‘Your face has said that,’ he assured her dryly.
‘The fact that you also believe that I intend to discard you in that way also says that,’ he added grimly.
Brynne swallowed hard as she saw his concerned expression. A concern that he quickly masked as that arrogant pride fell into place once more.
He continued. ‘As you have no doubt guessed, I was already engaged to Francesca when Joanna and I met seven years ago. It was an arranged marriage, not a love match. Our parents had decided on it while we were still children. It was to be the marriage of two powerful, rich families rather than Francesca and I.’ He shook his head. ‘I met Joanna in Australia, at a time when I was trying to decide how best to extricate myself from a situation, an engagement, I no longer wanted.’
‘Alejandro—’
‘You will do me the courtesy of letting me tell you these things, Brynne!’ he rasped. ‘You will have plenty of opportunity when I have finished to criticize and chastise!’ he added derisively.
What he had already told her was enough to make her revise some of the opinions she had formed before accompanying him and Michael to Majorca.
‘Joanna knew of my engagement to Francesca. She and I—talked about it. Joanna could not even begin to imagine marrying someone she did not love. As no longer could I.’ He sighed. ‘Joanna and I were not in love with each other, either, but she helped me to understand that I had to talk to Francesca, to see if she would release me from the engagement. But before I could do so I received an urgent call from Spain. My father had had a heart attack. To even contemplate causing such a scandal when he was so seriously ill was unthinkable. Can you understand that?’ he asked.
Of course she could understand. She knew how binding these arranged engagements could be, that they were usually arranged for the advancement of the family rather than the individuals who ended up married to each other.
‘You married Francesca knowing that the two of you didn’t love each other.’ She nodded. ‘I—have to agree with Joanna, I can’t imagine anything worse!’
He nodded abruptly. ‘It was an unhappy marriage from the first. We both tried—Francesca wanted to be a dutiful daughter, you understand?’
‘As you wanted to be a dutiful son,’ Brynne acknowledged, unable to stop the slight anger she felt towards the parents who had forced them into such a marriage.
‘As I wanted to be a dutiful son.’ Alejandro gave an inclination of his head. ‘As I tried to be a dutiful husband. Whether you believe it or not, Brynne, I was a faithful husband,’ he added.
She grimaced. ‘Why shouldn’t I believe you, Alejandro?’
‘Many reasons,’ he sighed. ‘I was unfaithful during my engagement when I had my brief relationship with Joanna. I have had many relationships since my marriage ended.’
He wasn’t going to spare himself—or her!—any of the hurtful details, was he? Brynne acknowledged ruefully. Although the fact that he was telling her at all, when she knew he wasn’t a man who ever opened up about himself, was starting to make her wonder if there wasn’t some purpose behind the explanation …
‘Unfortunately, Francesca was not a dutiful wife.’ He gave a slight shrug. ‘Who could blame her? Nineteen years of age, and married to a man she did not even know, let alone love! Within a year of our marriage she had taken a lover. It is not so unusual in such marriages, although it is normal to wait until after the first son is born,’ he added. ‘To ensure that the husband knows that at least the heir is his!’
‘What happened to Francesca, Alejandro?’ she prompted huskily.
He looked grim. ‘She died while giving birth to her lover’s child. The child died, too.’
Brynne gave a pained gasp.
‘Are you not going to ask me how I knew the child belonged to her lover?’ Alejandro looked down at her.
A pose Brynne was now beginning to realize was as much a defence as anything else. Alejandro might not have loved his wife, but now that Brynne had come to know him better she didn’t doubt that once married to Francesca he would have honoured the marriage.
She gave him an encouraging smile. ‘Because you weren’t her lover …?’
Alejandro felt some of the tension leave him, realizing as he did so just how tense he actually was. But this was important to him. That Brynne believed him was important to him. Much more important than anything else ever had been …
‘Because I was not her lover,’ he echoed. ‘We were lovers—if it can be called that—for only the first three months of our marriage. I do not believe it was something that either of us particularly enjoyed,’ he said ruefully, remembering those months when they’d tried to force a feeling of love for each other, an emotion that had never happened. ‘Whereas making love with you four nights ago—’
‘Alejandro—’
‘I was wrong to leave you in the way that I did,’ he told her forcefully. ‘My only excuse—and it is perhaps not an acceptable one—is that I thought it for the best. I did not understand what was happening between us. But these four days away from you—I have thought of nothing but you, of our time together. Would you like to know why, Brynne?’
Brynne looked at him questioningly, not sure yet what he wanted from her. But she had no doubts that he was being honest; didn’t she at least owe him the same?
‘Yes,’ she answered huskily. ‘Yes, Alejandro, I want to know why you have thought of me the last four days.’
‘Because our time together was beautiful,’ he told her gruffly. ‘Making love with you was more beautiful than anything else I have ever experienced.’
Brynne felt a lump form in her throat, hot tears clouding her vision. Because making love with Alejandro had been beautiful for her too.
Alejandro moved to clasp her hands in his as he looked down at her intently. ‘It stunned me to learn of your inexperience.’ He put up a hand to smooth her hair back from her face as he looked down at her. ‘Beautiful, beautiful lovemaking,’ he groaned huskily. ‘I swore after my disastrous marriage that I would never become involved in that way with anyone ever again. But having got to know you—I am not proud of the way I behaved when I left you so abruptly. My only excuse is that I feared what you made me feel. But please believe me, Brynne, when I tell you I have thought of nothing else but you these last four days, of being in your arms again,’ he admitted.
She looked up at him. ‘I thought—you seemed so—angry, before you left …?’
He shook his head. ‘Not anger, Brynne. Never anger. You had given me a precious gift that night, and I—ungracious swine that I am—did not know how to accept it!’
Brynne hadn’t thought of it as a gift at the time, had only wanted to be with Alejandro. To be with the man she loved.
Alejandro’s arms tightened about her. ‘Brynne, I do not want you to leave me tomorrow.’
Her breath caught in her throat as she looked up at him, at the emotion in those softened dove-grey eyes, an emotion she thought she recognized, but found incredible in this man.
‘I suppose I could come with you and Michael to Spain for a couple of weeks—’
‘That is not what I mean, Brynne.’ His voice hardened. ‘I—even now this is difficult for me!’ He released her to move away, running a hand through the dark thickness of his hair. ‘Try to understand, Brynne, I have never been in love with anyone, was determined that I never would be after my marriage was so painfully unsuccessful—’
‘I haven’t asked you for love, Alejandro—’
‘You do not need to ask!’ He turned to her. ‘Because the last four days away from you have shown me that I do love you, Brynne. More than life itself. More than anything and anyone,’ he said shakily. ‘The thought of you leaving me tomorrow, of you ever leaving me, is not something I can even contemplate!’
Brynne stared at him, at the assured, aloof man that she loved with all her heart, at the man who was no longer aloof at all, let alone assured.
Warmth began to course through her, to wipe away
all the dread she had felt at the thought of parting from him.
Alejandro loved her.
Alejandro Miguel Diego Santiago loved her.
After the way he had left her four days ago she had never thought—had never even begun to hope—that he could return the feelings she had for him, hadn’t understood at the time that what she had seen as his desertion he had seen as a sense of self-protection.
Only to come back today and tell her that he did love her. More than anything or anyone. Challengingly. Defensively. As if he feared the pain she could inflict on him if she chose to do so.
She moved to stand in front of him, their bodies almost touching as she looked up into his face. ‘I love you too, Alejandro,’ she breathed huskily. ‘I love you so much that the thought of leaving you has been impossible for me to contemplate, either—’ She got no further as Alejandro swept her up into his arms, her body held against the hardness of his as his mouth claimed and captured hers in a kiss full of the hunger he had felt for the four days of their parting.
It was a need Brynne felt too, holding nothing back as she returned the heat of his kiss, her arms up over his shoulders as her fingers became entangled in the dark thickness of his hair.
Alejandro wanted to devour her, to have her take him so deep inside her body that it would be impossible to tell where Brynne ended and he began.
Brynne was his flame. White-hot. Burning. That heat cleaving him to her side for all time.
He was breathing deeply when at last he raised his head to look down into her flushed face. ‘You do love me …’ he said in wonder, knowing that it was true, that his honest Brynne could never be anything but truthful with him, in her emotions as well as her words.
She smiled up at him. ‘Of course I love you, Alejandro.’ Her fingers moved lightly down the clenched line of his jaw. ‘You are everything—everything I could ever want in the man I love. You’re a wonderful son. An affectionate and caring father. A man of honour in all things, including your relationships—’
‘And you, Brynne?’ he cut in searchingly. ‘What am I to you, Brynne?’
‘That’s easy.’ She smiled tremulously. ‘You’re the man I will love all my life.’
His breath caught in his throat at the simple statement that meant everything to him.
He had decided long ago that love and marriage were not for him, that Francesca had married him but had not loved him. The women he had known before her and since her had taken him, and all the things he could give them, but had not given him love.
Brynne gave him love, all her love, without asking for anything in return except that he love her too.
And he wanted to give her so much more than that! Everything that he was. Everything that he would be.
‘Will you marry me, Brynne?’ he prompted huskily, his arms tightening about her instinctively as she stiffened to look up at him dazedly. ‘What did you think, querida? That I would tell you I love you, would listen while you tell me you feel the same way, and that I would then dishonour such a love with less than I offered to a woman who did not love me as I did not love her?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t think anything. I never thought, never dreamt, that you would ever love me …’
He frowned darkly. ‘If I had never known you, Brynne, I would never have known what it is to love and be loved. Do you honestly think I could ever let such a love escape me by offering you less than marriage, less than everything that I am, that I have to give?’
Brynne hadn’t known what to expect after admitting that she returned the love Alejandro told her he felt for her. Perhaps a brief relationship, a brief, beautiful relationship that would have to sustain her for the rest of her life. Marriage was something that she had never dreamt Alejandro would ever offer to any woman again …
She swallowed hard. ‘But marriage, Alejandro.’ She shook her head. ‘You told me you would never marry again.’
‘To a woman who did not love me, no!’ Alejandro assured her with some of his old arrogance, his arms like steel bands about her. ‘But you are different, Brynne. In the short time I have known you you have become the air I breathe, the perfume that warms my pillow, the very essence of my life. I will allow nothing, and no one, to come between us ever again.’
He was talking of Antonia Roig, and other women like her, women who only wanted to take and to use him, not to love him as he so deserved to be loved. As Brynne loved him …
‘If you do not agree to marry me for love then I will have to try to tempt you into a marriage with me for Michael’s sake.’ He raised his eyebrows as he looked down at her.
But Brynne could see the humour lurking in his grey eyes, the self-derision mixed with a determination that told her he would resort to such methods if all else failed.
‘A marriage of convenience, you mean?’ she drawled teasingly.
‘A marriage that will give me the right to hold you, to love you, to come to your bed every night for the rest of our lives!’ he corrected softly.
‘Oh, no, Alejandro—’
‘Oh, yes, Brynne,’ he said firmly.
She shook her head. ‘It will give us both the right to hold each other, to love each other, to come to our bed every night for the rest of our lives,’ she corrected pointedly. ‘If I have one condition to marrying you, Alejandro, then it’s that we have a huge four-poster bed to share wherever we might be!’
He tilted his head teasingly. ‘That is your only condition …?’
She laughed huskily. ‘No conditions, Alejandro!’ she assured him happily. ‘I would marry you, will always love you, even if I have to live in a shack on the edge of a beach for the rest of my life!’ She threw her arms about his neck. ‘I love you, Alejandro Miguel Diego Santiago! I love you. I love you!’
Alejandro gathered her even closer into his arms, moulding her against him, knowing her to be the other half of him, the woman who completed him, who made him whole. ‘I will love you for our lifetime and beyond, Brynne,’ he whispered.
‘As I will love you, Alejandro,’ she vowed.
‘Juanna Mercedes Santiago and Roberta Magdalena Santiago,’ Brynne murmured emotionally as she looked up from gazing down at her newly born daughters into the face of the man she loved beyond words or expression.
Alejandro.
Her husband. Her lover. Her best friend. And now, almost a year to the day after their marriage, the father of their twin daughters.
Alejandro fiercely returned that gaze. ‘They are truly beautiful, Brynne, but not as beautiful, or courageous, as their mother!’ He shook his head. ‘I could not bear to see you suffer so ever again!’
Brynne laughed. ‘Childbirth isn’t suffering, my love,’ she assured softly.
A year of marriage had given them a bond of love so deep that it could never, ever be broken, only added to. As the birth of their daughters had done. They had become Michael’s parents too, and had been absorbed into Alejandro’s loving family as he had been accepted into her own family. They had delighted in each new discovery about each other.
Brynne reached up and touched her husband’s cheek, smoothing away the worry and strain he had suffered as he had held her hand through the hours of childbirth. ‘I love you, Alejandro,’ she told him earnestly. ‘Enough and more to have half a dozen babies—’
‘Half a dozen!’ Alejandro cut in forcefully, his expression only relaxing as he saw how she was teasing him, this beautiful woman he loved to distraction. ‘Maybe two more,’ he countered.
Brynne laughed softly. ‘Maybe three …?’
Maybe three, he conceded achingly, knowing there was nothing he could deny this woman who meant more to him than life itself.
His wife.
The mother of his children. All his children. However many they might have.
The woman who loved him more than he had ever thought it possible to be loved.
But most of all, the woman that he would love, fiercely, passionately, beyond life itself …
; The Mediterranean
Billionaire’s
Secret Baby
Diana Hamilton
About the Author
DIANA HAMILTON is a true romantic and fell in love with her husband at first sight. They still live in the fairytale Tudor house where they raised their three children. Now the idyll is shared with eight rescued cats and a puppy. But, despite an often chaotic lifestyle, ever since she learned to read and write Diana has had her nose in a book—either reading or writing one—and plans to go on doing just that for a very long time to come.
CHAPTER ONE
DARK brows clenched in irritation above narrowed smoke-grey eyes, Francesco Mastroianni drove through the gathering gloom of a chilly March evening. Vicious rods of rain hit the windscreen of the throatily growling Ferarri, adding to his already sour mood.
Visiting this part of rural Gloucestershire wasn’t his idea of a picnic—there were too many uncomfortable memories—but there was no way he could have excused his way out of it. He was too fond of Silvana even to think of turning the weekend invitation down and spoiling her pleasure in showing off her new home.
Trouble was, his cousin Silvana and her husband Guy had recently moved from their swanky London abode to a newly renovated manor house in a county that sent a shiver through him whenever the name was mentioned.
He didn’t do cringing, and he found the grossly unwelcome experience infuriating.
Per l’amor del cielo—just get over it! he instructed himself toughly, gritting his teeth until his jaw resembled something carved out of rock. However painful the experience, he’d learned a priceless lesson—hadn’t he?
Francesco had been cynical where the female sex was concerned since he’d entered his late teens and learned that his family’s wealth was a powerful magnet. It was hard to credit that he’d actually been besotted and bewitched into allowing himself to believe that, against all his previous expectations, he’d finally found one woman he could trust. Actually to believe she was the one woman in the world he could trust with his life and his love until the day he died.
Mistress to the Mediterranean Male (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 14