Abby Green - One Night - Latin Heat

“I’m glad you feel that way. The truth is I don’t want to hurt you, either.” Alejandro tightened his hands on the steering wheel. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Our son is what matters. We’ll focus on him. I’ll never leave you or Miguel. Together we’ll make sure our son is always well cared for.”

Our eyes locked, and an ache lifted to my throat. Turning away, I tried to block the emotion out with a laugh. “Miguel will be a duke someday. That’s crazy, isn’t it?”

Alejandro turned his eyes back to the road.

“Sí,” he said grimly. “Crazy.”

I’d been trying to lighten the mood. But his voice sounded darker than ever. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No. You are correct. Miguel will be Duque de Alzacar.” I frowned. But before I could figure out what lay behind the odd tension in his voice, he turned to me. “So you forgive me for forcing you to marry me against your will?”

I exhaled.

“It’s a very complicated question.”

“No. It is not.”

Something broke inside me. And words came pouring out.

“You think I was silly and selfish to want to marry for love. But for the past ten years, that dream was all I’ve held on to.” I looked at my hands in my lap. “Ever since I was fourteen years old, I’ve felt so alone. So unwanted. But then, last year, when I met you...” I lifted agonized eyes to his. “All my dreams seemed to be coming true. It was as if...I’d gone back in time. To the world I once knew. The one filled with love. The world where I was good enough. Wanted. Even cherished.”

Alejandro’s expression darkened. “Lena...”

“Then you abandoned me,” I whispered. “You told me you didn’t love me, that you never would.” I looked at him. “But I still married you yesterday, Alejandro, knowing that. Knowing you’ve lied to me in the past and will lie in the future. I married you knowing that the loneliness I tried to leave behind me in London will now follow me for the rest of my life. Only now, instead of being a poor relation, I’m the gold digger who got pregnant to ensnare a rich duke. And everyone will say, weren’t you so good and noble to marry me? Wasn’t it an amazing sacrifice for you to make me your wife? How generous of you! How kind!”

He glowered. “No one will say that.”

I cut him off with a low laugh. “Everyone will. And I know there will be days when I’ll feel that marrying you was the biggest mistake of my life.” I drew a deep, shuddering breath, then met his gaze. “And yet I can’t regret it,” I whispered. “Because it will make Miguel’s life better to have you in his life. Every single day. He will know you. Really know you.”

“I wish he could.” Alejandro stared at me. His dark eyes were liquid and deep. “I wish I could tell you...”

I held my breath. “Yes?”

His face suddenly turned cold, like a statue. He looked away. “Forget it.”

I exhaled, wishing I hadn’t said so much.

He drove the car off the main road, then took a smaller one, then turned on a private lane that was smaller still, nothing but a ribbon twisting across the broad-swept lands. Alejandro stopped briefly at a tall iron gate, then entered a code into the electronic keypad. We proceeded inside the estate, which looked so endless and wide, I wondered how anyone had wrapped a fence around it, and if the fence was visible from space, like the Great Wall of China.

Then I saw the castle, high on a distant hill, and I sucked in my breath. It was like a fairy-tale castle, rising with ramparts of stone and turrets stretching into the sky.

“Is that...?” I breathed.

“Sí,” Alejandro said quietly. “My home. The Castillo de Rohares. The home of the Dukes of Alzacar for four hundred years.”

It took another fifteen minutes to climb the hill, past the groves of olive trees and orange trees. When we reached the castle at last, past the ramparts into a courtyard surrounding a stone fountain, he stopped the car at the grand entrance on the circular driveway. He turned off the engine, and I could hear the bodyguards climbing out of the SUV behind us, talking noisily about lunch, slamming doors. But as I started to turn for the passenger-side door, Alejandro grabbed my wrist. I turned to face him, and he dropped my arm.

“I am sorry I hurt you, Lena. When I left you last summer, when I refused to return any of your phone calls—I did that for good reason. At least—” his jaw tightened “—it seemed like good reason.”

“No, I get it,” I said. “You didn’t want me to love you.”

“No. That’s not it at all.” He lifted his dark eyes to mine. “I didn’t leave because you loved me. I left because I was falling in love with you.”

CHAPTER SIX

I STARED AT him in shock.

“What?” I breathed.

A hard knock banged against the car window behind me, making me jump. Turning my head, I saw a plump smiling woman, standing on the driveway outside, dressed in an apron and holding a spoon. She waved at us merrily. I saw the bodyguards greeting her with obvious affection as they went into the grand stone entrance of the castle.

“Another housekeeper?” I said faintly.

“My grandmother,” he said.

“Your—” I whirled to face him, but he had already opened his door and was getting out of the car, gently lifting Miguel out of his baby seat. Nervously, I got out of the car, too, wondering what the dowager Duchess of Alzacar would make of me.

“Come in, come in,” she said to the bodyguards, shooing them inside. She kept switching from English to Spanish as if she couldn’t quite make up her mind. “Knowing Alejandro, I’m sure you didn’t stop for any lunch, so everything is ready if you’ll just go straight to the banqueting hall...”

“Abuela,” Alejandro said, smiling, “I’d like you to meet my son. His name is Miguel.”

“Miguel?” she gasped, looking from him to Alejandro.

He blinked with a slight frown, shaking his head. “And this is my new wife. Lena.”

“I’m so happy to meet you.” Smoothing one hand over her apron, she turned to me with a warm smile, lifting the wooden spoon high, like a benign domestic fairy about to grant a really good wish. “And your sweet baby! I can hardly wait to...” Her eyes suddenly narrowed. “Your new what?”

Coming over to me, Alejandro put his free arm around my shoulders. “My wife.”

She lowered her spoon and looked me over, from my long hair to my soft white blouse with the Peter Pan collar, to my slim-cut jeans and ballet flats. I braced myself for criticism.

Instead, she beamed at me, spreading her arms wide.

“Oh, my dear,” she cried, “welcome to the family. Welcome to your new home!”

And she threw her arms around me in a big, fierce, welcoming hug.

Shocked, I stiffened. Then I patted her awkwardly on the back.

“But I’m being silly,” she said, drawing back, wiping her eyes with her brightly colored apron. “My name is Maurine. But please call me Abuela, if you like, as Alejandro does. Or Grandma. Or Nana. Whatever. I’m just so happy you’re here!”

“Thank you,” I said, unsure how to handle such immediate warmth and kindness.

“But you—” she whirled on her grandson with a scowl “—you should have known better than to elope!”

Alejandro looked abashed. It was a funny, boyish expression on his masculine face. “We would have waited and had a proper wedding,” he said, rubbing his neck sheepishly, “but Abuela, it happened so quickly....”

“Huh. Don’t think you’re getting off that easy. We’ll talk about it later. Now—” her plump face softened as her eyes lit up “—let me hold that baby.”

Ten minutes later, Maurine was giving me a speed tour of the castle, on the way to the dining hall. “The foundations of Rohares date from the times of the sultan,” she said happily. “But most of the building dates from the early seventeenth century. It was bombed in the war, then when we came back we had no money and it fell into disrepair.” She looked sad, then brightened, smiling up at her grandson. “But Alejandro made his fortune in Madrid, then restored every part of it, made Rohares better than it had ever been before! And here’s where we’ll have lunch....”