dug up a tissue and he crouched to catch her eyes with his own.

  “Your turn. Tell me how you feel,” he commanded.

  “Grateful.” It was a cowardly admission. A small, easy one because she didn’t have the courage to make a bigger one. It was true, though. “No matter what happens between us, I will always be grateful you gave me someone who will love me as I am.”

  His expression altered. Torment seemed to grip him. “Pia, I’m that person. I love you exactly as you are.”

  Her heart lurched and she felt so dizzy, she nearly fell off the rock. “You can’t.”

  “Of course I can. That’s why I left. I couldn’t stand that I was doing it again, hurting someone I loved. It was terrible logic because I wound up hurting you anyway. I’m looking forward to you preventing me from being so stupid again.”

  “But I’m not…lovable.”

  “Of course you are. You’re funny and smart and kind and sensitive. Sexy as hell. Brave.”

  “See, you’re lying.”

  “Modest. Very beautiful, although I know you don’t care about that. Curious and warm.”

  “Robotic.”

  “Introspective. Affectionate.” He touched her knee where her jeans were soaked through.

  She was starting to shiver, but not from the cold. She couldn’t hold her mouth steady. “Why are you saying all this?” He was inspiring such a depth of hope, but she was so afraid to believe.

  “Because I love you.” His expression became very grave while her heart teetered and rolled. “I could not have gone through this without you, Pia. I couldn’t have faced my past and moved beyond it. I would have let it destroy me if I hadn’t been falling in love with you this whole time. I wouldn’t be capable of love if you weren’t here, inspiring it in me.”