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She tried not to think of those piercing, dark eyes. That rakish grin that looked like dangerous enticement.
Truly, Matías and Diego Navarro looked so much alike it shouldn’t make one bit of difference to her which one she married. They were both devastatingly handsome. And by all accounts, Matías was a much better man than his brother. Not that she knew much about them. She refused to allow herself to search the internet for information about Diego, as much as she had wanted to. But he radiated an air of danger that Matías simply did not.
That was the problem. There was something more than looks driving that strange connection she had felt to Diego from the moment she had first set eyes on him two years earlier. She’d heard people describe attraction in terms of being struck by lightning.
She’d met Diego Navarro and it had been as if a black fire had been lit inside her. Burning slowly, growing, over the course of all that time.
Matías was a good man. A man that her father wanted to do business with. And why shouldn’t she...
Why shouldn’t she do exactly as he asked?
After all, she was the reason he had lost the love of his life. The reason her fragile, beautiful mother had died in childbirth.
She had to be the daughter her mother would have wanted. A daughter who was worth the loss her father had sustained. A daughter who made him happy. A daughter who was enough.
And so she did her best.
She had always known that her father would have a hand in choosing her husband.
She had accepted it with grace and dignity. The only time she had ever mouthed off, the only time she had ever allowed the witch rolling around in her mind to escape, was in conversation with Diego.
There was no point thinking about him now.
He had not offered for her.
But he might have.
She closed her eyes and sighed.
She heard footsteps in the hall and her heart rate quickened. She sat there on the edge of the bed, praying that it wasn’t Matías.
There was no reason to believe that it should be.
Two weeks she had been here, and he hadn’t so much as kissed her.
He had been solicitous beyond the point of reason. Constantly putting parasols over her head in the sun and worrying over her pale skin in the heat. Like she was a scoop of ice cream that might melt into a puddle.
She might be free of her father, but her fiancé had taken up the charge of overprotective presence easily enough.
Today had been the first time he had given her a bit of breathing room. There had been an accident with one of the horses on the rancho and a stable boy, and Matías had been consumed with the care of the boy since it had happened. As a result, Liliana had finally been given a few hours free to wander the rancho without someone clucking after her like a hen.
That was what was so funny. He was more like a protective older brother than he was a fiancé. At least, how she would imagine a fiancé would be.
And she was grateful for it. Which was another bad sign, she imagined.
She had never seen a married couple together. She didn’t know how her parents had been, but the way that her father talked about her mother made her believe that theirs had been a passionate love. That when she had died his heart had been ripped from his body and sent to the grave right along with her.
She couldn’t imagine having a connection like that with another person.
Much less Matías.
She didn’t think she wanted one like that, really.
The footsteps passed by and she let out a sigh of relief. She wasn’t ready to be physical with him. Which was foolish, as they were going to be married very soon. They would have to be physical then. They should kiss. Something. They should do something.
The idea didn’t disgust her—it was just that she found...
When she closed her eyes and thought of kissing Matías, inevitably, his sculpted, dark features transformed. Into more dangerous ones.
Diego.
She had never—not in all her life before setting eyes on that man—indulged in childish infatuations. Having always had a sense that her father was going to arrange her marriage, she had known there was no point.
She wasn’t a fairy-tale princess. Prince Charming wasn’t going to come for her.
Prince Acceptable was going to be selected for her.
And so there had never been a crush. Never been a fantasy.
Until him.
She wondered if it could be called a crush or a fantasy. This dark, terrible feeling that made her want to do something reckless and awful. Something the Liliana she’d been raised to be would never consider.
Diego was the worst possible man for her to have developed a connection to. The worst possible man to be fixated on now.
Her father wanted her to do this and she’d poured all of her energy, all of her life, all of herself, into doing what he asked.
Liliana felt compelled to be a counterpoint to death. And that was a very heavy weight to carry. But she was alive. Her mother was dead.
Could she complain about anything being too heavy when she lived?
But you’ll live your whole life without ever touching him...
“It doesn’t matter!”
She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but it burst from her mouth and she looked around, hoping her voice didn’t draw attention to her.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter.
She’d made her choices. She could have been a rebellious daughter. She could have pushed back against her father’s edicts. His demands she learn etiquette and deportment instead of going on to university. His pronouncement that she’d play hostess when he had businessmen over.
His long-standing proclamation he would choose her husband.
But when she thought of rebelling against him...
It made her cold all over.
Her father was her only family. The only person in the world who loved her.
How could she push back against that? How could she test that?
Maybe someday Matías would love her.
The idea didn’t fill her with any sense of joy.
She stood from the bed and paced across the large bedroom. The rancho was opulent, but she had spent her life surrounded by opulence. It was nothing new, and suddenly, she despised her own jadedness on that score.
So many people would be grateful to marry Matías. To be made his princess, for all intents and purposes. To be the lady of the rancho, and have all these beautiful lands, this incredible hacienda and the horses that came with it.
And she could find nothing, no sense of excitement, no sense of triumph inside of her.
Nothing at all.
She stood at the window, brushing the curtains to the side and looking out at the well-manicured lawn. The pale moonlight spilled over the rippling grass, the slight breeze making it look like water rather than earth. Making her feel as though she could open the window and dive straight down into the depths and swim far, far away from all of this.
Suddenly, she saw movement. Not the shift of a blade of grass, but a shadow, moving across the grounds. She didn’t know what possessed her, only that she unlatched the window, opening it and the screen along with it, leaning out slightly so that she might get a better look at whatever was below.
And then, the dark shadow was closer to the house, and she could see for sure what it was.
A man.
There was a man out on the grass, moving around. She should call someone. For in all likelihood someone clearly sneaking through the property was not staff, and was not supposed to be here at all.
Perhaps he was one-half of a pair of ill-fated lovers. In which case, she didn’t want to call anyone.
Her own love life was, if not ill-fated, then severely stunted, and she was hardly going to damage anyone else’s.
But the figure kept coming closer to the house, and when he began to scale the side of the building, using the ornate molding and the window ledges as footholds, she stood frozen, watching him.
She should scream. She should call out for help. But she didn’t. She simply stood. With the window open, as if she were inviting him in. He kept moving closer, and closer. And then he looked up, and she saw dark, glittering eyes just barely visible in the moonlight.
Still. She didn’t move. Still, she stood without making a sound.
It wasn’t until he climbed to her window, and wrapped his arm around her waist, one hand holding tightly to the molding up above, his eyes clashing with hers, that she screamed.
“Now we must hurry,” he said, that voice low and far too familiar. “Because you have caused a scene.”
She found herself being jerked from the window, suspended above the ground, terror roaring through her veins.
She clung to the man, because she had no choice. She would fall to her... Well, perhaps not her death, but her certain maiming if she did not cling to those strong, broad shoulders, her breasts pressed against the chest so solid it seemed to be made of stone rather than flesh.
But he was hot. Hot in a way that only flesh and blood could be.
He had spoken.
And she knew.
Knew exactly who held her in his arms.
“I have a helicopter waiting,” he whispered. “Are you holding on to me?”
“Y-yes.”
“Good,” he responded.
He let go of her and she wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck, as he made startling time scaling down the side of the house. She gave a short prayer of thanks when her feet connected with the grass, but it was short-lived as she found herself being picked up and hauled away quickly.
She heard voices, shouting, and she looked over his shoulder to see dark figures standing in her bedroom window. Clearly responding to the scream.
“We will escape before he manages to mobilize. Believe me. I was hardly going to plan a kidnapping that I could not execute. I’m far too vain for such a thing.”
“For kidnapping?”
“For failed kidnappings. I would only ever engage in a successful one.” He bustled her into a car waiting at the edge of the lawn and drove them to the edge of the woods, taking her out of the car again, hauling her around like she was a sack of nightgown-wearing potatoes.
“Why exactly are you kidnapping me?” she asked, as she hung limp over his shoulder.
It was strange, she imagined, that she wasn’t fighting him. That she wasn’t screaming or pitching a massive fit, trying to escape his hold.
But she didn’t want to. Not even a little bit. Not in the slightest. She found that she wanted to...see where he was going. Because hadn’t it been Diego she had just been thinking of?
And she had to ask herself why she had stood there with the window open if she truly didn’t want to be taken.
And so she let him carry her into the woods, across to a clearing, where there was indeed a helicopter awaiting them. He hauled her up inside easily, depositing her in the seat and buckling her before taking his position at the controls.
“You pilot...helicopters?”
“We don’t have time to talk.”
He fired up the rotors, and they began to gain speed. Just as she saw lights in the distance, they lifted off from the ground, above the trees, and away.
She couldn’t hear, not over the sound of the engine and the propellers, but then he put a headset on, and placed one on her head as well. She adjusted it.
“Can you hear me?”
His voice came over the speakers and into her ears. “Yes,” she responded.
“Excellent.”
“Did you want to make conversation now?” It seemed strange, all things considered.
“I thought we might pick up where we left off when last we spoke,” he said.
“Did you? Well, it might be a slightly different conversation, Diego, as when last we spoke we were in my father’s library. And today we are in a helicopter, with you having kidnapped me from my fiancé’s home.”
“You will not marry him.”
Her heart kicked into gear, slamming into her breastbone. “I won’t?”
