by Marinelli, Carol; Hayward, Jennifer; Stephens, Susan; Anderson, Natalie
“Is that what your parents were arguing about the day your mother died?”
She nodded. “The groom showed up the night before asking for more money. My mother was terrified it would ruin her career when she found out.”
“At least you know she wasn’t keeping it from you.”
“But it was unnecessary,” she bit out, mouth trembling. “All of it. If my father had told my mother the truth, if she hadn’t been so upset that day, it never would have happened.”
“You can’t know that,” he murmured, brushing a thumb across her cheek. “Your father isn’t responsible for your mother’s death, Cecily. No one is. I know how much you loved her, what a special bond you had, but she’s gone. You need to let her go.”
“I do,” she agreed, fire glinting in her eyes, “and so do you. This devastation,” she said, waving a hand at him, “this badly miscalculated mistake my grandfather made—it needs to end, Alejandro.”
“Tell your father to apologize and it will.”
“He won’t do it. He promised my grandmother and my mother he would never sully their legacies. He’d rather you strip him of every cent he has than break his promise.”
He clenched his hands by his sides. “So he elects to use you as a pawn instead? He knows exactly what he is doing, Cecily. By putting you squarely in the middle, by tearing my loyalties in two, he won’t have to sacrifice anything. It’s the same insane arrogance your family has been perpetuating for decades.”
“Funny,” she said quietly, “that’s what he said about you. That I am your power play. That you are only marrying me to secure your heir…that you are enjoying taking away the one thing he values most.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he bit out. “You know what you mean to me.”
“I thought I did.” Turbulent emotion swirled in those blue eyes. “Now I’m not so sure.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Explain.”
“My father showed me the letter you sent him. You were supposed to be getting him to see reason, Alejandro, not threatening to annihilate him.”
That made his skin sting. “I gave him time to see reason. I hand delivered him a generous compromise—a much more generous one than most would offer. I was on my way to talk sense into him today when my flight was diverted—time I don’t have. But sometimes, querida, the only thing a man like him understands is the bottom line.”
“And that worked well didn’t it? You are like two stags engaged in a fight to the finish. There will be no winner in this.”
He threw up his hands. “What would you have me do?”
“Drop this,” she said quietly. “We can heal this wound together if we refuse to perpetuate it. You said so yourself when you first proposed marriage.”
“That was assuming your father was a reasonable man.”
She regarded him silently. “Is it really so different what he is doing than what you are? He is trying to preserve my family’s honor just as you are yours.”
“A crime was committed, that is the difference,” he growled. “Don’t make me make impossible decisions, Cecily.”
* * *
Exactly what her father had said. Cecily turned away, arms wrapped around herself, feeling like a patchwork quilt she was knitted into so many pieces, the stitches barely holding.
She’d left Kentucky battered and broken over her father’s refusal to choose her over a decades-old feud. Over the realization his love and duty toward her mother, something that had always been so passionately strong, had superseded his feelings for her. But it had also answered the question she’d asked herself at the very beginning of her and Alejandro’s relationship.
“Cecily?” Alejandro curved his fingers around her arm and turned her back to him.
She lifted her gaze to the frustration tangling in his. “I thought I could do it,” she said huskily. “A practical marriage to you for the sake of our child. I thought that what we could have together was better than this secret desire I’ve always had to be loved, because who knew if that even existed for me?
“And then,” she said, taking a deep breath, “you made me believe in you. You were the one thing in all of this I could hold on to when everything else was crumbling beneath my feet. You were my person.”
His gaze darkened. “I still am. That hasn’t changed.”
“No,” she agreed. “I’ve changed. I allowed myself to fall in love with you. I started buying into this dream we were building together and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I want it all, Alejandro. I want that unconditional love we talked about that night at La Reve. I want you to choose me over this feud that is tearing us all apart.”
He looked as if he’d been sucker punched. “I did choose you. I’m marrying you. We are building a life together.”
“No,” she said, “you’re marrying me because I’m carrying your child. And maybe because on some level you care for me, because I believe you do. But ours will never be a real marriage. You will never let yourself love because your past has made you too afraid to do it.”
His face shuttered. “I’m not afraid to love, I refuse to go there because I know it will mess up a perfectly good relationship. Because we have more to consider in this than just us—we have a child on the way.”
She shook her head. “Allowing yourself to feel won’t mess us up. It will make us better.”
“It’s inconsequential,” he said curtly. “Love is not a capacity I have, Cecily. I’ve been clear about that from the beginning. I’m not trying to be obstinate, I’m telling you the truth.”
Her heart dropped at the utterly closed off look on his face. She’d known this was coming, hadn’t she? That she’d been letting her feelings run away with her in the hope the caring she sensed in him might turn into the love she needed. The love she now knew she deserved. But to hear him say it, to reject it so completely, was like a knife to the insides.
“So what will you do?” she asked quietly. “Take my father to court? Put our child in the center of this war between two families, exactly what your parents did to you?”
“We will shield them from it,” he rejected. “Ensure that never happens. Your father has a choice, Cecily, let him make it.”
“So do you. You have the power to make this decision and yet you won’t. I am expected to give up everything for a marriage with a man who will never love me.”
His hands fisted by his sides. “Cecily—”
She swiped her purse off the chair. “I think we both need time to think.”
“About what? We are getting married in a week.”
“About whether I can do this. Because the man I fell in love with wouldn’t do this to me. He wouldn’t make me make this choice.”
She turned and stalked to the door. He followed, his face a dark cloud. “Stay and we’ll talk this out. You can’t just walk off into the night like this. You’re clearly emotional.”
She pivoted to face him, eyes flashing. “I am emotional, Alejandro. So give me the space I’m asking for.”
“Where will you go?”
“I have no idea.” She yanked the door open before that last stitch gave. “Given the two males in my life have managed to so thoroughly disappoint me, I feel the need for some distance.”
* * *
Gluing his feet to the floor, Alejandro resisted the urge to go after her. It might push her over the edge in the mood she was in. But the thought of her out there alone in New York, even with his credit cards, made him crazy.
He traced a path back to the bar instead and poured himself another glass of Scotch, his fury growing with every breath. She couldn’t just change the rules of the game at the eleventh hour. Decide she loved him, then walk away. Break the promises she’d made to him and his child.
Because as much as she’d enjoyed throwing his emotional unava
ilability at him, he had invested in her too…in this future they were building together. He had trusted her to stick—not to walk out that door in an eerily similar scene to one he’d been privy to far too many times in his life.
He collapsed in a chair. I want it all, Alejandro. I want that unconditional love we talked about. I want you to choose me over this feud that is tearing us apart.
He scowled at the amber liquid in his glass. He was the good guy here. He’d been honest about what he was capable of from the very beginning. It was Clayton Hargrove, the arrogant bastard, who was intent on breaking his daughter’s heart.
He rested his head against the back of the chair. An envelope on the table caught his eye. Picking it up, he pulled out its contents. The sonogram. Living, breathing proof of the child he and Cecily had conceived together, it knocked the air from his lungs all over again.
It had all become too real. Too easy to envision the family he and Cecily could have together. How complete the idea of it made him feel. Tempting—too tempting to want to have it all—everything he’d never had.
Cecily made him want things he knew he couldn’t have. He didn’t have the inherent trust in him to subscribe to that kind of a vision—an unconditional love. He’d given that up a long time ago.
And hadn’t she just proven his instincts right by walking out that door?
* * *
He woke the next morning with a viciously heavy head. Canceling his meetings, he flew to Belgium.
“I take it this isn’t a social visit,” his grandmother said over coffee the next morning on the porch, eyeing his combustible demeanor.
He shook his head and gave her the recap, finishing with Cecily’s departure.
Adriana looked pensive. “What a mess,” she murmured. “Can you really blame her? She feels as if she’s been betrayed by the two men she loves.”
“Yes,” he bit out, “I can. You don’t walk out on someone when you’re having a disagreement. You talk it out. Work it out.” He lifted a brow. “And who’s side are you on anyway? This is your battle I’ve been fighting.”
“Yes,” she agreed softly, “and maybe Cecily’s right. Maybe it’s time it ended.”
Blood pulsed against his temples. “You’re telling me this now?”
His grandmother took a sip of her coffee. Sat back in her chair. “There’s more to the story of Harper and I than you know. The rivalry we shared was epic, fueled by our mutual ambition. We pushed each other, made each other better. You might even have called us friends in the beginning. But somewhere along the way, it turned toxic, this need to win.”
“Harper decided Diablo was the key to it all. When I wouldn’t agree to allow her to stud him with Demeter, she lashed out, tried to hurt me. We were at a show in Barcelona when I discovered she was having an affair with your grandfather.”
With Hugo? The most honorable man he’d known?
“It was a mistake,” his grandmother acknowledged. “Harper was beautiful. Irresistible to men. And partly,” she conceded, “it was my fault. My mindless obsession with my sport hurt your grandfather—he felt I loved it more than him at times. And maybe I did.”
The remnants of a long-ago pain stained her dark eyes. “The affair was over by the time I confronted him about it. I think he knew she had been using him. But it nearly cost us our marriage.”
Alejandro attempted to absorb the chink in a relationship that had seemed bullet proof. “You forgave him.”
“I loved him, so yes I did. Marriage is never perfect, Alejandro. It’s messy and complex, but your grandfather and I built something strong enough that it withstood the difficult times. He was the love of my life.”
He took a sip of his coffee. Considered the message she was sending. He could have that with Cecily. He knew it in his heart. All he’d ever wanted from the beginning was to protect her—to take away the shadows. To keep her.
So why was it so hard to make that leap she was asking of him? Was the survival instinct that had driven him for so long simply too strong? And yet, he knew even as he thought it, that he loved her. That she’d found a way beneath those defenses of his from the very beginning until she’d crawled into the very heart of him.
He’d spent every minute since denying what he knew to be true because she made him feel so alive, so complete, he couldn’t contemplate ever losing her.
Except where had that gotten him? He would lose her now if he wasn’t careful.
His grandmother set a gnarled, weathered hand on his. “Go find Cecily. Tell her it’s over. I’ve spent far too much time and emotion chasing my pride, Alejandro. Enough is enough.”
He nodded. “I’ll go talk to Clayton.”
“No,” Adriana said, fixing her dark gaze on him. “Leave Clayton to me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ALEJANDRO RETURNED TO New York intent on finding Cecily and making things right. Except his fiancée had turned her phone off and wasn’t returning his calls.
She was not, according to her father, in Kentucky, apparently having followed through on her vow to achieve distance from both of them. Nor was she in Manhattan according to the private detective who’d worked on the Hargrove file for him. Which left him precisely nowhere—five days before his wedding.
The calls started then. First the wedding planner with one urgent item after another, then the contractors at the farm with some last minute snags on the finishing materials. With no capacity to sit on a phone all day advising them on things he couldn’t see, he moved up to the Cherry Hill and managed his business from there.
His fiancée would, he assumed, come talk to him when she was ready. Which needed to be soon.
He personally supervised the unloading of Cecily’s horses as they arrived from Kentucky—his other surprise for her. He even went out and bought a box of that crazy-looking American cereal for Bacchus who was now missing home as well as his mistress.
He could identify. A piece of Cecily haunted him everywhere he looked. Taunting him with his own stupidity—reminding him of what he stood to lose.
He woke the next morning to a text from Cecily saying she was fine. That she needed more time to think. No clue to her whereabouts. No time frame on the thinking.
He left another message for her. Told her he needed to talk to her. No reply.
Was she trying to make him sweat? Or was she reconsidering marrying him?
And then it was the day before his wedding. All the renovations complete, the main barn a gleaming masterpiece of wrought-iron and mahogany, he wrote a massive check to the construction manager and thanked him and his team for their hard work.
Watching them leave, a very real fear consumed him that Cecily wasn’t coming back. That he had hurt her so badly by not putting her first, by letting her down like everyone else, he’d ruined everything.
But she’d left him for God’s sake. How the hell was he supposed to fix it if he was talking to himself?
* * *
“In case you’ve forgotten,” Stavros drawled that evening in the Great Room at Cherry Hill, pool cue in hand, “a wedding does require a bride. You need to make a call on this, Salazar.”
Alejandro was well aware of that. It was a fact his groomsmen had been dancing around all evening, but with two hundred guests set to descend here tomorrow, it was a reality he could no longer ignore.
“How about this?” Stavros suggested, lifting the cue. “I sink this shot, you call it off. I miss—we keep it in play for another twenty-four hours and hope she shows up for a Concerto in E.”
Antonio grimaced. “This is no time for your warped sense of humor.”
“On the contrary,” the Greek drawled, “some humor is desperately needed here.”
“Not that kind,” Sebastien interjected. “Maybe we should determine what we’re going to tell the guest
s if we do call it off.”
“A permit issue with the renovations,” Antonio suggested.
“Not bad,” Sebastien pondered thoughtfully.
“Or you could call it off now,” Stavros said. “Before half of New York gets into their cars and drives up here.”
If he were smart, Alejandro conceded, that’s what he would do. But he had signed on for this future he and Cecily had built together. He had promised to never let her down. He wasn’t going to be the one to bail on her.
“I’ll make a decision in the morning.”
* * *
Cecily paced the veranda of the rustic cabin she’d rented in the Catskills as the sun made its way into the sky.
Her wedding day.
Her heart climbed into her mouth. She had to make a decision. She was supposed to marry Alejandro in hours. But nothing seemed clear.
This idyllic paradise, buried deep in the heart of the mountains had seemed the perfect place to think. To lick her wounds. Because both her father and Alejandro had cut her deeply.
She knew it was Alejandro’s sense of honor at work, knew her history was at play here too, but she wanted, needed that unconditional love from the man she married. She couldn’t settle for less.
And yet, she conceded, leaning against the pillar of the veranda and looking out at the splendor of the red and gold leaves, all this beautiful place had done was remind her of the home she and Alejandro were building—the place where her heart was.
And so—her impossible decision. Marry Alejandro and grow to hate him for what he was doing to her family. To her. Don’t marry him and deprive her child of a home and herself of the man she loved.
She watched the sun rise high above the trees. A long-ago conversation with her mother filtered through her head. “You don’t choose who you love, Cecily. How and when you love. You just do.”
Something unraveled inside her. And suddenly she knew.