Lazaro touched the velvet box in his coat pocket and cursed the flash of adrenaline that raced through him. It was adrenaline; it certainly wasn’t nerves. He didn’t do nerves. He did decisive action. He didn’t question, he moved forward with confidence. Always.
That was how he’d worked his way up from the ground level of the massive corporation he’d eventually built up with his ideas on how to reinvent the place. It was how he’d built a career, a name for himself. How he’d netted billions in the bank.
He took advantage of every resource and did what had to be done. As he was doing now.
It was extremely fortuitous that one of the art museum’s head curators happened to be on a par with Vanessa’s father as far as social clout went. And even more fortuitous that she was a gossip.
It meant that she would tell anyone who was even half-interested that Lazaro Marino had paid to have the museum empty this evening so that he could ask the woman in his life a very important question.
In Vanessa’s circle, media exposure was seen as vulgar, common. Anyone could earn that kind of notoriety. The First Families and those like them saw class as something you were born with, not something you could acquire. And anyone who wasn’t born with it was somehow less.
The way to spread the word was through careless discretion, nothing half so common as an actual write-up in a newspaper.
He curled his fingers around the ring box and leaned against the terrace railing. Vanessa was due to arrive soon, another detail carefully coordinated with a trail that would be easy to follow.
He heard high heels on marble and looked up. Vanessa was walking toward him, the expression on her face mutinous. She had dressed for the occasion, though, as he’d requested. Red silk this time, hugging her curves. Her lips were painted to match her dress and her dark hair was pulled back into a neat bun. He wished she’d left it down. He enjoyed the feel of the silken strands sliding through his fingers.
He tightened his hold on the ring box. This was what it was about. The ring. Taking his place in the world. The truth was, he didn’t give a damn about what anyone in high society thought of him. But he wouldn’t be seen as beneath anyone, as some sort of trash from the barrio they could despise and lord their power over. He wouldn’t be beneath anyone. And Vanessa was the key.
“What is this?” she asked, looking around the terrace. It was lit by a string of paper lanterns that hung low overhead, just as it had been the night they’d met at the charity event.
“You didn’t guess?”
“I wouldn’t dare try to guess at the inner workings of your mind,” she said, walking to the railing and resting her forearms on the top of it, leaning over, keeping her eyes fixed on the garden.
He moved so that he was standing next to her and pulled the ring box out of his pocket and placed it on the top of the stone railing. “I thought this was an ideal place to make our arrangement official.”
She turned her head sharply, her eyes wide. Then she looked down at the ring box.
“Are you going to look at it?” he asked.
“I … so this is your proposal?” Her eyebrows winged halfway up her forehead, her expression one of pure incredulity.
“I think I proposed already,” he said stiffly.
“Well, but … no, because now there’s a ring.” She didn’t touch the ring box, she just looked at it.
“And most women at this point would be looking at the ring.”
“Why all this?” she asked, ignoring his statement. “The museum and the lights?”
“Because I had to speak to quite a few people to arrange this romantic gesture.”
She nodded slowly. “And they’ll tell other people.”
“Yes. Your social class is just small enough that word travels to everyone in it very quickly.”
She frowned. “Right.”
“I’m sorry, did you want something more public?”
She shrugged. “No.”
Anger surged in him, anger and something else that he couldn’t quite identify. “You’re disappointed?”
“I’m not disappointed. That implies I had an expectation about this moment and, truly, for all I knew, you were going to courier me a ring at my office. But I did have expectations of this moment as far as my life goes.”
“And this doesn’t meet your standards?” he asked, his stomach tightening.
“Not really.”
“You might want to look at the rock before you declare the effort subpar, querida,” he said, conscious of the fact that his accent had thickened with his building anger.
He popped the top on the box and pushed it closer to her. She looked down and her eyes widened. Not a big surprise. Five carats would have that effect on someone like her.
“I hope that’s fitting of a woman of your status.”
Vanessa looked down at the ring, glittering beneath the lantern light. The large, square diamond set into a band of white gold with an intricate, antique-style weave was nestled in cream silk, looking as if it had been made just for her.
There was so much about the moment that seemed made just for her. An empty art museum, a gorgeous man and a marriage proposal. If it had been a real marriage proposal—real in the sense that there was love behind it and not just mercenary business dealings—he would have gotten down on one knee. They would have walked through the museum and talked about their future. They would have felt like the only two people in the world.
If they had never parted, if she had stopped him from leaving that night, maybe it would be real.
Her heart squeezed in her chest and she squelched the thought. It didn’t matter. This was reality. And in reality, he’d shoved the ring in her direction and barely looked at her. He hadn’t even asked the question, and it all just hung between them, awkward and unspoken. Painful. Because this was like some nightmare version of a fantasy she might have created for herself.
“It’s lovely.” She reached out and touched it, hesitant to pick it up, to put it on, because the ring made it all seem real. And final.
And because part of her wanted so badly to wear Lazaro’s ring, so very badly. And that was embarrassing, humiliating. She didn’t really want the Lazaro that had come back into her life with all the finesse of a jackhammer. She wanted the man she used to imagine he was. The man he never had been.
“Don’t you like it, querida?” he asked.
“I love it. It’s beautiful. Perfect.”
“You seem giddy,” he said, his expression flat.
“I love it,” she said, teeth gritted.
“Put it on.”
Anger surged through her, pummeling her tender heart. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”
She held her hand out, determined not to be the one to fasten her own diamond handcuffs. He took her hand in his, the heat of his skin on hers sending prickles of electricity through her body, making it nearly impossible for her to cling to the anger that was anchoring her to the balcony, reminding her that this was nothing more than a farce.
He took the ring out of the box and it caught the light. Such a beautiful sign of eternal bondage. She closed her eyes while he pushed it onto her fourth finger. It fit perfectly, and it was more disturbing than anything that it fit. That it somehow seemed right.
She pulled her hand back and brushed her palm down over her skirt, trying to ease the fiery, tingling sensation that was spreading from her fingertips