by Jennie Lucas
She told him, as Eduardo turned to shout the information at his driver, growling at him to drive faster, faster.
“Just hold on, querida,” Eduardo said softly to her, stroking her hair. “We’re almost there.”
But Callie was lost in pain as the car flew down the streets of New York, taking sharp turns and honking wildly until the car sharply stopped. The car door flung open, and she was dimly aware of Eduardo shouting that his wife needed help, help now dammit!
“But I’m not your wife,” Callie breathed as she was wheeled into the hospital. She looked up at him, blinking back tears even as the pain started to recede. “We only have a license. We’re not married.”
Callie heard him gasp before she was whisked away by a nurse to a private examination room. As the contraction eased, she changed into a hospital gown. When the nurse came back through the door, Callie got a single glimpse of Eduardo pacing in the hallway, barking madly into a phone at his ear. Then the door closed, and the round-faced, smiling nurse came to check her. She straightened. “Six centimeters dilated. Oh, my goodness. This baby is on the way. We’ll notify the doctor and get you to your room. I’m afraid it might be too late for anesthesia …”
“Don’t—care—just want my baby to—be all right …” But before Callie had even been wheeled to her private labor and delivery room, the new contraction had already begun. Each one was worse than the last, and this one hit her so badly it made her whole body shake. Rising to her feet, reaching toward her bed, Callie covered her mouth as nausea suddenly roiled through her.
Quickly Eduardo came behind her. He snatched up the trash can and gave it to her just in time for her to be sick in it. Afterward, as the pain receded, Callie sat down on her hospital bed and cried. She cried from pain, from fear, and most of all from knowing that she’d just been vulnerable in front of Eduardo Cruz … and was about to be even more vulnerable.
But there was no way out now.
Only one way through.
“Help her!” Eduardo bit out at the nurse, who gave him an understanding smile.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s time for meds. But don’t worry. The doctor is on his way….”
Eduardo snarled a curse that involved the doctor’s lacking moral qualities, intelligence and bloodline. Growling, he went to the door and peered out into the hallway for the third time before Callie heard him mutter, “Thank God. What took so long?”
“All good things take time.” A smiling, white-haired man in a suit followed him back into the private delivery suite. Eduardo went to Callie, who was stretched out across the hospital bed with her feet in stirrups, taking deep breaths and trying to relax before the next contraction.
“That’s not my doctor!” she cried.
Eduardo knelt beside the bed. “He’s going to marry us, Callie.”
She looked between them in shock. “Right now?”
He gave her a crooked half smile, pushing sweaty tendrils of hair off her face. “Why? Are you busy?”
Callie looked at the trim man with the white beard and bow tie. “Is he authorized to just randomly marry people?”
The corners of his lips quirked. “He’s a justice of the New York Supreme Court. So yes.”
“There’s a twenty-four-hour waiting period after the license—”
“He’s waived it.”
“And my previous license—”
“Handled.”
“Everything always goes your way, doesn’t it?” she grumbled.
Leaning over the hospital bed, he kissed her sweaty forehead. “No,” he said in a low voice. “But this time it will.” He turned back to the judge. “We are ready.”
“The doctor will be here any second,” the nurse warned.
“I’ll do the express version, then.” The judge stood in front of the beeping, flashing displays that monitored both Callie’s heart rate and the baby’s, and gave the plump nurse a wink. “Will you be my witness?”
“All right,” the nurse said with a girlish blush. “But make it quick.”
“Quicker ‘n quick. So. We’re gathered here in this hospital room to marry this man and this woman.” The judge peered down at Callie’s huge belly. “And none too soon, I’d say …”
“Just get on with it, Leland,” Eduardo snapped.
“Do you, Eduardo Jorge Cruz, take this woman—what’s your name, my dear?”
“It’s Calliope,” Eduardo answered for her through clenched teeth. “Calliope Marlena Woodville.”
“Is it really?” The judge looked at her sympathetically through wire-rimmed glasses. “How very unfortunate for you.”
“From my mother’s—favorite soap opera,” she panted.
“Right. So do you, Eduardo, take this woman, Calliope Marlena Woodville, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.”
Callie felt the pain starting to build again, and grabbed Eduardo’s shirt. Looking at her, he put his hand over hers, then said angrily to the judge, “Hurry, damn you!”
“And do you, Calliope Woodville, promise to love Eduardo Jorge Cruz, forsaking all others, till death do you part?”
Eduardo looked down at her with his dark eyes. Once, this had been all Callie ever wanted, to promise her love and fidelity to him forever. And now it was happening. She was promising to love him forever, though she knew it was a lie.
It was a lie, wasn’t it?
“Callie?” Eduardo said in a low voice.
“I do,” she choked out.
Eduardo exhaled. Had he wondered, for a brief instant, if she might refuse? No, impossible. He was too arrogant, too sure of his control over women, to ever doubt….
“I see you already have the ring,” the judge said, then blinked in surprise at the tiny diamond on Callie’s hand. “I must say, Eduardo,” he murmured, “that’s unusually restrained for you.”
She was still wearing Brandon’s engagement ring! Horrified, Callie tried to pull it off her swollen finger, but it was stuck. “I’m sorry—I … forgot …”
Without a word, Eduardo eased the ring from her finger and tossed it in the trash. “I will buy you a ring,” he said flatly. “One worthy of my wife.”
“Don’t worry.” She gave him a weak smile as she felt the pain start to build again. She panted, “Our marriage will be so short it really doesn’t matter …”
“That’s the spirit,” the judge said jovially. “Ring can come later. Or not. Well, kids, we’ll just skip through and assume the part about forsaking all others and staying together for better or worse. And since with Eduardo I already know it’ll be for richer, not poorer, I reckon that’s about it.”
Callie stared at the judge, then Eduardo. The wedding ceremony had passed by in a flash. Just a few words spoken, and two lives—soon, three—forever changed. How could something so life-changing be so fast?
The judge gave them a big grin. “You may now kiss the bride.”
She nearly gasped. Kiss? She’d forgotten that part! He was going to kiss her?
Eduardo turned to her. Their eyes met. He slowly leaned over the bed, and for an instant, all the pain fled Callie’s body in a breathless flash.
When his mouth was an inch from hers, he hesitated. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin, causing prickles up and down the length of her body.
Then he lowered his lips to hers.
Eduardo kissed her, and prickles turned to spiraling electricity, sizzling her nerves like a current sparking up and down her body. His lips were hot and soft, in pledge of their promise, inflaming her senses from within. It lasted only a brief moment, but when he pulled away, Callie’s hands were shaking, and not from pain.
“Congratulations, you crazy kids,” the justice said, beaming at them. “You’re married.”
Married. Callie’s body flashed cold over the magnitude of what she’d just done. She’d married Eduardo. She was his wife.
Just for three months, she reminded herself desperately. The prenuptial agree
ment had been clear about the timetable. At least in the paragraphs she’d skimmed before the contraction had hit her … She tensed as another contraction hit, burning through her like wildfire. She gasped, biting back a cry as her doctor came in, a brown-haired man in his late fifties. Glancing at the monitors, he checked her. Then he smiled. “Seems you’re good at this, especially for a first-time mother. All right, Callie. Time to push.”
Her eyes went wide as fear ripped through her. Instinctively she reached for Eduardo’s hand, looking up at him with pleading eyes.
Eduardo took both her hands in his. “Callie, I’m here.” His voice was deep and calm as his dark eyes looked straight into hers. “I’m right here.”
Panting, she focused only on his black eyes, letting herself be drawn into them. As she started to push, bringing her baby into the world, she’d never felt any pain so deep. She gripped her new husband’s hands so tightly she thought she’d break his bones, but Eduardo never flinched, not once. He never left her. As she held on to him for dear life, nurses moving around them at lightning speed, monitors beeping, she focused through her tears on his single, blurry image. Eduardo was her one solid, immovable focal point.
He never looked away.
He never backed down.
He never left her.
And in the end, the pain was worth it.
A healthy seven-pound-eight-ounce baby girl was finally placed in Callie’s arms. She looked down at her daughter in amazement, at the sweetest weight she’d ever known. Cuddled against her chest, the baby blinked up at her sleepily.
Leaning over them, Eduardo kissed Callie’s sweaty forehead, then their baby’s. For a long, perfect moment, as medical personnel bustled around them, the newly married couple sat together on the bed with their brand-new baby.
“Thank you, Callie, for the greatest gift of my life,” Eduardo said softly, stroking the baby’s cheek. He looked up, and his dark, luminous eyes pierced her soul. “A family.”
CHAPTER THREE
EDUARDO CRUZ had always known he’d have a family different from the one he’d grown up in. Different.
Better.
His home would have the joyous chaos of many children, instead of a lonely, solitary existence. His children would have comfort and security, with plenty of food and money. And most of all: his children would have two parents, neither of whom would be selfish enough to abandon their children.
The first time Eduardo had seen a truly happy family, he’d been ten, hungrily trolling the aisles of a tiny grocer’s shop in his poor village in southern Spain. A gleaming black sedan had pulled up on the dusty road, and a wealthy, distinguished-looking man had entered the shop, followed by his wife and children. As the man asked the shopkeeper for directions to Madrid, Eduardo watched the beautifully dressed woman walk around with her two young children. When they clamored for ice cream, she didn’t yell or slap them. Instead she’d hugged them, ruffled their hair then laughed with her husband as he’d pulled out his wallet with a sigh. Handing out the ice creams, the man had whispered something in his wife’s ear as he wrapped his arm around her waist. Eduardo had watched as they left, getting back in their luxury car and disappearing down the road to their fairy-tale lives.
“Who was that?” Eduardo had breathed.
“The Duke and Duchess of Quixota. I recognize them from the papers,” the elderly shopkeeper had replied, looking equally awed. Then he turned to Eduardo with a frown. “But what are you doing here? I told your parents they’d get no more credit. What’s this?” Grabbing the neck of Eduardo’s threadbare, too-short jacket, he pulled out the three ice cream bars melting in his pocket. “You’re stealing?” he cried, his face harsh. “But I should have expected it, from a family like yours!”
Humiliated and ashamed, Eduardo’s heart felt like it would burst, but his face was blank. At ten years old, he’d learned not to show his feelings from a mother who raged at him if he laughed, and a father who beat him if he cried.
Scowling, the shopkeeper held up the ice cream bars. “Why?”
Eduardo’s stomach growled. There was no food at home, but that wasn’t the reason. He’d been sent home from school early today for getting into a fight, but his father hadn’t cared about what had caused the fight. He’d just hit Eduardo across the face and kicked him from the house. He was too disabled—and too drunk—to do anything but lie on the couch and rage against his faithless wife. Eduardo’s mother, who worked as a barmaid in the next village, had been coming home less and less, and three days ago, she’d disappeared completely. The boys at school had taunted Eduardo. Not even your mother thinks you’re worth staying for.
When he’d seen the Madrileños eating ice creams, Eduardo had had the confused thought that if he took some home, his family might love each other, too. ¡Idiota! Crushing, miserable fury filled him. He suddenly hated them—all of them.
“Well?” the grocer demanded.
“Keep it, then!” Reaching out a grubby hand, Eduardo knocked the ice cream bars to the floor. He’d turned and run out of the shop, running as fast as his legs could carry him, gasping as he ran for home.
And it was then he’d found his father …
Eduardo blinked. He looked around the comfort and luxury of his chauffeured, three-hundred-thousand-dollar car. His eyes were strangely wet as he looked down at his two-day-old baby, sleeping peacefully in her car seat as Sanchez drove them home from the hospital.
Her childhood would be different.
Different.
Better.
He’d never let the selfishness of adults destroy her innocent happiness. He would protect her at all costs. He would kill for her. Die for her. Do anything.
Even be married to her mother.
As the car drove north on Madison Avenue, Eduardo’s eyes looked past the baby to Callie on the other side. He’d once thought she was the only person he could really trust, but the joke was on him.
She’d lied to his face for years.
And not just to him. A few hours after the birth, Callie had called her family to tell them about her new marriage and new baby. White-faced and trembling, she’d refused to speak to her sister then started crying as she spoke to her mother. When Eduardo had heard her father yelling on the other line, leaving Callie in tearful, pitiful sobs, he’d finally snatched the phone away. He’d intended to calm the man down. But it hadn’t exactly turned out that way.
He scowled, remembering Walter Woodville’s angry words. Setting his jaw, Eduardo pushed the memory aside. The man was clearly a tyrant. No wonder Callie had learned to keep things to herself. His eyes narrowed.
Then he looked back at his sleeping daughter, and his heartbeat calmed. For the past two days he hadn’t been able to stop staring at her tiny fingers. Her plump cheeks. Her long eyelashes. The way she unconsciously pursed her tiny mouth to suckle, even while she slept.
Eduardo took a deep breath.
He had a child. A family of his own.
He had a wife.
He’d married Callie to give their baby a name, he reminded himself, then he scowled. And yet she was still nameless.
He glared at his wife and bit out, “María.”
Callie looked back sharply, her vivid green eyes glinting like emeralds sparkling in the sun. “I told you no. My baby will not be named after your Spanish dream wife. No way.”
He exhaled, regretting he’d ever told his trusted secretary that he wished to marry María de Leondros, the young, beautiful Duchess of Alda. They’d only met socially once or twice, but marrying her would have been a satisfying way to prove how far he’d come since the days he’d stolen ice creams. “María is a common name,” he said evenly. “It was my great-aunt’s name.”
“Bite me.”
“You’re being jealous for no reason. I never even slept with María de Leondros!”
“Lucky her.” She folded her arms, glaring at him. “My daughter’s name is Soleil.”
Irritated, Eduardo set his jaw. Was it so s
trange that he wished to name his child after his Tía María, who’d brought him to New York, who’d worked three jobs to support him? María Cruz had encouraged him to see his high-school job pumping gas in Brooklyn not as a dead-end, but a place to begin. After she’d died, he’d gone from driving a gas truck, to owning a small gasoline distribution business, which he’d sold at twenty-four to become a wildcatter. His first big find had been in Alaska, followed by Oklahoma. Now Cruz Oil had drilling operations all over the world.
Yet Callie stubbornly refused to be reasonable. Instead she pushed for the name Soleil, which meant nothing personal to anyone—she’d just found it in a baby name book and liked the sound! He set his jaw. “You are being irrational.”
“No, you are,” she retorted. “You’re already giving her a surname, and I chose her name months ago. I’m not changing it because of your whim.”
He lifted his eyebrows incredulously. “My whim?”
“Soleil is pretty!”
“Did it, too, come from your mother’s favorite telenovela?”
“Go to hell,” she said, turning to stare out the window as they drove through the city. Silence fell in the backseat. Eduardo took a deep breath, clenching his hands into fists. His wife’s stubbornness exceeded common sense! Because of her, they’d had to leave the hospital without yet filing a birth certificate.
His jaw set grimly, he turned back to her. “Callie—”
But her eyes were closed, her cheek pressed against the car window. He heard the rhythm of her breathing, and realized to his shock that she’d fallen asleep in the middle of their argument.
He looked at her beautiful face, against the backdrop of Central Park, the vivid green trees and lawn reminding him of her eyes. Her light brown hair fell in soft waves against her roses-and-cream complexion. As usual, she wore no makeup, but no ingénue on Broadway could hold a candle to her natural beauty. She wore the baggy knit pants and long-sleeved T-shirt his staff had brought to the hospital, but he knew the hidden curves of her generous figure would put any scrawny swimsuit model to shame.