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She stared at him as if he’d lost his sanity. Maybe he had, or maybe he had just found it.
“What?”
“Marry me, amada. El Rancho Grande will be saved. And I’ll deed it over to you.”
“I couldn’t let you do that! You don’t want to ma—”
“Is marriage such an awful idea? People marry, create homes, have children, many of them with less in common than you and I.”
“But—but we don’t know each other.”
“Of course we do. Didn’t I just say how much we have in common? Ranching. Horses.” His voice grew husky. “We’re incredible together in bed.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless there’s someone else.”
“There’s no one else,” she said quickly, and stopped herself before she could tell him the truth, that she loved him, that there would never be anyone else but him…
“We’re right for each other, amada. Those two meddlers knew what they were doing.” He lifted her face so their eyes met. “Marry me, chica. Say yes.”
She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to, with all her heart. But was it enough for them to have the same interests? To be good in bed? Most of all, was it enough for her to love him when what she wanted, what she longed for, was for him to love her, too?
“Lyssa.” Softly, tenderly, he brushed his lips over hers. “We can make a good life together. I promise it. Say yes, amada. Say yes.”
Alyssa rose on her toes and kissed him.
And said yes.
Who would have imagined that the interference of two men on opposite sides of the world could result in such happiness?
Lucas had honestly thought he had everything. The land he loved. The horses he bred. A far-flung corporate empire he had created. All the women a man could want.
Surely that was everything.
Dios, how wrong he’d been.
On a soft June evening, watching Alyssa as she went from table to table in the candlelit garden of the house in Monroy, chatting easily with the guests at the engagement party he’d insisted she must have, he knew how poor he had actually been.
Until now, he’d had nothing.
His Lyssa was everything.
They had been together three weeks. Three wonderful, amazing weeks. Initially he’d wondered if he had rushed her into a situation she hadn’t really wanted. For instance, there was the first time he told her he had to go to Paris on business.
“Will you be gone long?” she’d said politely when what he’d wanted her to do was beg him not to leave her or, better still, ask if she could go with him.
Why not simply tell her that’s what you want? a reasonable voice inside him had whispered.
But reason had little to do with pride or idiocy or whatever in hell it was that made him so mulish and finally he’d cursed himself for a fool, swept his Lyssa into his arms and said the question was not how long would he be gone but how long would she want them to spend in Paris.
Her smile had warmed his heart.
“Do you want me to go with you? I thought—I mean, I know this isn’t exactly how you’d intended things to be, Lucas, and I don’t want to be in your way. I don’t want to, you know, change your life.”
“Amada,” he’d whispered. “You have already changed it. And I love—I love the result.”
Then he’d carried her to their bedroom and made gentle love to her until her whispers, her caresses had driven him half out of his mind, and he’d taken her with wild abandon while she cried out his name and shattered in his arms.
His beautiful virgin had become a gifted student. She could arouse him with a smile, a touch, and he never tired of it or of her.
In Paris, he’d introduced her to all his friends. She was shy at first but not intimidated, not even when they went to a party and his former mistress arrived with her new lover, saw him and literally threw herself into his arms.
