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Her brothers quickly trooped out and Alexandra slowly turned to face Wolf, who had a black eye, a bloody nose, swollen lip, bruised cheekbone and a big ugly mark at his temple.
“What were you thinking?” she whispered.
Wolf shrugged wearily. “I wanted to be with you,” he said, swaying on his feet. “I wanted to be here—” he drew a breath and reached up to wipe away blood trickling from a cut in his cheekbone “—for you.”
“For me?”
He wiped the blood on the back of his jeans. “You must be worried sick about your dad. If it were my dad, I would be.”
“And that’s why you’re here?”
“Alexandra, I said I’d be there for you anytime you needed me. And so I’m here.”
She blinked back tears. He looked as if he’d been run over by a truck. “Getting ambushed by my brothers.”
“I was doing okay.”
Her lips pursed. “Let’s get you to the kitchen and get some ice on those bumps and bruises.”
In the kitchen, she directed Wolf to a chair at the scarred pine farm table while she made him an ice pack out of a plastic bag and some ice cubes inside a clean dish towel.
She studied him, ice pack in hand. Blood continued to trickle from a cut in his cheekbone—he might need stitches for that one—and more blood dried at the corner of his lip. His forehead was shadowed with pink and purple. His hair was long, definitely not combed. He hadn’t shaved in God knew how long and circles were etched deeply beneath his famous smoldering eyes.
“Wolf, I’m worried some of these cuts will end up in scars.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do,” she said, pressing the ice pack to his temple, furious all over again.
“Alexandra, I’d fight a hundred men for you. I’d slay dragons, too.”
She saw him wince as she shifted the ice pack around on his head. “Wolf, when I said fight for me, I didn’t mean literally.”
His laugh was low and self-mocking. “I might be too old to box professionally, but I wasn’t going to lose you, Alexandra. You’re mine. You’ve been mine from the very beginning.”
“When you called me ‘ordinary’?” she replied.
He reached up to wrap his hand around her wrist as she held the ice to his temple. “Ordinary’s a good thing, love. After ten years of Hollywood nonsense, I welcomed you like a breath of fresh air. It didn’t take me long to realize that I might be far from home but you were exactly what I needed. Wanted. Loved.”
Alexandra’s hand trembled as she clutched the ice pack. Wolf was her undoing. “I don’t stand a chance against you, do I?” she murmured.
He tipped his head back, smiled up at her, dark eyes hot, wicked. “No.”
And he just kept on melting her heart.
It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t resist him. And God knew she’d tried.
Wolf’s hand warmed hers, and once her trembling stopped, he pulled her hand away, discarded the ice pack and drew her down onto his lap. “Come home, lady,” he said, dropping his head to kiss her throat. “Come home with me. Start a family with me.”
She leaned against him as his arms went around her. “You forgive me then?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I’m as much at fault as you. I can see now I didn’t handle Joy’s illness well. I thought I was doing the right thing, but in retrospect I see I only made the problem worse.”
“She’s better now?”
Wolf’s shoulders lifted. “She was in Arizona in rehab for three months. She swears she’s done drinking, but it’s not my battle anymore. It’s hers. We both know it.”
Her forehead furrowed with concern. “You were really worried about her.”
“I thought she’d die,” he answered simply.
Alexandra twisted on his knee to better see his face. “Die?”
“My mom was an alcoholic, too.” Wolf rubbed his hand over his jaw, and for a moment a shadow of the old torment was back, darkening his eyes. “That’s why my father took me away from her when I was twelve. She died less than a year later—alcohol poisoning—and I’ve always blamed my father. And myself. I hated that we just left her, didn’t help her. I thought we might as well have killed her ourselves.”
“That’s why you couldn’t turn your back on Joy,” Alexandra concluded softly.
The corner of his mouth lifted, but he still looked tortured. “Those are those ghosts and demons I mentioned.” He let out a half sigh. “But trying to help Joy when she didn’t want to give up drinking taught me invaluable lessons. We can’t help someone that doesn’t want to be helped, and in the end, our first responsibility is to ourselves.”
She leaned forward, wrapped her arms around his neck, felt his warm, hard chest crush her breasts. And it was a delicious sensation, familiar as well as exciting. “I love you.”
“I should have been there for you more, Alexandra. I should have listened to you better—listened with my heart, not my head.”
“But you were.”
“No—”
“Yes,” she whispered, cutting his protest off with a slow and very tender kiss. “I love you, Wolf,” she said against his mouth. “I love you more than you’ll ever know. I’m just so grateful you’re here and that you waited for me and fought for me and didn’t give up on me.”
He made a rough sound in the back of his throat and stroked her hair back from her face and then along her cheek. “I will always fight for you.”
“Even when I get scared and do foolish things?”
“Especially then,” he answered soberly.
Alexandra dashed away fresh tears. “I’ve learned lessons, too. And I know now why I didn’t feel loved enough. It wasn’t anything you were doing. It was me. I didn’t love me enough to believe that you could love me, too.”
“How could anyone not love you, Alexandra? Your family dotes on you. Your brothers would go to the ends of the earth for you. And I know this—I will never love anyone the way I love you. I couldn’t. You were made for me and I’ve spent years traveling the world to find you.”
Swallowing a soft cry, she dragged her hands through Wolf’s hair, fingers twining in the black, inky length. “So that’s how an Irish Spaniard ends up in Los Angeles.”
“I came to find my heart.”
She blinked even as a tear trickled down her cheek. “I promise you’ll never have to search for it again.”
Wolf cupped her wet face in his hands. “And I’m going to hold you to that promise,” he said roughly before kissing her absolutely senseless.
And maybe, Alexandra thought hours later as she lay snuggled in her husband’s strong arms in her rather small childhood bed, those Hollywood happy endings really do come true.
Pure Princess,
Bartered Bride
Caitlin Crews
About the Author
CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouth-watering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle school social life. And so began her life-long love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.
Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.
She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.
