He thought fleetingly of the situation that had brought about his marriage to Loren. The governess’s curse may not be real, but it had certainly made an impact on his life, and not one he was happy to accede to.
The three supposed edicts of the governess as she’d cursed his ancestor played back in his head—honor, truth and love. Well, he had both honored and continued to love his grandfather, and he’d tried to love his wife. Tried, and failed. It was a failure he wanted to put behind him as quickly and effectively as he could.
As he pressed the accelerator down a little harder, sending his car flying along the resort road, he vowed Loren would come back into his arms, and into his bed, on his terms or no terms at all.
Twelve
It had been two weeks since their last civil conversation beyond the frozen politeness they displayed to everyone at mealtimes at the castillo. At least those mealtimes when Alex deigned to come home.
His grandfather had been moved from the hospital, protestingly, into convalescent care. That he would be allowed back home when he met the rehabilitation markers set by his doctors was of no consolation to him. Loren had spent most of her days divided between keeping him company, preventing him from being cheerfully murdered by the staff at the facility where he was staying and performing her duties at the orphanage.
Each time she held the babies, she ached a little more for the child she did not carry. But, she told herself, that need would soon be assuaged by the procedures she would soon commence. Her doctor had agreed to begin the necessary treatments once both she and Alex were fully apprised of the information relating to them.
Now she finally had all that information to hand and she was determined to start whatever was necessary as soon as possible—which meant ensuring Alex was equally informed.
The prospect of undergoing injections to ensure she produced multiple viable eggs was something she didn’t look forward to, but she was prepared to endure whatever she had to. She’d promised, legally and personally, to carry out her end of the agreement. She was her father’s daughter. She did not renege on anything.
Loren checked her reflection before grabbing the file of papers the doctor and his nurse had given her. She smoothed her straight dark hair with one hand before straightening her shoulders and giving herself a small nod of approval. She was ready to go to Alex’s office.
The dark blue shift she wore tapered to her slender form perfectly, and her matching sling-back shoes confirmed her businesslike appearance. And that’s all this was. A business transaction. The execution of a plan.
At the resort, the receptionist waved Loren through to Alex’s offices. At his door she paused, her hand curled, knuckles ready to rap on the smooth wooden surface. But then she decided against it. She was his wife, after all. There had to be some advantages to it.
She reached for the polished steel handle, pushed open the door and stepped inside only to come to a rapid halt at the sight before her.
Giselle was all but straddling Alex’s lap—her hair a golden tumble down her back, her hand covering his own as it pushed up the hem of her skirt, her other arm draped around his neck and his head bent into the curve of hers.
Loren gave a startled gasp and spun on her heel before stopping and forcing herself to face the couple who were now apart. Giselle quickly stood beside Alex’s chair and slowly rearranged her clothing. Her face wore a distinct look of sly satisfaction—Alex’s, however, wore one of dark fury.
Loren looked from one to the other, suddenly overwhelmed with a determination that would brook no denial. She would not tolerate this. If Alex wanted a child in this marriage then he’d have to play by her rules and her rules demanded no infidelity.
It was time she grew a spine and fought back. Adrenaline coursed through her body. Suddenly she could begin to understand why people took scary risks. The sense of exhilaration was both terrifying and electrifying at the same time.
She pointed one finger at Giselle. “You. Get out.”
“I beg to differ,” Giselle drawled. “I believe you’re the one out of place here.”
“You can beg all you like, but you will be doing it elsewhere from now on. Get out, now, and stay the hell away from my husband.”
“Alex!” The other woman appealed to the silent male figure at her side. “You can’t let her talk to me like that. You have to tell her about us.”
“What’s it to be, Alex?” Loren challenged.
“Leave us,” he said, his voice calm and level.
“Surely you don’t expect me—” Giselle protested.
Loren smiled at her, although it was more a baring of teeth than a signal of pleasure. “I believe my husband asked you to leave.”
With a sniff of disdain Giselle collected her bag, then with a hand trailing the side of Alex’s face she said, “Should you change your mind, you know where to reach me.”
Loren watched as Giselle sashayed out of the office and went to close the door firmly behind her. Then she crossed back over to Alex’s desk and dropped the clinic folder onto his desk in front of him.
“If you want to go ahead and have a baby with me then there have to be some boundaries. The most important is that you keep your hands off other women or you can consider our marriage over.”
He gave a short laugh. “Marriage? You think what we have is a marriage?”
“We have what approximates a marriage, but we’ll have what is most definitely a divorce if you so much as touch another woman again.”
Alex leaned back in his leather executive chair and steepled his fingers. Giselle’s move on him had taken him by surprise. He’d made it more than clear, both before he’d traveled to New Zealand and since his return and subsequent marriage to Loren, that anything he and Giselle had shared was well and truly over.
At first she’d been subtle—well, subtle for Giselle anyway. In recent weeks, her overtures had been more blatant, but nothing like today’s blitzkrieg. He’d been on the verge of pushing her away—off his lap and out of his employ—when Loren had entered his office. He’d half expected Loren to simply leave again, but even then his little wife had surprised him.
Despite keeping her distance from him it was patently clear she was not prepared to share her toys, either. The knowledge gave him a surge of satisfaction. Perhaps now she would listen to reason.
He reached forward and flicked open the file she’d dropped on his desk with one finger. His eyes skimmed the first page of details and everything inside him rebelled. No way would he accede to this barbaric coercion of nature when for them, in all likelihood, it was not even necessary.
“No other women, you say?” he asked, arching one brow and allowing his lips to relax into a smile.
“You heard me.”
His wife stood opposite him, standing her ground like a sentinel.
“Hmm.” Alex pursed his lips in consideration. “Yet you do not plan to share your bed with me like a dutiful wife ought?”
“We’ve been over this, Alex. You don’t love me, yet you want a baby with me. Some people might be able to separate emotion from their physical behavior but I am not one of them. I won’t share my bed with you if your only purpose in coming to me is to conceive a child.”
There was a tiny break in her voice. A break that gave him the leverage he was looking for. She had not stopped loving him, he was sure of it. And if she hadn’t, then he could press home his advantage and use this as an opportunity to win her back. To make their marriage the genuine article.
“I see. Well, then there is nothing for it but for me to agree to your condition that I not touch another woman.”
“Thank you,” she said, her breath escaping in a rush.
He raised a hand. “I haven’t finished. I do agree to your condition, on a condition of my own. I refuse to allow you to submit to this process, Loren. We will conceive our child the old-fashioned way.”
“No.”
“Then I’m sorry. Because on this I refuse to negotiate.”
Before he could stop her Loren had turned and left his office. Over? Surely she didn’t mean it. Shock reverberated through his body. Shock followed rapidly by a determination to stop her in her tracks. To somehow make her retract her statement, to admit her love for him, to allow him to admit his for her. He would not let her go, not like this, not ever. Galvanized by a combination of fear and resolve, he shot from his chair and out of his office.
By the time he reached the reception area he was just in time to see his wife’s sleek convertible spin out of the parking lot and up the driveway leading to the main road. He felt his jacket pocket for his keys and cursed that he’d left them in his briefcase instead. There was no time to waste. Alex turned and zeroed in on his receptionist.
“Your car keys, give them to me now.”
Flustered, the woman withdrew her handbag from a file drawer and extracted her keys.
“It’s the Fiat, at the end of the staff car park,” she said with wide eyes.
“Gracias, you’ll find my keys in the case beside my desk. Take my car tonight.”
“The Lamborghini?”
But Alex barely heard her. He had to reach Loren before she did something stupid, like leave him for good.
* * *
She could barely see through the tears that spilled from her eyes and down her cheeks as she grabbed clothes indiscriminately from her wardrobe and drawers and jammed them into her suitcase.
Was it so unreasonable to expect him not to have affairs?
Perhaps it was if she wasn’t prepared to give him the surcease his male body obviously demanded. But what of her needs? What of the pleasures he’d taught her to receive and, in turn, to give? If she didn’t have him, she didn’t want anybody else and she most definitely wasn’t prepared to share him.
Besides, he didn’t want her. Not really. He only wanted her to create the heir he so desperately needed to provide to prove to Abuelo that the curse was nothing but hearsay on the tail of a three-hundred-year-old legend. She certainly had to admire the lengths he was prepared to go to set his grandfather’s mind at rest, but the cost wasn’t something she was prepared to pay. Not anymore. Not when beneath it all he still thought marrying her had been a mistake.
Loren bit back a sob as she shoved the swimwear and the sarongs she’d taken to Dubrovnik into the case and dashed the tears from her cheeks. A sound behind her made her pause. Before she could return to her task, she was spun around. The articles of clothing she still held were plucked from her hands and cast to the floor at her feet.
Alex stood before her, his strong hands holding her upper arms firmly so she couldn’t pull away.
“I am no woman’s leavings,” he ground out in a harsh breath. “Unless, of course, you really are planning to leave me?”
“Of course I’m leaving you. I can’t do this anymore, Alex. I can’t.”
“Why? Tell me.” His fingers curled into her arms, pulling her closer to him.
“I can’t share you. I refuse to share you. You know I love you, I always have—stupidly, now more than ever. I accepted when I married you that you didn’t love me. I could live with that. But I cannot live with you taking your pleasure from other women. I lived through that with my parents. My mother’s infidelity drove them both insane. I will not fall victim to that kind of desperate dependence. Not even for you.”
“But you have no need to share me. I have never been unfaithful to you, Loren. Please, believe me.”
She yanked herself free from his grasp and a choked laugh erupted from her throat.
“Don’t treat me like a fool. From the second I arrived here Giselle has made it perfectly clear that you were only biding time with me until I provided you with an heir. Even you yourself did nothing to disabuse me of that belief.”
“And our honeymoon? Did that mean nothing to you?”
“Mean nothing? It meant everything to me when we could finally be a couple. Yet the second we returned everything went back to how it was before. Including your relationship with your assistant.”
“My relationship with Giselle has been nothing but professional for several months.”
“How can you expect me to believe that? All those late nights and early mornings? I never saw you, you never spoke to me. And what about what I interrupted today?”
“I admit, I was involved with Giselle for a short period before I came to New Zealand, but once I’d decided to marry you I broke things off with her. Today was Giselle’s desperate attempt to reignite a flame that never went beyond a distant flicker. What we shared was well and truly over before I asked you into my life, Loren. It’s only ever been you since then.”
Loren just shook her head. She wished she could accept his words as the truth but she hurt too much.
“Why should I believe you, Alex? Why should I believe my husband when he thinks our whole marriage is a mistake?”
“Because I love you!”
“Don’t lie to me about that, Alex. Not now, not ever!”
She spun away from him and clutched her arms around her body as if she could somehow assuage the empty pain that filled her chest in the place of her heart and the death of her dreams.
He turned her back to face him and cupped his hands around her face, tilting it up so her eyes would meet his.
“Loren, I love you. I didn’t plan to. To be totally honest, I didn’t even want to. I thought we could marry, and that our feelings for each other would never go beyond companionship at best. How wrong I was!” He shook his head at his own foolishness. “I didn’t count on falling in love with you, but from the moment you stood up to your mother, you started to inveigle your way into my heart. Day by day, week by week, I’ve learned to respect you and to love you.
“That’s what I meant when I told my brothers I had made a mistake marrying you the way I had. It was wrong to rush into marriage merely to disprove some stupid curse that has no bearing on our lives today no matter what my grandfather believes. It was wrong to use you that way. But I do not regret marrying you, Loren. I will never regret that. If I had this time over again I would still have brought you back to Isla Sagrado, back home, but I would have taken the time to woo you, to learn about the woman you are now, to acknowledge that love is not something to be spurned or used to a man’s advantage.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Loren, please, give me another chance. Give us another chance.”
Confusion swirled inside her. Half of her wanted to believe him, to have faith in his words and hold them to her forever. But the other half still hurt, deeply and most painfully. Her trust in him had been broken, her pride dashed. Deep down, she didn’t want to lay herself open for any more hurt.
“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I even want to try again.”
His dark eyes deepened to darkest black as she saw her own pain reflected in their depths.
“Then go. Return to New Zealand. I will not hold you to a marriage that you no longer can commit to. I will see to our dissolution, to your freedom. I’m sorry, Loren. I never thought things would come to this. As much as it breaks my heart, I would rather see you free to go than be trapped here with me, even as much as I need you by my side.”
“You would do that? You’d let me just leave? What about the curse? What about Abuelo?”
“Don’t you understand? Without your love, without you, I will forever be cursed. If you cannot love me then who am I to hold you here? I can only beg your forgiveness for being such a fool and for using you the way I did.
“Losing you has taught me a valuable life lesson. There is more to honoring a parent’s wish and a family’s expectations than just going through the motions. Without love, it means nothing.”
He let her go and Loren rocked slightly on her feet as he did so. The confusion that had so clouded her mind only moments ago began to solidify into one clear thought.
Alexander del Castillo
loved her.
Finally, this tall, proud man was hers.
Relief coursed through her veins followed by a bubbling rush of exhilaration. She drew in a deep breath.
“Alex,” she said, in as level a tone as she could manage, “would you do one final thing for me?”
“Anything.”
“Would you bring my suitcase?”
She saw his features settle into a frozen mask, but to his credit he said nothing. Merely zipped up the case and hefted it off the bed with one hand.
“Thank you,” she said, and started walking through their suite and into his bedchamber.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice thick as if his throat was constricted.
“I don’t want to be apart from you anymore—not even in separate rooms.”
“Then you’re staying?”
“You couldn’t get rid of me now for anything.”
Loren looked at him now, face-to-face, surprised to see the sheen of tears reflected in his eyes. That this powerful man was reduced to tears by the fact that she’d chosen to remain with him said it all.
“Love me, Alex.”
“Forever, mi querida.”
His arms closed around her, making her feel as if she’d finally come home. After their clothing had been torn from their bodies and they came together on his massive pedestal bed Loren knew she was home forever.
Past hurts dissolved into distant memories as his hands caressed her body with a new reverence. Fears about the future disappeared as she welcomed him inside her, not only physically but, finally, wholly and emotionally, as well.
* * *
It was late and the castillo silent and brooding in the darkness as Alex led Loren down the stairs.
The Tycoon's Charm: The Tycoon's Paternity AgendaHonor-Bound Groom Page 30