“I agree, sir. And that’s not the problem.”
“Then, what is?” Dios, he was tired. He wanted a meal and a shower and a night’s sleep, but he damned well suspected he wasn’t about to get them any time soon.
“Tell him, Thaddeus,” the woman said.
Lucas looked at her. Her face was blank but hatred for him shone in her eyes.
Suddenly his exhaustion dropped away.
He thought of how he could change that look by taking her into his arms again and kissing her into submission. How she would respond to him. How she would beg him to make love to her.
Damn it, he thought, and strode to the window, stared into the black night while the wind shook the trees and the rain pelted the roof. He had nowhere to go until morning or, more precisely, he had no way to leave this place until then.
He had to calm down.
A deep breath. Then he turned to the attorney.
“She’s right for once, Norton. Tell me the rest. I’m sure I’ll find it amusing.”
The lawyer pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face.
“First, you must understand, sir. The ranch was not always the way it is today.”
Lucas glanced at the photos on the wall. “So what? For all I give a damn, it might have been the finest ranch in all Texas.”
“It was,” the woman said in defiance.
“Fine. It was paradise. Just get on with it.”
“A royal command, Thaddeus. You must obey.”
Lucas glared at her. “Be careful, amada,” he said softly.
“Yes, Alyssa, please. You’re only making matters worse.”
“You’re the one making matters worse,” she snapped. “If you’d done as I asked and simply ignored this whole thing—”
Lucas slammed his fist on the desk. So much for staying calm.
“Damn it,” he roared, “that’s it! Tell me what you’re hiding about that contract, Norton, or so help me, I’ll see you never practice law again!”
Thaddeus Norton took a briefcase from a chair and extracted a thick folder.
“Just bear in mind, sir, I told Aloysius this was insane.”
“Insane?” The woman gave a shaky laugh. “How about immoral? Unethical? How about it’s like something out of bad melodrama?”
“When the two of you get tired of this conversation,” Lucas said coldly, “perhaps you’ll be good enough to explain what in hell you’re talking about.”
The attorney opened his mouth and then shut it again. The woman shot him a look, then lifted her chin. She looked beautiful, proud and untouchable.
“Thaddeus is a coward, so I’ll do it and then we can all have a good laugh. For starters…I hate to disappoint you, Mr. Reyes, but Aloysius wasn’t my lover.” She paused. “He was my father.”
“You’re McDonough’s daughter?”
“His adopted daughter. My name was originally Montero. And there was never any warmth between Aloysius and me.”
“Alyssa,” Norton said wearily, “that’s ancient history.”
“You’re right for once, Thaddeus, but our esteemed visitor wants answers. Well, I’m giving them to him. My mother is dead and so is Aloysius. I cannot imagine missing him, especially now that he’s drawn me into this—this mess.” Her smile was bitter. “Sorry this is all far less intriguing than me being the star of some sordid little drama, Your Mightiness, but that’s the way it is.”
“Let me get this straight,” Lucas said in the tone of a man who’d just watched a rabbit pulled from a hat and knew damned well that sleight-of-hand tricks were not magic. “Aloysius McDonough learns he’s dying. He has no wife but he has a daughter. She’s cold and unfeeling and he has no desire to give her the land he once loved.”
“Sounds good. And you’ve got it half-right, except the land was actually my mother’s. And she loved it.”
“Forgive me,” Lucas said with heavy sarcasm. “I had the characters wrong but not the basic plot. You want the ranch. I own it. And? You got me here so you could do what? Beg me to give it back? Ask me to sell it to you for next to nothing?” His mouth twisted. “Or did you imagine you’d seduce me into giving it to you,” he said, his eyes locked to hers. “Was that the plan?”
“Try ‘none of the above,’” she said coldly.
“Really?” Lucas folded his arms. “I wasn’t born yesterday, amada. Not being mentioned in Daddy’s will must have been hard to accept.”
“But I am mentioned. That’s the problem.”
“He left you something, then? Good for you but I don’t see how it involves me, or why I’ve come such a distance to watch such a badly written play.”
Was he wrong, or did some of her confidence seem to drain away?
“There’s a clause in the contract. I didn’t know about it until Aloysius died and the will was read. It’s—it’s what Thaddeus calls the stipulation.”
“Dios, you say that as if the word might burn your mouth. Are you going to explain it, or must I shake it out of you?”
“I would advise against anything so foolish, Mr. Reyes.”
That tough attitude was back. The statement was a challenge. So was the way she’d addressed him. His honorific creaked with antiquity in this century but her deliberate avoidance of it was, he knew, an insult.
Well, he wouldn’t rise to the bait. He wanted the truth and he had the feeling it was worse than it seemed, more than one man scamming another out of a lot of money.
“Explain, then,” he said gruffly.
Alyssa touched the tip of her tongue to her lips.
“Everything you’ve heard is true. My father offered this ranch to your grandfather, and your grandfather agreed to buy it. But—”
“But?”
“But,” she said, her voice suddenly low, “your grandfather—your grandfather wanted to purchase something more. And my father agreed to sell it to him.”
She fell silent as thunder roared over the house. The scent of ozone, of anticipation, hung in the air. A streak of jagged light sizzled just outside the window; thunder clapped overhead. It lent an air of melodrama to the scene.
And yet, Lucas thought, this was no melodrama. Whatever was playing out here was real.
Once, kayaking down a wild river, his craft had been poised at the lip of a class four rapid for what had seemed an eternity, enough time for him to look down into a whirlpool he knew had claimed many lives.
His heart had missed a beat as he hung above it, caught somewhere between exhilaration and terror.
That was how he felt now, looking at Alyssa McDonough, waiting for her to finish telling him what he had come all this distance to learn.
“And?” he said softly. “What’s the ‘something more’ your father agreed to sell to my grandfather?”
An eternity seemed to pass. Then Alyssa shuddered and raised her eyes to his.
“Me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE look of horror on Lucas Reyes’s handsome face was exactly what Alyssa had expected.
She recalled feeling just as horrified when Thaddeus first told her about what he kept calling the “stipulation.”
“It’s a joke,” she’d insisted. “It’s not legally binding. A clause like that is absolute nonsense.”
“It isn’t that simple,” Thaddeus had said carefully. Marriage contracts, he explained, could be legal and binding. They were still in use in parts of the world, especially in royal families.
Alyssa had snorted with derision.
“I have news for you. We don’t sell human beings in America.”
“No one is selling a human being. I keep telling you, it’s—”
“A marriage contract. It’s still illegal. Tell Prince Felix I said so. And if he argues, tell him where he can shove that stipulation!”
“Read the contract before you make a decision, will you? It calls for the Reyes to restore the land and use it, in perpetuity, for ranching. Otherwise, the bank will seize it and you know what that means.�
��
She knew, all right. A local developer was panting for all these rolling acres, eager to turn them into soulless tracts of cheap housing.
It was a sobering realization. Losing her mother’s land was bad enough. Losing it to a developer was worse but being married off to a stranger…
“How could you have drawn up such a document?” she’d demanded.
Thaddeus admitted that he hadn’t. Prince Felix’s attorneys had done virtually all the legal work. He had done nothing but, in his words, crossed a few t’s and dotted a couple of i’s.
She was still groaning over that when he’d dropped the next bit of news.
Felix’s grandson, the prince who would permit his grandfather to buy him a bride, was on his way to finalize arrangements.
“He’s not finalizing anything!”
“The contract exists, Alyssa. I’m afraid there’s little I can do.”
“You can change it. Research it. Find precedents we can use to break it. I’ll do the same. Damn it, I had a year of law school. I know there’s not a contract written that can’t be broken. How come you don’t know that, too?”
“Read the contract,” Thaddeus had repeated wearily.
So she’d read it. And the more she’d read, the more she’d seen just how cleverly the Reyes’s lawyers had been in their use of language and tort law.
The contract seemed unassailable.
She’d sent Prince Felix a letter, demanding he forget the stipulation. She hadn’t received an answer. She’d figured that meant the Spanish prince would not be dissuaded from coming to the ranch. Why? Was it to try to hold her to the contract terms? Did he actually think he could do that? Most of all, why would he be willing to marry a woman he had never seen?
The only thing that made sense was that Lucas Reyes was the human equivalent of a toad.
Squat. Bloated, with constant drool falling from fleshy lips. Ugly enough to frighten small children. Or tall. Skinny as a scarecrow, with ears that stood out from his head. After a couple of days, she’d decided he probably had warts, too.
And then she and Bebé had come within an inch of riding down a stranger. A tall, dark-haired, hot-eyed, gorgeous stranger…
The Spanish prince. And he had no idea who she was, or the real reason he was here. He honestly thought he’d come to look at a mare.
In reality, he’d come to look at her. Breeding stock, according to Aloysius.
Hadn’t he always described her in the terms horsemen used when talking about mares? It started when she turned sixteen. She had, he’d said, good bloodlines. Good conformation. She’d make someone a good wife. Someone with money, who could infuse life back into the ranch was what he’d meant, though nobody dared say it.
A couple of months later, Aloysius had sent her east to boarding school, then college. She’d come home when her mother took ill, went east again after her death—and returned for the last time when Aloysius was dying. An act of human decency, because it had seemed the right thing to do.
Now here she was, staring at the stud she was supposed to be bred to.
The man who’d bought her from Aloysius.
So much for human decency.
Okay. Lucas Reyes hadn’t bought her. He hadn’t even known about the deal. Whatever. It was still humiliating and once she knew his identity, thanks to George, she’d phoned Thaddeus and demanded he drive over and handle things. She would stand by and listen, but Thaddeus would do the talking.
Wrong.
Thaddeus had taken the coward’s way out. He’d tiptoed up to the truth, then lurched away from it so that she was stuck with the job. She’d have to explain why he was here to Lucas Reyes. It was horrible and demeaning and…
And, just look at the man. Look at His Mightiness. His jaw was trying its best to defy gravity.
He was—what was the word? Nonplussed. Alyssa wanted to laugh. His Mightiness, the Prince of NonPlussed. It didn’t even the score. She was still humiliated but at least he was completely bewildered.
How nice. How well-deserved.
He’d done a fine job of bewildering her this afternoon. Invading her space, forcing a confrontation…
Kissing her as if it was his right—but he probably thought it was. He was a prince, born to wealth and power and, okay, good looks.
Why not be honest?
Lucas Reyes was gorgeous.
Black hair. Hazel eyes. Strong jaw. A little dent in his nose that only heightened his sexiness.
He must have broken it sometime in the past.
A riding accident? Or an accident with a woman? It was nice to think some woman had given the prince her best shot.
The rest of the man was gorgeous, too. Long. Lean. Hard-muscled. When he’d kissed her she’d felt the masculine power of his body. The strength of it. When he’d kissed her…
God, when he’d kissed her…
Alyssa blinked. Lucas was looking at her with the intensity of a rattlesnake watching a field mouse.
It frightened her but she’d sooner have died than let him know it. She didn’t know much about men—why would she want to? What she’d learned, watching her mother defer to Aloysius, was enough. But she knew stallions and to show weakness to a stallion was to put yourself in mortal danger.
So she steeled herself for the Spanish prince’s inevitable questions and reminded herself that she’d had nothing to do with any of this, and he’d damned well better get that straight.
“Explain yourself.”
His voice was low and filled with command. Alyssa narrowed her eyes. The last time anyone had used that tone with her was in sixth grade and Miss Ellison had demanded to know why she’d punched Ted Marsden in the nose.
Because he thought he could get away with putting his hand on my backside, she’d said, and Miss Ellison had tried, unsuccessfully, not to laugh.
Nobody was laughing now.
Alyssa drew herself up. “Excuse me?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said. I just didn’t like the way you said it.”
Lucas stepped forward. She managed to stand her ground but was that really better than tilting her head back so she could keep her eyes on his?
“It’s been a very long day, amada,” he said softly. “I am tired and irritable, I have not eaten since morning, and I am in no mood for nonsense.”
“I’m sorry if you find our hospitality lacking,” Alyssa said, her coolness making a mockery of the words, “but I am equally tired and irritable and, thanks to your presence, I have not eaten, either. Just knowing you were here spoiled my appetite.”
She gasped as his hands closed around her shoulders.
“You are quick to offer insult.”
“You are quick to show your temper.”
“I want answers.”
“And I want you gone. Perhaps, if we cooperate, we can both get what we want.”
Angry as he was, Lucas almost laughed. Dios, this one was tough! Not that she wasn’t frightened. Despite her show of bravado, he could feel her trembling under his hands.
Was she afraid of him?
He hoped not. She had angered him, yes. Infuriated him, was closer to the truth, but he had no taste for scaring women, especially women with such deep blue eyes and sweet, tender mouths.
And look how quickly she’d taken his thoughts from where they belonged, he thought coldly.
Something was going on here, a scam, a swindle of some kind, and he was not going to let this woman, who was surely part of it, distract him.
“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said, señorita.” Lucas lifted his hands from her shoulders. “So, go on. Explain yourself. Oh. Sorry.” A smile that wasn’t a smile at all twisted his mouth. “What I meant,” he said dryly, “is, would you kindly tell me what you meant by that cryptic statement? In what way did my grandfather supposedly ‘buy’ you?”
Alyssa decided to ignore his sarcasm. It was time to get this over with.
“As Thaddeus told you, yo
ur grandfather and my adoptive father signed a contract. Felix paid Aloysius half the agreed-upon price.”
Lucas was watching her through narrowed eyes. “With the other half due when?”
“When the stipulation had been fulfilled.”
“There’s that word again.”
Alyssa swallowed. A moment ago, she’d been ready to explain. Now—God, now, she just wanted the floor to open up.
“Well? I’m waiting. What ‘stipulation’?”
“It’s—it’s…The stipulation involves—”
Her tongue felt as if it were glued to the roof of her mouth. How did you tell a man he was supposed to marry you?
“You see, Alyssa?” Thaddeus Norton’s plump face was flushed. “It isn’t that easy after all.”
The lawyer marched across the room to Lucas and held out the folder he’d taken from his briefcase. A couple of minutes out of the line of fire seemed to have restored his courage.
“Read it yourself, Your Highness. In the end, it’s simpler that way.”
Lucas nodded, took the folder, extracted a sheaf of papers from it, turned his back to the room and began to read.
Half an hour went by.
Then he swung toward the attorney.
“This is insane.”
“It’s a marriage contract.”
Lucas’s face darkened. “Do not provoke me, Norton.”
The lawyer’s few seconds of courage seemed to be over.
“I’m not trying to provoke you, sir,” he stammered, “I’m just stating the facts. That document—”
“Is a joke!” Lucas flung the pages on the desk and watched as they fluttered to the floor like dry leaves. “No one signs things like this anymore.”
Alyssa nodded. “I said that. I told Thaddeus—”
“You told Thaddeus,” Lucas said sharply. “Oh, I’ll just bet you did!” His eyes narrowed. “Or did you dictate this to him line by line? Did you dip back into the middle ages and come up with a document guaranteed to send me into orbit?”
“Me?” She moved toward him, eyes flashing. “You think I…? Let me tell you something, Mr. Reyes—”
“It’s Prince Reyes,” Lucas snarled. “Or Your Highness. Get it straight.”
The Spanish Prince s Virgin Bride Page 5
