The Billionaires' Brides Bundle
Page 202
“Grandfather, maybe you didn’t understand my suggestion. An act of charity—”
“I don’t want your damned act of charity,” Alyssa McDonough snapped.
Lucas stared at her. Had she understood the entire conversation?
Suddenly a cough rumbled through the telephone, and another and another. Lucas had never heard anyone cough like this; his grandfather sounded as if he were drowning.
“Grandfather? Grandfather!”
The coughing faded away and another voice came on the line.
“I’m sorry, Prince Lucas, but your grandfather cannot continue this conversation.”
“What do you mean?” Lucas roared. “What’s happening? Who in hell are you?”
“I am his nurse, sir, and—Madre di Dios! Llamada para una ambulencia, Maria. Rapidamente!”
The call ended in a blur of voices. Lucas struggled for control, then whirled toward Alyssa McDonough.
“I heard everything,” she said. “Every word. I speak your language—were you too egotistical to think I couldn’t? And I don’t want your charity, I don’t want anything from you, I don’t want—”
“I must return to Spain immediately.”
“Well, good for you because—”
“You will come with me.”
“Don’t be an ass!”
“I have no time to waste in foolish argument. There are issues to be settled and I cannot remain here to deal with them.”
“Listen, you—you poor excuse for a human being—”
Lucas had spent part of an afternoon and most of an evening with this woman. She was still a stranger but he had learned one sure thing about her.
He knew how to silence her and he did, gathering her quickly in his arms, drawing her to him and taking her mouth, hard, with his.
She struggled.
He’d known she would.
And then she moaned, gave that little sigh he knew meant surrender, and lifted herself to him. To his kiss.
He gave in to it, if only for a second, to the pull of it, the sweetness, the hunger.
Then he clasped her shoulders and looked down into her blurred eyes.
“Will you walk, or must I carry you?”
“You can’t do this!”
Lucas laughed, lifted Alyssa into his arms and carried her from the house.
CHAPTER SIX
WHAT made men think they had the right to walk right in and take over a woman’s life?
Was it bred in their genes? Was there a strand of male DNA labeled “authoritative jerk?” Had scientists missed it all these years?