His Seductive Revenge

“You’ve demanded honesty from me. You’ve managed to pry some of my secrets loose from moorings I didn’t think anyone could. Don’t deny me the same insight into what drives you.”

“Men view sex differently. Women like to fantasize that it’s different when she’s the right woman for him. It’s not true. It still comes down to physical satisfaction for men, not emotional.”

“Always?”

“I suppose I can’t speak for all men. We don’t discuss the point as women do. But I believe it’s so.”

She rolled her head, easing kinks settling in her neck, feeling sorry for him because he was so disillusioned about love.

“Tired?” he asked.

“A little.”

“Let’s stop for now. I’ll order lunch.”

He watched her shift her shoulders as he asked his housekeeper to serve lunch on the screened porch facing the garden. He hung up the phone just as Cristina put her hand on a stack of paintings leaning against a wall.

“May I?” she asked.

He had a decision to make, quickly. After a minute, he nodded. Then he waited.

At first she simply seemed caught up in the images she was examining, then something changed. She slowed down. Concentrated. Focused. She turned toward him, accusation in her eyes.

“These paintings are signed Marquez. But the style... It’s so distinctive. I couldn’t see it in the photographs. You’re—You’re not—”

“I am Gabriel Alejandro De La Hoya y Marquez.” And I am descended from kings.

The tag came automatically to mind, an old game he and his mother had played. She’d always made him say the whole thing together. He’d stopped when he was fifteen and knew better.

“I don’t understand,” she said, looking around. “There’s no curtain. No two-way mirror. There’s just—”

“Me and you. The ridiculous rumor is just that, Cristina, started by someone who thought it would be diverting to say that is the way De La Hoya works. It’s part of the mystique.”

“Why?”

“Why the secrecy? Because it places a higher value on the work.”

“And you’re only interested in making money.”

He watched her expression close up. He’d disappointed her. “I make a very comfortable living. I don’t need what I get from my art, but I enjoy the game, one I have to play out now because I’m too far into it to stop. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love it. I do. I also love the challenge of taking a losing company and making it successful. Or helping a determined immigrant start a business. Or endowing an artist. Painting feeds my soul. It also puts food on the plate of some starving artist, giving him or her the freedom to pursue their dreams full-time.”

They faced each other like duelists in the streets of the Old West. Cristina intentionally moved toward him, needing some kind of action, some forward momentum. The shock had immobilized her. “And you’ve already decided that I’m worthy of your trust. You don’t think I’d tell anyone the truth,” she said, studying his expression.

“I know it for a fact. We have a connection. That connection is only going to get stronger by your knowing the truth. Alejandro De La Hoya is a known quantity. Gabriel Marquez is not. Not as an artist, anyway. I want you to have confidence in me to do what’s right for you in this portraits. I think you would trust De La Hoya more than Marquez.”

“Well, you’re wrong.” She stopped in front of him. “I don’t think it will make a difference, except that I like knowing the truth. Your secret is safe with me.”

“I know.”

She smiled. “You were the tiniest bit worried, though, weren’t you? I could see it in your eyes.”

“It’s always a leap of faith.”

“I knew there was something you were keeping hidden.”

“Did you?”

She liked the arrogant lift of his brow. He was a complicated man who had just made himself more so, therefore more intriguing, and more dangerous. She would have to open up to him now in ways she hadn’t anticipated.

“Tell me, Gabe—Is that what I call you?”

He nodded.

“Tell me. Do you have affairs with your subjects? Jen was sure by looking at the paintings that you do.”

“Is that what you’re looking for?”

“I asked you first.”

He hesitated. “I choose my subjects carefully. Sometimes I’ve chosen to paint someone I’m involved with. Usually, it isn’t the case. Certainly the older I’ve gotten, the less the two mesh.”

“Thank you for your honesty.”

Gabe reached behind her and loosened the ribbon, pulling it slowly across her neck. “Now you must answer my question.”

She pressed a shaky hand to his chest. “If my father had his way, I’d be engaged to Jason Grimes today and married to him next week.”

“Which tells me nothing. Certainly it doesn’t answer my question. Are you looking to have an affair?”

She shifted her weight. “No.”

Her hesitation gave him a different answer, but he wouldn’t call her on it. Not yet. “All right.”

He found it endearing, the way surprise and disappointment washed across her face before she stepped back. What an innocent she was. If her father played the right cards—the emotional ones—she’d marry Jason Grimes. For her father’s sake, of course, not hers. She believed in love—or the fantasy of love. But she also believed in family. Losing weight to please her dying mother said it all.

Gabe loved his mother. She’d been the only constant in his life. But he had never allowed her to tell him how to live his life—

Except once. He had promised her he wouldn’t exact revenge against his father, worthless bastard that he was, even though the opportunity and means had been within Gabe’s reach many times. What was the purpose of having money and the power that came with it if he couldn’t use it as he wished?

In that sense he supposed he was like Arthur Chandler or Richard Grimes. Grimes would use his wealth to buy back lost power. Gabe would do the same thing, if necessary. The difference was that he would never get in the same kind of trouble—and expect his son to bail him out.

But the ultimate sacrificial lamb was Cristina Chandler. And lamb she was, one in need of protection. Her powerful but desperate father had turned her into a commodity, her value set according to how well she could get him out of a jam.

Then again, Gabe seemed to be doing the same thing.

“You’ve drifted to another time zone,” she commented.

“I was thinking I should paint you beneath a bower of ivy.”