One Night Of Consequences Collection. Annie West

leaving me bereft and bewildered. But the broken, truly broken, came later...

      Now, Alejandro took my hand, glancing up and down the quiet Mexican street.

      “Come back inside, Lena. We have much to talk about.”

      Feeling the electricity of his hand wrapped around mine, I looked up with an intake of breath.

      He was so close now. Touching me. My lips parted. He was somehow even more devastatingly handsome than I’d remembered. He had the kind of face that could break a woman’s heart into a million pieces, to little shimmering fragments of gray dust, leaving you too dazed with his power and beauty to feel anything but gratitude as he lazily destroyed you.

      Without my notice, he led me back into the foyer. Reaching over my head, he towered over me, his arm brushing against my hair, his body pressing against mine. I shivered, clutching my baby close. But he merely closed the heavy door with a sonorous bang behind me.

      The hard-edged billionaire duke, in his sharply tailored clothes, stood out starkly against my comfortable, bohemian home, with its warm tile floors and walls I’d decorated with homemade paper flowers and my own paintings, one of the Parroquia de San Miguel, but the rest of my baby, the first from when he was just six days old.

      Looking down at me, Alejandro said softly, “Is what Claudie told me true? This baby in your arms—it is mine?”

      Trembling, I pulled away. Gathering my wits, I glared at him. “Do you really expect me to answer that?”

      “It’s an easy enough question. There are only two possible answers.” Reaching out, he stroked my cheek, but there was no tenderness in his gaze. “Yes. Or no.”

      “You’d be a horrible father! I won’t let my sweet boy be turned into a heartless bastard like—”

      “Like me?” His voice was dangerously low. His dark eyes gleamed in the shadowy foyer. “Is that what you really think of me—after all we once shared?”

      Caught in his gaze, I trembled. Once, I might have believed so differently. I’d managed to convince myself that beneath his wealth and power and aristocratic title, Alejandro was decent and good. Like generations of women before me, I had seen what I wanted to see. I’d been blind to the truth, until, against my will, the blindfold had been torn from my eyes.

      “Yes. That’s what I think of you.”

      A strange expression flickered across the chiseled planes of his face, an emotion I couldn’t identify before it swiftly disappeared. He gave me a sardonic smile.

      “You are right, of course. I care for nothing and no one. Least of all you, especially after you and your cousin have gone to such lengths to blackmail me over this child.”

      “Blackmail you?” I gasped. “You’re the one who deliberately seduced me, and got me pregnant, intending to steal my baby away so you could raise him with Claudie!”

      He grew very still.

      “What are you talking about?” he ground out.

      My body was shaking with emotion. “You think I didn’t know? When I found out I was pregnant, you’d already left me and gone back to Spain. You wouldn’t return my calls. But fool that I was, I was still desperate to share the news, because I hoped you might care! So I begged Claudie for enough money to fly to Madrid. I was scared to tell her why I needed the money. She’d planned so long to marry you. But when I told her I was pregnant, she did something I never imagined.”

      “What?”

      I took a deep breath.

      “She laughed,” I whispered. “She laughed and laughed. Then she told me to wait. She went into the hallway, but she left the door open and I heard her call you. I heard her congratulate you on your brilliant plan! Thanking you, even! How brilliant you were, how clever, to seduce her lowly cousin, the poor relation, to provide the heir you knew she could never give you! Now the two of you could get married immediately.” My voice turned acid. “Just as soon as her lawyer forced me to sign papers terminating all my parental rights.”

      “Yes. She called me.” His eyes narrowed. “But I never...”

      “‘Don’t worry, I’ll get Lena to sign her baby away,’ she said!” My voice trembled as I remembered the terror I’d felt that day. “She asked you to send over a few security guards from your London office, just in case I tried to fight!” My voice choked and I looked away. “So I ran. Before either of you could lock me away somewhere for the duration of my pregnancy and try to steal my child!”

      Silence fell. His eyes narrowed.

      “From the day, from the hour Claudie told me you were pregnant, I’ve had investigators trying to track you down, chasing you around the world. Yes, she had some crazy idea that it was her inability to have children that kept me from marrying her. She was wrong.” He came closer. “I raced to London, but you were already gone. And ever since, you’ve always managed to disappear in a puff of smoke whenever I got close. That, querida, is expensive. And so is this.” He motioned at the high ceilings of the two-hundred-year-old colonial house. “This house is owned by a shell company run out of the Caymans. My investigators checked. So why don’t you just admit who’s helping you? Admit the truth!”

      Something told me not to mention Edward St. Cyr. “And what’s that?”

      “Once you found out you were pregnant, you knew I would never marry you.” His voice softened, his dark eyes almost caressing me. “So you came up with a different plan to cash in, didn’t you? You struck a deal...with your cousin.”

      Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t that. I stared at him. “Are you crazy? Why would Claudie help me? She wants to marry you!”

      “I know. After you disappeared, Claudie told me she knew exactly where you were, but that you refused to let me see the child until we could guarantee a stable home. Until I married her.”

      My lips parted in shock. “But I haven’t spoken to Claudie for a year. She has no idea where I am!” I shook my head. “Did she really try to blackmail you into marriage?”

      “Women always want to marry me,” he said grimly. “They think nothing of stealing or cheating or lying for it.”

      I snorted. “Your ego is incredible!”

      “It’s not ego. Every woman wants to be the wife of a billionaire duke. It’s not personal.”

      Of course it is, I thought unwillingly, my heart twisting in my chest. How could any woman not fall in love with Alejandro, and not want him for her own?

      “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