Her folded arms fell, and she looked uncertain. “No.” Swallowing, she blinked fast. “But I can’t blame them. I let them down.”
“No,” he said sharply. “You had a baby. You got married. And when you tried to share that news with them, they ripped you apart.”
She took a deep breath. “I know it might seem that way …”
“They were cruel to you.” He could still remember the rasp of her father’s voice. You’ll never be a decent husband or father, and you know it. If you’re even half a man, you’ll send her and the baby home to people who are capable of loving them.
“I’ll make them forgive me.” Callie’s emerald eyes glittered suspiciously. “I have to try.”
As she turned away, he grabbed her arm. “Write to them first.”
She turned back to face him. “What?”
“If you show up in person, who knows how they’ll react? What if they shut the door in your face? Do you really want to risk it?”
Callie looked pale, staring at him.
“Write first,” he said smoothly. “It’s the best way to gather your thoughts. And give them time to consider theirs.”
“Well.” She took a deep breath, her expression crestfallen. “Maybe you’re right.” She looked down at her feet. “I would die if they shut the door in my face. Or if they refused to see Marisol. I can’t even imagine it. But then,” she said unhappily, “I thought they would call me before now….”
He put his hands around her shoulders. “Write to them.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely.”
She bit her lip. “Even Brandon?”
Exhaling, jaw tight, he gave a single nod.
She sighed. “All right.”
“All right?”
She looked up. Her green eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. “Thank you,” she said haltingly, “for helping me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Eduardo had never seen her look so beautiful. Mesmerized, he reached down to stroke her cheek then pulled her into his arms. He felt her soft breasts press against his chest, and breathed in the floral and vanilla scent of her hair. He felt the warm whisper of her breath against his bare chest, and his drawstring pajamas suddenly felt three sizes too tight. “I told you,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t want your thanks.”
“But—”
“Don’t.” Especially since he had no intention of allowing her letters to reach her family—or McLinn. He put his palm against her cheek, his fingers threading through her hair. “You are my woman, Callie. I would do anything to keep you safe and happy.”
Looking up at him, she suddenly blurted out, “Who were you talking to on the phone?”
He stared at her. “What?”
Looking grumpy, she folded her arms. “I wasn’t going to ask,” she sighed. “I was going to be totally stoic and silent about it.”
“Oh, querida.” Smiling, Eduardo stroked her cheek. She was so transparent. He loved that about her. “You wondered if I was talking to some woman?”
“The thought crossed my mind. Every woman wants you….”
“And I want only one woman in the world.” Lifting her chin, he looked straight into her eyes. “I am yours and only yours, my beautiful wife. I will never betray you, Callie.”
“You won’t?”
“I was just talking to a rival … who lives far away.”
“Oh,” she said. With a sigh of relief, she hugged him, pressing her face against his bare chest.
Stroking her back through the soft chenille robe, Eduardo exhaled at how close it had been. She must have heard the end of his phone call. If she’d heard the whole conversation, she wouldn’t have been worried about some imaginary woman. No, it would have been far more dire.
“Try to contact my wife again,” Eduardo had growled, “and you’ll regret it.”
“You can’t keep me from her. We both know you’re not good enough. You’ll never make her happy.” McLinn’s voice had been angry, and with an edge of desperation that had grown over the months Eduardo had blocked the man’s letters and phone calls. Yesterday, there had even been an attempted delivery of a cell phone in a padded envelope. His bodyguard had opened the package while Callie was upstairs getting ready for the Winter Ball.
An hour ago, Eduardo’s anger had finally boiled over. Rising from their bed as Callie slept, he’d used the number from his investigator, and called McLinn’s cell phone in the middle of the night.
The young farmer had actually threatened him, saying he was going to call the police and claim Callie was being held against her will. Against her will!
Eduardo narrowed his eyes. The police he could deal with. But McLinn had threatened to return to New York. He could not guard Callie at every moment in the city, keeping her from any unexpected meeting. Nor could he risk letting her talk to McLinn. He could only imagine what the man would tell her.
He needed a third option.
From the day they’d wed, he’d assigned the same investigator who got dirt on business competitors to keep track of his wife and all her family. Eduardo had burned the angry letters sent by her father, the pleading tearstained cards from her mother. He’d tossed her sister’s bouquet of sappy flowers shaped like a pink baby carriage in the trash.
At first he’d done it because he didn’t trust Callie. Then he told himself he was just trying to protect her. Sure, her father was trying to be nicer now, but even Eduardo’s own parents had had their good days. He wouldn’t allow them access to Callie until he knew for sure they wouldn’t hurt her again.
But deep in his heart, he knew that wasn’t the only reason.
You weren’t even man enough to come and ask me for her hand. The memory of her father’s cold words still rankled in his mind. You might own half our town, but I know the kind of man you really are. You’ll never be a decent husband or father, and you know it.
To Walter, as to many others, Eduardo was just a selfish, demanding tyrant, the foreign CEO that his employees obeyed—but despised.
So be it. Eduardo didn’t need the man’s respect. But he wouldn’t let anyone insult his wife. Or cause them problems that could tear his family apart.
Stroking her back, Eduardo took a deep breath. He was starting to trust Callie again. But he didn’t trust the world. Whenever he let himself care for someone, they disappeared from his life. He wouldn’t let that happen. Not this time.
“Eduardo?”
Callie was looking up at him in the shadowy hallway, her brow furrowed. Her robe had fallen open slightly to reveal her plump breasts, and suddenly he knew exactly what he needed. He pulled her closer, stroking the edge of her neckline as he murmured, “You said something about helping me sleep?”
“Er.” She suddenly blushed. “I just thought …”
“Yes.” Grabbing her hand, he led her back to the master bedroom. Pulling the robe off her unresisting body, he pushed her back against the bed. His wife looked like an angel in the moonlight, he thought, her light brown hair silver twined with gold, her pale skin luminous. Her breasts were huge, their full rosy tips bright and vivid against her white skin.
Eduardo kissed her hard and deep. He felt her respond, kissing him back with equal fire, and wanted her as if he hadn’t already been satiated that night. He wanted her even more than he did yesterday, and all the year before that. Her small hands roamed his body, stroking his naked chest, caressing his shoulders, his back. He exhaled when she ran her fingers lightly over his backside then groaned aloud as she ran her hand questingly over the hard shaft beneath his drawstring pajama pants. Her face was rapt as she stroked his hard length through the fabric. He grabbed her wrist.
“I do not know—how long I can last,” he groaned.
She gave him a smile full of infinite feminine mystery. “So don’t.”
“Querida—”
She unlaced his pants and pulled them down his hips, to his thighs. His hard shaft sprung free from the fabric, and she looked down
at him with awe. Reaching out, she took him fully in her hands.
“Callie,” he breathed. Her touch felt too good, causing him to jerk involuntarily beneath her stroke. His heart was pounding. He wanted to bury himself deep inside her, impale her, fill her to the hilt now—now—now! “What are you—?”
Her eyes were dark and full of need as she pulled him over her onto the bed. “Take me,” she whispered.
A low growl rose in his throat as he looked down at her, spread across the bed for his pleasure. He didn’t even take the time to pull off his pajama pants. He couldn’t. Leaving them across his thighs, he positioned himself and thrust inside her, filling her.
She gasped, gripping his shoulders. Her face filled with anguished ecstasy, and for a moment he thought he’d gone too far, too deep. He started to withdraw.
“No.” Gripping her fingers into his flesh, she started to move beneath him. “More.”
He pushed inside her again, and she moaned. He rode her, harder and faster, until the bed frame rocked loudly against the wall.
“Stop!” she whispered, looking up at him. “Don’t wake the baby!”
He exhaled in a surprised laugh then, leaning forward, kissed her forehead tenderly. Gripping her hips, he slowly thrust inside her in a controlled movement. Somehow the silence just deepened the pleasure. Made it forbidden. He rode her wet and hard until she gripped his upper arms and he heard her soundless scream of pleasure. With a rush of ecstasy, he slammed into her one last time with a shuddering, silent gasp as his whole world shimmered and exploded.
He fell on top of her. It might have been minutes, or an hour, later before he was aware he might be crushing her beneath the weight of his body. He didn’t know how much time had passed, which was strange. For one precious moment, it had almost felt like sleep….
He started to move away from her, but she grabbed his arm. “Stay with me.”
He hesitated. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep beside her. But in this moment, he could deny her nothing. Without a word, he rolled back and pulled her to his naked chest, spooning her smaller body with his larger one.
She turned around in his arms. “I love you.”
Shocked, he stared down at her in the dark bedroom. Her beautiful, round, upturned face was glowing, tears sparkling down her cheeks in the moonlight.
“I love you, Eduardo.” Closing her eyes, she pressed her cheek against his bare chest. “I never stopped loving you, and I never will.”
A tremble went through his body as he stroked her hair. Hearing those words on his wife’s lips—the words he’d detested and avoided hearing from any other woman—was a sudden, precious gift. Sweet beyond measure.
Poison in his heart.
Now he had even more to lose. Even more to protect. His arms tightened around her. Would she still love him if she found out what he’d done? After Brandon McLinn explained it to her in the most destructive way possible?
He said with forced cheerfulness, “What do you think about spending Christmas in the south of Spain?”
Pressing her face against his chest, she gave a contented sigh. “Spain?”
He stroked her back, keeping his voice casual. “I have a villa on the coast, not too far from my old village.” And five thousand miles from Brandon McLinn. “What do you say?”
She smiled up at him sleepily. “I’ll go anywhere with you.”
Eduardo gloried in his wife’s generous spirit and trusting heart. Callie knew his flaws better than anyone. And yet somehow she’d chosen to love him.
It was the most precious gift he’d ever received. And the one he least deserved.
Within minutes, she fell asleep in his arms. Eduardo stared out the windows at the dark city and the vast blackness of the Hudson River. It was cold December, when night lasted forever and spring was a distant promise. She loved him. And it was like hot summer to a half-frozen man.
He would never let her go. Ever. Even if it cost his very soul.
In the darkness, his eyes hardened.
He wouldn’t lose her. Not now. Not ever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SITTING by their pool overlooking the Mediterranean, Callie was trying—again—to convince her body to tan in the warm Spanish sun. She glanced back toward their luxurious, enormous villa, where her baby was taking her afternoon nap. Callie loved it here. All right, she was still shockingly pale, but she’d never been so happy.
Or so sad.
In the four months since they’d left New York, her handsome husband had taken their family all over the world via private jet, to all the glamorous places she’d once dreamed of as a girl. They’d spent Christmas here at the villa, decorating their enormous Christmas tree with oranges. On Christmas Eve, they’d gone to a candlelight service, then after putting the baby to bed she and Eduardo had a midnight supper by candlelight. It had been a special, sacred night between them, the one-year anniversary of the first time they’d made love.
When she woke the next morning, Eduardo was gone, as always. Getting Marisol from her crib, she’d gone downstairs to discover an obscene number of gifts beneath their Christmas tree, and beside it, a debonair Santa with twinkling black eyes, in a red suit far too large for his sleek physique and a fake white beard over his chiseled jawline. Marisol had laughed in wonder and delight, and so had Callie. Santa had presented their baby with so many expensive toys and clothes that it could have satisfied a child army. Marisol had responded by playing with the tissue paper and then trying to chew on her own shoe.
Callie had giggled. “See what happens when you spend too much money on a baby, Santa?”
Santa turned to her. “And I have something for you, Mrs. Claus, er, Cruz.”
Reaching into his big black bag, he’d pulled out a key chain that had her initials, “CC”, created in what looked to be diamonds and gold. She’d taken the key chain with an incredulous laugh.
“It’s beautiful … but are you crazy? People lose key chains. I’ll be scared to use this.”
Santa smirked. “The key chain isn’t the gift. Look again.”
Frowning, she looked down at the ridiculously expensive gold-and-diamond key chain and saw the key. Her mouth went dry as she looked up. “What’s this?”
He gave her a sudden wicked grin. “Go outside.”
Still in her red-and-green flannel pajamas, she’d lifted their baby on her hip, and gone out into the courtyard of the villa, with Santa close behind. Even on Christmas Day, the Spanish sun was warm, and the air smelled of orange groves and the ocean. She’d stopped abruptly in the dusty courtyard.
There, with a big red bow on the hood, she saw a brand-new Rolls-Royce.
“The silver reminded me of you,” he murmured softly behind her. “It’s the color of the dress you wore to the Winter Ball a few weeks ago. You sparkled like a diamond. You shone like a star.”
Turning to face him without a word, Callie pulled down his white beard. Eduardo’s handsome face was revealed, his dark eyes glowing with admiration.
“And every day, Mrs. Cruz,” he said, stroking her cheek, “you’re more beautiful still.”
With an intake of breath, she threw one arm around his neck and, standing on tiptoe, gave Santa the kiss of his life. It wasn’t until Marisol began to squirm and complain that Callie recalled that she was squashing their baby, and that she probably shouldn’t let her baby see her kissing Santa Claus anyway.
Callie drew back with tears in her eyes.
“Thank you,” she whispered, then shook her head with a laugh. “But I’m afraid you’re going to be very disappointed with my gift to you.”
“What is it?”
“Soap-on-a-rope and a really ugly tie,” she teased.
“Oh, yeah? I’ve been needing those.”
She smiled at him. In reality it was a homemade coffee mug she and Marisol had made together, etched with her baby’s tiny handprints, which she knew he’d love.
He sobered. “You give me a gift every day, Callie,” he said so
ftly. “By being my wife.”
She’d looked at him, her heart in her throat. Then her smile faltered. “I just wish I’d heard from my family today.”
Eduardo’s eyes darkened, and he gave her a tight smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Do not worry, querida. I am sure you will hear from them soon.”
But she hadn’t, not in all the months since then. She’d sent her parents and her sister a letter every week, filled with photographs of Marisol and of their life in Europe. She’d told them how the baby was growing. She’d told them about Marisol’s first tooth, the first time she’d turned over in her crib, the first time she’d sat up by herself. She’d described everything that had happened over the seven months of her baby’s life. Callie had even poured out her feelings about Eduardo, her former boss, whom she’d once tried to hate but now loved. She wanted to undo the damage she’d once done, and let them see Eduardo as he really was: a good man.
In response to all her carefully written letters, she’d gotten only cold silence.
She tried not to let it bother her. When Eduardo was home, he gave her and the baby his full attention. He’d needed to take business trips again, to the Arctic and Colombia and elsewhere. But whenever he traveled to a destination he thought his family might enjoy, he brought Callie and Marisol along, traveling on the private jet with a full staff and Mrs. McAuliffe in tow. It was amazing.
They’d spent Valentine’s Day in Paris, in a royal suite at a five-star hotel with a view of the Tour Eiffel. After the baby was asleep, Eduardo had surprised Callie with a romantic, private dinner for two in their suite. She shivered, remembering champagne, chocolate-dipped strawberries and hot kisses that had lasted for hours.
Most recently, they’d gone to Italy. In Venice, he’d rented a palace overlooking the Grand Canal and they’d shared a romantic gondola ride; in Rome, Marisol had had her first taste of lemon gelato, which she’d savored by letting it dribble down her chin.
Such adventures they’d shared as a family. Growing up on her parents’ rural farm, the farthest Callie had ever traveled as a child was to the county fair. She’d never have imagined she’d someday have a life like this. International. Glamorous.
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