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“When the stipulation had been fulfilled.”
“There’s that word again.”
Alyssa swallowed. A moment ago, she’d been ready to explain. Now—God, now, she just wanted the floor to open up.
“Well? I’m waiting. What ‘stipulation’?”
“It’s—it’s…The stipulation involves—”
Her tongue felt as if it were glued to the roof of her mouth. How did you tell a man he was supposed to marry you?
“You see, Alyssa?” Thaddeus Norton’s plump face was flushed. “It isn’t that easy after all.”
The lawyer marched across the room to Lucas and held out the folder he’d taken from his briefcase. A couple of minutes out of the line of fire seemed to have restored his courage.
“Read it yourself, Your Highness. In the end, it’s simpler that way.”
Lucas nodded, took the folder, extracted a sheaf of papers from it, turned his back to the room and began to read.
Half an hour went by.
Then he swung toward the attorney.
“This is insane.”
“It’s a marriage contract.”
Lucas’s face darkened. “Do not provoke me, Norton.”
The lawyer’s few seconds of courage seemed to be over.
“I’m not trying to provoke you, sir,” he stammered, “I’m just stating the facts. That document—”
“Is a joke!” Lucas flung the pages on the desk and watched as they fluttered to the floor like dry leaves. “No one signs things like this anymore.”
Alyssa nodded. “I said that. I told Thaddeus—”
“You told Thaddeus,” Lucas said sharply. “Oh, I’ll just bet you did!” His eyes narrowed. “Or did you dictate this to him line by line? Did you dip back into the middle ages and come up with a document guaranteed to send me into orbit?”
“Me?” She moved toward him, eyes flashing. “You think I…? Let me tell you something, Mr. Reyes—”
“It’s Prince Reyes,” Lucas snarled. “Or Your Highness. Get it straight.”
“I had nothing to do with this, Your Mightiness. I didn’t even know about it. Do you really think—do you honestly think I’d want my name linked to yours, even on a piece of paper?” She stopped an inch from him, hand lifted, forefinger pointed at the center of his chest. “Never! You understand that, oh almighty potentate? Not in a million years. Not in a hundred million years. Not ever!”
Lucas knew how to stop the angry words flying from that pretty mouth. All he had to do was haul her close, bury his hands in her hair and kiss her.
And, Dios, he wanted to do it.
To watch her eyes fill with rage—and then watch them fill with desire.
Was he crazy? He’d just read a document full of where-ases and wherefores that boiled down to an arranged marriage between him and Alyssa Montero McDonough—that middle name made sense, he thought crazily, all that heat and smoldering fury—he’d just discovered his beloved, conniving, scheming, possibly senile grandfather had pledged his name and his fortune to a Texas wildcat, and he wanted to kiss her?
Like hell he did.
What he wanted was to get out of this madhouse. Not tomorrow. Right now.
“This,” he said, “is getting us nowhere.”
