Just one look at her had been enough to prove the information he’d been given about her sheltered lifestyle. She appeared as untouched and protected as she’d been the day she left Isla Sagrado. But beneath that inexperienced exterior beat a sensual heart. Wakening that side of her would be a delight and would make the whole process of providing Abuelo with a great-grandchild, as proof the curse did not exist and laying it to rest once and for all, an absolute pleasure.
Alex tilted his head slightly to watch Loren as her mother began a tirade of reasons why she should not return to Isla Sagrado. He wasn’t worried about Naomi’s arguments. If there was one thing he remembered most clearly about Loren as a child it was that despite her quiet attitude, there was no matching her tenacity once she had made up her mind. The vast number of his girlfriends she’d scared off being a case in point.
Instead of following the argument, he took the time to fully take in the woman who would be his wife. Her long black hair, scraped back in a utilitarian ponytail, showcased the delicate structure of her face. And what a face—the child’s features he remembered had matured into those of a beautiful young woman’s. Her brows were still strong and delicately arched but the eyes beneath them, dark brown like his own, glowed with an inner fire, and her lips were full and lush. Fuller, perhaps, because of their recent kiss, and certainly something he wanted to taste and savor again.
Where had that gawky kid who’d followed him around incessantly disappeared to? In place of the slightly older version of her that he’d expected, he’d discovered a woman who, while she had every appearance of fragility and a vulnerable air about her that aroused his protective instincts, somehow had managed to develop a backbone of pure steel.
He was reminded of Audrey Hepburn as he looked at her now. The gamine features, matured into beauty—the delicate bone structure, intensely feminine. Something else roared to life from deep inside of him. Something ancient, almost feral. She was his—betrothed to him as a matter of honor between friends, but his nonetheless. And she’d stay that way. Nothing Naomi could say would ever change that.
Two
Despite the luxurious trappings of first class, Loren had been unable to sleep during the long journey from New Zealand. After a day and a half of travel and changeovers she felt weary and more than a little disoriented as she made her way through Sagradan customs and immigration. Nothing about the airport was familiar to her anymore. Still, she supposed as she hefted her cases from the luggage carousel and onto a trolley, it was only natural that change had come to Isla Sagrado in the ten years she’d been gone.
Even so, a pang for the old place she’d left behind lodged behind her heart. Loren shook her head. She was being fanciful if she expected to be able to walk back into her old life as if she’d never left. So much had changed. Her father was gone, her mother was now half a world away and here she was—engaged and preparing to reunite with her fiancé of only a few weeks.
It didn’t seem real, Loren admitted to herself—and not for the first time. Everything had moved so fast from the moment she’d told her mother she was returning to the home of her birth. Well, at least once Naomi had recognized that she could not sway her only child’s stubborn insistence that she would be marrying Alexander del Castillo.
Alex had taken control once her mother had ceased her objections and washed her hands of the matter, smoothing the way toward having Loren’s expired Sagradan passport renewed and booking her flights to Isla Sagrado. Loren hadn’t had to lift so much as a finger. Well used to taking care of such details for both her mother and for the overseas guests who visited the massive working sheep and cattle station, it had been a pleasure to have someone else take care of her for a change.
Once he’d had everything organized to his satisfaction, Alex had departed, but not before arranging a private dinner for just the two of them, off the station. They’d choppered to Queenstown, where they’d visited a restaurant on the edge of Lake Wakatipu. The late autumn evening had been clear and beautiful and the restaurant every bit as romantic as Loren had ever dreamed.
By the time they’d returned to the station she knew she was totally and irrevocably in love with him. Not the innocent adoration of a child nor the all-absorbing puppy love of an adolescent, but the deeper knowledge that, no matter what, he was her mate in this lifetime and any other.
He’d been solicitous and attentive all night and, before walking her to her small suite of rooms in the main house at the station, he’d kissed her again. Not with the heated, overwhelming rush of emotion that consumed her the day he’d arrived, but with a gentle, sure promise of greater things to come. Her body had quivered in response, eager to discover the depths of his silent promise right there, right then. But Alex had backed off, cupped her cheek with one warm strong hand, and told her he wanted to wait until their wedding night—it would make their union more special, more intimate.
It had only made her love him more and had served to leave her fraught with nerves the entire journey to Isla Sagrado. Nerves that now left her giddy with exhaustion and made battling the broken wheel on her luggage cart all the more taxing. Fighting the way the thing wanted to veer to the left all the time, Loren paid little attention to the sudden silence in the arrival hall as she came through the security doors after clearing customs.
A silence that was suddenly and overwhelmingly broken by the flash of camera bulbs and a barrage of questions flung at her from all directions and in at least three different languages.
One voice broke over all the rest to ask in Spanish, Isla Sagrado’s dominant language, “Is it true you’re here to marry Alexander del Castillo and break the curse?”
Loren blinked in surprise toward the man, even as a multitude of others around him continued with their own questions.
A movement at her side distracted her from answering. A tall and stunningly beautiful woman, wearing a startling red dress, hooked an arm around her and leaned forward, her long, honey-blond hair brushing Loren’s arm like a swathe of silk.
“Don’t answer them. Just smile and keep walking.
I’m Giselle, Alex’s personal assistant. I’m here to collect you,” she murmured in a French-accented voice that was very un-assistantlike. Her emphasis on the word personal hinted strongly at things Loren herself had no experience of.
“Alex isn’t here?” Loren blinked to fight back the sudden tears that sprang to her eyes as sharp points of disappointment cut through her.
Believing he’d be here to welcome her home at the end of her journey had been what had kept her going these past few hours. Now, she fought to keep her slender shoulders squared and her sagging spine upright. Struggled to keep placing one foot in front of the other.
Giselle put her free hand on the handle of the luggage cart and directed it, and Loren, toward the exit. Airport security had miraculously cleared a path and beckoned them toward the waiting limousine at the curbside.
“If he’d have come, the media circus would have been worse and we’d never have cleared the airport,” Giselle said in her husky voice. “Besides, he’s a very busy man.”
Giselle’s intimation that Alex had far more important things to attend to than collecting his fiancée from the airport pierced Loren’s weariness, making her stumble slightly.
“Oh, dear,” the other woman said, tightening her hold around Loren’s waist. “You’re a clumsy little thing, aren’t you? You’ll have to improve on that, you know, or the media are going to have a field day with you.”
While Giselle’s tone was light, Loren felt the invisible slap of disapproval behind her words. But there was no chance to respond right away. They were at the car at last. There, a uniformed chauffeur, who looked more like a bodyguard than a driver, hefted her cases into the voluminous trunk of the limo as if they weighed little more than matchsticks. Once that was taken care of, Loren took the opportunity to speak.
“I’m tired, that’s all. It’s been quite a trip,” she responded as she slid over onto the br
oad backseat of the limousine, her voice a little sharp, earning her an equally sharp look from Giselle in return.
“Touchy, too, hmm?” Giselle narrowed her beautiful green eyes and gave Loren an assessing look. “Well, we’ll see how you measure up. Since Reynard issued the press release about Alex’s engagement, the whole drama of your father’s near drowning and him giving you away afterwards has been front-page news. Goodness knows paparazzi will be crawling all over you to find out about you.”
“I’m surprised. I thought Alex might have kept that quiet,” Loren said, frowning at the thought of having to rehash the story of her and Alex’s fathers’ actions over and over again.
“Quiet? Hardly. With the way things are here they need all the strong publicity they can get. You must remember how the island’s prosperity seems to be intrinsically linked with the del Castillos’. Whether there’s any truth to the curse or not, everyone here is lapping up the story. Promises of happily ever after and all that. Honestly, they’ve made it all sound so sweet it’s almost enough to give you cavities.” Giselle finished with a high-pitched laugh that didn’t quite ring true.
“So you don’t believe in happily ever after?”
“Sweetie,” Giselle replied with a smile stretching her generous lips into a wide curve of satisfaction, “what’s more important is if Alex believes in it. And we both know he’s far too pragmatic for that. Besides, it’s not like you two are going to have a real marriage.”
“Well, I certainly expect we’ll have a real marriage. Why else would we even bother?”
“Oh, dear, you mean he hasn’t said anything yet?”
Loren felt her already simmering temper begin to flare. “Said anything about what?” she asked through clenched teeth.
“About keeping up appearances, of course. Though perhaps he thought it would be clear. After all, if he’d had any interest in a real marriage he’d have wanted to have some say in the organization of the wedding ceremony and reception, wouldn’t he? Instead, he gave me carte blanche. But don’t you worry, I’ll make sure you have a day to remember.”
“Well, I’d like to go over the wedding details with you later on, when I’m more rested,” Loren asserted, pausing for effect. “Then I’ll more than happily take the arrangements off your hands. I’m sure you have far more important things to occupy yourself with.”
Loren chose to ignore the rest of what the woman had said. She knew she and Alex had little time before their proposed wedding date only two weeks away, but surely he hadn’t left everything to his assistant—his personal assistant, she corrected herself.
“Oh, but I have everything under control. Besides, Alex has signed off on what I’ve done already. To change anything now would only cause problems.”
The implication that Loren would bear disapproval from Alex for those problems sat very clearly between the two women. Loren took a steadying breath. She wasn’t up to this right now but she knew what Giselle was doing. She’d probably taken one look at Loren and totally underestimated her. Clearly Giselle had some kind of bond with Alex that she didn’t want to let go. Maybe she’d even harbored a notion of a relationship with him.
Whatever might have happened between Alex and Giselle before she had arrived home, Loren was his fiancée, and she’d prove she was no walkover. Her battle with her mother to come here in the first place had proven to her that she was anything but that.
“Well,” she said, injecting a firm note into her voice, “we’ll see about that once I’ve checked everything over and conferred with Alex.” At the other woman’s sharply indrawn breath she added, “It is my wedding, after all.”
Loren settled back against the soft leather upholstery and gazed out the window of the speeding limousine, wondering if she had gone too far in establishing where she stood with Giselle. Perhaps she’d been oversensitive, worn out as she was with travel. But underneath Giselle’s self-assuredness and apparent solicitude she sensed a vague but definite threat, as if she was stepping where she wasn’t fully welcome by coming back to Isla Sagrado.
She stifled a sigh. She’d expected her homecoming to be different, sure, but when push came to shove she couldn’t forget what—or more importantly, who—had brought her here.
Alex.
Just thinking about him created a swell of longing deep inside. Without thinking, she traced the outline of her lips with her fingertips, silently reliving their last kiss. If she tried hard enough she could still feel the pressure of his mouth against hers, still experience the heady joy of knowing he’d traveled to New Zealand to fulfill their fathers’ bargain—that he’d seen her and still wanted her.
Loren let her hand drop back into her lap and stared out the passenger window, searching for familiar signposts and buildings. The landscape had changed so much that Isla Sagrado hardly felt like home anymore, she thought sadly as the unfamiliar roads and buildings swept by them.
The soft trill of a cell phone startled Loren from her reveries. From the corner of her eye she saw Giselle lift a phone to her ear.
“Alex!” Giselle answered, her voice warm and sweet as honey.
Loren’s stomach clenched in excitement and she waited for Giselle to hand the phone over to her so she could speak with him herself.
“Yes, I have your future bride here in the car. I expect we’ll be at the castillo in about half an hour.” She cocked her head to one side and smiled as she listened. “Fine. Yes. I’ll let her know.”
Giselle flipped the phone shut and gave Loren a smile. “Alex sends his apologies but he won’t be able to meet with you until this evening. Business, you understand.”
If Loren wasn’t mistaken, there was a distinct hint of smugness in the other woman’s glittering emerald gaze. She swallowed her disappointment. Not for anything would she yield so far as to display even one hint of weakness, no matter how bitter the pill that Alex couldn’t spare even a few minutes to greet her on her first day here.
“Of course. I look forward to the opportunity to have a little rest and freshen up before I see him.” Loren smiled in return, summoning a bravado she hoped she could pull off. “Besides, Alex and I have the rest of our lives together. What’re a few more hours?”
Alex put down his office phone and stared out the window. It looked down and over the sprawling luxury waterfront resort that was his main concern in the management of the del Castillo financial empire. From his position, it looked beautiful and peaceful, but appearances could be deceiving.
A matter between two of his key management staff that he’d thought Giselle had settled weeks ago had flared up again today with no apparent warning. He sighed. There was no accounting for personalities and how people could either rub along together or end up rubbing one another entirely the wrong way. Add to that the constant harping on about the wretched governess’s curse, both in the media and in the whispers among the staff—suffice it to say that the sooner this wedding was done and Loren was pregnant with his child, the better.
How a nation of well-educated and forward-thinking people could remain so superstitious defied belief. The legend of the governess and her curse on the del Castillo family when she was spurned by her lover was just that. A legend. There was no proof. Even the media interest he himself had encouraged had turned into a two-headed beast he could barely tolerate. Giselle had been an enormous help, always stepping in to deflect questions away from him so she could handle them herself.
And she had come to his aid again today. In the face of the urgency in dealing with today’s debacle, her calm suggestion that she collect Loren from the airport had been welcome. Giselle was a consummate professional. He knew she’d make Loren feel at home and get her comfortably settled at the castillo.
If he’d gone to get her, the press would never have let them leave. They’d still be there, posing for pictures, answering questions—wasting time that could be better spent letting Loren unwind after her flight and letting Alex get this administrative headache straightened out. It would be
much better for Alex to spend time with her tonight, at the quiet family dinner he’d organized with his brothers and his grandfather, and no press around to badger them.
He allowed himself a small smile at the thought of his grandfather’s excitement over their planned dinner. Abuelo’s reaction when told that Loren would be returning to Isla Sagrado as his future bride had been worth the time away from the problems at the resort to visit with her.
He thought back to when he’d broken his brief liaison with Giselle. She’d pouted a little but had taken his decision, and the diamond tennis bracelet he’d bought her as a severance gift, with good grace and assured him her efficiency in her work would continue. And she’d reiterated her willingness to take up where they’d left off should he ever change his mind.
Until he’d seen Loren again, he’d given Giselle’s offer some serious thought. After all, once he’d married and met Abuelo’s concerns by ensuring the next del Castillo generation would be born, why shouldn’t he have some fun? But, despite the clinical manner in which he’d imagined this alliance would go forth, from the second his lips had touched Loren’s there had been something about her that had pushed Giselle’s offer right out of his mind.
That Loren was unschooled in the ways of love was clear, but how unschooled? The thought that she might be a virgin both intrigued and enticed him. To be her first lover, to unlock the sensual creature he’d tasted in that first kiss? Oh yes, there were definitely aspects of his marriage to Loren Dubois that he found himself looking forward to far more than he’d anticipated. Now, if he was going to enjoy any time with Loren later today he needed to catch up with his work here at the resort. Fortunes didn’t make themselves—legend or no.
Honor-Bound Groom Page 3