Filthy Rich Revenge: A Filthy Rich Billionaires Book

by Lynn Raye Harris

  She didn’t think Alejandro would accept that conclusion without having the baby tested, but she would find it reassuring if they were clear.

  They climbed into the limo and headed for the villa. Traffic was thick as usual and Rebecca was busy watching people on the sidewalks as they passed by. Studying the women’s clothing and wondering if any of them were in love with a moody billionaire too.

  “We need to set a date for the wedding. Have you called your mother?”

  Rebecca turned to look at him. She didn’t know what to say to him anymore. He was like a stranger to her. When they talked, it was about the baby or the wedding, nothing more. And that was only sporadic. It was like he wanted to pretend she didn’t exist until he had to speak to her about something. As soon as he had an answer, he went back to studying the screen of his cell phone or speaking rapid Spanish to someone on the other end of the line.

  “She hasn’t returned my call yet.”

  He looked surprised. Rebecca shrugged. She was accustomed to her mother’s shallowness by now.

  “She’s probably shopping. Or skiing,” she added.

  Disapproval hardened his expression. “Do you want to wait so she can be here for the ceremony?”

  She picked at a thread on her sweater. “It’s not necessary.”

  Silence for several seconds.

  “My sister wants to meet you.”

  Rebecca smiled. “I’d like to meet her, too.” He’d always spoken with affection for his sister. Rebecca was nervous about the prospect of meeting Valencia, but curious as well. Perhaps Valencia wasn’t taciturn and moody like her brother. Rebecca hoped that was the case. She could use a friendly face for a change.

  “She is arriving tomorrow for a short visit. We can be married while she’s here, if that is agreeable.”

  Rebecca fiddled with her bracelet to hide her surprise. He hadn’t mentioned his family at all since she’d returned. He also hadn’t mentioned a specific date to get married. Suddenly, it was sometime soon. How very like him to make a decision and barrel forward with it.

  “Does she know about the baby?”

  “Sí, I have told her.”

  Which meant his sister knew why they were marrying so quickly. “And your parents?”

  “They will know soon enough.”

  She wasn’t sure what to think about why he hadn’t yet told his parents. “What will they think about you marrying me?”

  He gave her a significant look. “They won’t care. They are far more interested in their own lives than in mine or my sister’s.”

  She heard the bitterness in his voice. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d said to her in the car the night they’d returned from his parents’ party. After her brief time in Juan and Carmen Ramirez’s company, she knew it was probably the truth. They reminded her of her own mother. Selfish and self-absorbed narcissists who lived for themselves alone.

  “They will not be at the wedding?”

  His laugh was sudden and sharp. “You don’t want them there, believe me. They would somehow manage to turn it into a personal drama where they occupied center stage.”

  “You had a lavish wedding before. I believe the king and queen attended.” She’d looked up photos on the Internet. Alejandro had been spectacular, his bride gorgeous—but neither of them smiled much.

  “There is no time for that kind of wedding,” he said coolly. “You would be big with our baby by the time we married. We will have a quick civil ceremony and be done, sí?”

  She pushed her hurt down deep. It wasn’t that she wanted a huge wedding. She just wanted it to be about something more than a marriage of convenience to him. She also wanted to understand why he’d married his first wife since he claimed not to have loved her.

  Something he’d said once tickled her mind. “You told me the night of the anniversary party that your father wanted to chase me away five years ago. If he cared who you married then, why not now?”

  Alejandro sighed. “It wasn’t you specifically, Rebecca. He wanted me to marry my brother’s fiancée.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My father arranged a marriage for my brother. It was a matter of family honor to him. When Roberto died, it fell to me to keep the agreement.”

  “Your brother died before you met me. If you were to marry her in his place, then you were already engaged.”

  Tears pricked her eyes. Stupid hormones. This was old news. Nothing to cry over now.

  Alejandro’s brows slashed down. “No. I had no intentions of marrying her, in spite of my father.”

  “But you did anyway. Did the sheets even get cold before she moved in?”

  “You left me, Rebecca.”

  She lifted her chin and met him dead in the eye. “It took me almost a year to see someone else. Yet you were married and expecting a baby by then.”

  It was hard to admit the truth, but why hide it any longer? He acted like he was the one who was wronged. What about her? She wanted him to know how difficult it had been for her.

  His look was intense, curious. “You did not take a new lover? Why should I believe this?”

  Of course, he would question her.

  “You can believe what you want, Alejandro.” She lowered her eyes, toyed with a hula girl charm on her bracelet. “I’ve never been the sort of woman who falls into bed with whomever strikes my fancy. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I always had to be so careful. My life wasn’t like other girls my age. Not in any way.”

  Alejandro stared at the top of her head. All this talk about marriage was closing a vise around his neck. He had every intention of marrying her, of binding her to him so he had legal rights to his child, but the thought of doing so always made anger burn low in his gut. He would marry her, but he didn’t have to enjoy the prospect. Sometimes he wondered if he’d been expertly maneuvered into it. He tried not to consider that possibility very often.

  But what was this about being careful who she slept with? Her attention was firmly fixed on the gold bracelet she wore. He wanted to reach out, clasp her arm, and make her look at him. But he did not.

  “What do you mean, querida?”

  “My father. Layton International.” She never looked up. “He liked to test me.”

  He thought back to how upset she’d gotten when he’d told her he’d had her investigated. Was this the root cause of her anger? “Did your father have you watched?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  He thought that if Jackson Layton were alive right now, he’d throttle the man. “All the time?”

  Her head snapped up. Tears glinted in her eyes. Something tightened in his chest. He reached up to rub absently at the spot, then realized what he was doing and dropped his hand again.

  “He might have. I don’t really know any longer.” She lay her head back against the seat, closed her eyes. He found himself thinking how fragile she looked. She’d been almost a shadow of herself when he’d seen her in New York last week. Since returning to Spain, he’d put Señora Flores to work feeding her. She had more color in her cheeks, and she was starting to fill out a little bit. Soon, she would be big with his child. The thought made him irrationally possessive.

  “Why would he do this to you?”

  She took a deep breath, let it out again. “Because I was a girl, Alejandro. He wanted a son to leave the business to.” She looked at him. “He thought I would be weak, that I would lose my head over a man. Because that’s what women do, naturally.”

  “Not you,” he said and meant it. One of the things he’d always been impressed with was her sense of the hotel business. They’d spent hours talking about every aspect of the business when he was still new to it. And after he’d taken her company, he’d watched her in the boardroom, reviewed her management of Layton International, and realized who’d really steered the company into a freefall. The only weak Layton was her father.

  “He had cause to think so,” she said quietly.

  “Because of me?”<
br />
  “No, someone else.”

  Something very like jealousy sliced into him. “You were in love?”

  She’d told him she loved him. He’d believed it until she betrayed him. But to think she’d loved someone else? Really loved him? He had an urge to slam his fist into something.

  “It was a couple of years before I met you, the summer I was twenty. Parker Gaines was very sophisticated, very suave. He was a con man, though I didn’t know it of course.”

  She bowed her head, spoke to her lap. “My father wanted to test me. Or so he said. He hired Parker to ‘breach my defenses’ as he put it. I was young enough and—” She laughed bitterly, brokenly. “—lonely enough to believe Parker’s lies. He seduced me, claimed to love me, and stole money from me. Worse, he got the combination to the safe in my office. He stole documents, checks, and plans for future developments. Father was furious.”

  Alejandro seethed. Dios, was her father insane? He did not doubt for a moment that she spoke the truth. She was too devastated, her fingers trembling as she talked, her voice breaking on the name Parker Gaines.

  “Why would your father do this?”

  She shrugged as if it didn’t mean anything, but he knew that was far from true.

  “He wanted to teach me to be ruthless. He called me to his office after I’d discovered the extent of Parker’s theft. And Parker was there, drinking scotch and smiling like he’d won the lottery. He’d recorded our conversations, played back some of the juicier ones for my father while I tried to defend myself.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “It was humiliating. But I learned my lesson. I was very careful who I let into my life after that.”

  Alejandro frowned. She was supposed to be a spoiled heiress, not this ravaged woman pouring out her private pain to him. Alejandro didn’t know he’d reached for her until he gripped her hand in his, felt the small bones and cool skin. Delicate.

  But not fragile. Rebecca was made of sterner stuff than her father had given her credit for.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you, querida.”

  Though he would never say so to her, he was also glad Layton was dead. It saved Alejandro the trouble of killing the man himself.

  She didn’t say anything, just nodded, her head turned toward the window. When her shoulders shook silently, he squeezed her hand. Nothing more, though it went against every instinct he had not to drag her into his arms and hold her.

  27

  Why had she told him those things? Rebecca splashed cool water on her face in the ensuite bath and looked at her red-rimmed eyes in the mirror. Stupid hormones were making her weepy. She could cry over anything these days. But to cry over old humiliations that were firmly in the past? Was she insane?

  Alejandro had been horrified, like any rational person would be, but no doubt he viewed it more as a curiosity outside his sphere than something that touched him personally. He had been kind to her, but that was all.

  If she’d hoped for a connection with him, she’d been wrong. She’d let her guard down, but she had to be careful in future and keep her feelings hidden. She would not give him the power to hurt her ever again.

  When they arrived back at the villa, he’d wasted no time getting away from her. He’d gone into his office and shut the door. She didn’t blame him. It was a pitiful story, but not truly tragic in the way losing a child had been. Nothing her father had done to her compared to that.

  Rebecca pressed her hand to her stomach, her heart fluttering at the thought of losing this baby. “You will be well, little one. I know you will. Your daddy is big and strong, and you will be strong just like him.”

  Saying it didn’t make it true, but she was determined not to allow any negativity to creep into her thoughts about this child.

  For the rest of the evening, she didn’t see Alejandro. He was still in his office, door closed, when she returned from the kitchen where she’d had a small helping of Señora Flores’s wonderful paella.

  Rebecca could hear him barking out orders to someone on the other end of the line. She hurried back upstairs and sat on the chaise in her suite to watch television. When her phone rang, she snatched it up.

  “Charlotte!”

  “Hi, Rebecca. How’s it going in Madrid?”

  Rebecca sat back and sighed softly. “It’s going well. How about you?”

  “Work is busy. Lots of conferences to pull off. I’ve been designing centerpieces for an upcoming tech conference, and I just booked in a party at Francois. It made me think of you. I’m sorry you aren’t in New York anymore.”

  Francois was the award-winning restaurant located in La Belle Amelie. Heather Livingston, who Charlotte worked for, often used Layton properties for her events. That was how Rebecca and Charlotte had met. Somehow, in spite of their vastly different lives, they’d become fast friends. Rebecca was probably the only person in the world who knew about Charlotte’s brief romance with Crown Prince Luca De Santis of Iria. A romance that had broken her heart and sent her far from Iria to start over again.

  “Me too. But at least La Belle Amelie is mine. Let me know how Pierre and the staff do for the party, okay?” The hotel was still a part of the larger Layton International chain, but it was hers now. If she wanted to disassociate with the brand, she could. But that wouldn’t be wise, especially now that she was no longer in New York.

  Charlotte laughed. “Of course I will. Are you okay otherwise? I know it’s been hard to lose the company your family built.”

  “It has, but that’s business.” Plus, she had other things to worry about.

  “And the baby?”

  Rebecca put a hand over her stomach. “So far, so good. Alejandro makes sure I get to all my appointments. He is very attentive.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “Yes.” Rebecca hadn’t told Charlotte how angry Alejandro had been, or that he’d basically ordered her to Madrid. It was too embarrassing, too pitiful, and Rebecca hadn’t been able to admit the truth to anyone. Charlotte thought everything was going well and that Rebecca and Alejandro were reuniting and working out their issues. Rebecca almost came clean, but she didn’t like how it made her feel to tell another soul that Alejandro mostly ignored her and was planning to marry her simply to secure his rights to his child. It was all so cold and unfeeling.

  But she had to say something about the marriage now that it was imminent. “He doesn’t want to delay any longer. He wants to get married as soon as possible.”

  “It makes sense, really. Are you excited?”

  Rebecca twisted the fringe on a throw pillow she’d pulled across her lap. “My head is spinning. I don’t think I’ll be excited about anything until it’s over. Everything is happening so fast.”

  “Aw, honey, it’ll be okay. He came back for you, and he clearly loves you. He wants to get married. Not every man does, you know. It’ll be fine.”

  The lump in Rebecca’s throat was huge. “I know. I wish you could come.”

  “I wish I could too.”

  “Maybe after the baby is born you can come for a visit. We’ll go shopping and lie around the pool and eat lots of paella. It’s so good here.”

  “I’d like that,” Charlotte said, her voice a little smaller than before. It hit Rebecca that Iria was a lot closer to Spain than New York. Charlotte was probably thinking about the last time she’d been to Iria, and the heartbreak she’d suffered. She would not want to be anywhere close to where Luca De Santis was. The sexy prince often appeared in the tabloids, and that was bad enough for Charlotte. But to be in the same time zone?

  “We’ll pencil it in,” Rebecca said lightly, not wanting to prod Charlotte about her feelings for Luca. They’d gotten drunk together one night at Rebecca’s place a couple of years ago and spilled all the details about their tragic love affairs with two powerful and handsome men. They’d both agreed that stunning men like Alejandro and Luca weren’t worth the trouble, no matter how exciting they were at first.

  The conversation moved on to other
topics, and by the time they hung up they were both laughing. They promised to stay in touch now that they couldn’t get together for drinks or dinner every once in a while, and then Charlotte had to go and deal with a last-minute crisis in decorations.

  Rebecca set her phone down and lay back on the chaise, flipping the channels until she found a cooking show. Her eyes were heavy, but she didn’t move to the bed. She didn’t remember falling asleep, but when she opened her eyes sometime later, the room was dark. Had she turned off the television?

  Before she could work it out, she was floating in the air, then falling gently down, her back landing on cushiony softness. A blanket covered her, and she realized she’d been cold as she snuggled into its warmth.

  “Alejandro,” she breathed, knowing it was he who had moved her. She could smell his expensive soap, feel the warmth of his hard body as he’d carried her. She reached for him before he could escape, wound her arms around his neck. “You’re here. With me.”

  “I am here, querida. Why were you on the chaise? It cannot be comfortable enough for the whole night.”

  “Bed’s too big,” she replied on a yawn. She was so sleepy. Maybe she was dreaming, and he wasn’t there at all. It was certainly possible. After her conversation with Charlotte, she’d been thinking about Alejandro and wishing it really was a happy reunion and not this mess she’d found herself in.

  “You have to sleep in the bed, Rebecca. It’s better for you. More comfortable.”

  “Stay with me….”

  Did he groan? “I cannot,” he said, gently pulling her arms away from his neck.

  She’d been so lonely without him. Was it wrong of her to want him? To want to feel needed by him, even if only for a short while?

  “Why don’t you want me?” She didn’t mean to say it aloud, but the words spilled out, the pain in them unmistakable.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at her. She reached up to trail her fingertips along his jaw. She could see him in the dim light from the moon, the hard lines of his face, the outline of his big body silhouetted against the pale wall behind him. He really was here. Tomorrow, she’d be humiliated by the things she’d said. Tonight, she just wanted answers.