The Innocent Behind the Scandal (The Marchetti Dynasty 2)

He reached out and caught her hand, tugging her into him where he stood near the driver at the wheel, behind a pane of glass. ‘What I’m used to is not necessarily good. It’s a privilege to see Venice again through your reaction.’ Maks looked at the buildings over Zoe’s head. ‘I’d forgotten how amazing it is the first time.’

Zoe was glad he was not looking at her as she blushed at his reference to the first time. It had indeed been amazing.

The water taxi veered smoothly towards one of the impressive buildings. It stood on its own, with an area of greenery to the side, a massive balcony on the first floor. The taxi pulled up to a wooden walkway and a man in a uniform rushed towards them, helping first Zoe, then Maks, out of the bobbing boat.

They were led up to the foyer of the hotel and welcomed as if Maks was returning royalty by a fawning manager, who came with them in the rococo-inspired elevator up to the most sumptuous, luxurious suite of rooms Zoe had ever seen.

There were chandeliers, gold-painted frescoes on walls and ceilings, acres of Carrara marble, Murano glass vases and lamps, oriental rugs on parquet floors.

When the manager had left, and she’d managed to pick her jaw up off the floor, she asked, ‘Do you own the place or something?’

Maks looked a little sheepish.

Zoe’s jaw dropped again. ‘You own this hotel...’ She couldn’t quite compute that information, so she walked over to the open double doors that led out to the balcony. She looked down over the Grand Canal and shook her head at the incongruity of her in this unbelievable place.

Maks came and stood beside her. ‘What are you thinking?’

She looked at him. He had his hands in his pockets, nonchalant. ‘I’m thinking that it was naive of me not to just assume you owned this hotel. It must be amazing...’

‘What must be amazing?’

Zoe shrugged. ‘To walk into a place like this and know that it’s yours... It’s kind of incomprehensible to me, and yet it’s all you’ve ever known?’

Now Maks shrugged and looked away, out to the view. He put his hands on the balcony. ‘I’ve had great privilege. I would never deny that. But if I could swap what my sister and I experienced for a far less privileged existence then I would, in a heartbeat.’

‘It was that bad?’

He glanced at Zoe, his face stark. ‘It was bad enough.’

Somehow Zoe knew exactly what he meant. It had been just ‘bad enough’ to blight both their lives for ever. Like hers had been blighted—albeit by very different circumstances.

She said, ‘I only had eight years with my parents and my brother, but they were wonderful years.’

So wonderful that she couldn’t bear to contemplate experiencing having a family again, only to have it ripped away from her.

Maks turned his back on the view. ‘You lived in Dublin?’

Zoe nodded and smiled. ‘We had a beautiful house on the coast, just south of Dublin city, overlooking the Irish Sea. I used to love sitting in the conservatory and watching the weather change over the sea, especially on stormy days. I’d watch how it rolled in with such a fury, and yet I felt so safe and protected...as if nothing bad could ever touch me.’

What an illusion that had been.

Maks reached out and cupped her face. His thumb traced the scar above her lip with such a light touch she was afraid she was imagining it.

He said, ‘And yet it did.’

Emotion tightened Zoe’s chest and throat. Maks must have seen it, because he pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her. But Zoe was too scared to let the emotion bubble up and out, terrified it might never stop. So she swallowed it down and pushed out of Maks’s arms, avoiding his eye.

‘I think I’ll go and freshen up.’

* * *

Maks watched Zoe walk back into the suite, pick up her bag and disappear into the bathroom. He rubbed at his chest absently. The raw emotion in her eyes just now had hit him squarely in the solar plexus. Normally, any hint of emotion made him shut down in response, but he hadn’t been able to ignore Zoe. And she’d been the one to push him away.

He turned back to the view of the canal, barely registering it. Which only made him think of Zoe’s comment about his jadedness.

Porca miseria. What the hell was going on with him? It was as if as soon as he’d laid eyes on Zoe something inside him had realigned into a new configuration.

Immediately an inner voice said, Ridiculous. It’s physical desire, pure and simple. Unprecedented. Raw. Insatiable. But just desire. A chemical reaction. Not emotion.