Uncovering Her Nine Month Secret

by Jennie Lucas

I wanted to lash back at him. To tell him he was being unreasonable, or that I hadn’t had a choice. Instead, I said the only thing that mattered. The only thing that was true.

  “I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice. “I was wrong.”

  He’d been opening his mouth to say more, no doubt cutting, angry accusations. But my humble, simple words cut him off at the knees. For a long moment, he stared at me in the shadowy cloakroom. Down the hall, we could distantly hear music playing, people laughing. Then he turned away, clawing back his dark hair.

  “Bien. I wasn’t exactly perfect, either,” he muttered. Lifting his head, he glared at me. “But you’re never to see him again. Or let him near Miguel.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Fine?”

  “He stopped being my friend the moment he called my baby ‘it.’”

  “So,” he said with a casual tone that belied the tension in his shoulders, “did you let him kiss you?”

  I gaped at him. “Oh—for heaven’s sake!” I stomped my foot against the plush carpet. “I’m not going to say it again!”

  “I found the two of you here, talking...”

  “And I just saw you talking to an actress in the ballroom. I didn’t accuse you of making out! He made a pass at me last week. I refused. End of story.”

  “Once we are married...”

  My cheeks went hot. “Married!” I stared at him, shocked. “Who said anything about marriage?”

  Now Alejandro was the one to look shocked.

  “I just asked you to marry me!”

  “Asked?” My voice was acid. “When you asked, I said no. Tonight, you just announced it! In front of everyone! You may have asked—I never said yes!”

  “We are going to be wed. Accept it.”

  “I will accept an engagement,” I retorted. “I will accept that we need to live in the same town, perhaps even the same house, for our son. A public front, a pretense for Miguel’s sake, to make it appear we are actually a couple—that he wasn’t just some mistake! But nothing more. There’s no way I’m actually going to marry you. Do you think I would ever give you my body again? Or my heart?”

  “I told you,” he ground out. “I’m not asking for your heart.”

  “Then you can forget anything else—I won’t give you my body, or take your name! I owe you respect as Miguel’s father, but that’s it,” I said through gritted teeth. “Whatever you might believe, you don’t own me, any more than Edward did!”

  “I’m not Edward. I’m the father of your child.” He grabbed my wrist, looking down at me. “I’m the man you will wed. I don’t need your heart. But your body, at least, will be mine.”

  “No!” But even as I gasped with fury, heat flashed from his possessive grip on my wrist. Electricity crackled up my arm, to my throat, to my lips, to my breasts, down, down, down to my core. Pushing me back roughly against the coats, he looked down at me in the shadows.

  “Did you really think,” he said softly, “once I found you, I would ever let you go? I gave you up once for the sake of a promise. I gave you up to do the right thing. But fate has thrown you back into my arms. Now you will be entirely mine—”

  Lowering his head, Alejandro kissed me fiercely, his lips hot and hard against mine, plundering, demanding. I tried to resist. I couldn’t let myself feel—I couldn’t—

  Then I melted as the banked embers inside me, beneath the cold ash of the past lonely year, roared to a blazing fire. My body shuddered beneath his ruthless, almost violent embrace, and I wrapped my arms tightly around him, holding him to me, lost in the sweet forbidden ecstasy of surrender.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HIS LIPS SAVAGED MINE, his tongue hot and salty and sweet. I clutched his shoulders, desperate to sate my desire. I’d hungered for him every night, even when I hated him, against all reason, against my will.

  Alejandro’s hands ran along my bare arms then moved to the tangle in my hair, tilting my chin so he could plunder my mouth more deeply. Long tendrils of hair had pulled free from my chignon. I felt them brush against my naked shoulders as his hard, muscular body strained against me, towering over mine, overpowering me. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough...

  His hot kisses moved slowly down my neck, as he murmured husky endearments in Spanish against my skin. My head fell back against the wall of coats, and I closed my eyes, feeling tight and dizzy. He nuzzled my bare skin over the neckline of my gown. His hands cupped my breasts straining against the pink silk of the bodice.

  So sweet. So hot. My breath came at a gasp, and as my eyelids flickered, the world seemed to spin in whirling patterns of shadows and light, echoes of past love and longing. For over a year I’d longed for him. For all my life, I’d longed for this. And it was even better than I remembered, a powerful drug beyond imagining. Wrapped in his embrace, I forgot myself, forgot my own name, and knew only that I had to have him or die....

  A low deliberate cough came behind us. Startled, I turned my head, and Alejandro straightened. The Bulgarian ambassador stood at the cloakroom door, with his wife draped in pearls behind him.

  “Excuse us,” he said gravely, and stepping forward, he took a black fur coat off the hanger behind us.

  I heard his wife titter as they left, “See, Vasil? I told you it was a love match!”

  “Poor devil deserves some pleasure, at least,” the man’s reply echoed back to us, “after the grasping creature tricked him into marriage with a pregnancy.”

  Shamefaced, I looked up at Alejandro. The air in the cloakroom suddenly felt thin and cold.

  “Let me go,” I said.

  His hold on me only tightened. “Who cares what they say?”

  “I care,” I whispered.

  “Bull,” he cut me off ruthlessly. “You’re too strong to be ruled by gossip.” His hands moved slowly down the bare skin of my upper back, and I shivered, fighting my own desire. “It’s this you’re afraid of. This.” He stroked my arms to my breast, then abruptly pulled me up to stand, hard against his body. “This is all that matters....”

  “It’s not,” I choked out. “There’s love. And trust....”

  “Love for our son. And trust for your husband. Your partner.”

  For a second, I trembled. I did want those things. A real home. I’d already accepted that we would need to live in the same town, or better yet, the same house. Why not accept a partnership? We could share a life, a son, even a bed. Would it be enough, without romantic love? Could I live without that? Could I?

  For Miguel’s sake?

  “Maybe I could accept a marriage without love,” I said in a small voice. I took a deep breath and raised my gaze to his. “But there is no partnership without trust. Can you promise you’ve never lied to me? And that you never will?”

  I watched as the brief triumph in his eyes went out. “No.”

  My lips parted in a silent gasp. I hadn’t expected that. My heart twisted as I thought how, with just a few hot kisses and the dream of giving Miguel a real home and family, I’d been perilously close to giving up my dreams.

  “Well, which is it, Alejandro?” I choked out. “Did you lie to me in the past? Or will you lie to me in the future?”

  His jawline tightened. For a moment, his face seemed tortured. Then, as I’d seen happen before, his expression shuttered, becoming expressionless, leaving me to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing. “Take your pick.”

  I stiffened. Hating him—no. Hating myself for letting him kiss me. Letting him? All he’d had to do was touch me and I’d flung myself into his kiss with the hunger of a starving woman at a piece of bread. “What have you lied to me about?”

  “You expect me to tell you the truth about that?”

  “Other women?”

  He glared at me. “I told you. I believe in honor. Fidelity. No. My
lie is about—something else.”

  “What?”

  “Me,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “Only me.”

  Which didn’t tell me anything at all! “Fine. Whatever.” I glared at him. “You shouldn’t have kissed me.”

  He relaxed imperceptibly now that we were no longer talking about his secrets.

  “This isn’t the place,” he agreed.

  “I didn’t just mean the cloakroom. I mean anywhere.”

  “I can think of many places I’d like to kiss you.”

  “Too bad.” My cheeks flamed, but I wouldn’t let him distract me. “Take your kisses, and your lies, somewhere else.”

  “A marriage in name only?” He sounded almost amused. “Do you really think that will work?”

  “Since I can’t even trust you, let alone love you, there will be no marriage of any kind,” I snapped. “And if you keep asking, even our engagement will be remarkably short.”

  “Why are you trying to fight me, when it’s so obvious that you will give in?” he said. “You want to raise Miguel. So do I. What do you expect to do—live next door? In my stable?”

  “Better that than your bed.”

  His dark eyes glittered. “That wasn’t how you kissed me.”

  Heat pulsed through me. I could hardly deny it. I looked away. “Sex is different for women. It involves love!”

  He snorted. “Right.”

  “Or at least caring and trust!” I cried, stung.

  “Who is speaking in generalities now?” he said harshly. A cynical light rose in his eyes. “Many women have sex with strangers. Just—as you said—as many women prefer to drink their coffee black, without the niceties of sugar and cream!”

  My cheeks flushed. “Fine for them, but—”

  “Lust is just an appetite, a craving, such as one might have for ensaladilla rusa. No one says that you must be deeply committed to the mayonnaise in order to enjoy the taste of the potato salad!”

  I lifted my chin. “Go seduce one of those salad women, then! I don’t want you in my bed, I don’t want you as my husband and I just regret I’m stuck with you as Miguel’s father!”

  “Enough.” His voice was deadly cold. “You have made enough of a fool of me, making me beg—for the truth about Miguel, for the DNA test, for access to him. I even had to beg you to keep your promise to come to Spain. There will be no more begging, at least—” his eyes glittered “—no more begging from me.”

  Alejandro had begged me for stuff? I must have missed that. “I never—”

  “You will marry me. Tonight.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “Right now. Choose.” His expression had hardened. “A priest. Or a lawyer.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Call it what you want.”

  I licked my lips, then tried, “Edward would help me. He has money and power to match even yours....”

  “Ah.” Alejandro came closer, softly tucking back a long tendril of hair that had escaped when he’d crushed me a few moments ago in his passionate embrace. “I wondered how long it would be before Mr. St. Cyr’s name made an appearance. That was even quicker than I expected.”

  My cheeks went hot, but I lifted my chin. “He would still help me if I asked.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he would,” he said softly. “But are you willing to accept the cost of his help?”

  I swallowed.

  “And the price to Miguel. Think of it.” He tilted his head. “A custody war, when each side has infinite resources to pay lawyers for years, decades, to come.” He gave a brief, humorless smile. “Miguel’s first words after mamá and papá might be restraining order.”

  I sucked in my breath.

  “And the scandal... The press will have a field day.” Pressing his advantage, he stroked my cheek almost tenderly. “Miguel will grow so accustomed to paparazzi he’ll start to think of them as members of his family. With good reason, for he’ll see them more frequently than he sees either of us.” He dropped his hand. His voice became harsh. “Is that really what you want?”

  “Why are you doing this, Alejandro?” I choked out.

  “I won’t risk having Edward St. Cyr as my son’s future stepfather.”

  I shook my head. “It will never happen!”

  “I’m supposed to believe that? A few minutes ago, you promised you’d never see him again. Now you’re threatening to use his wealth and power in a custody battle against me.”

  He looked at me with scorn, and I didn’t blame him. I wiped my eyes. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that—but you’re forcing my back against the wall! I have no choice!”

  “Neither do I.” His sensual lips curved downward. “You think you can control him. You cannot. He’s selfish. Ruthless. Dangerous.”

  I flashed him a glare full of hate. “Are you talking about him,” I said bitterly, “or yourself?”

  “Yes, I could be dangerous,” he said softly. “If anyone tried to hurt someone I cared about. I would die—or kill—to protect someone I loved.”

  “But you don’t love anyone!”

  “You’re wrong.” His voice was low. His lips pressed together in a thin line. “So will it be marriage between us—or war?”

  “I hate you!”

  “Is that your final answer?”

  Tears of hopeless rage filled my eyes, but I’d told Edward the truth. Alejandro had owned me from the moment I’d become pregnant with his child. I would give anything, sacrifice any part of myself, for my son. My heart. My dreams. My soul. What were those, compared with Miguel’s heart, his dreams, his soul?

  My baby would not spend his childhood in and out of divorce courts, surrounded by pushy paparazzi, bewildered by the internecine battles of his parents. Instead, he would be safe and warm and surrounded by love. He would be happy.

  It was all I had to cling to. All I had to live for.

  My shoulders fell.

  “No,” I whispered. “You win. I will marry you.”

  “Now.”

  “Fine! I hate you!”

  He looked down at me, his expression sardonic. “Hate me, then. At least that I can believe. Far more than your so-called love. But you will be my wife. In every way.”

  Yanking me into his arms, he kissed me, hard. But this time, there was nothing of tenderness, or even passion. Just a ruthless act of possession, showing me he owned me, a savage kiss hard enough to bruise.

  Pulling me out of the cloakroom and outside into the warm Spanish night, he called for his driver. The paparazzi were long gone, and the street was quiet, even lonely.

  Alejandro took me to the house of a local official, where with a quiet word a certificate of permission to marry was produced in record time. Then to a priest, in a large, empty church, so old and full of shadows it seemed half-haunted with the lost dreams of the dead.

  And so Alejandro and I were wed, in that wan, barren church, with only flickers of candlelight and ghostly moonlight from the upper windows lighting the cold, pale marble. My pink ball gown of silk and embroidered flowers, which once seemed so beautiful, now hung on me like a shroud.

  There was no wedding dress. No cake. No flowers. And no one, except the priest and his assistant called as witness, to wish us happiness.

  Which was just as well, because as I looked at the savage face of my new husband as we left the church into the dark of night, I knew happiness was the one thing we’d never have.

  * * *

  Alejandro looked across the front seat of the car. “You’re going to have to talk to me at some point.”

  I looked out the window at the passing scenery as we drove south into Andalucía. “No, I don’t, actually.”

  “So you intend to ignore me forever?” he said drily
.

  I shrugged, still not looking at him. “Lots of married couples stop talking eventually. We might as well start now.”

  We’d been alone in the car together for hours, but it felt like days. Alejandro was driving the expensive sports sedan, with Miguel in the baby seat behind us, cooing and batting at plush dangling toys. Three bodyguards and his usual driver were in the SUV following us. “I want some private time with my new bride,” Alejandro had told them with a wink, and they’d grinned.

  But the reason he’d desired privacy wasn’t exactly the usual one for newlyweds. I’d given Alejandro the silent treatment since our ghastly wedding ceremony last night. Seething. It wasn’t natural for me to bite my tongue. I think he was waiting for me to explode.

  He’d gotten me home by midnight as promised. The instant we returned to his Madrid penthouse I’d stalked into the bedroom where my baby slept, and though I couldn’t slam the door—too noisy—I’d locked it solidly behind me. Very childish, but I’d been afraid that once Mrs. Gutierrez left, he might demand his rights of the wedding night. Pulling on flannel pajamas, I’d stared at the door, just daring him to try.

  But he hadn’t. About three in the morning, feeling foolish, I’d unlocked the door. But he never came, not even to apologize for his brutish behavior. There was no way I would have let him seduce me...but my nose was slightly out of joint that he hadn’t even bothered to try. Our marriage was only a few hours old, and he was already ignoring me?

  I didn’t see him until this morning, when he was coming out of the guest bathroom next door, looking well rested and obviously straight out of the shower. His dark hair was wet, a low-slung towel wrapped around his bare hips and another towel hanging over his broad, naked shoulders.

  I’d stopped flat in the hallway, unable to look away from the muscular planes of his bare chest, laced with dark hair, or the powerful lines of his body, to the slim hips barely covered by the clinging white terry cloth.

  Alejandro had greeted me with a sensual smile. “Good morning, querida,” he’d purred, then lifting a wicked eyebrow as if he already knew the answer, he’d inquired, “I trust you slept well?”