One Night: Latin Heat: Uncovering Her Nine Month Secret / One Night With The Enemy / One Night with Morelli

“Be serious.”

“I’m trying to be. But I’ve never asked any woman to marry me before. I’m starting to think I must be doing it wrong. Do I need to get down on one knee?”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Then what is it?”

I’m afraid you’d make me love you again. The cold knot near my heart, which had started to warm on the edges, returned to ice. “Come on,” I mumbled, looking at the ground. “We both know that I’m not exactly duchess material.”

“Are you trying to let me down gently?” he demanded. He stopped, leaning our baby against his hip as he looked at me. “Is there someone else? Perhaps the person who helped you flee London last year, and travel around the world?”

“It’s not like that.”

“When a man protects a woman,” he said grimly, “it is exactly like that.”

“How do you know it’s a man?”

“By looking at your face,” he said softly. “Right now.”

I looked away. My throat hurt as I took another sip of the rich, sweet coffee, watching all the mothers and fathers and smiling nannies hovering on the edge of their children’s delighted play. Some of them looked back at me. They probably imagined we were a family, too.

But we weren’t.

I would have given anything if Alejandro could have been a man I could trust with my heart. A regular guy, a hardworking, loving man, who could have been my real partner. Instead of a selfish playboy duke who didn’t know the meaning of love, and if married would plainly expect me to remain a dutiful wife imprisoned in his castle, raising our child, while he enjoyed himself elsewhere. Why shouldn’t he? If love didn’t exist, I could only imagine what he thought of fidelity.

“Why did you seduce me, Alejandro?” I blurted out.

He blinked. “What?”

My voice trembled as I looked up at him. “If you weren’t trying to get me pregnant to provide an heir for you and Claudie, why did you seduce me? Why did you even notice me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Are you really going to make me spell it out? Fine. You’re—you—” I waved my half-full coffee toward him “—and I’m...” I indicated my white dress I’d worn for thirty-six hours now, wrinkled and possibly stained with baby sick I didn’t know about, and I shivered in the cool morning air. “I believed Claudie’s story last year because, for the first time, everything made sense. There was no other reason for you to... I mean, why else would a man like you, who could have any woman in the world, choose a woman like...”

Reaching out his hand, he cupped my cheek. “Because I wanted you, Lena. Pure and simple. I wanted you.” Looking down at me, he said in a low voice, “I’ve never stopped wanting you.”

My lips parted. I trembled, fighting the desire to lean into his touch. The paper cup fell from my hand, splashing coffee across the grass. But I barely noticed. Craning back my head, I blinked back tears as I whispered, “Then why did you break up with me like that, so coldly and completely? Just for telling you I loved you?”

Alejandro stared at me, then dropped his hand. “Because I didn’t want to lead you on. I’d promised myself I’d never have either wife or child....”

“But why?” I said, bewildered. “Why wouldn’t you want those things? You’re the last of your line, aren’t you? If you died without an heir...you would be the last Duke of Alzacar.”

“That was my intention,” he said grimly.

“But why?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He looked down at Miguel in his arms. “Fate chose differently. I have a son.” His dark eyes blazed at me, filled with heat and anger and something else...something I couldn’t understand. “And I will protect his future. Right or wrong.”

“You keep saying right or wrong. What is wrong about it?” I narrowed my eyes. “If you’re trying to imply that he’s not good enough—”

“Of course not,” he bit out.

“Then it’s me—”

He shook his head impatiently, his jaw tight. “I’m talking about me.”

The great Duque de Alzacar, admitting some kind of fault? I blinked. I breathed, “I don’t understand....”

“What is there to understand?” he said evasively. “Now that I am a parent, my priorities have changed. Wasn’t it the same for you, when Miguel was born?”

I hesitated. It was true what he said, but I still had the sense he was hiding something from me. “Yes-s....”

“We have a child. So we will do what is best for him. We will marry.”

“You didn’t want to marry me in Mexico.”

“That was when I thought you were a liar, a thief and probably a gold digger. Now my opinion of you has improved.”

“Thanks,” I said wryly.

“Why are you fighting me? Unless—” He gave me a sharp, searching gaze. “Are you in love with someone else?”

The image of Edward flashed in front of my eyes. I wondered if Alejandro would still keep his improved opinion of me if he knew I’d been living in another man’s house. It would look sordid, even if the truth had been so innocent. At least—innocent on my side. Swallowing, I looked away.

“I’m not in love with anyone.” My voice was barely audible over the noisy children at play.

His shoulders relaxed imperceptibly. “Then why not marry me?” His tone turned almost playful. “You really should consider it for the jewels alone....”

I gave a rueful laugh, then looked at him. “I’d never fit into your world, Alejandro. If I took you at your word and became your wife, we’d both be miserable.”

“I wouldn’t be.”

I shook my head. “Your expectations of marriage are lower than mine. It would never work. I want—” I looked down as my cheeks turned hot “—to be loved. I want what my parents had.”

Alejandro abruptly stopped. We were in the far back of the playground now, in a quiet overgrown place of bushes and trees. “But what about our son? Doesn’t he have some rights, as well? Doesn’t he deserve a stable home?”

“You mean a cold, drafty castle?”

“It’s neither drafty nor cold.” He set his jaw. “I want my son, my heir, to live in Spain. To know his people. His family.”

I frowned at him. “I thought you had no family.”

“My grandmother who raised me. All the people on my estate. They are like family to me. Don’t you think he deserves to know them, and they should know him? Shouldn’t he know his country? Where else would you take him—back to Mexico?”

“I loved it there!” I said, stung.

“We will buy a vacation house there,” he said impatiently. “But his home is with his land. With his people. With his parents. You of all people,” he said softly, “know what it means to have a happy, settled childhood, surrounded by love.”