Honor-Bound Groom

by Yvonne Lindsay

  Loren watched as Giselle sashayed out of the office and went to close the door firmly behind her. Then she crossed back over to Alex’s desk and dropped the clinic folder onto his desk in front of him.

  “If you want to go ahead and have a baby with me then there have to be some boundaries. The most important is that you keep your hands off other women or you can consider our marriage over.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Marriage? You think what we have is a marriage?”

  “We have what approximates a marriage, but we’ll have what is most definitely a divorce if you so much as touch another woman again.”

  Alex leaned back in his leather executive chair and steepled his fingers. Giselle’s move on him had taken him by surprise. He’d made it more than clear, both before he’d traveled to New Zealand and since his return and subsequent marriage to Loren, that anything he and Giselle had shared was well and truly over.

  At first she’d been subtle—well, subtle for Giselle anyway. In recent weeks, her overtures had been more blatant, but nothing like today’s blitzkrieg. He’d been on the verge of pushing her away—off his lap and out of his employ—when Loren had entered his office. He’d half expected Loren to simply leave again, but even then his little wife had surprised him.

  Despite keeping her distance from him it was patently clear she was not prepared to share her toys, either. The knowledge gave him a surge of satisfaction. Perhaps now she would listen to reason.

  He reached forward and flicked open the file she’d dropped on his desk with one finger. His eyes skimmed the first page of details and everything inside him rebelled. No way would he accede to this barbaric coercion of nature when for them, in all likelihood, it was not even necessary.

  “No other women, you say?” he asked, arching one brow and allowing his lips to relax into a smile.

  “You heard me.”

  His wife stood opposite him, standing her ground like a sentinel.

  “Hmm.” Alex pursed his lips in consideration. “Yet you do not plan to share your bed with me like a dutiful wife ought?”

  “We’ve been over this, Alex. You don’t love me, yet you want a baby with me. Some people might be able to separate emotion from their physical behavior but I am not one of them. I won’t share my bed with you if your only purpose in coming to me is to conceive a child.”

  There was a tiny break in her voice. A break that gave him the leverage he was looking for. She had not stopped loving him, he was sure of it. And if she hadn’t, then he could press home his advantage and use this as an opportunity to win her back. To make their marriage the genuine article.

  “I see. Well, then there is nothing for it but for me to agree to your condition that I not touch another woman.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her breath escaping in a rush.

  He raised a hand. “I haven’t finished. I do agree to your condition, on a condition of my own. I refuse to allow you to submit to this process, Loren. We will conceive our child the old-fashioned way.”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m sorry. Because on this I refuse to negotiate.”

  “And I refuse to take another woman’s leavings. Our marriage is over.”

  Before he could stop her Loren had turned and left his office. Over? Surely she didn’t mean it. Shock reverberated through his body. Shock followed rapidly by a determination to stop her in her tracks. To somehow make her retract her statement, to admit her love for him, to allow him to admit his for her. He would not let her go, not like this, not ever. Galvanized by a combination of fear and resolve, he shot from his chair and out of his office.

  By the time he reached the reception area he was just in time to see his wife’s sleek convertible spin out of the parking lot and up the driveway leading to the main road. He felt his jacket pocket for his keys and cursed that he’d left them in his briefcase instead. There was no time to waste. Alex turned and zeroed in on his receptionist.

  “Your car keys, give them to me now.”

  Flustered, the woman withdrew her handbag from a file drawer and extracted her keys.

  “It’s the Fiat, at the end of the staff car park,” she said with wide eyes.

  “Gracias, you’ll find my keys in the case beside my desk. Take my car tonight.”

  “The Lamborghini?”

  But Alex barely heard her. He had to reach Loren before she did something stupid, like leave him for good.

  She could barely see through the tears that spilled from her eyes and down her cheeks as she grabbed clothes indiscriminately from her wardrobe and drawers and jammed them into her suitcase.

  Was it so unreasonable to expect him not to have affairs?

  Perhaps it was if she wasn’t prepared to give him the surcease his male body obviously demanded. But what of her needs? What of the pleasures he’d taught her to receive and, in turn, to give? If she didn’t have him, she didn’t want anybody else and she most definitely wasn’t prepared to share him.

  Besides, he didn’t want her. Not really. He only wanted her to create the heir he so desperately needed to provide to prove to Abuelo that the curse was nothing but hearsay on the tail of a three-hundred-year-old legend. She certainly had to admire the lengths he was prepared to go to set his grandfather’s mind at rest, but the cost wasn’t something she was prepared to pay. Not anymore. Not when beneath it all he still thought marrying her had been a mistake.

  Loren bit back a sob as she shoved the swimwear and the sarongs she’d taken to Dubrovnik into the case and dashed the tears from her cheeks. A sound behind her made her pause. Before she could return to her task, she was spun around. The articles of clothing she still held were plucked from her hands and cast to the floor at her feet.

  Alex stood before her, his strong hands holding her upper arms firmly so she couldn’t pull away.

  “I am no woman’s leavings,” he ground out in a harsh breath. “Unless, of course, you really are planning to leave me?”

  “Of course I’m leaving you. I can’t do this anymore, Alex. I can’t.”

  “Why? Tell me.” His fingers curled into her arms, pulling her closer to him.

  “I can’t share you. I refuse to share you. You know I love you, I always have—stupidly, now more than ever. I accepted when I married you that you didn’t love me. I could live with that. But I cannot live with you taking your pleasure from other women. I lived through that with my parents. My mother’s infidelity drove them both insane. I will not fall victim to that kind of desperate dependence. Not even for you.”

  “But you have no need to share me. I have never been unfaithful to you, Loren. Please, believe me.”

  She yanked herself free from his grasp and a choked laugh erupted from her throat.

  “Don’t treat me like a fool. From the second I arrived here Giselle has made it perfectly clear that you were only biding time with me until I provided you with an heir. Even you yourself did nothing to disabuse me of that belief.”

  “And our honeymoon? Did that mean nothing to you?”

  “Mean nothing? It meant everything to me when we could finally be a couple. Yet the second we returned everything went back to how it was before. Including your relationship with your assistant.”

  “My relationship with Giselle has been nothing but professional for several months.”

  “How can you expect me to believe that? All those late nights and early mornings? I never saw you, you never spoke to me. And what about what I interrupted today?”

  “I admit, I was involved with Giselle for a short period before I came to New Zealand, but once I’d decided to marry you I broke things off with her. Today was Giselle’s desperate attempt to reignite a flame that never went beyond a distant flicker. What we shared was well and truly over before I asked you into my life, Loren. It’s only ever been you since then.”

  Loren just shook her head. She wished she could accept his words as the truth but she hurt too much.

  “Why should I believe you, Alex? Why sh
ould I believe my husband when he thinks our whole marriage is a mistake?”

  “Because I love you!”

  “Don’t lie to me about that, Alex. Not now, not ever!”

  She spun away from him and clutched her arms around her body as if she could somehow assuage the empty pain that filled her chest in the place of her heart and the death of her dreams.

  He turned her back to face him and cupped his hands around her face, tilting it up so her eyes would meet his.

  “Loren, I love you. I didn’t plan to. To be totally honest, I didn’t even want to. I thought we could marry, and that our feelings for each other would never go beyond companionship at best. How wrong I was!” He shook his head at his own foolishness. “I didn’t count on falling in love with you, but from the moment you stood up to your mother, you started to inveigle your way into my heart. Day by day, week by week, I’ve learned to respect you and to love you.

  “That’s what I meant when I told my brothers I had made a mistake marrying you the way I had. It was wrong to rush into marriage merely to disprove some stupid curse that has no bearing on our lives today no matter what my grandfather believes. It was wrong to use you that way. But I do not regret marrying you, Loren. I will never regret that. If I had this time over again I would still have brought you back to Isla Sagrado, back home, but I would have taken the time to woo you, to learn about the woman you are now, to acknowledge that love is not something to be spurned or used to a man’s advantage.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Loren, please, give me another chance. Give us another chance.”

  Confusion swirled inside her. Half of her wanted to believe him, to have faith in his words and hold them to her forever. But the other half still hurt, deeply and most painfully. Her trust in him had been broken, her pride dashed. Deep down, she didn’t want to lay herself open for any more hurt.

  “I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I even want to try again.”

  His dark eyes deepened to darkest black as she saw her own pain reflected in their depths.

  “Then go. Return to New Zealand. I will not hold you to a marriage that you no longer can commit to. I will see to our dissolution, to your freedom. I’m sorry, Loren. I never thought things would come to this. As much as it breaks my heart, I would rather see you free to go than be trapped here with me, even as much as I need you by my side.”

  “You would do that? You’d let me just leave? What about the curse? What about Abuelo?”

  “Don’t you understand? Without your love, without you, I will forever be cursed. If you cannot love me then who am I to hold you here? I can only beg your forgiveness for being such a fool and for using you the way I did.

  “Losing you has taught me a valuable life lesson. There is more to honoring a parent’s wish and a family’s expectations than just going through the motions. Without love, it means nothing.”

  He let her go and Loren rocked slightly on her feet as he did so. The confusion that had so clouded her mind only moments ago began to solidify into one clear thought.

  Alexander del Castillo loved her.

  Finally, this tall, proud man was hers.

  Relief coursed through her veins followed by a bubbling rush of exhilaration. She drew in a deep breath.

  “Alex,” she said, in as level a tone as she could manage, “would you do one final thing for me?”

  “Anything.”

  “Would you bring my suitcase?”

  She saw his features settle into a frozen mask, but to his credit he said nothing. Merely zipped up the case and hefted it off the bed with one hand.

  “Thank you,” she said, and started walking through their suite and into his bed chamber.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice thick as if his throat was constricted.

  “I don’t want to be apart from you anymore—not even in separate rooms.”

  “Then you’re staying?”

  “You couldn’t get rid of me now for anything.”

  Loren looked at him now, face-to-face, surprised to see the sheen of tears reflected in his eyes. That this powerful man was reduced to tears by the fact that she’d chosen to remain with him said it all.

  “Love me, Alex.”

  “Forever, mi querida.”

  His arms closed around her, making her feel as if she’d finally come home. After their clothing had been torn from their bodies and they came together on his massive pedestal bed Loren knew she was home forever.

  Past hurts dissolved into distant memories as his hands caressed her body with a new reverence. Fears about the future disappeared as she welcomed him inside her, not only physically but, finally, wholly and emotionally, as well.

  It was late and the castillo silent and brooding in the darkness as Alex led Loren down the stairs.

  “Where are you taking me?” Loren asked in a whisper.

  “There is one more thing we need to do. Trust me.”

  He felt his heart swell as her slender fingers tightened in his. That small silent communication meant so much. To finally have her trust and to know he honestly returned it was one of the greatest gifts he’d ever received.

  Their slippered feet made no sound as they crossed the great hall toward the small private chapel that formed part of the castillo’s ancient history. The well-tended chapel door swung open silently beneath his touch.

  “Wait here a moment,” he instructed before moving swiftly down the center aisle of the centuries-old place of worship.

  Moonlight gave eerie illumination to the stained-glass windows that had been fitted by successive generations of del Castillos. At the altar Alex lit the thick candles in their squat candelabra, letting their golden glow chase the shadows of the past to the corners of the chapel.

  He turned back to Loren, covering the short distance back to the door, to his bride, in seconds. Taking her hand again, he led her to the altar.

  “I should have done this right the first time. I owed you that,” he said, stroking the side of her face softly before letting his hands reach down to take both of hers in his own.

  “It’s all right, Alex. We survived anyway.”

  Her smile was bittersweet and Alex made a silent vow to ensure that the last of their ghosts were banished from this moment.

  “We may have survived but you deserve more than that. This time I don’t want there to be any doubt.

  “Loren, I love you for your strength in the face of adversity, for your pride and incredible sense of honor and for the gift of your love to me, even when I didn’t deserve it. From this day forward, you will never again be lonely for I will always be at your side to give you comfort and to support you in whatever you do for all of our lives together.

  “I promise you, I will always be your rock, I will always honor you, remain true only to you and I will always love you—today and forever.”

  He lifted her hand and placed a kiss on her ring finger, sealing a brand upon her skin where his rings already claimed her as his by law. He rested their clasped hands against his chest as Loren took a deep breath and started to speak, her voice low and clear in the air between them.

  “Alex, I have always loved you for your principles, for your direction and your love for your family. I am honored to be your wife, to be your partner for life and to be the one to support you and love you through whatever comes our way in the future. I treasure your love for me and will always do everything in my power to protect and nurture that love.

  “Together I know we can weather any storm and be safe in the knowledge that it will only bring us closer and will only serve to help me love you more. I can’t wait to have children with you, to watch them grow with your guidance and strength behind them and I promise that I will always be there for you and always love you.”

  She reached up and kissed him, sealing their vows to one another with a hunger and a pledge that promised a happier future.

  As one, they bent to blow out the candles, then left the chapel to return
to their chamber, oblivious to the fading apparition in the far reaches of the shadows—a woman in eighteenth-century dress—smiling.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6443-8

  HONOR-BOUND GROOM

  Copyright © 2010 by Dolce Vita Trust

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