by Jennie Lucas
“Awww, so sweet,” the movie star said, somewhat ironically. “Well. Whenever the romance is over, feel free to...”
“It’s not a romance,” a man said behind us. “It’s extortion.”
Turning, I sucked in my breath. A man stood behind us, dressed exactly like the others, in a sharp black tuxedo. The man I’d been so desperate to see—and yet, oddly, he seemed out of place here. Handsome. But malevolent.
“Edward,” I breathed. “I thought you were in Tokyo—”
His eyes softened. “My staff called me. I was glad to hear you’d gone to London to see me. But not so glad to hear who was with you.” He glared at Alejandro, his jaw tight, even as he continued to speak to me. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right,” I said, suddenly nervous.
The two men were glaring at each other, both of them straining the size of the ballroom between their shoulders and masculine pride. I had a sudden dismaying flash of two predators, growling over the same female—or the same prey.
Alejandro’s eyes narrowed, but with a swift glance at me, he politely put out his hand. “Edward St. Cyr. I know you by reputation, of course.”
The words were courteous and cool. Edward took them as the insult they were no doubt intended. Without taking the offered hand, he bared his teeth in a smile. “How gracious of you to say so. I know of you not just from reputation, but also from more...personal sources.” He looked down dismissively at Alejandro’s hand. “It does seem a little...tacky?...that after dragging Lena to Europe, you’d force her to pose as your date.”
“I didn’t force her.”
“Of course you did,” he said roughly. “What is it, some feeble attempt to project stability for the benefit of future shareholders? Or—no, don’t tell me—some attempt to make her love you again?” Smiling his shark’s smile, Edward held up his glass of champagne in salute. “You’d think destroying her once would be enough for you. But if anyone would be selfish enough to try for twice, it’s you, Navaro.”
No respectful Your Excellency. Just Alejandro’s surname, tossed out with scorn. The entire group, including me, stared wide-eyed as Edward drank down the entire contents of his champagne glass. We looked at Alejandro.
He had dropped his hand, his eyelids now narrowed to slits. “Whatever you might have heard about me, it was a mistake.” He glanced at me. “Lena now knows the truth.”
Edward lifted an eyebrow. “Convinced her of that, have you?”
“What are you even doing here?” Alejandro’s face hardened. “I don’t recall sending you an invitation.”
Setting his empty glass down on a nearby tray, Edward looked over the ballroom with a small smile. “I have plenty of friends. One was happy to bring me along.”
“Who?”
“The Bulgarian ambassador.” Edward turned back with lifted eyebrows and said mildly, “Surely you’re not going to throw us out and risk an international incident?”
Alejandro looked at a gray-haired, distinguished-looking man across the ballroom, who appeared deep in conversation with someone I recognized from newspaper photos, who’d recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. He turned back with gritted teeth. “What do you want, St. Cyr?”
“I want Lena, since she’s asked for me,” he said softly. He turned to me, holding out his arm. “Shall we go, love?”
I heard a low, almost barbaric growl, and suddenly Alejandro was in front of me, blocking me from Edward’s outstretched arm.
“So it’s like that, is it?” Edward said. “She’s your prisoner?”
“She’s here with me of her own free will.”
“Free will.” Edward’s lips pulled back, revealing white, sharp teeth. “Meaning you probably blackmailed her over that baby. You have no real claim on her.”
“I have every claim.”
“Because she had your child?” He snorted, jerking his chin. “Keep it,” he said derisively. “If I’m the man she wants, I will give her more.”
I gasped aloud at his cold reference to Miguel. It?
Edward couldn’t have referred to my precious baby as “it.” He couldn’t have implied that he could get me pregnant and replace Miguel in my arms, in my life, as easily as someone might replace a new shoe.
Could he?
The black slash of Alejandro’s eyebrows lowered. Every line of his hard-muscled body was taut, as if he were barely holding back from attack. He reminded me of a lion, or a wolf, coiled to spring, with only a thin veneer of civilized reason holding him in check—but not for much longer.
The two of them were about to start a brawl. Right here, in this elegant gilded ballroom, surrounded by the glitterati of Spain and all the world. The crowd around us was already growing, and so were the whispers. I wished I’d never started this by trying to contact Edward. Desperately, I yanked on his sleeve. “Please. Don’t...”
Edward looked down at me condescendingly. “It’s all right, Lena. I’m here now. I won’t let him bully you.” His eyes were hard, and his broad shoulders were square, like a rugby player’s. And the condescending smile he gave me, after the cold, contemptuous stare he’d just given Alejandro, made me wish he was a million miles away. “You’re safe. I’ll take over.”
“Take over?” I repeated incredulously.
Just yesterday, I’d wished so ardently for Edward’s help. I’d remembered only that a year ago, when I’d needed to escape London, when I’d felt desperate and terrified and alone, I’d been grateful for his strength. But now...
I’d forgotten what Edward was really like.
Forgotten the times he’d visited his house in Mexico after Miguel was born, when he’d seemed irritated by Miguel’s cries when my son’s tummy hurt or he was unable to sleep. Edward had made several dark hints about adoption, or sending the baby back to Claudie and Alejandro. I’d thought Edward’s jokes were in poor taste, but I’d let it go, because I owed him so much.
But now—
Edward was no longer even looking at me. He was smiling at Alejandro, utterly confident—like a dog who couldn’t wait to test out his slashing claws and snarling teeth, to prove who was the stronger, meaner dog, in the pretext for a brawl of fighting over a bone—me.
Alejandro’s dark eyes met mine. For a moment, they held. Something changed in his expression. He seemed to relax slightly. He drew himself up, looking almost amused.
“Yes, Lena is the mother of my child,” he drawled. “And because of that I have a claim on her that you never will. But that’s not the only claim. I have one deeper even than that.” He glanced at me. “We intended to keep it private for a few days more, as a family matter, but we might as well let everyone know, shall we not, querida?”
“Um, yes?” I said, as mystified as everyone else.
Still smiling that pleasant smile, Alejandro turned and grabbed a crystal flute and solid silver knife off a waiter’s passing tray. For a moment I froze in fear. Even with a butter knife—heck, even with his bare hands—I knew Alejandro could be dangerous. Boxing and mixed martial arts were hobbies in his downtime, the way he kept in shape and worked out the tension from a hard day making billion-dollar deals.
I exhaled when he didn’t turn back to attack Edward. In fact, he rather insultingly turned his back on him, striding through the ballroom, to the dais, as the crowds parted like magic. He climbed the steps to the same microphone where he’d given the speech before. Most of the guests, seeing him, immediately fell silent. A few continued to whisper amongst themselves, staring between him and Edward—and me.
Alejandro chimed his knife against the crystal flute, so hard and loud that I feared the delicate glass might break in his hand. The entire ballroom fell so quiet that I could hear my own breath.
“I know this is a business gathering,” he said, “but I must beg your indulgence for a moment.
I am, after all, amongst friends....” His eyes abruptly focused on me across the crowd. “I have some happy news to announce. My engagement.”
No. My face turned red and my body itched in an attack of nervous fear beneath my pale pink ball gown as a thousand people turned to stare at me. The whispering increased, building like the roll of distant thunder.
“Many of you probably wondered if I’d ever get married.” Alejandro rubbed the back of his dark hair then looked up with a smile that was equal parts charming and sheepish. “I confess I wondered that myself.” His low, sexy voice reverberated across the gilded ballroom. “But sometimes fate chooses better for us than we could ever have chosen for ourselves.”
No, no, no, I pleaded desperately with my eyes.
He smiled.
He lifted his champagne flute toward me. “A toast. To Miss Lena Carlisle. The most beautiful woman on earth, and the mother of my baby son...”
The whispers exploded to a sharp roar.
“...to the future Duchess of Alzacar!”
There were gasps across the crowd, the largest of which was probably mine. But Alejandro continued to hold up his flute, so everyone else did, too. He drank deeply, and a thousand guests drank, too. Toasting to our engagement.
Only two people continued to stare at him blankly.
Edward.
And me.
My body trembled. All I wanted to do was turn and flee through the crowd, to disappear, to never come back. To be free of him—the man who’d once destroyed me. Who could, if he tried, so easily do it again—and more, since now our child could be used against me.
But that child also meant, in a very real way, that I was bound to Alejandro for the rest of my life. We both loved Miguel. We both wished to raise him.
Which meant, no matter how fiercely I wished otherwise, and no matter how I’d tried to deny it, I would never be truly free of Alejandro—ever.
Cheers, some supportive, some envious and some by bewildered drunken people who’d missed what all the fuss was about but were happy to cheer anyway, rang across the ballroom, along with a smattering of applause. Alejandro left the dais, where he was stopped by crowds of well-wishers, including the glamorous movie star I’d recognized and two heads of state.
Behind me, Edward seethed with disappointment and fury, “He doesn’t own you.”
“You’re wrong,” I whispered. I turned to Edward with tears in my eyes. “He owned me from the moment I became pregnant with his baby.”
Edward’s face went wild.
“No,” he breathed. He started to reach toward my face, then he stiffened as he became aware of all the people watching us, the strangers starting to hover, no doubt awaiting their chance to congratulate me on snagging a billionaire duke into illustrious matrimony. Gorgeous, beautiful women in designer clothes, thin and glossy like Claudie, were already staring at me incredulously, clearly in shock that someone like me could possibly have captured the heart of a man like Alejandro.
The answer was simple. I hadn’t.
This was my future. Everything I thought I’d left behind me in London, all the pity and dismissive insults. Except it would be even worse. Being described as a poor relation was practically a compliment, compared with the epithet that strangers would soon use to describe me: gold digger.
It would have been different if Alejandro and I had actually loved each other. Thinking of it, my heart ached. If he’d loved me, and I’d loved him, I wouldn’t have given two hoots what anyone else thought. But as it was...
“You agreed to marry him?” Edward said incredulously.
“Not exactly.” Swallowing over the ache in my throat, I breathed, “It doesn’t matter. Now he has proof he’s Miguel’s father, he’ll never let him go. And I will never leave my son. So we might as well be married....”
“Like hell.”
Edward grabbed my arm, his eyes like fire. Without warning, he pulled me through the crowd. I had one single image of Alejandro’s shocked face across the ballroom, watching us, before I was out the side door and down the hall, pushed into a dark, quiet corner of the empty coatroom.
Edward turned to me, his face contorted by shadows.
“Run away with me,” he said urgently.
I drew back in shock. “What?”
“Navaro has no hold on you.”
“He’s Miguel’s father!”
“Share custody of the kid if you must,” he said through gritted teeth. His hand gripped my forearm. “But don’t throw yourself away on a man who will never deserve you.”
“What are you saying?” I tried to pull away my arm, but his grip was tight.
“He terrified you for a year—got you pregnant just to steal your baby—”
“I was wrong—he didn’t! It was all Claudie! She’s the one who said it, and I believed her.”
“So he’s innocent? No way,” he said grimly. “But even if he is—even if he didn’t do that one awful thing, what about the rest?”
“What do you mean?”
“He made you love him, then he abandoned you. Don’t you remember how gray your face was for months afterward? How your eyes were hollow and you barely spoke? I do.”
I swallowed. “I...”
“Where was he when you wanted to give him everything? When you tried to tell him you were pregnant? He changed his phone number. How can you marry him now? How can you forget?”
I flashed hot, then cold. Yes. I remembered.
“And after all that, he gets you back?” Edward pulled me closer, looking down at me in the shadowy cloakroom with a strange light in his eyes. “No. I was there for you. I took care of you. I’m the one who—”
“Get your hands off my woman.”
The low voice was ice-cold behind us. With a gasp that must have sounded guilty, I whirled to face him. “Alejandro!”
His eyes were dark with fury as he looked at me. “So this is why you were so reluctant to marry me?”
“No, you—”
“Be silent!”
I winced.
“Don’t talk to her that way,” Edward said.
Alejandro didn’t look away from me. He held his body in a dangerous stillness as he ground out, “You have nothing to do with us, St. Cyr.”
Either Edward didn’t see the warning, or he didn’t care. “Don’t I? Who do you think was supporting her this past year? Who held her together after you blew her apart?” Coming closer to Alejandro, he said softly, with a malicious look in his eyes, “Who was at Lena’s side at the hospital, when she gave birth to your child? Where were you then, Navaro?”
Alejandro slowly turned to look at him. I saw the hard set of his shoulders, the rapid rise and fall of his breath. I saw his hands tighten at his sides, and knew Edward was about to lose half of his face.
“Stop!” I cried, stepping between them in real fear. “Stop this at once!” I pressed on Edward’s chest. “Just go.”
He lifted his eyebrows in shock. “You can’t honestly choose him over me?”
“Go. And don’t come back.” I glanced back at Alejandro and knew only the fact that I stood between them kept him from attack. I took a deep breath. “Thank you for everything you did for me, Edward. I’ll never forget how you helped me.” My jaw hardened. “But it’s over.”
Edward’s face contorted. “You’re throwing yourself away on him? Just because of some stupid baby?”
My sympathy disintegrated.
“That stupid baby is my son.”
“Dammit, you know I didn’t mean...”
But my heart had iced over. Releasing him, I stepped back, closer to Alejandro. “Yes, I choose him. Over you.”
“You heard her,” Alejandro said roughly. “You have thirty seconds to be out of my building, before security throws yo
u out.”
“Sending in your goons, eh?” he sneered. “Can’t be bothered to do it yourself?”
“Happy to,” Alejandro said grimly, pushing up the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket as he took a step forward, fists raised.
“No!” I grabbed his arm. My hand couldn’t even fully wrap around the full extent of the hard, huge biceps beneath his tuxedo. “Please, Alejandro,” I whispered. “Don’t hurt him. He was good to me, when I had no one else. I never would have survived without him. Neither would Miguel. Please. For my sake.”
Jaw taut, Alejandro slowly lowered his fist. “For your sake.” His voice was low and cold as he turned to Edward. “Thank you. For protecting what I love.”
Love? For a moment I stared at Alejandro, then I realized he was speaking of Miguel.
Edward glared at him. Obviously not realizing he’d just narrowly escaped death, he sneered, “Go to hell.” At the door, he turned back and said, “I’ll be back for you, Lena.”
Then he was gone. And Alejandro and I were suddenly alone in the cloakroom. But my relief was short-lived.
“No wonder he loaned you his house,” he said. “No wonder he protected you. He sees you as his. Why does he believe that?”
I whirled to face him. The cold fury in his eyes was like a wave. But there was something else there, too. Hurt.
“He tried to kiss me last week,” I admitted in a low voice, then shook my head. “But I just gave a shocked laugh and he left. Whatever he might have hoped, all he ever was to me was a friend—”
“Friend,” he said scornfully. “You knew what he wanted.”
I shook my head fiercely. “Not until last week, I never—”
“Then you were willfully blind. He’s in love with you.”
“You’re wrong there.” Shivering, I crossed my bare arms over my pink strapless ball gown. “If he’d really loved me, he would have loved Miguel, too. But he was always getting annoyed about him. Suggesting things...like I should send him away, farm him out for adoption...”
Alejandro’s eyes darkened. “And you were willing to call him a friend? To let him near our son?”