One Night Of Consequences Collection. Annie West

his knife against the crystal flute, so hard and loud that I feared the delicate glass might break in his hand. The entire ballroom fell so quiet that I could hear my own breath.

      “I know this is a business gathering,” he said, “but I must beg your indulgence for a moment. I am, after all, amongst friends....” His eyes abruptly focused on me across the crowd. “I have some happy news to announce. My engagement.”

      No. My face turned red and my body itched in an attack of nervous fear beneath my pale pink ball gown as a thousand people turned to stare at me. The whispering increased, building like the roll of distant thunder.

      “Many of you probably wondered if I’d ever get married.” Alejandro rubbed the back of his dark hair then looked up with a smile that was equal parts charming and sheepish. “I confess I wondered that myself.” His low, sexy voice reverberated across the gilded ballroom. “But sometimes fate chooses better for us than we could ever have chosen for ourselves.”

      No, no, no, I pleaded desperately with my eyes.

      He smiled.

      He lifted his champagne flute toward me. “A toast. To Miss Lena Carlisle. The most beautiful woman on earth, and the mother of my baby son...”

      The whispers exploded to a sharp roar.

      “...to the future Duchess of Alzacar!”

      There were gasps across the crowd, the largest of which was probably mine. But Alejandro continued to hold up his flute, so everyone else did, too. He drank deeply, and a thousand guests drank, too. Toasting to our engagement.

      Only two people continued to stare at him blankly.

      Edward.

      And me.

      My body trembled. All I wanted to do was turn and flee through the crowd, to disappear, to never come back. To be free of him—the man who’d once destroyed me. Who could, if he tried, so easily do it again—and more, since now our child could be used against me.

      But that child also meant, in a very real way, that I was bound to Alejandro for the rest of my life. We both loved Miguel. We both wished to raise him.

      Which meant, no matter how fiercely I wished otherwise, and no matter how I’d tried to deny it, I would never be truly free of Alejandro—ever.

      Cheers, some supportive, some envious and some by bewildered drunken people who’d missed what all the fuss was about but were happy to cheer anyway, rang across the ballroom, along with a smattering of applause. Alejandro left the dais, where he was stopped by crowds of well-wishers, including the glamorous movie star I’d recognized and two heads of state.

      Behind me, Edward seethed with disappointment and fury, “He doesn’t own you.”

      “You’re wrong,” I whispered. I turned to Edward with tears in my eyes. “He owned me from the moment I became pregnant with his baby.”

      Edward’s face went wild.

      “No,” he breathed. He started to reach toward my face, then he stiffened as he became aware of all the people watching us, the strangers starting to hover, no doubt awaiting their chance to congratulate me on snagging a billionaire duke into illustrious matrimony. Gorgeous, beautiful women in designer clothes, thin and glossy like Claudie, were already staring at me incredulously, clearly in shock that someone like me could possibly have captured the heart of a man like Alejandro.

      The answer was simple. I hadn’t.

      This was my future. Everything I thought I’d left behind me in London, all the pity and dismissive insults. Except it would be even worse. Being described as a poor relation was practically a compliment, compared with the epithet that strangers would soon use to describe me: gold digger.

      It would have been different if Alejandro and I had actually loved each other. Thinking of it, my heart ached. If he’d loved me, and I’d loved him, I wouldn’t have given two hoots what anyone else thought. But as it was...

      “You agreed to marry him?” Edward said incredulously.

      “Not exactly.” Swallowing over the ache in my throat, I breathed, “It doesn’t matter. Now he has proof he’s Miguel’s father, he’ll never let him go. And I will never leave my son. So we might as well be married....”

      “Like hell.”

      Edward grabbed my arm, his eyes like fire. Without warning, he pulled me through the crowd. I had one single image of Alejandro’s shocked face across the ballroom, watching us, before I was out the side door and down the hall, pushed into a dark, quiet corner of the empty coatroom.

      Edward turned to me, his face contorted by shadows.

      “Run away with me,” he said urgently.

      I drew back in shock. “What?”

      “Navaro has no hold on you.”

      “He’s Miguel’s father!”

      “Share custody of the kid if you must,” he said through gritted teeth. His hand gripped my forearm. “But don’t throw yourself away on a man who will never deserve you.”

      “What are you saying?” I tried to pull away my arm, but his grip was tight.

      “He terrified you for a year—got you pregnant just to steal your baby—”

      “I was wrong—he didn’t! It was all Claudie! She’s the one who said it, and I believed her.”

      “So he’s innocent? No way,” he said grimly. “But even if he is—even if he didn’t do that one awful thing, what about the rest?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “He made you love him, then he abandoned you. Don’t you remember how gray your face was for months afterward? How your eyes were hollow and you barely spoke? I do.”

      I swallowed. “I...”

      “Where was he when you wanted to give him everything? When you tried to tell him you were pregnant? He changed his phone number. How can you marry him now? How can you forget?”

      I flashed hot, then cold. Yes. I remembered.

      “And after all that, he gets you back?” Edward pulled me closer, looking down at me in the shadowy cloakroom with a strange light in his eyes. “No. I was there for you. I took care of you. I’m the one who—”

      “Get your hands off my woman.”

      The low voice was ice-cold behind us. With a gasp that must have sounded guilty, I whirled to face him. “Alejandro!”

      His eyes were dark with fury as he looked at me. “So this is why you were so reluctant to marry me?”

      “No, you—”

      “Be silent!”

      I winced.

      “Don’t talk to her that way,” Edward said.

      Alejandro didn’t look away from me. He held his body in a dangerous stillness as he ground out, “You have nothing to do with us, St. Cyr.”

      Either Edward didn’t see the warning, or he didn’t care. “Don’t I? Who do you think was supporting her this past year? Who held her together after you blew her apart?” Coming closer to Alejandro, he said softly, with a malicious look in his eyes, “Who was at Lena’s side at the hospital, when she gave birth to your child? Where were you then, Navaro?”

      Alejandro slowly turned to look at him. I saw the hard set of his shoulders, the rapid rise and fall of his breath. I saw his hands tighten at his sides, and knew Edward was about to lose half of his face.

      “Stop!” I cried, stepping between them in real fear. “Stop this at once!” I pressed on Edward’s chest. “Just go.”

      He lifted his eyebrows in shock. “You can’t honestly choose him over me?”