Her Boss's One-Night Baby (HQR Presents) Page 11

  With an intake of breath, he caught her wrist.

  “Kintsugi,” she whispered.

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  Pulling her wrist from his grasp, she explained, “It’s a Japanese art, when broken pottery is rejoined by molten gold. But it’s more than that. It means something broken and repaired is more precious and beautiful than something unused and whole.” Her eyes met his. “It shows history. It shows life.”

  He gave a low, rueful laugh. “Oh, Hana,” he said softly. “You make the world new. I wish you could always look at me the way you are now.”

  “I will.” She ran her hand slowly down his bare, warm chest, still traced with droplets of water from his dripping wet hair, feeling the softness of his skin over his hard muscles.

  Tensing, Antonio looked toward the sea. “Tanaka—”

  Her hand froze. “What did Ren say to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He looked back at her. “I don’t want you to see him again.”

  “How can you say that? He’s my friend.”

  “And you’re my wife.”

  She drew away, the good feelings lost. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  But as she started to rise to her feet, he pulled her back. “Fine. We won’t waste our honeymoon talking about Tanaka.” Running his hand down her naked belly, he slowly lowered his lips to hers. “I have something more fun in mind, anyway...”

  Any further discussion was impossible as he kissed her. But his lips were barely on hers before there was a wrench below them, as the lounge chair cracked under their mutual weight. At lightning speed, Antonio was on his feet, catching her in his arms.

  Held protectively against his bare chest, she looked at him in amazement. “How did you do that?”

  “I’ll never let you fall.” He gently lowered her to her feet in front of him, their skin touching, his arms still around her waist.

  Behind his handsome face, edged with wild dark hair, she saw the bright blue Caribbean. She felt the warm breezes off the sea.

  And she felt it again, her heart swelling inside her as she’d never felt before, rising until she felt like she was nothing but heart, through muscle and bone, to the very edge of her skin. It terrified her.

  She was falling in love with her husband.

  Every time he made love to her, every time they talked and laughed together, every time he looked at her the way he was looking at her now, she fell a little deeper.

  She heard herself say in a small voice, “You won’t?”

  “Never,” he whispered. Gently, he lifted her chin, smoothing back long dark tendrils of her hair. “I’m your partner. In bed.” He kissed her cheeks. “In business.” He kissed down between her full breasts, letting the tip of his tongue taste with a flick a tiny bead of sweat. “In life.”

  Her knees went weak as she staggered back a single step, bracing herself against a thick wooden post on the edge of the large cabana.

  “I trust you,” he said. Something in his dark eyes made her wonder if he was speaking to her, or to himself. There was something he wasn’t telling her. Some hidden fear.

  But as her lips parted to ask, he fell to his knees on the sand in front of her. Leaning forward, he tenderly kissed the bare skin of her pregnant belly before he looked up past the full breasts straining the bikini top, to her luminous eyes.

  “Forever,” he murmured.

  Hana looked down at him. She heard the soft roar of the sea against the shore, the birds soaring through the palm trees above. She felt hot, trembling all over.

  Silently, he reached around her back and loosened the tie of her bikini top, letting it fall to the sand. He cupped her breasts with his large hands. Leaning forward, he gently suckled a pink nipple, swirling it with his tongue, making her gasp before he moved to the other.

  Still kneeling on the sand, he stroked down her waist to her hips, then undid the ties of her string bikini bottom, and that, too, fell to the sand.

  He leaned forward, lifting one of her knees over his shoulder. He breathed in the scent of her, then kissed her there, between her naked thighs.

  Holding her breath, she looked down at him kneeling between her tanned legs. Behind him, the gauzy white curtains shielding the cabana blew softly in the breeze, as flashes of golden light stroked patterns on his skin.

  He lowered his head between her legs and tasted her, making her shudder with desire. Gripping her hips with his hands, with one of her legs still tossed over his shoulder, he licked and suckled her most secret places, until she began to shake, gripping her hands on the wooden pillar behind her as she cried out.

  He rose to his feet, and yanked off his swim trunks almost violently, the hard shaft jutting from his body. Grasping her backside, he lifted her off the ground, pulling her legs to wrap around his hips. Leaning her against the pillar, he pushed slowly inside her, filling her inch by inch. She gasped, straining against him as he stretched her to the limit. He thrust again, and again, increasing the rhythm until he rode her, hard and deep. Panting for breath, she felt the world spinning around her, in Caribbean blue and pink sand and green palm trees, and at the center of it all, the man she...

  The man she...

  Tension twisted inside her, higher and higher, until her body shattered into a million pieces.

  Across the beach, the seagulls echoed her cry, and with one last thrust, he roared as he exploded inside her.

  Slowly, she came back to earth. She lowered her feet once more to the sand. Her husband held her, the two of them naked together in the cabana on the private pink sand beach. And he tenderly kissed her.

  But as she pressed her cheek against his chest, her heart was pounding at what she could no longer deny.

  She was in love with her husband.

  It’s all right, Hana told herself desperately. It’ll be all right.

  “You’re crying, querida,” Antonio said, touching her cheek. He gave a sudden wicked smile. “Am I just that good?”

  “Yes,” she managed. “You’re just that good.”

  And she tried not to think about how he’d told her from the beginning he wasn’t capable of loving anyone. She tried not to remember the pain in Ren’s words. I was stupid to let myself love you when I knew you wouldn’t love me back.

  And Hana felt a cold hollow in her belly.

  * * *

  Happiness suffused Antonio’s body as he held his wife in the beachside cabana, the two of them still standing naked in each other’s arms. She was everything to him, he thought drowsily, playing with the ends of her long dark hair. Everything.

  Then his eyes opened as he stared past her, out at the sea.

  Yes, she was everything. She owned him now. Half of him. Half this island. Half this villa. Half his company. Half his soul. She could cut him right in half, anytime she chose. Cut him in half and just walk away—

  You’ll never be good enough for her. You know it. I know it. And soon, Hana will know it, too.

  How long would it be before she realized Antonio was utterly unworthy of her? How long before she saw the deep, mysterious flaw that had caused everyone, starting with his own parents, to steer clear of him?

  Kintsugi, indeed. Nothing broken was ever better than something unused and whole, he thought bitterly. No philosophy would ever make him believe otherwise. Not against the experience of his life.

  Antonio tried to fight the panic rising inside him. He repeated to himself, over and over, that he could trust Hana. Hadn’t she proved that, time and time again?

  He trusted her. He trusted her. He repeated the words like a spell of protection. Hana alone had never lied to him, never betrayed him. He could trust her, he told himself. He could trust her. He had no choice.

  But what if he couldn’t? What if she left—and took everything, leaving him utterly destroyed? How could he just stand by an
d wait for it to happen?

  CHAPTER NINE

  HANA WASN’T SURE how it started, or why.

  The week they were married was the happiest of her life. But every day after that, there was a little less happiness, like air let out of a leaky tire.

  For the last six months, they’d lived as husband and wife in Madrid, working each day in the CrossWorld Airways headquarters, a glass and steel skyscraper in the financial center of the city, then sleeping together each night in the gorgeous bedroom of their nineteenth-century palacio, with its wrought-iron veranda covered with bright pink bougainvillea.

  Their lives should have been perfect. And they were—on the outside.

  But on the inside...

  She still didn’t understand what had happened. All summer, from the moment she’d married him in Tokyo last April, she should have felt like the luckiest woman on earth. So, except for the happy day in June when they’d found out they were having a daughter, why did it feel like each day, she had less than the day before?

  Like now. Coming to tell her husband it was time to leave for the party, Hana froze in the hallway as she heard the COO’s voice carry through the partially open door of Antonio’s office.

  “I understand Señora Delacruz isn’t getting paid. She doesn’t even have a title. Why?”

  “I haven’t decided yet what my wife’s place should be.” Antonio’s voice was cold.

  “You could add her to the board. Even as chairman.” The man gave a low laugh. “You must know CrossWorld couldn’t do without her.”

  “I know.” Her husband’s voice became colder still. “She is very popular with the staff.”

  “Popular with everyone... But it’s awkward, since no one is quite sure what her official position is. It makes it confusing. Does she have a position here, or not?”

  Hana strained to listen. She’d asked Antonio so many times over the summer when he would be making her new position in the company official, and giving her some title beyond just being his wife. But every time she asked, his expression closed up. “Later,” he always said. And that was exactly what he said now.

  “Later. We have more important things to discuss.” Antonio paused. “Like how we can gain control of Lund Avionics...”

  With an intake of breath, Hana abruptly pushed inside his door. “No. You can’t take the poor man’s company! It would be unthinkably cruel.”

  Her husband glowered at her. Looking around his sleek office with its beautiful view of Madrid, she saw not just the COO, but also his secretary and the head of acquisitions, all of whom were gaping at Hana now.

  Antonio didn’t like employees arguing with him, so they rarely did. Maybe that was why the COO, and everyone else at the Madrid headquarters, appreciated Hana. As his secretary, she’d been the only one to push back against Antonio, even gently. Now, as his wife and partner, she did it full bore.

  She didn’t hold back. She couldn’t be afraid to argue for what she thought was right for the company. It was their family’s airline, after all, that would someday be run by their daughter.

  So now, in response to Antonio’s furious glare, Hana coolly lifted her chin.

  Let others be yes-men and toadies. She was his wife. This company was half hers, even if she didn’t yet officially have the title or shares to prove it.

  Once, her job had been to make him look good. Now, it was to be fearless enough to point out when he was wrong.

  As he was now.

  “Lund Avionics is one of our core suppliers,” she said firmly.

  His black eyes glittered. “Exactly why we should acquire it. They’re vulnerable to a hostile takeover right now.”

  “Vertical integration doesn’t make sense in this case.” She glared at him. “Plus, I don’t like kicking someone when they’re down.”

  Antonio folded his arms, pulling up his tall, powerful frame in his sophisticated suit. “It’s already decided.”

  “I know it is.” Folding her arms over her hugely pregnant belly, she matched him toe to toe. “We’re not doing it.”

  The others in the room looked back and forth between them, wide-eyed, as if they were at a tennis match.

  Antonio narrowed his eyes as if he hated her. And for the first time since they’d returned to Madrid, Hana felt shaken.

  He abruptly turned away, speaking to the COO and VP of acquisitions on other topics before dismissing them a few minutes later. The COO paused, looking at Hana as he left.

  “Nice work lining up the New York union negotiations, Señora Delacruz.”

  “I just wish I could be part of the negotiating team,” she said ruefully. Antonio had convinced her it would be unwise, this close to her due date, to travel to New York for a week of stressful, contentious negotiations with the employees union.

  “I do, too. You have a magic touch with employees. With customers and suppliers, too. And your new charity initiative—genius! Which reminds me.” The man looked at his watch. “My wife will have my hide if I don’t head home to get ready.”

  “We need to do the same.” But as Hana glanced at her husband, her shy smile fell away. Antonio looked so strange, almost green. As if he’d just been kicked in the teeth. She didn’t understand. “Antonio?”

  “Yes,” he said tersely, not looking at her. “We should go.”

  But as the chauffeur drove the two of them home through the streets of Madrid, her husband barely looked at her.

  Hana was at a loss. Surely he couldn’t be upset at her for making her mark at their company? Or for having a different opinion, when they were both simply trying to do right by everyone?

  Whatever the reason was, from the moment they’d returned to Madrid, to the place she’d thought would be her forever home, Antonio had seemed more cold and distant each day.

  Could he have somehow learned her secret? Glancing at him again in the back of the Bentley, Hana took a deep breath. Was it possible he was actually trying to drive her away, as he’d done with all his mistresses before?

  But she wasn’t a mistress. She was his wife.

  So why? When had Antonio started to pull away from her? Had it been on their honeymoon? She tried to remember. The Caribbean sun had been spun gold on the pink sand beach. For four days, she and Antonio had splashed in the sea and made love. A blush suffused Hana’s cheeks as she remembered that time in the cabana, when he’d lifted her legs around his hips as he’d plunged into her, riding her hard.

  That would be impossible now. Her belly had grown in the last six months. With only a few weeks until her due date now, she was huge. The Spanish summer had nearly melted her with heat. Thank heavens that finally, in late September, the autumn air had grown cooler.

  But the nights were hotter than ever, at least in their bedroom. Sex wasn’t their problem. Antonio seemed to think it was his duty to bring her to explosive, gasping fulfillment at least twice a night. Last night, he’d done it three times.

  It had become harder and harder for Hana to hide her feelings. Since their honeymoon, she’d buried her love for him deep in her heart. She tried to forget. She couldn’t risk him knowing. Because if he couldn’t return her love, he’d scorn her, or worse—pity her.

  What would she do then? Could she still bear to be his wife, to live by his side, to sleep in his bed, if she knew for certain he’d never feel anything for her beyond friendship?

  No. She wouldn’t break up their family and home, just because her husband didn’t love her back. Home and stability were far more important than love.

  Weren’t they?

  The crowded city streets of Madrid in the early evening rush hour were flooded with the last rays of autumn sunshine as they went home. They were running late for their own party. But Hana could barely think about the charity ball that had been her project for the last two months. She kept giving Antonio side glances in the back of the Bentl
ey, as, in the front seat, Ramon Garcia kept up a stream of affable chatter in Spanish with the chauffeur.

  Antonio pressed the button to slide up the privacy screen.

  “I didn’t appreciate you contradicting me in front of the staff.”

  Antonio’s voice was terse in the seat beside her. Her hands tightened in her lap.

  “You mean about the avionics deal? I just don’t think it’s right to take advantage of the poor guy’s divorce, that’s all.”

  “If we don’t take advantage of it, someone else will.” His expression was hard. “And his liquidity problems are his own fault, for not making his wife sign a prenup.”

  “Don’t be too hard on him. After all,” Hana tilted her head with a flirtatious smile, trying to lighten the mood, “you didn’t make me sign one...”

  His dark eyes were grim. “That’s something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”

  The smile slid from Hana’s face. “You want me to sign a prenup?”

  “A postnuptial agreement, yes.” Antonio looked calmly handsome in his perfectly tailored dark suit. “And perhaps you should stop coming to the office.”

  Hana’s jaw dropped. “You’re kicking me out?”

  “Nothing so dramatic,” Antonio said gruffly. “It’s just that you’re about to become a mother...”

  “You’re about to become a father, but I don’t hear anything about you leaving your job.”

  “Our baby will be so tiny,” he persisted. “Helpless. Surely you would not wish to abandon a newborn to the care of nannies.”

  His words felt like an attack. Like he was trying to give her an argument that she could not fight, rather than tell her his real reasons. “I’m planning to stay home for a while, yes. But CrossWorld Airways is part of our family. Even the name comes from our surname. In a few months, I’ll return to work and bring the baby with me.”

  “It’s an office, not a nursery,” he said coldly.