by Jennie Lucas
With an intake of breath, she looked straight at the old wooden house with the peeling paint. Her heart stopped.
Standing on the wooden porch, with arms grimly folded, was Santiago.
What was he doing here?
Fear pounded through her as she turned off the engine of her truck.
With a deep breath, Belle got out of her old pickup, tossing her long brown ponytail, slamming the door with a rusty squeak.
“What are you doing in Texas?” She lifted her chin to hide the tremble in her voice. “Let me guess. Did you think up some new ways to insult me?”
He came down the rickety wooden steps toward her, his black eyes glittering. “Three nights ago, you showed up at my house with a very shocking accusation.”
“You mean I accused you of getting me pregnant?” Waving her arm, she said furiously, “Such a horrible accusation! No wonder you wanted me to get the hell out!”
Standing on the last step above her, he ground his teeth. “I was calling your bluff. It was a negotiation. I expected you to swiftly return with a demand for a specific sum of money.”
Calling her announcement of pregnancy a negotiation! He was just the worst! A lump rose in her throat. Blinking fast, she turned toward his entourage and helicopter in the field. She said evenly, “How did you find my address?”
“Easy.”
“You must have been waiting for hours.”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Twenty! How?” She gasped. “There was no way you could know when I’d get here. Even I didn’t know exactly!”
He gave a grim smile. “That was more difficult.”
“Were you tracking my truck? Spying on me?”
“Stop changing the subject,” he said coldly. He stepped closer on the packed dirt driveway, towering a foot over her. His black eyes traced the length of her body, from her oversized T-shirt to her shorts to her flip-flops, and a flash of heat coursed through her. “You were telling the truth? The baby is mine?”
“Of course the baby’s yours!”
“How can I trust a proven liar?”
“When did I lie?” she said indignantly.
“‘I can’t get pregnant, ever,’” he mimicked. “‘It’s impossible.’”
“You are such a jerk.” Belle shivered, sweating beneath the hot Texas sun.
His voice had been low, controlled, but she felt his cold fury. He was all gorgeous on the outside, she thought, like melted chocolate with his soulful Spanish eyes and black hair and hard-muscled body. Too bad his soul was even harder than his body. He had a soul like flint. Like ice.
Just when she’d been counting her blessings that he was out of their lives, here he was, pushing back in. For what purpose?
“You made your choice,” she whispered. “You abandoned us. This baby is mine now. Mine alone.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “That’s not how paternity works.”
“It is if I say it is.”
“Then why tell me you were pregnant at all?”
“Because three days ago I was foolish enough to hope you could change. Now I know it would be better for my baby to have no father at all than a man like you.” She lifted her chin. “Now get off my land.”
Growing dangerously still, Santiago stared at her, jaw tight. Without a word, he turned to stare across the stark horizon against the wide blue sky. Against her will, her eyes traced the golden glow of the sun gleaming against his olive-colored skin, the chiseled cheekbones, the dark scruff on his jaw.
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen, Belle.” When he looked back at her, his voice was low and deep, almost a purr. “Today, you’re going to get a paternity test.”
“What? Forget it!”
“And if it’s proven that the baby’s mine,” his black eyes glittered, “you’re going to marry me.”
Was he crazy or was she?
“Marry you?” Belle gasped. “Are you out of your mind? I hate you!”
“You should be pleased. Your plan worked. Admit you purposefully got pregnant with my child to trap me into marriage. Have that much respect for me, at least.”
“I won’t, because it’s not true!”
“I’ll admit I made a mistake, trusting you. I should have known better. I should have known your innocence was a lie. I shall pay for that.” He moved closer with a gleam in his dark eyes. “But so will you.”
A shiver went through her.
“I would never marry someone I hate,” she whispered.
“You’re acting like you have a choice. You don’t.” He gave a cold smile. “You’ll do what I say. And if the baby is mine...then so are you.”
CHAPTER THREE
SANTIAGO VELAZQUEZ HAD learned the hard way that there were two types of people in the world: delusional dreamers who hid from the harsh truth of the world, and those clear-eyed few who could face it, and fight for what they wanted.
Belle Langtry was a dreamer. He’d known that the day they’d met, at their friends’ wedding last September, when she’d chirped annoyingly about the bridal couple’s “eternal love” in face of their obvious misery. Belle’s rose-colored glasses were so thick she was blind.
But then, you’d have to be blind to see anything hopeful about love or marriage. Love was a lie, and any marriage based on it would be a disaster from start to finish. It could only end in tears. He should know. His mother had been married five times, to every man in Spain except Santiago’s actual father.
But for some reason, when he’d met Belle, so feisty and sure of her own illusions, he hadn’t been irritated. He’d been charmed. Petite, curvaceous, dark-haired, with deep sultry eyes and a body clearly made for sin, she’d gotten under his skin from the beginning. And not just because of her beauty.
Belle hated him, and wasn’t afraid to show it. With one glaringly big exception, Santiago couldn’t remember any woman scorning him so thoroughly. Not since he’d grown into his full height at twenty, and especially not since he’d made his fortune. Women were always hoping to get into his bed, his wallet, or usually both. He hadn’t realized just how boring it had all become until that exact moment that Belle Langtry had insulted him to his face.
She was different from the others. She drew him like a flame in the darkness. Her tart tongue, her apparent innocence, her brazen honesty, had made him lower his defenses. Their single night together had been transcendent and joyful and raw. It had almost made him question his cynical view of the world.
Then, three nights ago, he’d discovered how wrong he’d been about her.
Belle Langtry wasn’t different. She wasn’t innocent. She’d only pretended to wear rose-colored glasses to hide the fact that she was a cold-eyed liar, just like everyone else, plotting for her personal gain. She wasn’t like his mother had been, pathetically desperate for love, deceiving herself to the end of her self-destructive life. No. Belle was like Nadia. A mercenary gold digger who would say or do anything, her eyes always on the glittering prize.
At Fairholme, in the snowy garden that cold January night, when Belle had wept in Santiago’s arms as if her heart was breaking, she’d been lying.
When he’d softly stroked her long dark hair in the moonlight and whispered that everything would be all right, and Belle had looked up, her big dark eyes anguished beneath trembling lashes, she’d been lying.
When she’d told him she could never, ever get pregnant, and lowering his head, he’d kissed her beneath the moonlight scattered with snowflakes, as he tried to distract her from her grief, she’d been lying.
Santiago had known Belle was an actress. He’d just had no idea how good. He hadn’t been fooled in such a way in a long time.
After she’d invaded his cocktail party and dropped the bomb of her pregnancy news, he’d paced and snarled at his gu
ests, wondering what he’d do when Belle finally returned to make her financial demands. If she was truly pregnant with his child, she had leverage. Because as much as Santiago despised the idea of love and marriage, he would never abandon a child the way he himself had once been doubly abandoned.
What would Belle ask for? he’d wondered. Marriage? A trust fund in the baby’s name? Or would she eliminate the middleman and simply ask for a billion-dollar check, written out directly to her?
He’d waited that night, nerves thrumming, but she’d never returned to his town house. The next morning, he’d discovered she’d left New York, just as she’d claimed she intended.
Now, after three days, he knew everything about Belle, except for her medical records, which he expected to have later today. His investigator had easily found her home address in Texas. The GPS of her phone had been tracked through means he didn’t care to know, and someone had watched for her highly visible blue 1978 Chevy at the gas station two hours to the east, the only gas station for miles in this empty Texas prairie. He’d simply taken the helicopter here from his large ranch in south Texas.
But he could hardly be expected to reveal his strategies to an enemy. Which was what Belle now was.
From the day they’d met, she’d acted like she hated him. But he’d never hated her.
Until now.
Santiago stared down at her beneath the unrelenting furnace of the sun blasting heat from the Texas sky. He felt a prickling of sweat on his forehead. Wearing a vest, tie and long-sleeved shirt along with tailored wool trousers, he found the temperature brutal. And it wasn’t even noon.
Santiago set his jaw. He wouldn’t allow Belle to control the situation. Or his baby. He didn’t know her goal, but the way she was playing the game—like a professional poker player without a heart—the amount she wanted must be astronomical. And why would it ever stop, when she’d have the leverage to control him for the rest of her life? She could try to control custody, or make their child hate him through her lies. She could leave Santiago like a fish gasping on a hook.
Belle had deliberately misled him, saying she couldn’t get pregnant. Later, she’d ambushed him with her news and then fled New York, just to show him she meant business. She’d done all this for a reason. To get the upper hand.
But he wouldn’t let her use their innocent baby as a pawn. He couldn’t be forced or tricked into abandoning a child. Not after what he’d endured himself as a boy. Belle didn’t know who she was dealing with. Santiago would scorch the earth to win this war.
His eyes narrowed. She thought she could defeat him? He’d fought his way from an orphanage in Madrid, stowing away at eighteen on a ship to New York City with the equivalent of five hundred dollars in his pocket. Now, he was a billionaire, the majority owner of an international conglomerate that sold everything from running shoes to snack foods on six continents. You didn’t do that by being weak, or letting anyone else win.
Belle was in his world now. His world. His rules.
“I’ll never marry you,” she ground out, her brown eyes shooting sparks. “I’ll never belong to you.”
“You already do, Belle,” he said flatly. “You just don’t know it yet.” Turning, he made a quick gesture to his helicopter pilot, who started the engine.
She gave an incredulous laugh over the rising noise of the helicopter. “You’re crazy!”
Santiago looked down at her. Even now, despising Belle as his enemy, he felt more drawn than ever. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, perhaps, but somehow she was more seductive than any woman he’d ever known. His eyes unwillingly traced the curve of her cheek. The slope of her graceful neck. The fullness of her pregnancy-swollen breasts.
Belle was right, he thought grimly. He was crazy. Because even knowing her for a lying, almost sociopathic gold digger, he wanted her in his bed more than ever.
“I’d be crazy to abandon my child to you,” he said evenly. He looked over his shoulder at the wooden house in the barren sagebrush field, with only a few wan, spindly trees overlooking a dry creek bed. “Or to this.”
Following his gaze, she looked outraged. “You’re judging me because I don’t live in a palace?”
“I’m judging what you’ve done to escape it,” he said grimly. He knew all about how she’d been raised here, and only left a year and a half before. He wondered if her dream of Broadway stardom had always been a cover story, and she’d planned to hook a rich man from the beginning. Maybe even her friendship with Letty had been contrived, to better throw Belle in the path of wealthy targets.
The only thing good about this isolated, bare land was the view of the endless blue sky. The sky above the dry grass prairie was starkly dramatic. You could see forever. The freedom. The unending loneliness.
But there were all kinds of loneliness. You could be lonely surrounded by others, as he’d learned as a child.
His own son or daughter would never know that kind of loneliness. He or she would never feel unwanted, or alone. He would see to that.
He turned away. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Paternity test.”
“Forget it—”
He whirled on her with narrowed eyes. “You hate me,” he growled. “Fine. I feel the same for you. But does not our child, at least, deserve to know the truth about his parents?”
She glared at him, her eyes glittering with dislike. Then her expression faltered. He’d found the one argument that could sway her.
“Fine,” she bit out.
“You’ll take the test?”
“For my baby’s sake. Not yours.”
He exhaled. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, wondering if he’d have to physically force her into the helicopter—a very unpleasant thought, especially with a woman who was likely pregnant with his child. He was relieved she wasn’t being so unreasonable.
Then he realized Belle must have decided to change her strategy. She was just shifting her ground, like a boxer. Santiago’s lips pressed together in a thin line. He glanced at his bodyguards, hovering nearby. “Get her things.”
As his men reached into her pickup, Santiago took her arm, leading her forward. Within seconds, she was sitting comfortably beside him on a leather seat inside the luxury helicopter.
“I’ll take the test, but I’m never going to marry you,” she said over the sound of the propellers.
He narrowed his eyes coldly. “We both know this is exactly what you wanted to happen. So stop the act. In your heart, I know you are rejoicing.”
“I’m not!”
“Your joy will not last long.” He drew closer, his face inches from hers. “You will find that being my wife is different than you imagined. You won’t own me, Belle. I will own you.”
Her brown eyes got big, and he felt a current of electricity course through his body. Against his will, his gaze fell to her lips. So delicious. So sensual and red. Heat surged through his veins.
He’d always despised the idea of marriage, but for the first time, he saw the benefits. As much as he hated her, it had only lifted his desire to a fever. And he knew, by the nervous flicker of her tongue against her lips even now, that Belle felt the same.
Once wed, she would be in his bed, at his command, for as long as he desired. Because one thing, at least, hadn’t been a lie between them.
So why wait?
For all these months, since the explosive night he’d taken her virginity, he’d denied himself the pleasure of her. Both for his own sake and, he’d once believed, for hers.
No longer.
Tonight, he thought hungrily. He would have her in his bed tonight.
But first things first.
Putting on a headset, Santiago spoke to the pilot over the rising noise of the blades whipping the sky. “Let’s go.”
&nb
sp; * * *
Sitting in the helicopter, Belle looked through the window across the wide plains of Texas. Far below, she saw wild horses running across the prairie, feral and free, a hundred miles away from any human civilization.
She envied them right now.
“Those are mine.” Santiago’s voice came through her headset. Sitting on the white leather seat beside her, he nodded toward the horses with satisfaction. “We’re on the north edge of my property.”
So even the wild horses weren’t free, she thought glumly. It was the first time they’d spoken in the noisy helicopter since they’d left the world-class medical clinic in Houston.
“You want to own everything, don’t you?”
“I do own everything.” Santiago’s dark eyes gleamed at her. “My ranch is nearly half a million acres.”
“Half a—” She sucked in her breath, then said slowly, “Wait. Did you buy the Alford Ranch?”
He raised a sardonic eyebrow. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Of course I’ve heard of it,” she snapped. “It’s famous. There was a scandal a few years ago when it was sold to some foreigner—you?”
He shrugged. “All of this land was once owned by Spaniards, so some people might say that the Alfords were the foreigners. I was merely reacquiring it.”
She looked at him skeptically. “Spaniards owned this?”
“Most of South Texas was once claimed by the Spanish Empire, in the time of the conquistadors.”
“How do you know that?”
He gave a grim smile. “My father’s family is very proud of their history. When I was a boy, and still cared, I read about my ancestors. The family line goes back six hundred years.”
“The Velazquez family can be traced six hundred years?” she blurted out. She barely knew the full names of her own great-grandparents.
“Velazquez is my mother’s name. My father is a Zoya. The eighth Duque de Sangovia.”
His voice was so flat she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “Your father is a duke? An actual duke?”
