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But now—
Edward was no longer even looking at me. He was smiling at Alejandro, utterly confident—like a dog who couldn’t wait to test out his slashing claws and snarling teeth, to prove who was the stronger, meaner dog, in the pretext for a brawl of fighting over a bone—me.
Alejandro’s dark eyes met mine. For a moment, they held. Something changed in his expression. He seemed to relax slightly. He drew himself up, looking almost amused.
“Yes, Lena is the mother of my child,” he drawled. “And because of that I have a claim on her that you never will. But that’s not the only claim. I have one deeper even than that.” He glanced at me. “We intended to keep it private for a few days more, as a family matter, but we might as well let everyone know, shall we not, querida?”
“Um, yes?” I said, as mystified as everyone else.
Still smiling that pleasant smile, Alejandro turned and grabbed a crystal flute and solid silver knife off a waiter’s passing tray. For a moment I froze in fear. Even with a butter knife—heck, even with his bare hands—I knew Alejandro could be dangerous. Boxing and mixed martial arts were hobbies in his downtime, the way he kept in shape and worked out the tension from a hard day making billion-dollar deals.
I exhaled when he didn’t turn back to attack Edward. In fact, he rather insultingly turned his back on him, striding through the ballroom, to the dais, as the crowds parted like magic. He climbed the steps to the same microphone where he’d given the speech before. Most of the guests, seeing him, immediately fell silent. A few continued to whisper amongst themselves, staring between him and Edward—and me.
Alejandro chimed his knife against the crystal flute, so hard and loud that I feared the delicate glass might break in his hand. The entire ballroom fell so quiet that I could hear my own breath.
“I know this is a business gathering,” he said, “but I must beg your indulgence for a moment. I am, after all, amongst friends....” His eyes abruptly focused on me across the crowd. “I have some happy news to announce. My engagement.”
No. My face turned red and my body itched in an attack of nervous fear beneath my pale pink ball gown as a thousand people turned to stare at me. The whispering increased, building like the roll of distant thunder.
“Many of you probably wondered if I’d ever get married.” Alejandro rubbed the back of his dark hair then looked up with a smile that was equal parts charming and sheepish. “I confess I wondered that myself.” His low, sexy voice reverberated across the gilded ballroom. “But sometimes fate chooses better for us than we could ever have chosen for ourselves.”
No, no, no, I pleaded desperately with my eyes.
He smiled.
He lifted his champagne flute toward me. “A toast. To Miss Lena Carlisle. The most beautiful woman on earth, and the mother of my baby son...”
The whispers exploded to a sharp roar.
“...to the future Duchess of Alzacar!”
There were gasps across the crowd, the largest of which was probably mine. But Alejandro continued to hold up his flute, so everyone else did, too. He drank deeply, and a thousand guests drank, too. Toasting to our engagement.
Only two people continued to stare at him blankly.
Edward.
And me.
My body trembled. All I wanted to do was turn and flee through the crowd, to disappear, to never come back. To be free of him—the man who’d once destroyed me. Who could, if he tried, so easily do it again—and more, since now our child could be used against me.
But that child also meant, in a very real way, that I was bound to Alejandro for the rest of my life. We both loved Miguel. We both wished to raise him.
Which meant, no matter how fiercely I wished otherwise, and no matter how I’d tried to deny it, I would never be truly free of Alejandro—ever.
Cheers, some supportive, some envious and some by bewildered drunken people who’d missed what all the fuss was about but were happy to cheer anyway, rang across the ballroom, along with a smattering of applause. Alejandro left the dais, where he was stopped by crowds of well-wishers, including the glamorous movie star I’d recognized and two heads of state.
Behind me, Edward seethed with disappointment and fury, “He doesn’t own you.”
