The Tycoon's Charm: The Tycoon's Paternity AgendaHonor-Bound Groom

by Michelle Celmer

  “Loren.” Her mother turned to her with a stiff smile on her carefully tinted lips. “Surely you’re not going to take this seriously. You have a life here, a job, responsibilities. Why on earth would you even consider this outrageous plan?”

  Why indeed, Loren wondered as she looked around her. Yes, she had a life here. A life she’d been dragged to, kicking and screaming and full of sullen teenage pout. She’d never wanted to live with her mother but her father hadn’t contested his wife’s petition for full custody of their only child. Loren had later realized that had in part been because he’d never believed Naomi would actually go through with the divorce and relocate to the opposite side of the world. But his apparent indifference had hurt at the time and she’d arrived here at the Simpson Station feeling as though her entire world had been ripped apart. With that kind of beginning, it was hardly surprising that she’d learned to accept her place at the station, but she’d never learned to love it.

  And as for her work here and her responsibilities? Well, it would only be Naomi who missed her, and then only for as long as it took to browbeat some other assistant into docile submission. No. Loren had nothing to hold her here. She and Naomi had never enjoyed the kind of mother-daughter relationship that Loren knew others had and she had learned very early that it was easier to accede to her mother’s wishes than fight for her own. On Isla Sagrado, Loren had been almost solely her father’s child, and Loren had always believed her mother had taken her from the island more as a punishment for Francois Dubois than out of any kind of maternal instinct.

  She’d missed Isla Sagrado every day of the past ten years. Of course that pain of loss, the wrench of being repatriated, had dimmed a little over time, but it was still as real now as the man seated alongside her.

  Seeing him again was as if he’d brought with him the heat and splendor and lush extravagance of Isla Sagrado. Not to mention the promise of the revival of a passion for living that had lain dormant within her since she’d left the country of her birth.

  Yes, her initial reaction to Alex’s arrival here had been shock and disbelief. But it was clear he meant what he said. Why else would he have traveled half the world to come and see her?

  Thoughts spun through her mind with lightning-fast speed. Her earlier objections, as weak as they were, had come reflexively—a direct result of surprise at the manifestation of the man who’d been a part of her dreams her entire life. She’d wanted—no, she’d needed—to hear him refute her doubts to her face. To tell her they belonged together as she’d always imagined, as she’d pretty much lost hope of imagining.

  Now she knew what it was like to be in his arms, to feel truly alive for the first time she could remember, there was no way she was going to turn her back on her destiny with the only man she’d ever loved.

  “Why would I consider marrying Alex? I would have thought that was quite straightforward,” Loren responded with as much aplomb as she could muster under her mother’s piercing gaze. “Inasmuch as Alex wishes to honor his father, so do I mine. I’ve always understood that this would be my future, Mother.” She turned her face to look at Alex. “And it’s what I’ve always wanted. I would be honored to be Alex’s wife.”

  “How on earth could you know what you want?” Naomi demanded, pushing up out of her chair and pacing back and forth between them. “You’ve barely been off the station since we’ve lived here. You haven’t experienced the world, other men, anything!”

  “Is that what it really takes to make a person happy? Are you truly happy?” Loren held her mother’s gaze as her questions unerringly hit their mark. Naomi gaped for a moment, clearly surprised to hear Loren fight back. But even Naomi couldn’t deny the truth of what Loren had said.

  Naomi’s affairs were legend in New Zealand—her power and beauty made for a magnetically lethal combination—and yet, even though many had tried, no man had captured her heart. Loren knew she didn’t want that life for herself.

  “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you—your future, your life. Don’t throw it away on a pledge made before you can even remember. You are worth so much more than that, Loren.”

  Loren felt the walls, her mother’s walls, closing in around her and she pushed them back just as hard.

  “Exactly, Mother.” Loren sat up straighter, confidence coming from Alex’s warmth against her side—confidence to speak her mind at last and say the words she’d locked down deep inside for too long. “I stayed here because I had nothing else to do. Growing up on Isla Sagrado, I believed I had a purpose, a direction. When you and Papa split up I lost that. You took me away from the only future I ever wanted.”

  “You were just a child—”

  “Maybe then, yes. But I’m not a child any longer. We both know I’ve been marking time these past few years. You know my heart isn’t in the station like yours is. You always felt displaced on Isla Sagrado. That’s how I feel here. I want to go back.

  “As you so correctly pointed out, we are talking about my future and my life—and I want that to be on Isla Sagrado, with Alex.”

  * * *

  He could hardly believe it had been so easy. Alex savored the exhilaration that surged within him as Loren’s words hung on the air between mother and daughter.

  His body continued to throb in reaction to the slightly built woman at his side, remembering how it felt to be pressed against her far more intimately. Yes, kissing her had been a risk, but he’d built his formidable business reputation on taking big risks and reaping even bigger rewards. This had definitely been a risk worth taking.

  Just one look at her had been enough to prove the information he’d been given about her sheltered lifestyle. She appeared as untouched and protected as she’d been the day she left Isla Sagrado. But beneath that inexperienced exterior beat a sensual heart. Wakening that side of her would be a delight and would make the whole process of providing Abuelo with a great-grandchild, as proof the curse did not exist and laying it to rest once and for all, an absolute pleasure.

  Alex tilted his head slightly to watch Loren as her mother began a tirade of reasons why she should not return to Isla Sagrado. He wasn’t worried about Naomi’s arguments. If there was one thing he remembered most clearly about Loren as a child it was that despite her quiet attitude, there was no matching her tenacity once she had made up her mind. The vast number of his girlfriends she’d scared off being a case in point.

  Instead of following the argument, he took the time to fully take in the woman who would be his wife. Her long black hair, scraped back in a utilitarian ponytail, showcased the delicate structure of her face. And what a face—the child’s features he remembered had matured into those of a beautiful young woman’s. Her brows were still strong and delicately arched but the eyes beneath them, dark brown like his own, glowed with an inner fire, and her lips were full and lush. Fuller, perhaps, because of their recent kiss, and certainly something he wanted to taste and savor again.

  Where had that gawky kid who’d followed him around incessantly disappeared to? In place of the slightly older version of her that he’d expected, he’d discovered a woman who, while she had every appearance of fragility and a vulnerable air about her that aroused his protective instincts, somehow had managed to develop a backbone of pure steel.

  He was reminded of Audrey Hepburn as he looked at her now. The gamine features, matured into beauty—the delicate bone structure, intensely feminine. Something else roared to life from deep inside of him. Something ancient, almost feral. She was his—betrothed to him as a matter of honor between friends, but his nonetheless. And she’d stay that way. Nothing Naomi could say would ever change that.

  Two

  Despite the luxurious trappings of first class, Loren had been unable to sleep during the long journey from New Zealand. After a day and a half of travel and changeovers she felt weary and more than a little disoriented as she made her way through Sagradan customs and immigration. Nothing about the airport was familiar to her anymore. St
ill, she supposed as she hefted her cases from the luggage carousel and onto a trolley, it was only natural that change had come to Isla Sagrado in the ten years she’d been gone.

  Even so, a pang for the old place she’d left behind lodged behind her heart. Loren shook her head. She was being fanciful if she expected to be able to walk back into her old life as if she’d never left. So much had changed. Her father was gone, her mother was now half a world away and here she was—engaged and preparing to reunite with her fiancé of only a few weeks.

  It didn’t seem real, Loren admitted to herself—and not for the first time. Everything had moved so fast from the moment she’d told her mother she was returning to the home of her birth. Well, at least once Naomi had recognized that she could not sway her only child’s stubborn insistence that she would be marrying Alexander del Castillo.

  Alex had taken control once her mother had ceased her objections and washed her hands of the matter, smoothing the way toward having Loren’s expired Sagradan passport renewed and booking her flights to Isla Sagrado. Loren hadn’t had to lift so much as a finger. Well used to taking care of such details for both her mother and for the overseas guests who visited the massive working sheep and cattle station, it had been a pleasure to have someone else take care of her for a change.

  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 ha
d 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 she had arrived home, Loren was his fiancée, and she’d prove she was no walkover. Her battle with her mother to come here in the first place had proven to her that she was anything but that.

  “Well,” she said, injecting a firm note into her voice, “we’ll see about that once I’ve checked everything over and conferred with Alex.” At the other woman’s sharply indrawn breath she added, “It is my wedding, after all.”

  Loren settled back against the soft leather upholstery and gazed out the window of the speeding limousine, wondering if she had gone too far in establishing where she stood with Giselle. Perhaps she’d been oversensitive, worn out as she was with travel. But underneath Giselle’s self-assuredness and apparent solicitude she sensed a vague but definite threat, as if she was stepping where she wasn’t fully welcome by coming back to Isla Sagrado.

  She stifled a sigh. She’d expected her homecoming to be different, sure, but when push came to shove she couldn’t forget what—or more importantly, who—had brought her here.

  Alex.

  Just thinking about him created a swell of longing deep inside. Without thinking, she traced the outline of her lips with her fingertips, silently reliving their last kiss. If she tried hard enough she could still feel the pressure of his mouth against hers, still experience the heady joy of knowing he’d traveled to New Zealand to fulfill their fathers’ bargain—that he’d seen her and still wanted her.