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He damned well hoped he could but she didn’t want to hear his doubts any more than he did.
“Yes,” he said, with more conviction than he felt.
“And you’ll start by abducting me.”
“This is hardly an abduction, chica. After all, you are my betrothed. It says so in that damnable stipulation.”
“This isn’t a joke! I’m not your anything and you know it.”
“You’re right. And I’m wasting time. So, decide, amada. Stay here or go with me. I’m tired of this discussion.”
Alyssa opened her mouth to argue but argue about what? The damnable prince was right. They’d already talked the problem half to death and neither of them was any nearer a certain solution than before.
She looked at Thaddeus. He was right about that, too. Her father’s lawyer was useless.
“Yes or no, amada? Do I leave you here, or do you come with me?”
A cloud drifted across the face of the moon, momentarily obscuring everything but Lucas Reyes’s hard face. Alyssa shuddered as if the warm Texas night had suddenly turned cold.
This enigmatic stranger had invaded her life. He was all but convinced she’d known about the contract. That she wanted to marry him for his money and his title.
That she was, in other words, sly, scheming and greedy.
What would he say if she told him she’d been heartbroken when she’d learned the land wouldn’t be hers? That it was all she had left of her mother? That seeing the soil paved over, the old barns and stables knocked down to make room for what some called progress, would break her heart all over again?
Foolish question.
Lucas Reyes would say nothing. He wouldn’t believe her.
And why should she believe him? He said he was taking her with him because he wanted to convince his grandfather the contract couldn’t be enforced but was that true? Why would a man take a woman thousands of miles from her home for that reason?
Why should she trust him?
He could do anything to her, with her, once she left the safety of her home, her country…
“Well?”
His expression was still remote, his eyes flat pools of darkness. He was beautiful and terrifying and just the thought of all his power, all his intensity focused on her made her blood start to race.
Tears burned her eyes. She blinked them back. Her only defense was to convince him she wasn’t afraid of him.
“If I were to go with you,” she said, trying her best to sound calm, “you’d have to agree to certain—”
“Stipulations?”
His voice was soft as velvet but there was a razor-sharp edge to the implied humor in the word.
“Conditions,” she said. “Certain conditions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, you are to treat me with respect.”
A negligent shrug. “Done.”
“And you are not to touch me.”
He laughed.
