LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      THE FIRST TIME I saw London, I was a grief-stricken fourteen-year-old, newly orphaned, just arrived from New York. My grandmother, whom I’d never met, sent her driver to collect me from Heathrow. The sky was weeping and gray. I remembered trembling as I walked up the steps of the tall white mansion in Kensington, a house roughly the same size as my entire apartment building in Brooklyn.

      Brought in by the butler, I’d found my grandmother sitting at her antique desk in the morning room. I stood in front of the fireplace for some moments, my eyes stinging and my heart aching, before she finally looked up.

      “So you’re Lena,” she’d said, looking me up and down, from the lumpy coat my mother had made before her hands grew frail in illness, wasting away like her heart since my father’s death six months previously, down to my feet crammed into cheap, too-small shoes that had been all my loving but sadly unskilled father had been able to afford. “Not much of a beauty,” she’d said crisply, with some regret.

      It was raining in London today, too.

      As Alejandro’s driver waited, holding open my door, I shivered, looking up at the white mansion. I felt suddenly fourteen again. Except now I was going to face my cousin.

      Claudie and I were the same age, but she was so different in looks and manner that we could have been born on opposite sides of not just the Atlantic, but the universe.

      When I’d first come to the house—devastated by the loss of both my mother and my father within six short months—I’d tried so hard to make my beautiful, spoiled cousin like me, but she’d scorned me on sight. She’d been determined to drive me from the house. Especially once grandmother died and she saw the terms of the will. And she’d finally gotten her wish. She’d won....

      “What are you waiting for?” Alejandro said impatiently. “Get out of the car.”

      “I changed my mind. I don’t need to go in.”

      “Too bad. You’re going.”

      He looked far too handsome and rested. He’d slept and showered on his private jet. He was in a fresh suit. I, on the other hand, hadn’t slept at all since yesterday. After an interminable visit to a private hospital in San Miguel de Allende, where he’d paid a small fortune for the DNA test, we’d gotten on his private 747 and I’d spent the long flight walking back and forth in the cabin, trying to calm Miguel enough to sleep. But the cabin pressure hurt his ears, and only my continual walking soothed him. So I’d gotten exercise, at least, using the aisle of Alejandro’s jet as my own private treadmill.

      But there’d been no shower for me. I felt groggy, sweaty and dirty, and I was still wearing the same white cotton sundress I’d worn in Mexico. There was no way I was going to face my cousin like this.

      It was bad enough letting Alejandro see me.

      He’d barely said ten words to me on the plane; in fact, he’d said just five: “Want me to hold him?” Of course, I refused. I hadn’t wanted to give up possession of my baby, even for a moment. Even thirty thousand feet in the air, when there was no way for him to run off. The DNA test had proved the obvious—that Alejandro was Miguel’s father—but I was fighting his emotional and legal claim with every cell and pore.

      Now, as Alejandro looked at me in the backseat, the difference between his sleek gorgeousness and my chubby unattractiveness was so extreme I imagined he must be asking himself what he could ever have seen in me. Which begged the question: If he hadn’t deliberately seduced me last summer to create an heir, then why on earth had he?

      I licked my lips. “Alejandro,” I said hesitantly. “I...”

      “Enough delay,” he growled. “We’re going in.”

      I looked at my baby, tucked into a baby seat beside me in the back of the limo, now sleeping in blessed silence. “You go. I’ll stay here with Miguel.” Which would also be the perfect way for me to sneak to Edward’s house, at the end of the street.

      “Dowell can watch him.”

      I glanced at the driver doubtfully. “No.”

      “Then bring Miguel with us.”

      “Wake him up?” I whispered, scandalized. I narrowed my eyes. “Of course you wouldn’t worry about that. You’re not the one who spent the whole flight walking in circles trying to make him sleep.”

      Alejandro set his jaw. “I offered to take him....”

      “You could have offered again.” I was dimly aware that I sounded irrational. There was no way he could have taken Miguel from me on the jet except by force, which wouldn’t exactly have gone over well, either. My cheeks got hot. “It doesn’t matter.”

      He lifted a dark eyebrow. “You do know how to take care of Miguel better than I do.”

      His tone told me whom he blamed for that. “I had no choice. I thought you were going to steal him from me.”

      “So you stole him first?”

      I blinked. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

      “You could at least have called me directly,” he ground out.

      Now, that was unfair! “I tried! You wouldn’t take my phone calls!”

      “If I’d known you were pregnant, I would have.” His jaw tightened. “You could have left a message with Mrs. Allen....”

      “Leave a message with some faceless secretary at your London office to let you know, oh, hey, I’m pregnant with your baby? Seriously?” I lifted my chin. “You should have just taken my damn call!”

      Alejandro stared at me, his lips pressed in a thin line. “This argument is over.” He turned away. “Unlatch the baby carrier and lift it out of the seat. That won’t wake him up, as you know perfectly well.”

      My cheeks burned slightly. Yes, I’d known that. I’d just been hoping he wouldn’t.

      When I didn’t move, Alejandro started to reach around me. With a huff I turned and unlatched the seat. Miguel continued softly snoring in sweet baby dreams, tucked snugly in the carrier with a soft blanket against his cheek.

      As the driver closed the door

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