‘It doesn’t matter how good our one night together was, it was one night and it’s over, I have no intention of repeating it ever again.’
The look in his eyes, the faint lift of an eyebrow questioned her statement but she ignored it and plunged on.
‘I will not marry you. I don’t want anything to do with you.’
‘Liar,’ he said softly. ‘Look at what happened when I kissed you.’
‘What happened then was lust—it had nothing to do with love.’
‘And you need love before you marry?’
‘Yes! Yes, I do!’
‘Well, forgive me, carina, but I can’t offer you that. But I can offer you a great deal—’
‘And I don’t want it. I don’t want anything from you. What?’ she asked as she saw his proud head go back as if in shock, black brows drawing together sharply in a dark frown. ‘What have I said?’
‘If that is the truth, then I suggest that you talk to your father about this.’
‘My father—why?’
She was thoroughly confused now. There was no reason at all why he should bring her father into this.
‘If you really don’t know then he will tell you. It will come better from him.’
‘I have no intention of talking to my father. Nothing he can say will make me marry you.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘Positive.’
Santos seemed to need a couple of seconds to absorb what she had said, and for once his pale eyes were not clear and cold but clouded with something she didn’t understand.
‘Do you know why I was going to marry Natalie?’
‘Of course—you wanted marriage to found your dynasty of Cordero heirs.’
That realisation hit home like a blow to her chest, twisting something sharp and deadly in her heart. The image of a child that had Santos as its father, a boy with his dark strength or a girl with a softer, feminine version of that jet-black hair and stunning eyes, floated in her head. Children who would not have learned his cold cynicism and come to deny the idea of love. And children through whom their father might come to see that there was some emotion that he had never known, never understood in the rest of his life.
‘And you still do—but you can’t force me to marry you!’
‘I promise you that I don’t intend to use force. But you will marry me.’
‘No way! Never!’
The smile that flickered across his lips made her blood run cold, and, even worse, it forced her to look at what she had said, hear it again in her thoughts, and catch the shrillness, the edge of panic in her voice that gave away so much more than was comfortable.
‘Is there not a saying about never saying never?’ Santos drawled easily, flashing her that smile once more, but this time there was no charm in it. This time his eyes were pure ice and the curve of his lips was a promise of retribution if she didn’t do things his way.
‘There might be, but I think you’ll find that it doesn’t apply to me.’
‘Talk to your father, Alexa.’
It was low, almost soft, but there was a sombre severity about his tone that pulled her up sharp, making her look deep into his face, trying to read something of what was going through his mind in those unfathomable pale eyes. But Santos was giving nothing away. Instead it was as if a heavy metal shutter had clanged to behind his eyes, cutting off everything from her and concealing his thoughts from her totally.
‘Just what is going on here?’
But Santos simply shook his head, his beautiful mouth shut tight over any possible explanation.
‘All right …’
Backed into a corner, she knew there was no other way she could react. But she wasn’t going to let him enjoy his triumph.
‘All right, I’ll talk to my father but not now—not with you standing over me like some avenging angel. If I have to do this then I’ll do it in privacy—with you out of the house. Go on …’ she pushed when he didn’t respond, didn’t move. ‘I want you to leave—get out of my house …’
Just what she would do if he refused to budge, she had no idea. A scary, impossible image of her trying to actually physically move him, pushing him towards the door, flared in her head, making her shudder inwardly at the mere thought. But then, just as she was afraid she might actually have to try it he lifted his shoulders in a dismissive shrug.
‘OK,’ he said casually. ‘I’ll leave—for now. I need to check in to my hotel and there are a couple of business calls I need to make. But I’ll be back.’
The implied threat in the last three words, and the way that he emphasised them, pale, gleaming gaze fixed on her face as if searching for something that only he could see, made her nerves jump.