“A virgin bride, you mean?”
He gave a slight nod.
How humiliating! The whole world knew Zac needed a virgin bride. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her reading the newspapers after their engagement was announced. The tabloids’ speculation must’ve been lewd. And her father had put her up as a pure-as-driven-snow candidate. Ack. Suddenly Pandora was fiercely glad she’d decided against e-mailing her father for help. Of course, her father didn’t know about … the incident.
“So everyone knew about this … virgin deal … except me. I was stuck in the backcountry bush, looking after guests at High Ridge, while you guys plotted my fate. God, it sounds so feudal.” She hauled in a deep breath and covered her eyes with her hands. “And I thought it was fate. True love. Jeez, you must have thought me a silly, gullible little fool.”
“I thought you were exquisite. Sweet, charming, funny. I wanted to share my—”
“Stupid. That’s what I was,” she interrupted him, dropping her hands and fixing him with a determined gaze. “A world-class idiot. So how are we going to fix this … this disaster?”
His eyes flashed. “It need not be a disaster. We can work it out. But first I want to hear about this man.”
“What man?” But she had a horrible feeling she knew exactly what he was talking about.
Zac’s deck chair scraped across the terra-cotta cobbles. He leaned toward her and held her gaze squarely. “The one who claimed your virginity.”
“Zac!” Pandora gazed at him in fascinated horror. “You can’t expect me to talk about that.”
“Oh, yes, I can.” His brows drew together, and the dusky evening light that fell across his face dusted his harsh features with gold. “You might not have lied to me intentionally, but you’ve put me in a situation I never anticipated. I need to know the full facts to put a game plan in place to cope with any possible fallout.”
She stared blindly at the pink-and-orange clouds scattered across the western sky. This wasn’t about her, about her dignity, about her future with him. This was about him. About his business. About a fortune in share losses. About how he was going to handle their divorce … except he’d said he wanted to stay married, hadn’t he? She shook her head to clear it of the confusion and the ugliness.
Her relief when Georgios appeared to tell them dinner was ready was short-lived. No sooner had they made their way to the dining room and sat down at the table, where the silver cutlery glinted in the glow of half a dozen tall white candles, when Zac demanded, “Talk to me.”
“Okay,” she said in a flat little voice, and picked up her fork to toy with the seafood salad in front of her. “I’ll tell you exactly what happened. His name was Steve. He was charming, fun, good-looking—”
“I don’t want to hear that part,” Zac growled, a muscle pulsing high on his lean, tanned jaw. “I want to know who his family is, where you met this man.”
“I don’t know anything about his family,” Pandora said awkwardly, uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken.
“So how the hell did you meet him?”
She stopped picking at her food. “Sometimes my father allowed me to spend the August vacation with my best friend, Nicoletta. Her father was a very wealthy industrialist. They came from Milan, and a couple of times I stayed at their holiday home in Sardinia. A few times Nicoletta stayed with us. But High Ridge in winter isn’t as much fun as Sardinia in summer, so that didn’t happen often. She had an older brother—”
“Ah,” said Zac.
Pandora glared at him. “Alberto was only interested in soccer. There was no time in his life for anything else.”
“Then tell me about this man who—”
“I’m getting there.”
“Too slowly.”
“Zac! This is very difficult for me. Let me tell it my way, okay?”
Zac inclined his head. “I’ll be quiet.”
Pandora could see him visibly forcing himself to relax. It did nothing to calm her. She pushed her plate away and drew a steadying breath. “Nicoletta’s parents told Alberto to escort us around, to be a good host. Nicoletta loved frequenting the fashionable beaches to work on her tan and flirt with Alberto’s friends. I was horribly shy. But I went along with it because I wanted to fit in. Alberto tolerated the beach. In his view, it was better than taking us shopping. So each day Alberto would take us to play volleyball with a group of his friends—friends his parents approved of as fit company for Nicoletta—on the beach at Costa Smeralda. I started to come out my shell. It was fun.”
“I’m sure it was,” Zac growled.
“Zac, you said you’d be quiet!”
“I find it is impossible. What were your friend’s parents thinking allowing you and their daughter to be exposed to all these young men?”
“They came from wealthy families, some had minders. Even Alberto and Nicoletta had a bodyguard. He was young—Alberto wouldn’t tolerate an older guard—and just as mad about soccer and sports as Alberto. That’s why Alberto put up with him.”
“Don’t tell me the bodyguard—”
“No, no, nothing like that! Give me a chance to finish, Zac.” Pandora couldn’t hold back her impatience any longer. “That’s where I met Steve. On the beach, playing volleyball with Nicoletta, her brother and his friends. Alberto didn’t know Steve, but they discovered they had an acquaintance in common.”
“I bet they did.”
“Zac! Anyway, Steve was good at volleyball. But he was different from the other guys—he talked to me and Nicoletta. He was interested in what we had to say.”
Zac pushed his plate away. “I’m no longer hungry.”
“Me, neither,” Pandora muttered.
Zac let out his breath. The sound was loud in the silence of the darkening room. “It couldn’t have been hard to pick out a bunch of rich young kids. He must’ve had his eye on a rich wife.”
“I didn’t see it that way. He seemed so sophisticated. But, remember, I was not yet eighteen and he was twenty-five. He wore clothes with a cachet none of the guys I knew did. He drove a sporty red Alfa. He was very European, very cosmopolitan.”
“I don’t want to hear about your adolescent fantasy.” Zac sounded fit to burst, and the muscle was back in play, working high on his jaw. “I want to hear what happened.”
Pandora closed her eyes to avoid looking at him.
This was so much harder than she’d expected, reliving her stupidity, telling it all to Zac. “You have to understand … it happened precisely because he was an adolescent fantasy. I’d never dated. Goodness, I’d never been allowed to go anywhere with a boy. I didn’t even get to meet any. I had no brothers. I was at a very strict girls’ school. My father was very protective. Steve looked nothing like the kind of guy I’d been warned about. He was good-looking, obviously smart and successful and he wasn’t a threat. I could lust after him to my little beating heart’s content.”
There was silence.
Pandora opened one eye, then the other, and slid Zac a sideways glance. He was glaring ferociously, his jaw working like mad. She took a deep breath and plunged on. “He was more interested in Nicoletta. She’d always been more sophisticated, more developed physically, too. But he was nice to me, polite.”
“I’m sure he was.” Zac snorted.
“He