Free A Hint of Scandal by Tara Pammi Page B

couldn’t keep the anger out of his words. “What kind of mother leaves her daughters at the mercy of a man she hadn’t been able to cope with herself? Especially one like Jeremiah, who’s a bully even in the boardroom.”
    “What if she had no choice?” she threw back at him. “It couldn’t have been easy to cope with my father and us. I know, because she had never been in the best of health. Even before she left, I was a handful, failing classes, mixing with the wrong crowd, and every time I failed, he blamed her, called her a useless mother.”
    He pulled her white-knuckled fist into his hand, surprised yet again, by the jolt of sensation that ran up his arm. But he didn’t drop it as every instinct in him warned him to. It scraped him raw, her belief that she was somehow responsible for what her mother had done. It was an abyss he was very familiar with, having climbed out of it through sheer will. “You cannot hold yourself responsible for her leaving, Olivia. Just because you weren’t a model child doesn’t excuse her.” He should know, because he had done everything he could to be the perfect son and still it hadn’t been enough.
    She pulled her hands back, anger flashing in her eyes, dark and blistering. “Not everyone is strong and perfect like my sister and you.”
    He frowned, the fact she thought him perfect not sitting right with him. He was far from it. The fact that all he could think of at that moment was to lean forward and kiss her trembling mouth, sink his hair into her silky hair and muss it up as it had been before was proof enough.
    No, he was just like any other man, one slippery slope away from temptation, from becoming that needy, hurting boy he had once been. Just thinking about the past filled him with shame. How many blows had it taken before he’d learned to not interfere between his parents, how many days of crushed hopes that he could somehow make it all better? How much self-discipline to get rid of the nauseous guilt even when he had finally walked out?
    “No one who’s known you could call you weak, Olivia.”
    Shock flickered in her gaze, her hands slow and shaky as she pulled the wrap closer around her. “You obviously didn’t see me fleeing my father with my tail between my legs at the reception.”
    The bitterness in her words surprised him, even more so that it was directed at herself. She was a mass of contradictions, one minute—a fighter who didn’t take any punches, the next—a vulnerable woman too aware of her own weaknesses. “Actually, it’s what tipped me off that it was you and not Kim. And I understand why you did it. I’ve been a witness to Jeremiah’s temper more than once. Not every battle is worth fighting and it doesn’t make you a coward.” As he’d learned the hard way.
    Her gaze flew to his and lingered. A smile curved her lush mouth, mischief dancing in her eyes. “Are you thanking me for not causing a scene at the reception?”
    He laughed at the way she turned the tables on him. “Since you were the cause of it in the first place, no.”
    Olivia couldn’t shift her gaze away from him. His mouth bracketed into deep grooves, his blue eyes crinkled with laughter, he was gorgeous, divine. His smile reached out like a wave, something deep inside her roaring in response. Looking away from him, she thought back to the afternoon when she had finally given into temptation and looked him up on Google. But she hadn’t found anything of a personal nature, which was what she had been looking for really.
    What she had found about him was enough to give her a complex, though. A successful businessman who specialized in investing in small businesses in dire need of capital, influential board member on a wide variety of charities, and even the women he had dated in the past—all successful businesswomen in their own right, had only good things to say about him. Alexander King, apparently, was the perfect man by all accounts. She thought she might be