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But then that beautiful smile lit over Alicia’s lips, and Lucas knew it wouldn’t take much more persuasion.
“See you soon, then, Mr. Chandler,” Alicia said, leading Gabriel away and acting calm enough to fool him into thinking that nothing dramatic had just happened with the kid. “Thank you for everything.”
Lucas nodded, unable to stop himself from appreciating the way her curvy hips swiveled under that shapeless skirt. She gave real nice form to it, that was for sure.
Before reaching the door, she sent him one last glance, and the power of it just about bowled him over. All she did was smile a little, and his world tipped.
What was it about her? In that smile it seemed as if she could read his mind, slip beneath his skin, whisper inside his head.
I know you’re hurting, he imagined the smile saying. And I understand.
After they’d left, Lucas finally took a breath.
Realizing that he’d been holding the same one for what seemed like hours.
David had already gone outside by the time Lucas had said his farewells to the orphanage director. The Brain was waiting for his brother near the limo, where they had a view of the property: the main building, the annexes and the cottages, the chapel, the stables.
Arms crossed casually over his chest, David assessed Lucas, eyes a cool blue. With his stoic/casual pose, he looked like a stone-carved cowboy.
“Guess who called?” David said.
Lucas knew the answer before being told. “What’s the damage from the old man this time? Or is he announcing another future stepmom who’s two years older than I am?”
Well practiced in this line of conversation—one that never went anywhere—David kept his silence. Instead, his body language said it all: the loose limbs that spoke of a man in control of his own destiny, the slight tensing of his jaw that hinted at tension between the brothers. David was a big fan of Lucas’s hands-off business approach; he didn’t mind running everything while Lucas flashed his smile to the world at large. It was Lucas’s majority holding in the corporation’s stocks—a contract-tight promise his father had made to his first wife that included always seeing that Lucas, the firstborn, would own the company—that got to the Brain.
“Just spill it,” Lucas said, tired of waiting.
“He wanted an update. Wanted to know if today’s events were enough to impress Tadmere and Company.”
Tadmere, the family-oriented American media empire they were trying to acquire. Owning them would revitalize TCO, as well as give them more of an avenue to compete with the print rags and news shows that made a living off stalking Lucas. But the current, very pious owners were balking at turning over “their baby” to a company supposedly led by a man of Lucas’s reputation. It was Tadmere—and that scandalous Rome trip—that had prompted this whole personal PR campaign to make him look like a “nice guy.”
“And what did you tell him?” he asked nonchalantly, as was his habit. His dad hated when he did that.
And Lucas thrived on it.
“I told him things went perfectly.” David glanced at his Rolex and stood away from the limo. “He was happy about that, Luke. Really happy.”
A splinter of euphoria stabbed at his chest, making him bleed a little. It happened every time the old man seemed to be coming around, ever since he’d survived the stroke. But, even now, Lucas wasn’t about to get too giddy; Ford Chandler would return to prehealth-scare form soon enough. Lucas wasn’t about to set himself up for a fall.
“I’m sure you can imagine the happy fireworks going off in me,” Lucas said.
David sighed and shook his head. “Come on. You and I both know that, this time, maybe Dad will come around to appreciating you. I, for one, am sick to death of the way things are. And don’t deny—” David held up a finger to silence Lucas just as he was about to protest “—that you are, too. Suck it up this time and don’t get all rebellious against the guy. He’s sticking out an olive branch, these days. Would you just take it?”
“And what would sucking it up entail, David?”
“Just doing more of what you did here today. That’s all. Did it hurt so much?”
In the back of his mind, he heard Gabriel speaking English to him, saw all the boys lined up by the food tables and smiling in an effort to impress him.
Him—the notorious Lucas the Lover.
Respect, he thought. How would it feel to finally have it?
But it was impossible to come clean with David at this point. After all, it’d been tough enough to admit to his brother that he’d gone overboard in Rome with Cecilia DuPont and that he needed to cut the shenanigans.
And it’d been awful to admit it to himself, too. Admit that, more than anything, he craved one kind damn word from a father who didn’t give out many of them.
In response to that, Lucas had made a career out of being apathetic about the business his dad had raised from the ground up with his heart and soul. TCO was the son Ford Chandler favored best, so why didn’t he expect resentment from Lucas?
Resentment. God, it wore him out. He was weary from fighting a father who’d seemed to age fifteen years in the last month. The last time Lucas had seen his dad—hell, it was the day the competing tabloids had come out with that picture of Cecilia dancing in all her naked glory in a fountain, with a champagne-swilling Lucas cheering her on—the man had looked almost done. Finito, as Lucas’s Italian buddies would’ve said.
His fed-up father had been in a hospital bed in the penthouse of one of his New York buildings, skin pale from the pains Lucas had brought on. That was the day Lucas had realized that he might not have much time to show his dad he could be an actual success—not the punchline of the family.
“I think we accomplished a lot here,” Lucas said. “I wouldn’t say no to doing more of it.”
There. Underplay it. Don’t let them know how much it would mean for you to be taken seriously.
A small grin lifted the corners of David’s mouth, and Lucas knew he’d said the right thing.
“Today was just the first step,” his brother said. “It’ll take more than a few charitable photo ops to erase that bad-boy image you’ve got going.”
The memory of his father’s exhausted sighs and the slump of his shoulders—disappointment—edged into Lucas. He could do more, all right.
Still, he didn’t want to seem too excited. He couldn’t go that far yet. “You have something in mind, Einstein?”
“I’ve had some ideas today.” David’s eyes went a bit dreamy, the pose of many genius brainstorms that had kept TCO afloat. “It’d be perfect if you could do something to put the world’s—and Tadmere’s—doubts to bed for good. What we need to do is make you a pillar of society.”
“We’ve had a good start.”
“It goes way beyond the orphanage. I’m talking about a life change. A total tabula rasa so no one remembers Rome or Paris or the many screwed-up headlines you’ve inspired.”
Lucas bristled, mostly because the words were coming from his younger sibling. Mostly because they were true.
“Mammoth task,” he muttered.
“Not really.”
David was watching something in the distance, so Lucas turned around.
Without warning, his heart pinged around his chest and jumped up to lodge in his throat. Alicia Sanchez was walking hand in hand with a work-clothing-garbed Gabriel to the stables, swinging arms and laughing together.
“You got along with her real well,” David said. “And you’re good with kids, especially that one.”
Slowly Lucas turned back around, shoulders stiff and wary, his blood racing.
David held up both hands. “Trust me on this—if you could even do one thing like convince the public that you’re capable of a stable relationship with a decent woman, Tadmere would be ours. It might take some time for them to see what a wonderful monogamous man you’ve become, but… What can I say? Love changes even the wildest of miscreants. Then maybe, in the future…kids.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” But even as he said it, a part of Lucas—the one that’d felt numb today, the one who’d cried out for a father’s respect—didn’t completely shut out the idea.
“Think of how the world would look at you,” David added. “A reformed rake. People love that.”
Monogamy. Respect. A relationship. Respect.
Respect, respect, respect.
That was the bottom line, the one prize that had eluded Lucas for so long that it seemed like a dream.
“She’s beautiful.” David again, damn him. “If you could be paired with a ‘nice’ woman like her…pure gold.”
“Yeah, and, if the public found out that this was just a relationship built on the need for good PR, I definitely would come off looking even worse than before.”
“Lucas—” David cocked a stoic eyebrow “—think of those Rome pictures with Cecilia. How could you possibly come off as more of a rake? Besides, we’ve got our publicity machines to cover for us.”
Embarrassed anew to have been caught nearly in flagrante delicto by the press, Lucas glanced over his shoulder. Alicia and Gabriel were disappearing behind the buildings.
But that wasn’t the only reason he couldn’t help looking.
Fantasy merged with reality just for one pulse-stopping moment: Alicia’s smooth cheek against his palm, her curly hair between his fingers, her lips against his…
But then the rebuttals rushed in, pounding against his skull. Good girl. Playboy. Right.
“Forget it,” Lucas said, his tone brooking no argument.
“Listen, celebrities do this kind of thing all the time for good ink when they want to polish themselves up. Can you imagine the great press, even from the sources we don’t own?”
And it’d be just a business decision, Lucas added. Nothing different from any of the other safe relationships—dead ends—that you’ve had with every woman up until this point.
As Gabriel scuttled into the open, laughing and trying to break free, Alicia emerged to catch him, hugging him to her. Lucas’s stomach somersaulted.
Why? Because… Well, hell, because he was having doubts that he even had the ability to be a one-woman guy. All the press’s snide opinions testified to that.
Right? That’s the only reason he was feeling so weird.
“It wouldn’t hurt to talk to her to test the waters and see how she might react to such an idea, anyway,” David’s voice said.
The words drifted over Lucas as he kept watching Alicia, the woman who intrigued him and, Gabriel, the child who he suspected was so much like him.
Something like a family, Lucas thought as an unfamiliar emotion filled up the emptiness behind his ribs. What if…
Lucas turned to his brother, ending the discussion with a lethal glare.
Yet that didn’t mean he wasn’t hearing David’s logic over and over in his own mind as they drove back to his five-star resort room, where he ended up pacing the floor most of the night.
Chapter Three
When Guillermo Ramos had contacted Alicia last night, requesting that she entertain Lucas Chandler at the orphanage for one more day, her belly had scrambled with excitement.
She told herself it was more because she was that much closer to securing additional money for the orphanage than anything else—like, say, seeing the billionaire again.
Ridiculous, she thought now as they rode horses over the sun-dappled property. He was so far out of her league it wasn’t even funny. Plus, she had more important things than flirting to think about.
She snuck a look at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice. The same wind-ruffled hair. The same piercing eyes.
He seemed at home, sitting expertly in the saddle in his faded jeans, the reins threaded through his hand. Even though Mr. Chandler had told her that he wanted another gander around the place in order to see how additional donations could be utilized, Alicia found herself tongue-tied right now, unable to “sell” her own ideas about what Refugio Salvo could use.
But she would get over it…just as soon as she could overcome this strange shyness enveloping her. Was it because there were no cameras and the lack of them made everything much quieter, more real? Less like she was putting on a show?
“Look west, Mr. Chandler.” She pointed in that direction as they halted their horses. It was an expanse of grassy land, much like what they were on now, but it was cut off by a barbed-wire fence with a sign that said No Trespassing in Spanish.
“Neighbor’s property?” he said, easily controlling his roan gelding, Ackbar, who was dancing around.
“Yes, and possibly more land for the foundation to purchase for the ranch.”
With one last glance at the land, he paused, then prodded Ackbar into motion again. She caught up to him, and they rode side by side. He seemed deep in thought, so she didn’t bother him unnecessarily. She didn’t feel the urgency to.
And that was interesting. Even though she hadn’t spent more than a few hours with him, there was a certain comfort level in place. It was almost as if she’d known him before and they’d slipped right back into a companionable flow upon his return. Alicia had never experienced anything like it. She was naturally good with people, sure, and that’s why Guillermo was using her as a hostess. Yet there was always that invisible shield with strangers—a force you didn’t see but a barrier that was definitely there, all the same.
But not with Lucas Chandler. No, there was a different, unspoken something hanging over them…a humid atmosphere she’d been trying to avoid thinking about.
The sounds of chirping birds and moaning saddle leather accompanied them as he took the lead. He seemed confident in where he wanted to go, so Alicia went with it, ready to correct their course if need be.
“Ms. Sanchez,” he said, his voice blending with the smooth, grass-laced air, “may I ask you a question? And, if you don’t want to answer, that’s fine.”
She straightened in her saddle, friendly but on alert. “Ask away.”
“I’m just wondering, Ms. Sanchez…or Alicia. May I call you that? Alicia?”
“Of course.”
He smiled to himself. “I love how everyone says it down here. A-lee-see-a. It’s like a song.”
She laughed. “Was that your big question?”
“No. I’m just thinking about yesterday, especially when I asked you about how you came to be a volunteer here. The orphanage doesn’t pay you? Sorry if that’s too personal—”
“Don’t worry. It’s a part of how Refugio Salvo works, and you’d want to know.” Pancho, her mount, nickered, and Alicia absently patted the horse’s neck. “The orphanage can afford salaries for most of the staff—administrators, cooks, groundskeepers. But the sisters consider their work here to be part of their calling, freely given. Just like I do.”
“You should be compensated.”
She flushed, thinking how a paycheck would definitely help in day-to-day living but would also take away some of the significance of what she was doing. Charity. With a salary, her intentions of giving without taking just didn’t seem to count as much.
“Not to seem ungrateful, Mr. Chandler, but—”
“The money’s coming whether you take it or not.”
Alicia didn’t glance at the man next to her, but she didn’t have to. She felt his gaze on her. Her skin heated, flaring to confusion.
What was driving him to stick around to see the details of what the ranch needed? Some of the orphanage staff whispered it had to do with all the cameras that had followed him yesterday, but Alicia didn’t want to believe that.
