Once he’d had everything organized to his satisfaction, Alex had departed, but not before arranging a private dinner for just the two of them, off the station. They’d choppered to Queenstown, where they’d visited a restaurant on the edge of Lake Wakatipu. The late autumn evening had been clear and beautiful and the restaurant every bit as romantic as Loren had ever dreamed.
By the time they’d returned to the station she knew she was totally and irrevocably in love with him. Not the innocent adoration of a child nor the all-absorbing puppy love of an adolescent, but the deeper knowledge that, no matter what, he was her mate in this lifetime and any other.
He’d been solicitous and attentive all night and, before walking her to her small suite of rooms in the main house at the station, he’d kissed her again. Not with the heated, overwhelming rush of emotion that consumed her the day he’d arrived, but with a gentle, sure promise of greater things to come. Her body had quivered in response, eager to discover the depths of his silent promise right there, right then. But Alex had backed off, cupped her cheek with one warm strong hand, and told her he wanted to wait until their wedding night—it would make their union more special, more intimate.
It had only made her love him more and had served to leave her fraught with nerves the entire journey to Isla Sagrado. Nerves that now left her giddy with exhaustion and made battling the broken wheel on her luggage cart all the more taxing. Fighting the way the thing wanted to veer to the left all the time, Loren paid little attention to the sudden silence in the arrival hall as she came through the security doors after clearing customs.
A silence that was suddenly and overwhelmingly broken by the flash of camera bulbs and a barrage of questions flung at her from all directions and in at least three different languages.
One voice broke over all the rest to ask in Spanish, Isla Sagrado’s dominant language, “Is it true you’re here to marry Alexander del Castillo and break the curse?”
Loren blinked in surprise toward the man, even as a multitude of others around him continued with their own questions.
A movement at her side distracted her from answering. A tall and stunningly beautiful woman, wearing a startling red dress, hooked an arm around her and leaned forward, her long, honey-blond hair brushing Loren’s arm like a swathe of silk.
“Don’t answer them. Just smile and keep walking.
I’m Giselle, Alex’s personal assistant. I’m here to collect you,” she murmured in a French-accented voice that was very un-assistantlike. Her emphasis on the word personal hinted strongly at things Loren herself had no experience of.
“Alex isn’t here?” Loren blinked to fight back the sudden tears that sprang to her eyes as sharp points of disappointment cut through her.
Believing he’d be here to welcome her home at the end of her journey had been what had kept her going these past few hours. Now, she fought to keep her slender shoulders squared and her sagging spine upright. Struggled to keep placing one foot in front of the other.
Giselle put her free hand on the handle of the luggage cart and directed it, and Loren, toward the exit. Airport security had miraculously cleared a path and beckoned them toward the waiting limousine at the curbside.
“If he’d have come, the media circus would have been worse and we’d never have cleared the airport,” Giselle said in her husky voice. “Besides, he’s a very busy man.”
Giselle’s intimation that Alex had far more important things to attend to than collecting his fiancée from the airport pierced Loren’s weariness, making her stumble slightly.
“Oh, dear,” the other woman said, tightening her hold around Loren’s waist. “You’re a clumsy little thing, aren’t you? You’ll have to improve on that, you know, or the media are going to have a field day with you.”
While Giselle’s tone was light, Loren felt the invisible slap of disapproval behind her words. But there was no chance to respond right away. They were at the car at last. There, a uniformed chauffeur, who looked more like a bodyguard than a driver, hefted her cases into the voluminous trunk of the limo as if they weighed little more than matchsticks. Once that was taken care of, Loren took the opportunity to speak.
“I’m tired, that’s all. It’s been quite a trip,” she responded as she slid over onto the broad backseat of the limousine, her voice a little sharp, earning her an equally sharp look from Giselle in return.
“Touchy, too, hmm?” Giselle narrowed her beautiful green eyes and gave Loren an assessing look. “Well, we’ll see how you measure up. Since Reynard issued the press release about Alex’s engagement, the whole drama of your father’s near drowning and him giving you away afterwards has been front-page news. Goodness knows paparazzi will be crawling all over you to find out about you.”
“I’m surprised. I thought Alex might have kept that quiet,” Loren said, frowning at the thought of having to rehash the story of her and Alex’s fathers’ actions over and over again.
“Quiet? Hardly. With the way things are here they need all the strong publicity they can get. You must remember how the island’s prosperity seems to be intrinsically linked with the del Castillos’. Whether there’s any truth to the curse or not, everyone here is lapping up the story. Promises of happily ever after and all that. Honestly, they’ve made it all sound so sweet it’s almost enough to give you cavities.” Giselle finished with a high-pitched laugh that didn’t quite ring true.
“So you don’t believe in happily ever after?”
“Sweetie,” Giselle replied with a smile stretching her generous lips into a wide curve of satisfaction, “what’s more important is if Alex believes in it. And we both know he’s far too pragmatic for that. Besides, it’s not like you two are going to have a real marriage.”
“Well, I certainly expect we’ll have a real marriage. Why else would we even bother?”
“Oh, dear, you mean he hasn’t said anything yet?”
Loren felt her already simmering temper begin to flare. “Said anything about what?” she asked through clenched teeth.
“About keeping up appearances, of course. Though perhaps he thought it would be clear. After all, if he’d had any interest in a real marriage he’d have wanted to have some say in the organization of the wedding ceremony and reception, wouldn’t he? Instead, he gave me carte blanche. But don’t you worry, I’ll make sure you have a day to remember.”
“Well, I’d like to go over the wedding details with you later on, when I’m more rested,” Loren asserted, pausing for effect. “Then I’ll more than happily take the arrangements off your hands. I’m sure you have far more important things to occupy yourself with.”
Loren chose to ignore the rest of what the woman had said. She knew she and Alex had little time before their proposed wedding date only two weeks away, but surely he hadn’t left everything to his assistant—his personal assistant, she corrected herself.
“Oh, but I have everything under control. Besides, Alex has signed off on what I’ve done already. To change anything now would only cause problems.”
The implication that Loren would bear disapproval from Alex for those problems sat very clearly between the two women. Loren took a steadying breath. She wasn’t up to this right now but she knew what Giselle was doing. She’d probably taken one look at Loren and totally underestimated her. Clearly Giselle had some kind of bond with Alex that she didn’t want to let go. Maybe she’d even harbored a notion of a relationship with him.
Whatever might have happened between Alex and Giselle before