by Jennie Lucas
Nestling close, Hana looked up at him with a blushing, intimate smile that he felt all over his body. Looking back at his employees, Antonio held up his hand for silence.
“Thank you to everyone who made this deal possible today. You will take CrossWorld Airways into not just Asia, but the future!” He paused to allow for applause, taking champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. Hana held her flute, but did not drink it. “But I have other news, even more important to me personally.”
“What could be more important than business?” one of his lawyers hollered. Antonio smiled, then looked down at Hana in his arms.
“This wonderful woman, whom most of you know as my executive assistant, just became more. She’s become, this very hour, my wife.”
There was a gasp.
Hana looked up at him, biting her lip nervously. Antonio hesitated, wondering if he should hide the baby news for a few weeks more. But why? Half the people in the room had probably already guessed it, just based on the quickness of the marriage. Best to get all the juicy scandal out at once, and be done with it. “There’s more.” He paused. “We’re expecting a baby.”
The gasp became a roar, followed by more applause, as people surged forward to congratulate them, their faces all various degrees of shock and delight.
Hana was immediately circled by a group of women exclaiming over her and asking questions about the sudden wedding, and about her pregnancy. Antonio had a brief glimpse of her shy, happy smile as she was led away, before his view was blocked by one of his sharpest New York lawyers, coming forward with a well-cut suit and a big grin.
“I can’t believe it, Mr. Delacruz! Here I thought you were immune!” The man shook his head, rolling his eyes heavenward as he held up his martini glass. “A toast to love! It gets the best of all of us, sooner or later!”
“We should toast marriage,” a female lawyer chirped behind him. “Half our firm’s billable hours come from divorce!” At the head lawyer’s harsh glare, she blanched and mumbled, “Er, not that that will ever happen to you, Mr. Delacruz.”
“Of course not.” The head lawyer, a corporate shark whose going rate was three thousand dollars an hour, turned back to him with a blinding smile. “We’ve never handled Mr. Delacruz’s personal matters. So tell me,” he leaned forward confidentially, “Who did your prenup? I never heard a whisper. Tokyo’s top firm, I assume.” He gave a jovial laugh. “Obviously. It’s not like you’d want to just give away half your company.”
It hurt to hear those painful words out loud. Antonio flinched, feeling like he’d just been punched in the face, knocked out of his sensual dream into a harsh, cold reality.
Heart pounding, he slowly turned toward Hana. Across the room, she was smiling happily as she showed the other women the sparkling diamond on her finger. Then, suddenly, she looked up at the door, and her face lit up. With a gasp, she ran toward the door, her dark hair and pale pink sundress flying behind her.
Ren Tanaka stood in the doorway, his handsome face blank as he dropped his suitcase to the floor with a bang.
Watching as his wife threw her arms around the other man, Antonio felt suddenly sick inside.
He’d just given away his life, everything he cared about, everything that gave him value, to a woman who could now ruin him with a mere flick of her finger.
If Hana ever wanted to destroy Antonio, she could now. She could burn him to the ground. Leave him desolate and worthless and alone.
What had he just done?
* * *
“You’re here!” Hana cried, throwing her arms around her best friend. “I didn’t think you’d make it!”
“I didn’t,” Ren said grimly, pulling away from her impulsive embrace. “I dropped everything and took the bullet train from Osaka. But I’m still too late.”
She’d texted Ren her current location, after having left a long, rushed message on his phone hours before. She’d hoped and feared in equal parts that Ren would somehow make it to their wedding—hoped, because he was her only family, and feared, because she was afraid he’d try to talk her out of it or make a scene.
The truth was, Hana still couldn’t quite believe she’d done it. She’d married Antonio.
But he’d offered her everything she’d ever wanted.
A home. A real father for their baby. Marriage. Passion.
And half the company. That was most shocking of all. Antonio—offering to share his airline?
For all this time, she’d told herself that a selfish playboy workaholic like Antonio Delacruz would never change.
But the truth was he already had. In the space of two days, he’d gone from rejecting her, to offering child support money, to asking her to be his mistress, to proposing marriage and asking to share full-time parenting.
Hana thought of what she’d learned about his heartbreaking childhood. And yet he was still willing to take the risk.
The more she learned about Antonio, the more she—cared.
And he was starting to care for her as well. He had to be. Because there was no other reason he would have offered to share his company.
If he was willing to share his most precious possession with her, didn’t that also have to mean he’d be willing to truly share his life?
“How could you do it, Hana?” Ren demanded. “How could you marry him?”
Blinking, she looked at her friend in the elegant, crowded bar. His handsome face looked so strange. She said slowly, “Antonio is the father of my baby.”
“And when I left Tokyo, you said you’d never see him again.”
“He changed my mind.”
“How?”
“He’s not the man I thought he was, Ren. He wants to settle down, and be a father to our baby. Look, I know our wedding was a little sudden...”
“Sudden.” Ren’s face looked grimmer still. “Is that what you call it?” He looked around the modern bar, filled with Antonio’s employees and lawyers in their office clothes, getting drunk on martinis and sake. “This is your wedding reception?” He glanced at her pale pink sundress, which was starting to look a little limp after a full day of wear. “That’s your wedding dress?”
She stiffened. “Do you really think I care about the wedding details?”
Ren stared at her, and she blanched as she remembered all the times as a girl that she’d described ridiculous dreams about her faraway, someday wedding.
Her throat suddenly hurt. A moment before, she’d convinced herself that their impulsive ceremony had been perfect. Efficient. No plans, no worries, just done and over with.
But now, it suddenly occurred to her that she’d never have another wedding. Or the chance to experience romantic, fairy-tale love.
Good, she told herself. So their child would never know how it felt to be excluded, as Hana had.
But the reassurance felt hollow.
“You don’t even have a wedding cake,” Ren said contemptuously, looking around. “Where are your seven tiers with white buttercream frosting flowers?”
“I don’t care about cake.” She lifted her hand defiantly. “Besides. He got me this.”
Grabbing her hand, Ren closely examined the enormous platinum-set diamond ring. Then he snorted, releasing her hand. “That had to be his idea. Not yours.”
Pulling back her arm, she said stiffly, “It doesn’t matter. The wedding doesn’t matter. Just the marriage. We’re having a baby. We’re a family now. Partners.”
Silence fell between them, even as all around them people laughed over the bar’s loud, raucous music. One of the New York lawyers was yelling, “A toast! To annual growth next year of eight percent!”
“Nine!” someone else roared, sloshing his drink.
Ren looked at her in the shadowy entrance of the bar.
“Partners,” he said sardonically. “Very romantic.”
Her cheeks
heated. She couldn’t meet his gaze. “You know I never asked for love.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
With an intake of breath, she looked up, and saw the blatant pain in Ren’s dark eyes. Putting a hand to her mouth, she whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s so hideously unfair. I never meant to—”
“I know.” He tried to smile. “I was stupid to let myself love you when I knew you wouldn’t love me back. But I convinced myself—” He turned away. “It was stupid.”
Hana felt grief that she’d hurt her best friend. And on the edges of that grief, she felt fear.
I was stupid to let myself love you when I knew you wouldn’t love me back.
No, she told herself. She wouldn’t let herself fall in love with Antonio. No matter how charming or wonderful her husband might be. Because no matter how much he’d changed, she knew he’d never love her back. That miracle would be a step too far.
But as she looked across the crowded room, she saw her husband sitting at the bar. He lifted his head and his dark eyes burned through her soul.
Taking a deep breath, Hana quickly turned away. “Please, Ren. Just be happy.”
“Don’t worry about me.” His eyes narrowed. “But if your husband ever does the slightest thing to cause you pain—if he hurts you or disappoints you in any way—”
“He won’t,” Hana assured him. “Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I never meant to—”
“Stop.” A low strangled curse came from his throat. “I’ll get over it, Hana.”
“Get over it?”
He looked at her. “Loving you.”
She’d never thought she could feel so sad, standing beside her best friend on what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. Her view was suddenly blocked by Emika Ito.
“Congratulations again,” she told Hana warmly. “Married, and expecting a baby!” She shook her head, grinning. “No one thought Mr. Delacruz would settle down. I’ve always heard you were an amazing person, Hana. Now I think you’re a rock star!”
“Oh,” said Hana, who didn’t feel remotely rock star-ish at the moment.
Emika turned to Ren. “Mr. Delacruz wants to talk to you.”
His eyes darkened. “He does?”
“Alone.”
Antonio and Ren—talking alone? Anxiety ripped through Hana. “I’ll come with you.”
“No,” he said.
“You don’t have to do it—”
“You’re wrong,” Ren said grimly. He looked toward the bar. “I can hardly wait.”
* * *
Glancing toward the doorway from where he was sitting, Antonio saw Ren Tanaka coming forward with a glower and turned back to the bartender. “Double scotch.”
As the drink was placed in front of him, Antonio took a sip, letting the harsh liquid burn him from the inside. Scotch for a wedding reception. It should have been champagne, with toasts to the bridal couple, instead of to the future profitability of CrossWorld Airways. But then, as Antonio had told Hana, they weren’t a normal couple.
No. Any normal man in his position would have insisted on a prenup, instead of stupidly offering up half his fortune.
He could trust Hana, he told himself. He could trust her. He did trust her.
Antonio pressed the glass against his forehead, to cool his hot skin.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself.” Tanaka’s voice was cold as he slid into the empty bar stool beside him.
Turning, Antonio bared his teeth in a smile. “If you mean proud of marrying Hana, then yes, I’m very proud. She’s carrying my child and I’ve done right by her.”
“Right,” Tanaka sneered. He glanced back at Hana, who was still by the doorway talking to Emika Ito, throwing them worried glances. “The right thing would have been to set her free to marry someone who’s worthy of her.”
“That’s you, I suppose.”
“More than you’ll ever be.” Tanaka looked around. “This is how you marry Hana? No cake, no wedding dress, just some office party in a bar?”
The last thing Antonio needed was to be criticized just when he was already kicking himself about the prenup. His lip twisted in a snarl. “She doesn’t love you, Tanaka. Get over it.”
“She might have found a way to love me, someday, if you’d just left her alone. But you couldn’t, could you? You selfishly took her for yourself.”
“She kissed me first,” Antonio took malicious pleasure in informing him. “I didn’t seduce her. She kissed me.”
The younger man’s eyes flashed, then his jaw set. “You’re a selfish bastard, Delacruz. You jump from one place and person to the next, because you’re afraid if you stick around anywhere too long, people will realize you’re nothing. An empty husk.”
From long practice, Antonio kept his expression amused, so the other man wouldn’t know he’d hit his target. His voice was cool as he pointed out, “And yet Hana still chose me over you.”
“A choice you’ll make her regret, won’t you? Starting with this pathetic wedding.”
“I’ve planned her an amazing honeymoon,” said Antonio, who’d just that moment thought of it.
Tanaka muttered something in Japanese.
Antonio bared his teeth. “Consider your friendship with her over. Stay away from my wife.”
“You’ll never be good enough for her,” the younger man replied coldly. “You know it. I know it.” As the two men looked at Hana across the room, she turned and met Antonio’s gaze. Almost at once, her stunning face lit up, and he unwillingly felt his heart rise. Then he heard Tanaka add under his breath, “And someday soon, Hana will know it, too.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
HEAVEN. SHE WAS in heaven.
The hot Caribbean sun was shining on a sea that was so impossibly blue it burned Hana’s eyes to look at it from the pink sand beach.
Looking out from the lounge chair beneath the open-air cabana, where she was stretched out in a turquoise string bikini, she lifted her sunglasses and watched her husband rise from the sea.
Rivulets of water ran from his dark hair down his thick neck and over the muscles and hollows of his torso, to the edge of his swim trunks. All that water, and as she looked at him, her mouth went dry.
Coming over to the cabana, which was just wooden pillars, a slatted roof and white curtains perched over the sand, Antonio smiled down at her, his eyes crinkling. “You should have joined me in the water.”
“I was reading...” Then she saw that her book had fallen from her lap, and lay upside down in the sand, and blushed. His smile widened, and he sat beside her on the lounge chair.
“I have other ways to entertain you,” he said softly, running his large hand from her neck down the valley between her breasts, to her belly, naked and warmed by the sun. Her breathing quickened.
Her husband. Antonio was her husband now. She still couldn’t quite believe it. When they’d left their reception in Tokyo, he’d surprised her by taking her on a honeymoon to his private island in the Caribbean, where she knew for a fact he’d never taken anyone. It had always been his private demesne, where he went to get away from the world.
But he’d brought her here.
“You’re so good to me,” she said.
“So you don’t mind not having the wedding of your dreams?”
Not for the first time, Hana wondered what Ren had said to him in Tokyo. The last thing she wanted was for Antonio to feel bad. “I didn’t need a romantic wedding.”
Antonio gave her a skeptical look.
“Well, the honeymoon has more than made up for it,” she said, sighing with pleasure as she leaned back on the lounge chair, and that, at least, was utterly true.
After three days on his private island, she felt deliciously good all over. It was the longest vacation
either of them had ever had. With their phones turned off and the company’s decisions temporarily delegated to the COO, there had been nothing for them to do but enjoy each other.
Instead of thinking about work, they’d spent their days making love. Staying in a luxurious, sprawling villa, cared for by a live-in staff of ten, they’d laughed, splashing on the beach, kissing in the shallow blue water, drinking virgin piña coladas and eating seafood brought fresh from the sea.
“You look tense,” her husband informed her now with a wicked smile. “Let me give you a massage.”
Hana shivered as he slowly ran his hands down the length of her bare legs. As she felt his fingers caress and stroke the hollows of her feet, her gaze traced dreamily over the satin smoothness of her husband’s powerful body. His muscular thighs, his flat belly. His thick forearms, laced with dark hair. The hard line of his cheekbones and jaw, shadowed with bristle. His cruelly sensual lips.
Dappled sunlight flashed through the slatted roof of the cabana. A warm fragrant breeze, scented of sea salt and lush tropical flowers, caressed her skin, blowing against the gauzy white curtains that protected them from the eyes of the villa’s well-trained, discreet staff.
This cabana had become one of her favorite places on the private island, on the edge of the pink sand beach, with a breathtaking view of the Caribbean, separated from the bright blue horizon only by the sweep of green palm trees across the cove. And she’d never loved it more than now, on their last precious day before they returned to Madrid.
Antonio’s hands stopped, and his dark eyes seared hers.
“I want you, querida,” he growled.
She caught her breath. In spite of the hours he’d spent making love to her day and night since they’d arrived at this island, she wanted him as badly as if they’d never even kissed, as if she weren’t already carrying his baby inside her.
How was it possible that each time they made love, instead of satiating their desire, it only caused their fire to burn hotter?
Sitting up in the lounge chair, she reached out to stroke his rough cheek. His dark hair, still wet and plastered back, revealed the scar on his left temple where the awful boys at a Spanish orphanage had once beaten a six-year-old boy for crying. Gently, deliberately, she ran her fingertips over the raised scar.
