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With each week, each touch, each wildly explosive possession of her lithe body and incredible sensuality, each day spent laughing with her, testing her wit and often finding themselves bested by innocent gray eyes and a surprisingly sharp little mind, Shane and Sebastian felt their world balancing in a way it never had before.
She balanced them.
Just as she balanced their lives. Alyssa refused to spend every waking moment with them. Through the week, she demanded they leave her from morning until late afternoon. She needed to breathe without them a few hours a day, she informed them. Sebastian knew the decision for what it was, though. As young as she was, Alyssa needed a measure of independence, time to do the things women did without feeling as though she were abandoning them.
At first, they hadn’t thought much of that decision. It seemed, though, she was far wiser than they in enforcing it though. Because it forced them to find something to do with their time that didn’t include spy games, parties, or hangovers.
The effect wasn’t seen just by themselves, either, or felt just by their hearts. The maturity and lessening of quick tempers were immediately recognized by friends and family they saw during those hours. Their refusal to take further courier assignments from the agency they’d worked for for nearly three years was a surprise to the agents overseeing them. Their interest in De Loren business affairs that their grandfather had been pushing them to take was quietly noticed by their grandfather, Fernando De Loren, as well as Sebastian’s parents and brother, Lucien.
As summer deepened Shane and Sebastian more or less moved into the apartment with Alyssa. Through the week they helped Sebastian’s brother with the prized horses he bred as well as several business interests they owned in Barcelona. The rest of the time Shane and Sebastian spent with Alyssa.
Quiet evenings were spent talking, learning each other’s dreams for the future, their hopes and fears.
Alyssa hadn’t dreamed of college and a career, they learned. She dreamed of loving and being loved, of a house full of laughing children, and a life rich and filled with caring for them, as well as Shane and Sebastian.
She didn’t vow her love every day, but neither did they. The words weren’t spoken, but neither Shane nor Sebastian was in doubt as to who would father those babies.
In Alyssa they found a contentment they hadn’t known was possible. A peace that filled them, and laughter in the smallest things.
In Shane and Sebastian Alyssa found her freedom. Secure in the knowledge she wasn’t alone or unprotected, she found the balance she had been searching for to be able to look to the future and know the dreams she’d had could survive Margot’s machinations and too-strong personality.
She loved her mother. It was Margot who had taught her that loving someone didn’t mean the words had to be said with each breath, just felt with each beat of the heart. She was harsh, uncompromising, but what no one ever saw in Margot Hampstead was her complete dedication to her husband and child.
That dedication wasn’t always kind, but Alyssa had never doubted it, just as she never doubted her mother’s love.
What she did doubt was Margot’s ability to ever fully let Alyssa go. Neither of her parents had other family now that their parents were gone. They had no brothers, sisters, or nieces and nephews. They had Alyssa. And she hoped that one day her children would give her parents more to focus on than just their daughter. Enough to focus on that having two sons-in-law wouldn’t be impossible to accept.
As the second month of her vacation rolled by, Alyssa didn’t worry about promises, she didn’t worry about what would come next, because she had no intention of leaving Barcelona alone. If she left at all.
Shane and Sebastian had already made their plans. The purchase of the two-story apartment building in Alexandria, Virginia, had been made. Their agreement that Sebastian would take the position of her lover to her friends and family while Shane stepped back from the limelight until her father’s political career was realized. They would ensure Margot’s cooperation by bringing in contributors to the Hampstead political campaign who would more or less ensure Davis Allen Hampstead’s political dreams were brought to fruition.
Quietly the cousins made their plans, saying little to anyone, even Alyssa. As though their hearts were so much a part of each other that they had no fears of the future together, they found themselves simply enjoying the happiness that filled them.
A happiness they should have realized could never come so easily. Their friends saw it, Lucien De Loren watched it with somber knowledge, and their grandfather, Fernando, waited for the fall he knew was coming.
Such love, such complete inner peace in one person, never came without first paying a hefty price. The world simply didn’t work that way. The greater the love, the deeper the love, the higher the price demanded in compensation.
And, Fernando knew, the price his grandsons and their lover paid would be exceptionally high. What he hadn’t expected was the price the rest of the family would pay.
6
Shane and Sebastian entered the De Loren hacienda with its gracefully arched doorways and centuries-old elegance before dawn that morning. For decades De Lorens had resided within its walls, their wealth and carefully invested fortunes overseen with an eye to each future generation and the changes of the world’s financial landscape.
They had weathered wars, upheavals, rebellions, and personal losses that would have destroyed other families. The De Loren patriarchs had always believed in preparation, though. In both personal and private defenses as well as political strengths.
The summons the cousins had received before dawn had brought them from Alyssa’s bed for the early-morning meeting as suspicion tightened inside them with each mile covered. They knew, the closer they came, that somehow Alyssa lay at the center of this meeting.
Moving through the large, expansive rooms to the back of the hacienda, Sebastian knocked at the heavy wood door of his grandfather’s office firmly, his shoulders tight with tension.
“Enter,” the old man’s voice called out, as arrogant as ever, but now with a hint of anger as well.
As he glanced at his cousin Sebastian’s lips tightened at the certainty that this meeting would bring nothing good. Shane’s knowledge was reflected in the deep blue of his eyes, in the implacable exp
ression he too carried.
Opening the door, Sebastian stepped inside, almost pausing at the sight of his father, Alberto, his brother, Lucien, and Shane’s brother, Murphy.
“Gang’s all here,” Shane muttered behind him, his voice low enough that only Sebastian heard him.
