Loe raamatut: «The Spaniard's Stolen Bride»

CHAPTER ONE

DIEGO NAVARRO HAD a bad habit of breaking his toys.

It had started with a little wooden truck when he was a boy. He hadn’t intended to break it, but he’d been testing the limits, running behind it while he pushed it down on the ground.

He’d ended up falling on top of it and splitting his lip open, as well as popping the wheels off his favorite possession.

His mother had picked him up and spoken softly to him, brushing the tears from his face and taking the pieces of the truck into her hand, telling him it was okay.

His father had laughed.

He’d pushed Diego’s mother aside and taken the toy from her hand.

Then he’d thrown it into the fire.

“When something is broken,” he’d said darkly, “you must learn to let it go.”

Those words had echoed in Diego’s head later. When his mother was dead and his father stood emotionless over her body, laid out for burial before the funeral.

Diego hated his father.

He was also much closer to being his father than he would ever be to resembling his sweet, angelic mother, who had been destroyed by the hands of the man who had promised to love her.

Her hands had been gentle. Diego’s were weapons of destruction.

All throughout his life he had demonstrated that to be the truth.

In a fit of frustrated rage after his mother’s death, he had burned down his father’s shop at the family rancho. His father had known he’d done it, and Diego had wondered if the old man would finally kill him too. Send him to the devil, as he had sent Diego’s mother to the angels.

It had been worse. His father had simply looked at him, his dark eyes regarding him with recognition.

To be recognized by a monster as being one of his own had been a fate near death. At least then.

Diego had spent the next few years accepting it. And daring the darkness inside of him.

His father gave him a sports car for his eighteenth birthday. Diego crashed it into a rock wall on a winding road. If he had spun another direction before the accident he would have simply plummeted into the sea, and both he and the car would have sunk down to the ocean floor.

It would have been a mercy. For him to die young like that. Before he could create the kind of damage he had been seemingly destined for.

But no. He had been spared.

His mother, sweet and worthy, had not been. Reinforcing his faith in nothing other than the cruelty of life.

While he seemed to create a swath of destruction around him, Diego had thus far been indestructible himself.

It was the things he touched that burned. That broke.

Like Karina.

His one and only attempt at human connection.

His brother, Matías, was a good man. He always had been. Just as Diego had been born with a darkness in him, Matías seemed to have an innate morality that Diego could never hope to understand, much less possess.

Once he had realized that, he had isolated himself from his brother as well.

But he had met Karina. Pretty, vivacious and exciting.

She had lived life harder and faster than he had. Embracing all manner of mood-altering substances and wild sex. For a hedonist such as himself, she had been a magical, sensual embodiment of everything he hoped to lose himself in.

He had married her. Because what better way to tie his favorite new toy to him forever than through legal means?

Sadly, he had broken her too.

She had been beautiful. And he regretted it.

More than that, he regretted the life lost along with hers. The only innocent party in their entire damaged marriage.

But he was not heartbroken. He did not possess the ability to suffer such a thing.

His heart had already been broken. Shattered neatly, like his mother’s bones when she had fallen off her horse after his father had shot her.

The only good thing about that was, now that it was done, it could not be done again.

Now there was only the destruction he caused the world to concern himself with.

And truly, he did not concern himself with it overmuch.

He carried those losses on his shoulders. Felt the weight of them. Like a dark and heavy cloak.

It was his nature. And he had grown to accept it.

He took a long drink of the whiskey in his hand and looked around the room. He was back at Michael Hart’s impossibly stuffy New England mansion, playing the game that the older man demanded he play before they entered into any kind of business deal.

While Diego had a reputation as more of a gambler than a businessman, the truth of the matter was, he had not made his billions in Monte Carlo. He was a brilliant investor, but he made sure to keep his actions on the down low. He preferred his outrageousness in the headlines, not his achievements.

He wanted a piece of Michael Hart’s company. But more than that...

He was fascinated by the man’s daughter.

The beautiful heiress Liliana Hart had fascinated him from the moment he had first seen her, over two years ago. Delicate and pale, with long, white blond hair that seemed to glow around her head like a halo.

She was lovely, and nothing at all like the stereotype of an American heiress. No sky-high heels and dresses that made the wearer look most suited to dancing on poles.

She was demure. Lovely. Like a rose. He wanted to reach out and touch her, though he knew that if he did, he was just as likely to bruise her petals as anything else.

But he was not a good man. He was selfish and vain. He was also competitive. And at the moment he and his brother were being pitted against each other by their grandfather for the inheritance of the family rancho.

They had to marry to get their share or forfeit entirely.

Matías was too good to rush out and pluck a wife out of thin air simply for financial gain.

Diego wasn’t too good for anything. He would happily marry a woman for financial gain. And if on top of it, Liliana made his blood pound in a way no other woman ever had.

The money was an aside. The real attraction was besting his brother, and debauching Liliana.

And if Michael Hart was willing to give her up in trade for his investment in the company and solve the issue of his inheritance along with it?

Diego would chance bruising her.

He would be more annoyed with his abuelo if the old man’s edict hadn’t given him the excuse he’d needed to pursue the beautiful jewel of a woman who had captured his eye from the first.

He saw a flash of pink by the library door, and he realized it was Liliana, peeking inside, and then running away.

A smile curved his lips. He knocked the rest of the whiskey back, and then excused himself from the gathering, striding out with confidence, enough that no one asked where he was going.

No one dared question him.

He saw her disappear around the corner, and he followed, his footfall soft on the Oriental rug that ran the length of the hall.

There was a door slightly ajar, and he pushed it open, finding that it was another library. And inside, standing behind one of the wingback chairs, her delicate hands resting on the back, was Liliana.

“Ms. Hart,” he said. “We have not had a chance to say hello to each other tonight.”

Her face went scarlet. He found it so incredibly appealing. She always blushed when they talked. Because she found him beautiful. He was not a man given to false humility. Or indeed, humility of any kind.

God had made him beautiful, and he well knew it. But God had also made vipers beautiful. The better to attract their prey.

The fact he knew the weapons at his disposal was more necessity than vanity.

That Liliana found herself under his spell would make this so much easier.

“Mr. Navarro. I didn’t realize... That is... I don’t make a habit of attending my father’s business parties.”

“You attended our business dinner only a few weeks ago.”

She looked down. “Yes. That’s different.”

“Is it? I’m tempted to believe that you’re avoiding me, tesoro.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Treasure,” he said, taking a step toward her.

“And why would you call me that?”

He paused, midstride. She was not exactly what she appeared. Or perhaps she was. There was an openness to her. A lack of fear that spoke most certainly of inexperience. At least, inexperience with men like him.

Are there men like you? Or just monsters?

“It is what you are, is it not? Certainly, you are a treasure to your father.”

“If by that you mean a commodity.”

A smile curved his lips. “Well, money is the way of the world.”

“It would be nice if it weren’t.”

“Spoken like a woman who has always had it.” It wasn’t the first time he’d stolen time away to speak with Liliana. He found himself drawn to her like a magnet. And no amount of pursuing other women had dampened his interest in her.

“I prefer books,” she said, those delicate fingers curling around the chair, as if she were using it to brace herself.

“I prefer to experience life, rather than hiding away in a dusty library with only fantasy to entertain me.”

She surprised him by rolling her eyes. “Yes. A man of action. I prefer to pause and learn about the world, rather than simply wrapping myself up in my own experiences.”

“I didn’t realize you were socially conscious,” he said.

“A terrible detraction from my charms. Or so I’m told.”

He took another step toward her. “Who has told you this?”

“My father.”

“He is incorrect,” Diego said. “I find it fascinating.”

“Well. In that case. All of my personal issues of self-worth are solved.”

“I’m glad I could help.”

They stared at each other and he felt something. Heat. But something deeper. He was well acquainted with sexual attraction, and much in defiance of his typical fare, Liliana had an innocence about her that should not appeal to him. But did.

Still, he could appreciate the fact that his appetite—jaded from years of gluttony—was interested in something a bit different.

Something softer, sweeter.

She was like a ripe strawberry. And he wanted badly to have a bite.

But that thing beneath it... That current that made him feel as though he was being drawn to her against his will; that he could not quite understand.

She looked away, and her glossy hair caught the firelight, shimmering orange, as though the flames had wrapped themselves around the silken strands.

He closed the distance between them, and she did not turn to look his way. He reached out, brushing her curls to one side, his fingertips brushing the delicate skin of her neck.

“You are truly beautiful, Liliana. Do you know that?”

She looked at him, those blue eyes guarded. “Men have told me that before. Usually when they want something from my father.”

“Is that so?” It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he wanted something from her father too. That he wanted her. But he held it back.

“My father is a powerful man.”

“So am I, tesoro.” He placed his hand on her hip and felt a jolt beneath his touch. “Believe me when I tell you that I do not require anything to help bolster that. I need a hand up from no one. My money is my own, and my power is my own.”

“Is it?” she whispered.

“What do you think of that?”

She reached up, as though she were going to touch his face, and then she jerked her hand away. “Your power’s all your own?”

“Perhaps at the moment some of it is with you.”

She jerked away from him suddenly, almost tipping toward the fireplace before he caught her around the waist and sent them both stumbling back against the rock fireplace. His chest was pressed against her breasts, and she was breathing hard, those blue eyes locked with his.

“Sorry,” she said, breathless.

She began to wiggle, trying to get out of his hold.

“You don’t really want to escape me,” he whispered.

“I have to. I was avoiding you.”

“And I found you.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

There was something in her voice, a catch in her tone that made him find he did want to know. He released his hold and took a step back. And that was when he noticed the sparkling diamond on her left hand.

“Why, Liliana?” he asked.

“I told you, a great many men have seen me as a way to get to my father.”

“So you did.”

“And, well... One of them presented him with an offer that neither of us could refuse.”

“Is that so?” he asked, his voice rough, raging heat and fire and fury burning inside of him. “That is so interesting, as your father did not indicate as much to me.”

“Were you bartering with my father for my body as well?”

“Yes,” he responded.

He did not tell her that he had been offering her father money, and not the other way around. That he wanted her most of all.

“You’re not different,” she said, turning away from him. “Which is good to know.”

“It doesn’t matter. I doubt we’ll ever see each other again.”

She laughed softly. “We probably will. Christmases. Birthdays. That sort of thing.”

“Why would we see each other then?”

“Because, Diego. I’m about to become your sister-in-law. I’m marrying your brother.”