Spring Bride

by Sandra Marton

  “She talks too much, that Dolores.”

  “She didn’t mean any harm, Antonio.”

  He sighed. “No,” he said after a moment, “no, I suppose she did not. It is true. I had a mother and a father. But they did not raise me.”

  “Why? What happened to your parents?” Kyra felt Antonio stiffen beside her. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It’s none of my bus—”

  “My father was in South America on business.” He shrugged. “I have the story only secondhand, from my grandmother. He and my mother met…” He shrugged again. “Perhaps he never knew he had made my mother pregnant. She gave birth to me and it was the last anyone in the village saw of her.”

  Kyra’s throat constricted. “Oh, Tonio,” she said softly, “how awful for you.”

  His arm dropped away from her. “I do not tell you this to ask for pity,” he said coldly. “I tell it to you only because—because you asked me about my family”

  She had not asked him; he had volunteered. It was a subtle difference, yet Kyra knew it somehow held a world of meaning. But there was no time to think about it, not just now. Now, she was too busy forcing herself not to put her arms around Antonio and tell him there was nothing wrong with feeling compassion, especially when you loved someone.

  She cleared her throat. “I see.”

  But she didn’t see, not at all. Who had raised him, if not his parents? Had he been given into the care of relatives? Had he been handed over to an orphanage? Whatever had happened, she was almost painfully relieved she hadn’t told him about a father who’d tried to think for her or about the three big brothers who’d always made her a mascot but never a member of their silly clubs.

  All of it was true, all of it had shaped her life…but how petty it would sound to a man whose childhood had lacked the love and warmth of people who cared about him.

  Kyra longed to ask a dozen questions, but the set of Antonio’s face warned her that this wasn’t the time. Instead, she put her hand on his arm, and when he looked at her, she rose toward him and kissed his mouth.

  “I wish I’d known you when you were a little boy,” she said softly.

  Antonio looked at her for a long moment. Then he gathered her into his arms so tightly that she could hardly draw breath.

  ”Querida,” he whispered, “come to bed with me now.”

  Kyra felt a blush rise in her cheeks. “But—but Dolores…”

  He smiled. “She has been on this earth many years. She knows how it is between lovers.”

  Lovers, Kyra thought, her heart lifting, lovers It was such a beautiful, wonderful word.

  “Say the other name,” he murmured, his mouth inches from hers. “Let me hear it on your lips.”

  She smiled. “Tonio,” she whispered, “my Tonio…”

  He kissed her, his mouth open and hot against hers, until she was clinging helplessly to him, her hands curled into the front of his shirt.

  “Come to bed, querida,” he said thickly. “I need you now.”

  “Yes,” she breathed, and he caught her in his arms, carried her through the house and up the stairs to his room. He kicked the door shut, and the night and the stars closed down around them.

  Hours later, Antonio stirred and awoke.

  It was very late, that time in the darkness when the silence of the night is as heavy as the silence of the soul He turned his head on the pillow and gazed at Kyra, lying curled in the circle of his arm.

  Gently, so as not to disturb her, he bent and brushed his lips over hers. She sighed and snuggled closer into his embrace.

  It hurt his heart just to look at her. She was so beautiful. He smiled to himself. And so spirited. No woman had ever stood up to him as she had. No man, either. People had been deferring to him for a decade; he was Antonio Rodrigo Cordoba del Rey, and even if someone, somewhere, suspected the truth, that he had created himself out of a boy who had almost not grown up to become a man, that the father whose names he bore had never known or cared about his existence, what did it matter? He was wealthy, he was important…no one dared defy him.

  No one but Kyra. She was the only living soul in a dozen years he had told about himself, not all of it but enough. Even the things Jessamyn had known about him had not come from his lips; her father had told her the story of Antonio’s origins and—and—

  And Jessamyn had almost destroyed him. Antonio’s smile faded. He had thought himself in love with her. How foolish he’d been! He should have known that the lessons learned in childhood never really change. Love was a lie created by poets for fools to believe in.

  Now, at thirty-two, he knew love for the hoax it was. It would be so easy to think himself in love with Kyra. She was beautiful. Vibrant. Exciting. The sound of her voice, the scent of her skin, aroused a hunger in him that could not be sated. And she had given him the gift of her virginity.

  He was touched. He was happy. But he wasn’t stupid enough to try to call what he felt “love”.

  He looked at her again, asleep in his arms. A fist tightened around his heart. No, he thought, no, this was not love. They would enjoy what they had for as long as it lasted. A week. A month. And then…

  Kyra murmured in her sleep, sighed, and rolled onto her back. Antonio waited, then hiked himself up on one elbow. Slowly, he drew down the light blanket and let his eyes skim her lush, lovely curves.

  The hunger that swept through him didn’t surprise him. What followed—the throat-catching tendernessdid. He fought against the desire to waken her, to take her in his arms not to stir her to passion but to see her smile as her eyes focused on his face, to feel the warmth of her against his skin.

  He frowned, drew the blanket over her again, and eased his arm out from beneath her shoulders. He rose from the bed, walked to the partially opened French doors opposite, and stepped out onto his balcony.

  The night breeze carried the tang of the sea on its warm breath. He shut his eyes, remembering another scent, the almost overpowering smell of camellias that he had, for years, identified with Jessamyn.

  Por Dios, what was wrong with him tonight? He had put Jessamyn out of his heart years ago yet tonight he couldn’t get her out of his head. Antonio sighed. Perhaps it was best to let himself remember every detail. That might put the memories to rest once and for all.

  A Peace Corps volunteer had plucked him from his village and a life in which he had fought for scraps like a street mongrel and brought him to a Jesuit missionary school where three meals a day, a roof over his head, and a corner to call his own had been like a little piece of heaven.

  At seventeen, he’d been told that he’d won a scholarship to an exclusive American university.

  A week later, he was in Boston.

  He knew no one, spoke stilted, textbook English and a Spanish dialect almost incomprehensible to others. He was almost always broke. And he had an attitude that made it clear he had a very large, very precariously balanced chip on his shoulder.

  One of his professors, a Boston Brahmin with a bloodline as pure as his family fortune was large, had taken pity on him. In a burst of egalitarian generosity, he took Antonio under his wing.

  Within weeks, Antonio found himself absorbed into the bosom of the man’s patrician family.

  Or so he thought.

  He blossomed. He learned to smile, to talk, to share, to let others see what the Peace Corps volunteer and the missionaries had seen—the bright mind, the clever wit lurking just under the sullen exterior.

  And, inevitably, he fell in love with the professor’s daughter.

  Her name was Jessamyn. She was blond and terribly sophisticated. Antonio confined himself to sidelong glances and sweaty dreams. The professor was his mentor, he had no wish to do anything that would presume on the man’s kindness.

  But Jessamyn made such lofty ideas impossible. She touched his thigh under cover of the dining-room table; on the frequent occasions that he spent the night in the room opposite hers, she “forgot” to close her bedroom door as she prepared f
or bed.

  Eventually, Antonio took what was so blatantly offered. In his naivete, he assumed Jessamyn loved him just as he was sure he loved her. He added a second job to the one that was already necessary to supplement his scholarship money, saved enough to buy her a ring with a stone even he knew was painfully small, and promised himself he would someday replace it with the perfect diamond she deserved.

  That was what he told her when he proposed.

  Jessamyn laughed in his face.

  Antonio shut his eyes against the night, the sea and the pain of that memory.

  “Marriage?” she’d said. “To you? Antonio, darling, surely you know that could never happen!”

  And then she lifted up her skirt, put his hand on her flesh, and shuddered with pleasure.

  He left school the next day, made his way back to South America, and traded the price of the nng for the equipment he needed. Then he trekked into the jungle for months of backbreaking labor on a mining claim that was the butt of a hundred different jokes.

  A year later, he knew he had never really loved Jessamyn. He was also a millionaire ten times over.

  After that, he had his choice of women, all of them with blood as blue as Jessamyn’s. It was interesting how a man’s bank account could ultimately matter more than his lineage. Any one of his conquests would have married him, but Antonio only smiled, took what was offered, and moved on.

  And then, one night in Colorado, a woman with hair the colors of autumn had flashed him a look that carried a message he had almost forgotten. Unlike the others, she hadn’t cared that he had money, and power. Her silver eyes had said it all.

  “I know who you really are,” those eyes had said, “and what you are. And try as you like, you can’t have me.”

  But he had had her. Antonio drew a harsh breath of the sea-scented night air. He had made love to Kyra Landon, and now, and now—now, he didn’t want to let her go…

  “Antonio?”

  His heart lifted at the sound of that sleepy voice. He turned and found Kyra sitting up against the pillows, the blanket at her waist. The waning light of the ivory moon lay pale on her face and breasts.

  Antonio’s breath caught. Kyra, he thought, my Kyra.

  She smiled, lifted her hand in act of unconscious sensuality and pushed her hair back from her face.

  “Tonio,” she said softly, “come back to bed.”

  Antonio looked at her. How could he think of an ending to all this? He could not. By all he held dear, he could not!

  “Tonio? You look so strange…is something wrong?”

  He crossed the room quickly, came down next to her in the bed, and took her in his arms.

  “Yes,” he whispered, “something is very wrong, querida. I have not made love to you in far too long.”

  He kissed her and moved over her, telling her with his body what he could not even tell himself.

  But a long while later, as the sun rose over the rim of the sea, with Kyra sleeping in his arms, he knew it was time to stop pretending.

  He, the man who scorned love, had fallen in love.

  The realization terrified him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  KYRA woke slowly, safe and warm in Antonio’s arms.

  Had she ever been this happy in her life?

  She didn’t need to think about the answer. She knew it as surely as she knew she loved Antonio.

  Smiling, she propped her head on her hand and watched him as he slept. He looked so young, so boyish. A lock of dark, silky hair had fallen over his brow; his lashes lay thick and black against his high cheekbones. And his mouth—that hard, beautifully chiseled mouthwas soft and relaxed.

  Carefully, so as not to wake him, she bent and touched her lips gently to his. He made a sighing sound, his hand lifted and brushed against her hair but he didn’t awaken.

  “I love you,” Kyra whispered.

  And she did, with all her heart.

  She had come to the Caribbean to find herself. And she had. She had found that she was a woman, with a woman’s needs, passions and hopes; she had found what she needed to make herself complete.

  She needed Antonio, and his love.

  Kyra sank back against the pillows. Had she really only been on San Sebastian Island three days? It felt so much longer than that. But it was three days, which meant today was Monday.

  And that meant at least a temporary return to reality.

  She had to go to Caracas, contact the embassy. And the cruise line, too. For all she knew, they might have decided she’d fallen overboard!

  And her banker—she had to call him. She needed funds, and why should she give a damn if he gave her a lecture? She’d simply tell him to mind his own business.

  Kyra smiled. Why hadn’t that occurred to her before?

  But she knew the reason. It was because she’d left Denver a child in rebellion. It was why she hadn’t told anyone she was leaving, why she’d recoiled at the thought of phoning home for help.

  What nonsense that had been! She was an adult; she knew that now. Whatever decisions needed to be made in her life, she would make them. Whatever she did or didn’t do was strictly her business, and she would not let anybody chastise or scold her, not her banker or her attorney or even her three beloved, impossible big brothers.

  Not even Antonio.

  The thought came out of nowhere, and for an instant, it paralyzed her but then she gave herself a mental shake and called herself a fool.

  She knew Antonio now. He wasn’t the dictatorial tyrant she’d pegged him for. He was considerate and thoughtful with his secretary and with his housekeeper; he’d stopped at nothing to help her even when they were still sniping at each other. It was just that their relationship had gotten off to a bad start.

  All that was changed now. Kyra turned her head on the pillow, her expression softening as she looked at Antonio’s face. Oh yes. Everything had changed…

  Like a ghostly whisper, Mademoiselle’s voice sighed inside her head.

  The more things seemed to change, the more they stayed the same.

  No. No, the old dictum wasn’t true anymore.

  It had been, years ago when she was a little girl. Her father would treat her brothers with something approximating kindness for a day or so, just long enough for her to let herself stupidly start to believe things were going to change.

  But nothing ever did. Life would go back to what it had always been. Nothing at all would have changed.

  Kyra shivered. Quickly, she shoved aside the blankets and padded into the bathroom. She turned the shower on full and stepped under it, turning her face up to the spray.

  She was being silly. Antonio was nothing like her father. He wasn’t selfish or self-centered. Besides, she loved him. And she was sure he loved her.

  Or did he? He hadn’t said so. And what would it prove if he did? Her father had loved her; it had been in the name of love that he’d all but suffocated her.

  She made a sound that should have been a laugh as she turned off the water. Here she stood, agonizing over whether or not she could live the rest of her life with a man who hadn’t even suggested that he wanted to live the rest of his life with her.

  Hastily, before Antonio could awaken, take her in his arms and add to her growing confusion, she threw on a pair of his shorts and a shirt, slipped on her sandals, and hurried downstairs, where a surprised Dolores took one look at her face and wisely said nothing but ”Buenos días” as she helped herself to some coffee.

  Cup in hand, she made her way down to the paddock.

  “Kyra?”

  Antonio shot up in bed, his heart pounding. He had dreamed something—he couldn’t quite remember what, only that he had once again been alone on his island, that Kyra was gone.

  He swallowed hard, ran his fingers through his hair. He was not a man who believed in dreams, only in reality. And the reality was that Kyra had come into his life and he would not be fool enough to lose her.

  Smiling, he rose and made his way to the
bathroom, expecting to find her in the shower, expecting to slip into the steamy cubicle with her.

  She wasn’t there. Antonio’s brows drew together. There was nowhere she could have gone. He knew that. But he thought again of his dream, and his frown became a scowl.

  Suppose she wanted to leave? What would he say? He had no right to keep her here, not any longer. He had brought her here a captive; now, he was the captive. She had taken his heart.

  And what will she do with it, Antonio?

  He shook his head. She would not leave the island. Not now. She had told him how happy she was; why would she flee that happiness?

  There was time. Plenty of time. Over the next days, the next weeks, he would tell her what he felt. He would show her, not just by making love to her but by cherishing her. By protecting her, and taking care of her. He would start this very morning, by arranging for the replacement of her passport and visa. And he would take her shopping. He smiled, thinking of how incredibly sexy she looked in his clothes. But she would want things of her own, and he would get them for her.

  Finally, when the time was right, he would tell her.

  I love you, querida, he would say, and it would be all right because she was not Jessamyn, and he was not a foolish boy any longer.

  Whistling softly, Antonio stepped into the shower.

  Kyra stood at the paddock behind the garden, sipping her coffee and watching Antonio’s Arabians wheeling across the meadow.

  Getting up early, coming down here where she could sort out her thoughts, had been a good idea.

  There was no point in worrying about things in advance. She would ask Antonio to take her to Caracas, she would take the first steps toward putting her life in order, and—

  A pair of strong, masculine arms closed around her.

  “There you are,” Antonio said. His tone was warm if slightly gruff. He turned her in his arms, tilted her face to his, and gave her a long, deep kiss. “I have looked for you everywhere, querida. You should have told me you were coming here to see the horses.”