“Hey!” she shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The Lord of the Universe didn’t answer. He just kept walking toward the front door.
“Wait a minute!” Her voice rose higher. “I said—”
“I heard what you said.” He shifted her weight, opened the door and stepped onto the porch. A chorus of crickets and tree frogs greeted his appearance. “At close to a thousand decibels, how could I not?”
The old wooden porch creaked as he walked across it and made his way down the steps. To where? Alyssa thought crazily, but the answer was obvious.
He was taking her to Thaddeus’s black Cadillac.
The hell he was!
She kicked. She cursed. She pummeled his hard, unyielding shoulders. And she might have been an annoying mosquito, for all the response that got her.
“Damn it,” she shrieked, “you can’t do this!”
The prince dropped her to her feet beside the car.
“Norton. Give me your keys.”
The command rang with authority. So did the pressure of the hand that kept her pinned to his side. Alyssa threw a desperate look at the lawyer who was watching the drama unfold with his pudgy mouth hanging open.
“Thaddeus,” she said, “say something!”
Thaddeus stared at her. Then he cleared his throat.
“Your Highness. Your Majesty. Really, I don’t think—”
“That’s correct,” Lucas said coldly. “You can’t, or you would never have written that contract.”
“I told you, it wasn’t me, sir! It was your grandfather’s people. Madeira, Vasquez, Sterling and Goldberg. Madrid, London, New York—”
“Spare me the roadmap, Norton. I know where they’re located. Just give me your keys.”
“Don’t listen to him, Thaddeus!”
“She’s right, sir. I mean, she could be right. About you not being able to do this. In fact, my legal opinion is—”
“He’s useless,” Lucas said to Alyssa. “If he weren’t, you wouldn’t be in this fix to start with. His advice is the last thing you need.”
“You just want me to lose the ranch!”
“You’ve already lost it, Alyssa. It’s been sold. You have no claim to it any longer.”
Her face heated. “Unless I marry you.”
“There’s no chance of that,” Lucas said sharply. “If you think I’d let myself be ensnared in some old man’s scheme…”
“You, ensnared? I’m the one who’s trapped.” Alyssa choked back a laugh. “It’s like waking up and discovering you’re starring in a bad old movie. The landlord. The maiden—”
“But no hero, amada. I refuse to be cast in that role.” Lucas smiled unpleasantly. “As for the maiden…My grandfather might have fallen for the story of your supposed chastity but I’m not so easily fooled.”
Color flooded her face. “Good. Because my chastity, or my lack of it, is none of your damned business!”
“I don’t buy any of it, chica. For all I know, marrying me is precisely what you’re after.”
God, the insolence of the man! “You wish!”
Lucas grinned. “Ah, amada, you say that with such conviction.”
“Just—just go away. Forget you ever came here.”
“I would love to.” A muscle knotted in his jaw. “I’d like nothing more than to walk away and know I’ll never see you again.”
“Do it. Turn around and start walking.”
“I can’t. My grandfather’s lawyers wrote this damned contract because he wanted them to write it. Now he’s ill.” His voice roughened. “For all I know, he’s dying. He made a commitment that matters to him and I’m not going to turn my back on it until I find a way out he can accept.”
“You don’t need to take me with you for that to happen.”
“Unfortunately I do. I just explained the reason.”
“You explained nothing!”
“This is a waste of time. Get in the car. Norton? For the last time, give me your keys.” Lucas smiled coldly. “Unless you’d rather explain your part in all this to the Texas Bar Association.”
It was a long shot. What did the lawyer have to explain, after all, except that he’d been unable to convince a dead man not to enter into an unenforceable contract?
But it worked. The attorney’s face lost its color. Lucas saw it. So did Alyssa.
“Thaddeus,” she said desperately, “Tell this—this lunatic that he can’t do this!”
“This lunatic,” Lucas said with some amusement, “is your only hope.”
“You’re not my hope! I’d sooner lose everything than marry you!”
“Haven’t you been listening? You are not going to marry me! I am not going to be a sacrifice on the marriage altar.”
“You, a sacrifice? What about me? This—this plan your horrible old grandfather hatched is—”
She gasped as Lucas grabbed her shoulders. “Watch yourself,” he said softly. “And remember the bottom line. El Rancho Grande is at the heart of this situation.”
“You don’t give a damn about the ranch.”
“You’re right, amada, I don’t.” His expression hardened. “But my grandfather says you do. And, in honor of his commitment to an old friend, so does he.” His mouth flattened. “That puts finding a way out of this mess squarely in my hands.”
Alyssa’s head was spinning. Refuse to go with Lucas and the land was gone. Go with him and maybe, only maybe, it could be saved.
“This,” she said shakily, “this has—it has become very complicated.”
Lucas gave a bark of laughter.
“What if I agree to go with you? What will happen?”
“I’ll convince my grandfather that the contract is unenforceable, write a check for the arrears and the balance of the mortgage, deed the ranch to you and pretend we never met.”
She stared at him. “Can you do all that?”
He damned well hoped he could but she didn’t want to hear his doubts any more than he did.
“Yes,” he said, with more conviction than he felt.
“And you’ll start by abducting me.”
“This is hardly an abduction, chica. After all, you are my betrothed. It says so in that damnable stipulation.”
“This isn’t a joke! I’m not your anything and you know it.”
“You’re right. And I’m wasting time. So, decide, amada. Stay here or go with me. I’m tired of this discussion.”
Alyssa opened her mouth to argue but argue about what? The damnable prince was right. They’d already talked the problem half to death and neither of them was any nearer a certain solution than before.
She looked at Thaddeus. He was right about that, too. Her father’s lawyer was useless.
“Yes or no, amada? Do I leave you here, or do you come with me?”
A cloud drifted across the face of the moon, momentarily obscuring everything but Lucas Reyes’s hard face. Alyssa shuddered as if the warm Texas night had suddenly turned cold.
This enigmatic stranger had invaded her life. He was all but convinced she’d known about the contract. That she wanted to marry him for his money and his title.
That she was, in other words, sly, scheming and greedy.
What would he say if she told him she’d been heartbroken when she’d learned the land wouldn’t be hers? That it was all she had left of her mother? That seeing the soil paved over, the old barns and stables knocked down to make room for what some called progress, would break her heart all over again?
Foolish question.
Lucas Reyes would say nothing. He wouldn’t believe her.
And why should she believe him? He said he was taking her with him because he wanted to convince his grandfather the contract couldn’t be enforced but was that true? Why would a man take a woman thousands of miles from her home for that reason?
Why should she trust him?
He could do anything to her, with her, once she left the safety of her home, her country…
“Well?”
His expression was still remote, his eyes flat pools of darkness. He was beautiful and terrifying and just the thought of all his power, all his intensity focused on her made her blood start to race.
Tears burned her eyes. She blinked them back. Her only defense was to convince him she wasn’t afraid of him.
“If I were to go with you,” she said, trying her best to sound calm, “you’d have to agree to certain—”
“Stipulations?”
His voice was soft as velvet but there was a razor-sharp edge to the implied humor in the word.
“Conditions,” she said. “Certain conditions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, you are to treat me with respect.”
A negligent shrug. “Done.”
“And you are not to touch me.”
He laughed.
“You think this is funny? That you can—that you think you can kiss me whenever you want?”
“I think you demand too much.” His eyes went cold. “Too many conditions, provisos, stipulations, whatever. Come with me or don’t.”
A tremor went through her. Going with him was wrong. It was crazy. It was—
“Norton! The keys, man. Or I’ll take them from you.”
The keys arced through the darkness and into Lucas’s waiting hands.
“Decision time, amada. I’m leaving, with you or without you.”
Her feet wouldn’t move. Lucas shrugged and got behind the wheel.
“Even if—even if I wanted to go with you,” she said, rushing the words together, “I couldn’t until—until I got my things.”
“What things?”
“Clothes. My toothbrush. Things,” she said, hating the desperation in her voice.
“I will arrange for you to get everything you need when we reach my country.”
It was the kind of arrogant response she should have expected.
“My handbag, then. My wallet. My ID. Won’t I need a passport?”
He laughed. Why wouldn’t he? Even she had to admit it was impossible to think that a woman traveling with this man would need anything so mundane.
“Last chance,” he said, reaching over the console and opening the passenger door. “Yes or no?”
Alyssa ran the tip of her tongue over her dry lips.
He made it sound as if she had a choice but they both knew she didn’t. She hated him as much for that as for kissing her, for making her dizzy with his kisses…
The sound of the Caddy’s powerful engine idling in the still night filled her with dread. Her heart bumped into her throat.
Quickly, knowing that thinking about it too long might be a mistake, she slid into the passenger seat and shut the door after her.
“Just be sure you understand one thing.” Her voice trembled and she hated showing that little sign of weakness. “If there were any other way, I wouldn’t go with you.”
“Duly noted, amada,” he said, with a tight smile, “if not fully believed.”
God, she wanted to launch herself across the console and hit that square, impertinent jaw but that would have been stupid and she knew it. Instead she looked out the window, saw Thaddeus’s incredulous face and then the car was moving forward, gaining speed as it left the house and the attorney behind.
“Alyssa?”
Lucas sounded so calm. Had he realized this was all a terrible mistake? Was he human after all? Was he going to apologize for how he’d behaved?
“Yes?”
“Is there a better way to get to the local airport than the road I was on this morning?”
So much for wishful thinking. Bitterness made her incautious.
“The road where you made an ass of yourself, you mean?”
He stood on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust. He swung toward her, his face cold and hard in the light from the dashboard.
“I will not tolerate insolence.”
“And what about what I will not tolerate? Your vicious assumptions. Your—your pathetic attempts at seduction…”
She was in his arms before she could protest. He took her mouth with his as he had those other times, hard, deep, fast. He kissed her as if the contract was valid and she was his.
Suddenly the shock of what was happening overwhelmed her.
Alyssa began to weep.
She cried without sound, tears trailing down her face. She tasted the salt of them on her lips and he must have, too, because all at once, his kiss changed.
His mouth softened, asked instead of demanded. He whispered her name against her lips.
And her bones felt as if they might liquefy.
No, she thought, I don’t want this.
“Si, amada,” he whispered, “you do.”
Alyssa had spoken the thought but it didn’t matter because Lucas was drawing her into his lap. She could feel the beat of his heart, the power of his erection.
And then she stopped thinking.
She leaned into him. Let his arms enfold her, his hard body take the weight of hers. She had stood alone for so long. For all of her life. To surrender to his strength, to give herself up to him…
A whimper broke from her throat.
His hands cupped her face. She covered them with hers and he tilted her head back, changed the angle of their kiss. Her lips parted, clung to his. His taste was on her tongue, clean and heart-stoppingly male.
Her body was singing.
Singing, and aching for more than this kiss. For more, oh God, more…
He whispered something in Spanish. She felt his mouth at the pulse point beating rapidly in her throat, felt his hands sweep down her body, beneath her leather jacket and skim her breasts, his thumbs barely brushing her nipples.
Sensation shot through her. She cried out, arched against him. Her head fell back and he bent his head, kissed her silk-covered nipple, closed his teeth lightly around it.
Another cry burst from her throat. She buried her hands in his hair and he said her name as he slid his hand down the back of her trousers, under the edge of her panties. His palm burned against her skin.
God!
She wanted this, wanted more, wanted—
Suddenly Lucas tore his mouth from hers. Her eyes flew open as he thrust her back into her own seat. She saw his face.
His cool, amused face.
“So much for my so-called pathetic attempts at seduction, chica. As for your response…Very nicely done. It’s everything a man could want in a woman. Sweet. Passionate.” The look of amusement fled. “And, unfortunately, a little too convincing. I cannot imagine a virgin would return a kiss with such fervor.”
Alyssa lunged at him, fist raised. Lucas wrapped his hand around hers, hard enough to make her wince.
“You can understand, then, if I inform you that your comments about seduction strike me as a tease rather than a complaint.”
She spat a word at him, and he laughed.
“Such language, amada, and from that supposedly innocent mouth.” His laughter faded; his eyes turned cold. “As for seduction…If you behave yourself, I might consider taking you to bed. But I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last woman on earth. Is that clear?”
Alyssa yanked her hand free. “You’re despicable.”
“You break my heart.”
“You don’t have a heart!”
“All I want from you is help convincing my grandfather that this contract should never have been written, not for your sake or mine but for his. He is old and I love him, and I would not hurt him for the world. Do you understand?”
She wanted to make a clever response but her brain didn’t seem to be working.
Lucas Reyes was a mass of contradictions.
She’d accused him of having no heart but he did, when it came to his grandfather. But when it came to everything else…How could he kiss her and fake all that passion?
Better still, how could she have responded to him when she hated him?
“Now,” he sa
id coolly, “I ask you again. Is there a better road to the airport?”
She wanted to tell him the road to hell was the best road for him, but she wasn’t stupid.
Lucas Reyes was the enemy but for now, it would be best not to take him on. Instead she kept her voice as toneless as possible.
“Take the left fork at the end of the driveway, then the first road after that.”
“And where will I end up, amada? On my way to the airport—or on my way to hell?”
The look on her face made Lucas want to laugh.
But he didn’t.
Reading Alyssa McDonough’s thoughts was easy—but there was little to laugh about tonight.
His grandfather lay ill. He was bringing home a woman he distrusted. Who knew what was truth and what was deceit? Finding the answer seemed as elusive as chasing moonlight.
And, come to think of it, how was he going to get home? His plane would not be waiting for him. He’d sent it to New York, hours ago.
Lucas’s jaw tightened. Madre de Dios, what a mess!
He dug out his cell phone, mentally crossed his fingers and flipped it open. Four transmission bars appeared. Four beautiful, big transmission bars. Quickly, before the gods of mischief could erase them, he punched in 4-1-1 and asked for the airport’s number.
Luck stayed with him.
The office was open. And yes, there was a plane available for rent and yes, its range was sufficient to get to New York City.
Lucas made the necessary arrangements, phoned his pilot in New York, told him to be ready to go as soon as they arrived at JFK. When he flipped the phone shut, he found Alyssa watching him.
“Do people always do as you tell them?”
It was a cool statement, not a question, and he knew better than to take her words as a compliment. Instead he leaned across the console, caught her face in his hand before she could pull away and took her mouth in a slow, deliberate kiss.
“Si,” he said softly, “always.”
Then he swung the car back onto the road and gunned the engine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY left Texas in the small jet Lucas had rented, his hand firmly on Alyssa’s elbow as they boarded, as if he thought she might bolt at the last minute.
The Spanish Prince s Virgin Bride Page 7