“Si.”
“How is he?”
“Let’s put it this way. I said we would be there in a couple of hours. He said he would be watching a news show on CNN in a couple of hours and that he would expect us at six.”
“Then he’s better.”
“He is arrogant, demanding and dictatorial.”
Alyssa laughed.
“What is so amusing? Are you suggesting I am like that?” He grinned. “Okay. Maybe just a little. But yes, Felix is better. Much better, or so it would seem.” He caught her hands in his. “Will you come with me and meet him, amada? It is important to me.”
The bright day seemed to dim.
Of course it was important to him. Once they spoke with Felix Reyes, they could settle the contract issue once and for all. Lucas would be free of her and she would be free of him.
Free to go back to Texas, never to see her prince again…
“Lyssa. Damn it, something is wrong. Tell me what it is and I will fix it.”
Alyssa looked into her lover’s eyes. He was a good man. An honorable man. A powerful man. But not even Lucas Reyes, Prince of Andalusia, could fix a heart that was about to be broken.
“What’s wrong,” she said lightly, “is that you’ve only left me half an hour to dress. A woma
n needs more than that, Your Highness. If I’m not properly put together, whatever will you grandfather think?”
Lucas gathered her tightly against him and stroked his hand down her back.
Si, he thought, as he pressed his lips to the top of his Lyssa’s head, that was an excellent question.
What would Felix think?
The old man had poked his nose where it hadn’t belonged. He’d interfered in two lives…
And miraculously changed both of them, forever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE last months of Aloysius’s life, Alyssa had spent a lot of time in hospitals. She was prepared for what she was certain would come next. The smell of disinfectant. Harsh lighting. The brisk efficiency of the staff that kept emotions at bay.
There was none of that in the hospital in which Felix Reyes was a patient.
The corridors were bright but pleasant; the smell clean, not antiseptic. Nurses and aides smiled and greeted Lucas cordially.
Even Felix’s room was homey if you ignored the machines and monitors beeping and humming on the wall beside his bed.
Felix himself was sitting up, propped by a stack of pillows. His eyes were that combination of gold and green and brown, like Lucas’s. He had a neatly trimmed white mustache and beard. Dignity and authority clung to him like a royal cloak, though not enough to disguise his obvious frailty.
A smile lit his face when he saw Lucas.
“Mi hijo,” he said, opening his arms.
The men embraced. The affection between them made Alyssa’s throat constrict. Her mother had been reserved, and she and her father—her adoptive father—had so rarely showed warmth to each other that the times they had stood out in her memory.
The last had been the day she’d brought him home from the hospital after he’d pleaded to leave this earth under the wide sky of El Rancho Grande.
To her dismay, tears burned in the corners of her eyes. She blinked them back just as Lucas stepped away from the bed and Felix Reyes looked at her.