She’d been wrong to let him bring her here but that could be remedied. She would leave him. Leave this place…
Except, she had no money. No passport. She had nothing but her anger and it stayed with her, made her leave the bed, shower, put on the same clothes she’d been wearing for what seemed forever, speak curtly to Dolores when the housekeeper knocked an hour later to see if she was all right.
“I?
?m fine,” she snapped, and Dolores stammered out an apology for interrupting and left.
Alyssa felt as if she were coming apart. What she’d almost done, what she’d almost let Lucas do, proved it. Surely she’d never have melted into him if she were functioning normally.
She had not slept in hours. In days, or so it felt. She was beyond exhaustion; she knew that, but she couldn’t seem to stop pacing while she planned what she would say to Lucas when he returned.
She remembered the night Aloysius had died. How she’d stood beside his still form and felt nothing. How, hours later, the tears had finally come, tears for what might have been.
This was different. She knew that.
And, as late afternoon became evening, she began wondering what Lucas was facing in a hospital room at the side of an old man he so obviously loved.
Night fell over the Reyes mansion. Stars blazed in new constellations of fierce fire against the pitch-black sky. The adrenaline that had kept her going suddenly drained away, leaving her spent and weary.
She stripped off her clothes, leaving them where they fell, wrapped herself in a soft white cotton robe she found in the closet and stumbled to the bed.
Long hours later, a whisper roused her from the depths of sleep.
“Lyssa?”
Alyssa forced her eyes open. Lucas was sitting on the bed beside her, limned by moonlight, weariness and despair etched in every line of his proud, beautiful face.
He stroked his hand over her hair.
“Forgive me for being gone so long, chica. But my grandfather—”
“Is he—?”
“He’s alive,” he said in a low voice, “but—”
He shook his head. Without thinking, she reached up and touched his cheek.
“I’m sorry, Lucas.”
“Si. Thank you for that.”
Alyssa looked up at him in silence. Then, slowly, she reached for him. On a soft groan, he gathered her close and stretched out beside her.
“Go to sleep, amada,” he whispered, and she sighed, put her head on the shoulder of the arrogant, hard-hearted Spanish prince and took him with her deep, deep into sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE deepest hours of darkness, a night-creature called from the jasmine-scented gardens below the bedroom window. Its cry was soft, but it was enough to draw Lucas from his sleep.
He frowned into the darkness.
What bed was this? Not his. Neither was the room. For a second, he thought he was in New York, in his penthouse on Central Park West…
Until he felt the delicate weight of the woman in his arms.
Alyssa.
She was sprawled half-over his body, her thigh across his, her arm lying over his chest. Her head was on his shoulder; silky strands of her hair drifted across his lips.