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“If it’s really true you’d never deliberately hurt me...” He seemed to be speaking to himself. “I wish I could...”
“What?”
He shook his head, and his jaw went hard. “Nothing.”
What had he been about to say? I looked down, blinking as my eyes burned. Telling myself I shouldn’t care. Willing myself not to care.
My lie is about something else.
What?
I remembered the stark look in his eyes. Me. Only me.
Stop it, I told my heart fiercely. Don’t get sucked in! Keep your distance!
Silently, Alejandro stared forward at the road. For long minutes, the only sound was Miguel cooing to himself in the backseat, chortling triumphantly as he grasped a soft toy hanging from the top of his baby seat, and making it squeak. I smiled back at my son. He was the reason. The only reason.
“I’m glad you feel that way. The truth is I don’t want to hurt you, either.” Alejandro tightened his hands on the steering wheel. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Our son is what matters. We’ll focus on him. I’ll never leave you or Miguel. Together we’ll make sure our son is always well cared for.”
Our eyes locked, and an ache lifted to my throat. Turning away, I tried to block the emotion out with a laugh. “Miguel will be a duke someday. That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
Alejandro turned his eyes back to the road.
“Sí,” he said grimly. “Crazy.”
I’d been trying to lighten the mood. But his voice sounded darker than ever. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No. You are correct. Miguel will be Duque de Alzacar.” I frowned. But before I could figure out what lay behind the odd tension in his voice, he turned to me. “So you forgive me for forcing you to marry me against your will?”
I exhaled.
“It’s a very complicated question.”
“No. It is not.”
Something broke inside me. And words came pouring out.
“You think I was silly and selfish to want to marry for love. But for the past ten years, that dream was all I’ve held on to.” I looked at my hands in my lap. “Ever since I was fourteen years old, I’ve felt so alone. So unwanted. But then, last year, when I met you...” I lifted agonized eyes to his. “All my dreams seemed to be coming true. It was as if...I’d gone back in time. To the world I once knew. The one filled with love. The world where I was good enough. Wanted. Even cherished.”
Alejandro’s expression darkened. “Lena...”
“Then you abandoned me,” I whispered. “You told me you didn’t love me, that you never would.” I looked at him. “But I still married you yesterday, Alejandro, knowing that. Knowing you’ve lied to me in the past and will lie in the future. I married you knowing that the loneliness I tried to leave behind me in London will now follow me for the rest of my life. Only now, instead of being a poor relation, I’m the gold digger who got pregnant to ensnare a rich duke. And everyone will say, weren’t you so good and noble to marry me? Wasn’t it an amazing sacrifice for you to make me your wife? How generous of you! How kind!”
He glowered. “No one will say that.”
I cut him off with a low laugh. “Everyone will. And I know there will be days when I’ll feel that marrying you was the biggest mistake of my life.” I drew a deep, shuddering breath, then met his gaze. “And yet I can’t regret it,” I whispered. “Because it will make Miguel’s life better to have you in his life. Every single day. He will know you. Really know you.”
“I wish he could.” Alejandro stared at me. His dark eyes were liquid and deep. “I wish I could tell you...”
I held my breath. “Yes?”
His face suddenly turned cold, like a statue. He looked away. “Forget it.”
I exhaled, wishing I hadn’t said so much.
He drove the car off the main road, then took a smaller one, then turned on a private lane that was smaller still, nothing but a ribbon twisting across the broad-swept lands. Alejandro stopped briefly at a tall iron gate, then entered a code into the electronic keypad. We proceeded inside the estate, which looked so endless and wide, I wondered how anyone had wrapped a fence around it, and if the fence was visible from space, like the Great Wall of China.
