Kept at the Argentine's Command

But she wished he’d quit with the confusing messages he was sending.

He kept taking hold of her hand and making her feel like part of a couple, and he’d lulled her into a false sense of togetherness by letting her talk on and on about her plans. She’d definitely relished the opportunity, given that every time she’d seen Gigi lately the talk had always been about the wedding. But mainly it had just been nice sitting together, talking.

She shook her head. Really, he was being very careless with her feelings. Listening to her ramblings, behaving in a protective fashion, making her feel as if she was the only girl in the world. Didn’t he know all the nice gestures were making it harder for her?

No wonder she hadn’t looked for a sexual relationship before.

Sex made everything so much more complicated.

And it felt awful when it went wrong.

Because it had gone wrong. Somehow she’d misread things.

As she came out into the restaurant Alejandro’s body language caused what was left of her optimism to drop to her shoes. He looked faintly bored, sprawled in the booth with his phone open while two of the waitresses were clearing their table when it only took one. She couldn’t blame them. His long, lean muscular frame was on display in a T-shirt and jeans, but even dressed down he looked incredible, with his tousled chestnut hair falling over his temples.

She hadn’t missed the flurry of excitement as their waitresses had recognised him, nor the way Alejandro had dealt with that recognition, erecting a little wall of cool disregard that held them all at bay.

I’m not his girlfriend, she imagined herself telling the drooling girls flitting around him, but I might be carrying his child. We’re doing a test in a few weeks. Peeing on a stick.

Lulu’s pride lifted her spine.

No, she wouldn’t be spending time with him.

This wasn’t about that.

Besides, it was his loss.

Alejandro shot a couple of emails across town and looked up to see Lulu making her way back towards him.

She could at least smile at him.

He’d changed his plans for her. He’d skipped a meeting this afternoon at his office a few blocks from here, hence the explanatory emails, but he was supposed to be at the estancia right now.

She sat down. ‘I guess we can go now.’

Alejandro discovered he didn’t want to go anywhere.

She wouldn’t be alone, he reminded himself. It was the centre of Buenos Aires—the privileged centre. He’d organised a suite for her, he’d hand over a credit ca

rd, and with a gym and a pool and a health spa and the Recoleta district just outside, with its high-end boutiques, she wouldn’t be bored.

But he knew she wouldn’t use the card, and he suddenly felt a deep twist in his gut at the idea of her sitting alone in a hotel room.

She could be at this moment pregnant with his baby and he was planning to dump her in a hotel suite—like a secret he wanted to keep.

He’d be no better than his father.

That decided him—or rather her small hand creeping across the table to touch his did. He slid his fingers between hers.

‘Alejandro,’ she said, swallowing hard, but her eyes issued a challenge nonetheless, ‘I don’t want to stay in a hotel.’

‘It’s all right. I don’t want you to either. I’m taking you home with me,’ he said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LULU GLANCED AT her phone again and made a face. They had been driving for several minutes down a tree-lined road through the property Alejandro’s ancestors had held for centuries—called, evocatively enough, Luna Plateada, Silver Moon, after the stallion his Scots-born ancestor had brought across the seas two hundred years ago.

‘It’s just my mother,’ she said, when he asked her what was wrong.