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“But what I want to know is...” His voice became dangerously low. “Is this baby in your arms truly mine? Or is it just part of some elaborate plot you’ve set up with Claudie?”
My head snapped back. “Are you asking me if my son is some kind of stunt baby?”
“You would be surprised,” he said tightly, “how often in life someone pretends to be something they are not.”
“You think I’d lie about this—for money?”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps for some other reason.” He paused. “If you were not working for Claudie, perhaps you were working for yourself.”
“Meaning what?”
“You hoped that playing hard to get, disappearing with my child, would make me want to pin you down. To marry you.” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Not a bad calculation.”
My mouth had fallen open. Then I glared at him. “I would never want to be your wife!”
“Right.”
His single small word was like a grenade of sarcasm exploding all over me. For an instant my pride made me blind with anger. Then I remembered the dreams I’d once had and my throat went tight. I took a deep, miserable breath.
“Maybe that was what I wanted once,” I whispered. “But that was long ago. Before I found out you’d coldheartedly seduced me so you could marry Claudie and steal my baby.”
“You must know now that was never true.”
“How can I be sure?”
He shook his head. “I never intended to marry Claudie or anyone.”
“Yes, you said that. You also told me once that you never intended to have children. And yet here you are, fighting for a DNA test for Miguel!”
“I do not have a choice.” His expression changed as he said sharply, “You named the baby Miguel?”
“So?”
“Why?” he demanded, staring at me with a sudden suspicious glitter in his eyes that I did not understand.
“After the beautiful city that took me in—San Miguel became our home!”
He relaxed imperceptibly. “Ah.”
Now I was the one to frown. His reaction to our baby’s name had been so fierce, almost violent. Had he wondered if I’d named him after another man? “Why do you care so much?”
“I don’t,” he said coldly.
My baby whimpered in my arms. Fiercely, I shook my head as I hugged him close, breathing in Miguel’s sweet baby scent, feeling his tiny warm body against me. I nuzzled his head and saw tears fall onto his soft dark hair. “If you didn’t get me pregnant on purpose, if it happened by accident and you don’t want a child...just let us go!”
His jaw tightened. “I have an obligation....”
“Obligation!” I cried. “To you, he’s just someone to carry on your title and name. To me, he’s everything. I carried him for nine months, felt him kick inside me, heard his first cry when he was born. He’s my baby, my precious child, my only reason for living.” I was crying openly now, and so was my baby, either in sympathy or in alarm or just because it was past his nap time and all the adults arguing wouldn’t let him sleep. Miguel’s chubby cheeks were red, his eyes swimming with piteous tears. I tried to comfort him as I wept.
Alejandro’s expression was stone. “If he’s my son, I will bring both of you to live with me in Spain. Neither of you will ever want for anything, ever again. You will live in my castle.”
“I’d never marry you, not for any price!”
“Marriage? Who said anything about that?” His lips twisted. “Though we both know you’d marry me in a second if I asked.”
Stung, I shook my head furiously. “What could you offer me, Alejandro? Money? A castle? A title? I don’t need those things!”
He moved closer to me, his eyes dark.
“Don’t forget sex,” he said softly. “Hot, deep, incredible sex.”
In the shadowy hacienda, Alejandro looked at me over the downy head of the baby that we had created. My breasts suddenly felt heavy, my nipples tightening. My body felt taut and liquid at once.
“I know you remember what it was like between us,” he said in a low voice. “Just as I do.”
I lifted my gaze to his.
“Yes,” I whispered. “But what use are any of those things really, Alejandro? Without love, it’s empty.” I shook my head. “You must know this. Because the money, the palaces, the title—and yes, even the sex... Have those things ever made you happy?”
He stared at me. For a long moment, there was only the soft patter of the rain against the roof, our baby’s low whimper, and the loud beat of my aching heart.
Then abruptly, for the first time, Alejandro looked, really looked, at our son. Reaching out, he stroked Miguel’s soft dark hair gently with a large, powerful hand.
As if by magic, our baby’s crying abruptly subsided. Big-eyed, Miguel hiccupped his last tears away as father and son took measure of each other, each with the same frown, the same eyes, the same expression. It would have been enough to make me grin, if my heart hadn’t been hurting so much.
Suddenly our baby flopped out a tiny, unsteady hand against Alejandro’s nose. Looking down at him in surprise, Alejandro snorted a laugh. He seemed to catch his breath, looking at Miguel with amazement, even wonder.
Then he straightened, giving me a cold glare.
“There will be a DNA test. Immediately.”
“You expect me to allow a doctor to prick my baby’s skin for a blood test, to prove something I don’t want to be proved? Forget it! Either believe he’s your son, or—better yet—don’t! And leave us in peace!”
Alejandro’s face looked cold and ruthless. “Enough.”
He must have pressed a button or something—or else he had some freaky bodyguard alert, like a dog whistle I couldn’t hear—because suddenly two bodyguards came in through the front door. Without even looking at me, they kept walking through the foyer, headed across the courtyard toward the bedroom I shared with Miguel.
I whirled on Alejandro. “Where are they going?”
“To pack,” he replied coolly.
“Pack for whom?”
A third bodyguard who’d come up silently behind me suddenly lifted Miguel out of my arms.
“No!” I cried. I started for him, arms outstretched, but Alejandro held me back.
“If the DNA test proves he is not my son,” he said calmly, “I will bring your son back to you, safe and sound, and I’ll never bother either of you again.”
“Let me go!” I shrieked, fighting him—uselessly, for with his greater power and strength, his grip was implacable. “You bastard! You bastard! I will kill you! You can’t take him from me—Miguel! Miguel!”
“You are so sure he is mine?”
“Of course he is yours! You know you were my only lover!”
“I know I was your first....”
“My only! Ever! Damn you! Miguel!”
Something flickered in Alejandro’s eyes. But I was no longer looking at him. I was watching as the bodyguard disappeared through the door, my baby wailing in the man’s beefy arms. I struggled in Alejandro’s grip. “Let me go!”
“Promise to behave, Lena,” he said quietly, “and I will.”
How I wished I could fight him. If only I had the same power he did—then we’d see who gave orders! If I had his physical strength, I would punch him in the face! If only I had a fortune, a private jet, my own bodyguard army...
My lips parted on an intake of breath.
Edward.
Would he help me? Even now?
That wasn’t the question.
Would I be willing to pay the price?
“I don’t want to separate you from the baby,” Alejandro said, “but I must have the DNA test. And if you’re going to fight and scream...”
I abruptly stopped struggling. Nodding, I wiped my eyes. “I’ll come quietly. But please,” I said softly, looking up at his face, “before you take him to Spain, could we stop in London?”
He frowned. “London?”
I nodded, trying to hide my eagerness—my desperation. “I left something at Claudie’s house. Something precious. I need it back.”
“What is it?”
“My baby’s legacy.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Money?”
“And also,” I said on a wave of inspiration, “if we could talk to Claudie, together, we could force her to admit how she played us both. Then maybe we could actually trust each other, going forward....”
Alejandro rubbed the back of his head, then nodded. “That would be better. And to be honest, there are a few things I’d like to discuss with your cousin myself.”
His voice was grim. I believed him now when he said he didn’t want to marry Claudie. Maybe Alejandro hadn’t deliberately planned to get me pregnant after all.
But I’d been right about one thing. He still planned to steal my baby. He intended to keep Miguel at his side, to raise him as his heir in some cold Spanish castle, until he turned him into some heartless, unfeeling bastard like himself.
And Alejandro didn’t intend to marry me. So I’d be powerless. Expendable.
“So we have a deal?” Alejandro said. “You’ll allow the DNA test, and if he is my son, you’ll come with us to Spain?”
“With a stop in London first.”
“Yes. London. But after that, Spain. I have your word?”
“I honestly hate you,” I whispered with feeling.
“I honestly do not care. Do I have your word?”
I glared at him. “Yes.”
He looked down at me in the shadows. For a moment, there was a current of electricity between us, sparking in the shadows of the room. His fingers tightened. Then he abruptly released me.
“Thank you,” he said coldly, “for being so reasonable.”
Hiding the cold determination in my heart, I left him without a word, and nearly sprinted toward my baby.
Alejandro thought he owned me now. But I wasn’t as helpless as he thought. I had one card left to play, if I was willing to pay for it.
Was I?
For my son?
Yes. I was.
CHAPTER TWO
THE FIRST TIME I saw London, I was a grief-stricken fourteen-year-old, newly orphaned, just arrived from New York. My grandmother, whom I’d never met, sent her driver to collect me from Heathrow. The sky was weeping and gray. I remembered trembling as I walked up the steps of the tall white mansion in Kensington, a house roughly the same size as my entire apartment building in Brooklyn.
Brought in by the butler, I’d found my grandmother sitting at her antique desk in the morning room. I stood in front of the fireplace for some moments, my eyes stinging and my heart aching, before she finally looked up.
“So you’re Lena,” she’d said, looking me up and down, from the lumpy coat my mother had made before her hands grew frail in illness, wasting away like her heart since my father’s death six months previously, down to my feet crammed into cheap, too-small shoes that had been all my loving but sadly unskilled father had been able to afford. “Not much of a beauty,” she’d said crisply, with some regret.
It was raining in London today, too.
As Alejandro’s driver waited, holding open my door, I shivered, looking up at the white mansion. I felt suddenly fourteen again. Except now I was going to face my cousin.
Claudie and I were the same age, but she was so different in looks and manner that we could have been born on opposite sides of not just the Atlantic, but the universe.
When I’d first come to the house—devastated by the loss of both my mother and my father within six short months—I’d tried so hard to make my beautiful, spoiled cousin like me, but she’d scorned me on sight. She’d been determined to drive me from the house. Especially once grandmother died and she saw the terms of the will. And she’d finally gotten her wish. She’d won....
“What are you waiting for?” Alejandro said impatiently. “Get out of the car.”
“I changed my mind. I don’t need to go in.”
“Too bad. You’re going.”
He looked far too handsome and rested. He’d slept and showered on his private jet. He was in a fresh suit. I, on the other hand, hadn’t slept at all since yesterday. After an interminable visit to a private hospital in San Miguel de Allende, where he’d paid a small fortune for the DNA test, we’d gotten on his private 747 and I’d spent the long flight walking back and forth in the cabin, trying to calm Miguel enough to sleep. But the cabin pressure hurt his ears, and only my continual walking soothed him. So I’d gotten exercise, at least, using the aisle of Alejandro’s jet as my own private treadmill.
But there’d been no shower for me. I felt groggy, sweaty and dirty, and I was still wearing the same white cotton sundress I’d worn in Mexico. There was no way I was going to face my cousin like this.
It was bad enough letting Alejandro see me.
He’d barely said ten words to me on the plane; in fact, he’d said just five: “Want me to hold him?” Of course, I refused. I hadn’t wanted to give up possession of my baby, even for a moment. Even thirty thousand feet in the air, when there was no way for him to run off. The DNA test had proved the obvious—that Alejandro was Miguel’s father—but I was fighting his emotional and legal claim with every cell and pore.
Now, as Alejandro looked at me in the backseat, the difference between his sleek gorgeousness and my chubby unattractiveness was so extreme I imagined he must be asking himself what he could ever have seen in me. Which begged the question: If he hadn’t deliberately seduced me last summer to create an heir, then why on earth had he?
I licked my lips. “Alejandro,” I said hesitantly. “I...”
“Enough delay,” he growled. “We’re going in.”
I looked at my baby, tucked into a baby seat beside me in the back of the limo, now sleeping in blessed silence. “You go. I’ll stay here with Miguel.” Which would also be the perfect way for me to sneak to Edward’s house, at the end of the street.
“Dowell can watch him.”
I glanced at the driver doubtfully. “No.”
“Then bring Miguel with us.”
“Wake him up?” I whispered, scandalized. I narrowed my eyes. “Of course you wouldn’t worry about that. You’re not the one who spent the whole flight walking in circles trying to make him sleep.”
Alejandro set his jaw. “I offered to take him....”
“You could have offered again.” I was dimly aware that I sounded irrational. There was no way he could have taken Miguel from me on the jet except by force, which wouldn’t exactly have gone over well, either. My cheeks got hot. “It doesn’t matter.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “You do know how to take care of Miguel better than I do.”
His tone told me whom he blamed for that. “I had no choice. I thought you were going to steal him from me.”
“So you stole him first?”
I blinked. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
“You could at least have called me directly,” he ground out.
Now, that was unfair! “I tried! You wouldn’t take my phone calls!”
“If I’d known you were pregnant, I would have.” His jaw tightened. “You could have left a message with Mrs. Allen....”
“Leave a message with some faceless secretary at your London office to let you know, oh, hey, I’m pregnant with your baby? Seriously?” I lifted my chin. “You should have just taken my damn call!”
Alejandro stared at me, his lips pressed in a thin line. “This argument is over.” He turned away. “Unlatch the baby carrier and lift it out of the seat. That won’t wake him up, as you know perfectly well.”
My cheeks burned slightly. Yes, I’d known that. I’d just been hoping he wouldn’t.
When I didn’t move, Alejandro started to reach around me. With a huff I turned and unlatched the seat. Miguel continued softly snoring in sweet baby dreams, tucked snugly in the carrier with a soft blanket against his cheek.
As the driver closed the door behind us with a snap, I stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the cold white mansion.
I’d never wanted to return to this house. But there was one silver lining. I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Alejandro I wanted to come back for Miguel’s legacy. Something I’d been forced to leave behind that had nothing to do with the inheritance I’d lost.
As I looked up, the soft drizzle felt like cobwebs against my skin. Like memories. Like ghosts.
“What now?” Alejandro was glaring at me as if I wasn’t his favorite person. I couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t my favorite person right now, either.
Although at this moment there was one person I liked even less. I swallowed.
“I’m scared,” I whispered.
He stared at me. “Of Claudie?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“You don’t need to be scared,” he said gruffly. “I’m here with you now.” Reaching out, he took the baby carrier from my trembling hands. “Come on.”
Alejandro carried our sleeping baby up the stone steps and knocked on the imposing front door.
Mr. Corgan, the longtime butler, opened the door. His jowly face was dignified as he greeted Alejandro.
“Good morning, Your Excellency.” Then he glanced at me and his eyes went wide. “Miss Lena!” He saw the sleeping baby in the carrier, and the usually unflappable Mr. Corgan’s jaw fell open. “It’s true?” He breathed, then glanced at Alejandro, and the mask slipped back into place. Holding open the door, he said sonorously, “Won’t you both please come in?”
He led us into the elegant front salon, with high ceilings and gilded furniture. Everything looked just as I remembered—vintage, French and expensive. I’d been allowed in this room only a handful of times, the last being when I’d begged Claudie for money to fly to Spain. The day my life had fallen apart.
Mr. Corgan said, “I regret that Miss Carlisle is...out...at the moment, but she has a standing order to welcome you at any time, Your Excellency, if you care to wait.”
“Sí,” Alejandro said coldly. “We will wait.”
“Of course. She will be so pleased to see you when she returns. May I offer refreshments? Tea?”
Alejandro shook his head. He sat down on the pink striped couch near the window. He seemed incongruous there, this dark, masculine Spaniard with severely tailored black clothes, in a salon that looked like a giant powder puff, with the powder made of diamond dust.
He set down the baby carrier on the white polished marble floor beside the sofa. I swiftly scooped it up, and exhaled in relief now that my sleeping baby was safely back in my possession. I followed Mr. Corgan out of the salon and into the hallway.
Once we were alone, the butler’s mask dropped and he turned to face me with a happy exclamation.
“We missed you, girl.” He hugged me warmly. I closed my eyes, smelling pipe smoke and brass polish. Then I heard a crash and pulled back to see Mrs. Morris, the housekeeper, had just broken a china plate in the hallway. But she left it there, coming forward with a cry.
A minute later, both of them, along with Hildy, the maid, were hugging me and crying and exclaiming over Miguel’s beauty, his dark hair, his fat cheeks.
“And such a good sleeper, too,” Mrs. Morris said approvingly. Then they all looked at each other. I saw the delicate pause.
Then Hildy blurted out, “Who’s his father, then?”
I glanced back at the salon, biting my lip. “Um...”
Hildy’s eyes got huge when she saw who was in the salon. Then she turned to Mr. Corgan. “You were right. I owe you a fiver.”
His cheeks went faintly pink as he cleared his throat with a harrumph. “I might have heard some of your conversation with Miss Carlisle the day you left, Miss Lena.” He shook his jowly head with a glare. “It wasn’t right what she did. Driving you from the house a year before you would have got your grandmother’s inheritance.”
I was surprised for only a second. Then I gave a wry smile. Of course they knew. Household staff knew everything, sometimes even before their employers did. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does,” Mrs. Morris said indignantly. “Miss Carlisle wanted your inheritance and the moment she convinced you to move out of the house, she got it by default. Just a year before it would have finally been yours!”
I pressed my hand against my temple as emotions I had spent the past year trying to forget churned up in me.
When I turned eighteen, I could have left for college, or gotten a real job. Instead, I’d remained living in this house, working as a sort of house manager/personal assistant for my cousin beneath her unrelenting criticism as she tried her best to drive me away. I’d had a small salary at first, but even that had disappeared when she’d lazily announced one day that she was cutting the salaries of the staff by twenty percent. “They don’t need it,” she sniffed. “They are lucky, working all day in my beautiful house. They should be paying me!”
Mr. Corgan and Mrs. Morris and the rest had become my friends, and I knew they had families to support. So I’d given up my salary rather than see them suffer. Leaving me virtually destitute for years, in spite of working eighteen-hour days.
But I hadn’t minded, not really, because I’d known all I had to do was remain in this house until I was twenty-five, just a few months from now, and I would have gotten the huge inheritance once destined for my father, before he’d been cut out of the will for the crime of marrying my mother.
Eight years ago, when my grandmother lay dying, she’d clutched his old teddy bear and dissolved in tears I’d never seen before as she remembered the youngest son she’d once loved best. She’d called for her lawyer.
If Robert’s child proves herself worthy of the Carlisle name, my grandmother’s will had read, and she still lives in the house at the age of twenty-five, she may claim the bequest that would have been his.
But now it had all reverted to Claudie. I hadn’t cared a whit about the money last year, when I’d feared my baby would be stolen from me. But now...
“The house hasn’t been the same without you, Miss Lena,” Mr. Corgan said.
“Half the staff resigned after you left,” Mrs. Morris said.
“She’s been intolerable without you to run interference.” Mr. Corgan shook his head grimly. “I’ve worked for this family for forty years, Miss Lena, but even I fear my time here is nearing an end.” Leaning closer, he confided, “Miss Carlisle still insists she’ll marry your duke.”
“He’s not my duke....”
“Well. He’s the only man rich and handsome enough for her, though she says she’d marry any rich idiot who’d make her a duchess....” Glancing back over his shoulder, he coughed, turning red.
Turning, I saw Alejandro standing in the doorway of the salon. I wondered how much he’d heard. His face was half hidden in shadow, his expression inscrutable.
“Did you change your mind about the tea, Your Excellency?” Mr. Corgan gasped, his face beet red.
Alejandro shook his head. His eyes were dark, but his lips quirked at the edges. “We rich idiots prefer coffee.”
The butler looked as if he wished the earth would swallow him up whole. “I’ll get it right away, sir....”
“Don’t bother.” He looked at me. “Did you get what you came for?”
He’d heard everything, I realized. He thought I’d come for my inheritance. He thought that was the precious thing that had brought me here. It wasn’t.
I turned to Mrs. Morris urgently. “Did she throw out my things?”
“She wanted to,” she said darkly. “She told me to burn it all. But I boxed it all up and left it in your attic room. I knew she’d never bother to go all the way up there to check.”
“Bless you,” I whispered, and hugged her. “Stay and have coffee,” I called to Alejandro. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I started up the stairs, carrying my sleeping baby with me.
Climbing three floors, I reached the attic. It looked even more desolate than I remembered, with only one grimy window, an ancient metal bed frame and stacks of boxes. Setting down the baby, I went straight for the boxes.
“What are you looking for?”
Hearing Alejandro’s husky voice behind me, I turned. “These boxes hold everything from my childhood.”
He stepped inside the attic room, knocking his head against the slanted roof. He rubbed it ruefully. “I can see why Claudie wouldn’t come up here. This place is like a prison cell.”
“This was my home for over ten years.”