“I have to, unless you have any better suggestions. Rey?”
Reynard shook his head. A short sharp movement of his head that bore witness to the frustration they all felt at the position they were in.
“And you, Ben? Anything you can think of that will save our name and our fortunes, not to mention make Abuelo’s final years with us happier ones?”
“You know there is nothing else,” Benedict replied, resignation to their combined fates painting stark lines on his face.
“Then, my brothers, I’d like to propose a toast. To each of us and to the future del Castillo brides.”
One
New Zealand, now …
“I have come to discuss the terms of our fathers’ agreement. It is time we marry.”
From the second his sleek gray Eurocopter had landed on the helipad close to the house she’d wondered what had brought Alexander del Castillo here. Now she knew. She could hardly believe it.
Loren Dubois studied the tall near stranger commanding the space of her mother’s formal sitting room. Her eyes drank in the sight of him after so long. Dressed all in black, his dark hair pushed back from his forehead and his brown-black eyes fixed firmly on her face, he should have been intimidating but instead she wondered whether she’d conjured up an age-old dream.
Marry? Her heart jumped erratically in her chest and she tried to force it back to its usual slow and steady rhythm. Years ago, she’d have leaped at the opportunity, but now? With age had come caution. She wasn’t a love-struck teenager anymore. She’d seen firsthand what an unhappy alliance could do to a couple, as her parents’ tempestuous marriage had attested. She and Alexander del Castillo didn’t even know one another anymore. Yet, for some reason, the way he’d proposed marriage—in typical autocratic del Castillo fashion—made her go weak at the knees.
She gave herself a swift reality check. Who was she kidding? He hadn’t proposed. He’d flat out told her, as if there was no question that she’d accept. It didn’t help that every fiber in her body wanted to do just that.
Wait, she reminded herself. Slow down.
It had been ten years since she’d laid eyes on him. Ten years since her fifteen-year-old heart had been broken and she’d been dragged to New Zealand by her mother after the divorce. A long time not to hear from someone by any standards, let alone from the man she had been betrothed to from the cradle.
Even so, a part of her still wanted to leap at the suggestion. Loren took a steadying breath. Although their engagement had always been the stuff of fairy tales, she was determined to stay firmly rooted in the present.
“Marry?” she responded, drawing her chin up slightly as if it could give her that extra height and lessen Alex’s dominance over her. “You arrive here with no prior warning—in fact, no contact at all since I left Isla Sagrado—and the first thing you say to me is that it’s time we marry? That’s a little precipitate, wouldn’t you say?”
“Our betrothal has stood for a quarter of a century. I would say our marriage is past due.”
There it was—that delicious hint of accent in his voice, characteristic of the Spanish-Franco blend of nationalities of their home country, Isla Sagrado. It was an accent she’d long since diluted with her time in New Zealand, yet from his lips the sound was like velvet stroking bare skin. Her body responded to the timbre of it even as she fought down the wave of longing that spiraled from her core. Had she missed him that much?
Of course she had. That much and more. But she was grown-up now. A woman, not a child, nor a displaced bratty teen. Loren attempted to inject a fine thread of steel into her voice.
“A betrothal that no one seriously expected to be fulfilled, surely.”
Somehow she had to show him she wouldn’t be such a pushover. In all the time since she’d left Isla Sagrado he’d made no contact whatsoever. Not so much as a card at Christmas or her birthday. His indifference had hurt.
“Are you saying that your father made such a gesture lightly when he offered your hand?”
Loren laughed, the sound of it hollow even to her ears. She still missed her father with a physical ache, even though he’d been dead these past seven years. With him had gone her last link to Isla Sagrado and, she’d believed, to Alex. But now Alex was very much here and she didn’t know how to react. Stay strong, she told herself. Above all, stay strong. That’s the only way to earn the respect of a del Castillo.
“A hand that was little more than three months old when it was promised to you—you yourself were only eight,” she said with as much bravado as she could muster.
Alex moved a step toward her. She almost felt the air part to allow him passage; he had that kind of presence. Despite her inexperience with men of Alex’s caliber, it was one she responded to instinctively.
Alex had always been magnetic, but the past ten years had seen a new maturity settle on his broad shoulders, together with a stronger and more determined line to his jaw. He looked older than the thirty-three years she knew him to be. Older and harder. Certainly not a man who took “no” for an answer.
“I’m not eight anymore. And you—” he paused and ran his eyes over her body “—you are most certainly no longer a child.”
Loren’s skin flared hot, as if he’d touched her with more than a glance. As if his long strong fingers had stroked her face, her throat, her breasts. She felt her nipples tighten and strain against the practical cotton of her bra. And the longing within her grew harder to resist.
“Alex,” she said, her voice slightly breathless, “you don’t know me anymore. I don’t know you. For all you know I’m already married.”
“I know you are not.”
He knew? What else did he know about her, she wondered. Had he somehow kept tabs on her all this time?
“It would be foolish for us to marry. We don’t even know if we’re compatible.”
“We have the rest of our lives to learn the details of what we can do to please one another.”
Alex’s voice was a low murmur and his eyes dropped to her mouth. Please or pleasure? Which had he really meant, she thought, as she struggled against the urge to moisten her lips with her tongue. The longing sharpened and drew into a tight coil deep within her. Loren fought back a moan—the pure, visceral response to his mere gaze shocking her with its intensity.
Her lack of experience with men had never bothered her before this moment. All her dealings with guests and male staff here at her mother’s family’s sheep and cattle station had been platonic and she’d preferred it that way. It had been difficult enough to settle into the isolation of the farm without the complications of a relationship with someone directly involved with the day-to-day workings of the place. Besides, anything else would have felt like a betrayal—to her father’s promise and to the lingering feelings she still bore for Alex.
Now, that lack of experience had come back to haunt her. A man like Alex del Castillo would certainly expect more than what she had to offer. Would demand it.
In her younger years, she’d adored Alex with the kind of hero worship that a child had for an attractive older person—and, oh yes, he’d been attractive from the moment he’d drawn his first breath. She’d seen the photos to prove it. She’d believed that adoration had deepened into love, love not dimmed by Alex’s vague tolerance of the scrawny kid who followed him like a shadow around the castillo that had been his family home for centuries.
For as long as she could remember she’d plagued her father to repeat the story of how Alex’s dad, Raphael, had saved him from drowning