Abby Green - One Night - Latin Heat

“To make fun?” He looked at me with a scowl. “You think I would taunt you about having a happy childhood?” He shook his head. “If anything, I envy you,” he said softly, looking back at the pages that my tenderhearted mother had made for me when I was a child. Right up to the very last photo, of my father at Christmas, sitting beneath the tree wearing a Santa hat, smiling lovingly at the camera as he held my mother’s homemade gift of a sweater. Two months later, he was dead. There were no more photos. The last few pages of the album were blank. Alejandro said softly, “I have no pictures of myself with my mother. None.”

I blinked. “How is that possible? I mean, I’d think you’d have a million pictures taken....”

He abruptly looked at me. Without answering, he closed the photo album and handed it to me.

“Perhaps you’re not who I thought you were.”

“Who did you think I was?”

“Exactly like all the other women I’ve ever dated. In love with the idea of being a rich duchess.” He looked down at me, his dark eyes infinite and deep as the night sky. “But I’m starting to think you’re different. A woman who would willingly leave thirty million pounds... You were actually in love with me, weren’t you?”

My breath got knocked out of me.

“That was a long time ago.”

Our eyes met, and I suddenly had to get out of the attic. I picked up Miguel’s baby carrier with one arm and carried the albums with the other. “I’ll be downstairs.”

Without looking back, I fled, rushing down the flights of stairs. My teeth were chattering, and I was shaking with strange emotion. Edward, I reminded myself. The other reason I’d come to London. I had to get his help before Alejandro could bully me into going to Spain. Although it actually wasn’t going to Spain that frightened me. It was never being able to leave again. It was being separated from my baby. It was being completely under the control of a man who’d almost destroyed me once, just by making me love him.

As I reached the bottom of the staircase, I heard a car door slam outside. Through the windows, I saw a flash of purple.

Claudie had come home.

I turned to where Hildy was loitering at the bottom of the stairs. “Hildy!”

“Oh, hello,” she said, blushing when she saw me. “I was just dusting the banister, Miss—”

“My cousin is here. Please.” Grabbing Hildy’s arm, I whispered, “I need you to take a message to Edward St. Cyr.”

“Edward St. Cyr?” Hildy’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Mr. St. Cyr himself? Are you serious?”

“Tell him I need to see him,” I said with more assurance than I felt.

“Here, miss? You know he and Miss Carlisle hate each other....”

Hearing my cousin fumbling at the door, I shook my head. “Tell him...the Princess Diana Playground in thirty minutes.”

With a quick, troubled nod, Hildy hurried toward the back door. Just in time, too. The front door slammed.

“Well. Look who’s back.”

My cousin’s voice was a sneer. Warily, I turned to face her for the first time in a year.

“Hello, Claudie.” She was wearing a tight, extremely short bandage dress, the kind you might wear to a club if you wanted a lot of attention, in a vivid shade of purple that almost matched the hollows beneath her eyes. “Late night?” I said mildly.

She glared at me.

“If you came to beg for your inheritance, forget it. My solicitors went through the will with a fine-tooth comb,” she ground out. “You’ll never...” Then she saw the baby and gasped in triumph. “You brought the brat here? I knew you’d see reason.” She rubbed her hands together in glee. “Now I’ll either make him marry me, or else I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Claudie?” Alejandro said coolly from the top of the stairs.

My cousin looked up, speechless for the first time in her life. But she recovered almost instantly. Smiling up at him, she put her hand on her hip, setting a pose that showed her figure to advantage, wearing her six-inch heels and skintight purple dress, trailing a cloud of expensive perfume. Her gorgeous, long blond hair tumbled over her shoulders, emphasizing the bone structure of her sharp cheekbones.

But as she licked her big lips, beneath her smile, her eyes were afraid. “Alejandro. I didn’t know you were here.”

He came down the stairs, looking down at her. He stopped in front of her. Even though she wore such high heels, he was still taller.

“You lied to me, Claudie,” he said pleasantly. “Lena wasn’t holding my baby hostage. You were.”

She visibly trembled, then tried to laugh. Reaching into her crystal-encrusted bag, she got out a pack of cigarettes. “Darling, I don’t know what kind of lies my precious cousin might have told you, but...”

He grabbed her wrist almost violently.

“Do not,” he said coldly, “smoke near my son.”

“Your son,” she breathed, searching his gaze, then ripped her arm away. “Are you so sure of that?” Her beautiful blue eyes hardened. “How do you know he’s yours? You should have seen all the men who used to come through here, Alejandro—trooping up to Lena’s bedroom every single night—”

A little gasp escaped me, like an enraged squeak.

Alejandro lifted an eyebrow. “Then they must have been lost, on their way to your room, Claudie.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t like what you’re implying—”

“We did a DNA test,” he said, cutting her off. “The baby is mine.”

For a moment, she stared at him. But you could almost see her gather her forces. “He doesn’t have to be.” She looked from him to me. “If you don’t treat him like your son, no one else will.”

“You think I would abandon my own child?”

“Fine,” she said impatiently. She flung a skeletal finger toward my sweetly sleeping son. “We can take her baby. She’s nobody, Alejandro. She won’t be able to stop us....”

With a gasp, I protected the baby carrier with my body.

“Just think.” Claudie swayed her hips as she walked toward Alejandro with her hypnotic red smile. “Just think how perfect our future could be.” She started to wrap her arms around him. “With your money and title, and my money and connections...the two of us could rule the world.”

He looked down at her coldly. “Do you really think I’d want to rule the world, if the price would be marriage to you?”

Shocked, she let her arms fall to her sides.

“You used Lena for years as an unpaid slave,” he said, “then threatened to take her baby, for the sake of stealing what you wanted—her inheritance. And then you tried to blackmail me into marrying you!”

She licked her lips. “I...”

He held up his hand sharply, cutting her off. His voice was deep and harsh. “For the past year, you’ve lied to me, saying if I ever wanted to see my child, I had to marry you. Blaming Lena, making me think she was the one to blame. For that, you deserve to go to hell. Which I hope you will find—” he gave her a sudden, pleasant smile “—very soon. Adios, Claudie.” Scooping up the baby carrier, he turned to me gravely. “Shall we go?” Without another word, he walked out the front door.

“Alejandro, wait,” Claudie gasped, but I was the only one left to hear. “You.” Her face as she turned to look at me really did look like a snake’s. Or maybe a dragon’s—I could almost see the smoke coming out of her nostrils as her blue, reptilian eyes hardened. “You did this!”

For the past decade, I’d dreamed of what I would say to her if given the chance, after all my lonely years, crying alone in my attic. All the subtle and not so subtle ways she’d insulted me, used me, made me feel worthless and invisible for the past ten years. But in this moment, all those things fled from my mind. Instead, the real question came from my heart.