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“What is it?”
“Our prenuptial agreement.”
“What? So fast?”
“I had Bleekman start drawing up the draft after I spoke with your sister this morning.”
“But you didn’t even know if it was true about the baby–much less that you wanted to marry me!”
“I always like to be prepared for every possibility.”
“Yes.” She scowled. “To make sure you get your way.”
“To mitigate risk.” He pushed a fountain pen into her hand. “Sign it. And we’ll go get our marriage license.”
Callie looked through the thick stack of papers of the prenuptial agreement. She started to read the first paragraph. It would probably take an hour to read it all. Frowning, she thumbed through the pages uncertainly. She saw the amount of money he intended to give her as alimony and child support and looked up with a gasp. “Are you crazy? I don’t want your money!”
“My child will grow up in a safe, secure, comfortable home. That means she must never worry about money. And neither can you.” He set his jaw, watching her with visible annoyance as she turned back to page two and continued reading through the document. “Do you intend to read every single word?”
“Of course I do.” Lifting her head, she glared at him, even as pedestrians jostled them on the sidewalk. “I know you, Eduardo. I know how you operate—”
Her voice choked off as another sharp pain hit her body, so intense her spine straightened as she nearly gasped aloud. The contractions were getting worse. Surely this wasn’t Braxton-Hicks. She was in labor. Real labor. The baby was on her way. Callie put one hand over her belly and exhaled through her teeth.
“What’s wrong?”
Eduardo’s voice had changed. Trying to hide the pain rolling through her in waves, she looked up.
His handsome face was looking down at her with concern. He was worried about her. His dark eyes were warm, warm as they’d been during the time when she’d been his infallible secretary, when she’d been the one woman he needed, the only woman he trusted. Before they’d slept together in the happiest night of her life, and then she’d lost everything.
The intensity of his gaze caused her heart to twist in her chest. She could cope with his cold anger or cruel words, but not his concern. Not his kindness. A lump rose in her throat, and she suddenly had to fight tears.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I just want to get this over with.” Gripping the pen, she turned to the pages marked with yellow tags and rapidly scrawled her signature. It was all she could do to keep the pen steady, with her knees shaking. She shoved both the signed prenuptial agreement and pen against Eduardo’s chest, then turned away to focus on her breathing.
Breathe in, breathe out. She tried to let the pain go through her without fighting it or tensing her muscles, but it was impossible. Stupid useless breathing classes!
“You didn’t read it,” Eduardo said behind her, sounding almost bewildered. “That’s not like you.”
A policeman mounted on horseback came clopping in their direction, even as yellow taxis and large buses whizzed down the street, honking noisily. But all the moving colors of the busy world seemed to slide like water around her. She didn’t answer.
Eduardo touched her shoulder, turning her around. “Callie,” he said huskily. “What is it?”
She couldn’t speak over the ache in her throat. She’d loved him, in spite of his faults. She’d thought she was his one indispensible woman. Until he’d discarded her. She couldn’t let herself care for him. And she couldn’t let herself believe, even for an instant, that he cared for her.
“I just hate you, that’s all,” she bit out, pulling away. Pain ebbed from her body, and she exhaled, forcing her shoulders to relax. “Let’s just get this sham of a wedding over with.”
Without waiting for him, she started walking up the steps toward the courthouse.
“Fine.” When he caught up with her, the brief concern in his voice was gone. He strode ahead to open the door, and when she saw his face, it was hard and cold again. She was glad. She couldn’t bear his tenderness, not in his eyes and not in his voice. Even after all this time, it twisted her heart into a million pieces.
Three months, she told herself, her teeth chattering. Then I’ll be free.
She followed him into the courthouse, with his lawyer trailing behind. Twenty-two minutes later, they walked back out with the license. Callie knew it was exactly twenty-two minutes, because she’d started timing her contractions with her watch.
Eduardo didn’t touch her as they walked down the steps. He didn’t smile. He barely looked at her. After bidding the lawyer farewell, he led her toward the black car at the curb. “I have made arrangements for us to be married privately at my home,” he said coolly, as if discussing a business arrangement. Which, Callie reminded herself savagely, was exactly what it was.
She tried to follow, desperate to get their nightmare wedding over and done with, but another contraction hit her. Panting, she grabbed his arm. “I don’t think I can.”
He looked at her, his eyes flinty. “It’s too late for second thoughts.”
Sun burst through the clouds as light rain fell, sprinkling against her hot skin. She felt the contraction build inside her, and she could no longer deny what was happening. She gripped his jacket sleeve tightly. “I think … I think I’m in labor.”
He sucked in his breath, searching her gaze. “Labor?”
Wheezing, she nodded. As the pain built, her knees went weak beneath her and she felt herself start to collapse toward the sidewalk.
Then she felt Eduardo’s strong arms around her as he lifted her against his chest. It felt good, so good, to be cradled in his arms that she nearly wept. He looked down at her, his jaw tight.
“How long?” he demanded.
Her body was starting to shake with the pain and she saw from his expression that he could feel it, too. “All … day … I—I think …”
“Damn you, Callie!” he said hoarsely. “Why do you hide everything?”
She was in too much agony to answer. His jaw clenched and he turned away, racing to the curb. “Sanchez! Door!” he shouted, and his driver sprang into action. Seconds later, she was in the backseat of the black sedan. Eduardo took her hands in his own as he asked urgently, “Which hospital, Callie? The name of your doctor?”
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 agreement 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.
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