STICK: MC ROMANCE NOVELLA (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 8) (73 page)

Had she seen these? Of course she had.

Hurriedly he shoved his legs into his pants and dragged a tee-shirt over his head. He barely remembered to shove his foot into his loafers before he was barreling towards the elevator. He reached her room and shoved open the door; it was just as he had feared! All her belongings were gone.

Cursing in rapid Spanish,”Mierda, mierda, mierda” Leandro rushed downstairs, his heart in his throat as he looked over the crowd for any glimpse of her.

“Where is she?” he demanded of the receptionist.

The young woman took one look at him. All of the staff knew exactly who he was. She responded without asking who he meant, “She left Sir. She checked out.”

“When?” he bit out so furiously, that the startled receptionist drew back.

“A few minutes ago Sir. She was in quite a hurry.”

“Did you see which way she went?”

“No. But I’ll take a wild stab and say she was heading for the airport.”

Leandro didn’t wait to hear more; he left at a run, searching even as he headed for the door. But she was already gone. Weakly, he sank onto the pavement in front of the hotel. Whatever brightness had illuminated his day a scant twenty minutes ago had gone out completely.

Chapter Six

Alexandra Jordan was a mess. It had been seven weeks since she’d left Hawaii and while Lead Inc had not contacted them at all, she had been unable to get its conniving CEO out of her mind.

She had also been a nightmare to be around at work because she was so sensitive these days that the least thing set her off. In a single day, she had berated her CFO, fired a janitor and sent two new interns crying from her office after an intense scolding.

Three weeks after she had returned, the tension around her had been so palpable that Claire had pulled her aside and reminded her she was supposed to have gone on the break to relax and not to return an ogre. She had the temperament of a bear with a sore paw and she knew it.

When she had noticed that her normally stoic secretary now blanched every single time she so much as looked at the woman, and that even Claire was giving her a wide berth, she had gone home and had a good crying session just to get it all out of her system. These days she was more withdrawn and quiet which was a decided improvement from her earlier raging-bitch persona.

The past week, she had forced smiles until her cheeks hurt. She had smiled for real though when she learned that
Beautiful Designs
had somehow clinched the Alistairs Plc contract. Things were looking up, she had thought as she joined her colleagues for a toast in celebration.

But just when she had started to convince herself that Leandro was not worth her tears, her doctor had delivered what might have been amazing news under other circumstances, but felt pretty grim as things stood now; she was pregnant!

She had lost some weight, rather than gain some as one might expect, and the bags under her eyes were so prominent they threatened to dwarf her nose. She hadn’t been sleeping much either, she admitted but all that had to change now that she had a baby to think of. She looked around at the park; it was midday and she was pretty much alone. A few kids played in a nearby swing set while adults sat on some benches similar to hers, watching over them.

Alexandra’s hand rested both pensively as well as protectively on her stomach as she leaned back against the park bench and shut her eyes. She wasn’t showing yet but she already loved the tiny human being inside of her with all her heart. It wasn’t its fault that its father was a two-faced rat! But still, this was not how it was supposed to be!

“May I sit?” an achingly familiar voice said from right in front of her.

Alexandra’s eyes flew open disbelievingly. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The two-faced rat was standing right in front of her looking so unbearably handsome that she unconsciously started to grind her teeth. He was wearing a pair of well-washed jeans and a tee-shirt with simple sneakers and yet somehow he managed to look utterly respectable, male and delicious. He was also slimmer than she remembered; he actually looked a little gaunt.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered, her throat almost closing up. She had been torturing herself with images of his handsome, lying face since Hawaii but seeing him in the flesh was even more painful than her fevered anticipation had imagined.

“I need to talk to you Alexandra. You left the Island in a hurry and I had no chance t
o
”

“To seduce me further just so you could get me to reveal secrets about my business? Well you failed; we got the contract!” she cut in acidly.

“
Cara mia
, I’ve hurt you but you will let me make amends yes?” he said, his Spanish accent thicker as he dropped his long frame onto the bench beside her.

Alexandra felt as though the entire air around them reverberated with the very force of his presence and vitality. She edged away from him a little on the bench.

“Alexandra? Come on, don’t avoid me,
Cara mia
,” he pleaded, his hand grabbing hers to still her nervous movements.

“You have a lot of nerve showing your face here,” Alexandra spat jerking her arm from his light grasp. “So all you wanted was a contract and you had to sleep with me too? The humiliation couldn’t just end at me warming up to you? You could have simply asked me to withdraw as a friend and I would have considered it. You didn’t have to pretend to like me and actually fucking take me to your bed!”

Pun was really not her strong suit, she thought distractedly.

“It looks bad I know, but I swear it was nothing like that,” he said gruffly, taking her hand in his.

She sprung to her feet, flinging off his hand, her heart racing as she said frigidly, “Leave me the hell alone.”

Something glinted fleetingly in his dark eyes but was gone before she could ascertain what it was and he said, “I can’t. I have tried a thousand times to let you go but I can’t. I tried to forget you. I can’t undo what is done.”

“You’re damn right you can’t! I hate you and I curse the day I met you,” she lied.

Leandro looked weary and deflated all of a sudden and Alexandra felt her heart constrict in her chest as she looked at him. In this moment he didn’t look the part of some corporate raider as she had painted him; he looked almost like a little boy whose heart was breaking.

“I never set out to seduce you. I came to Hawaii to persuade you to withdraw Beautiful Designs from the bid. Lead Inc has been trying to take over some companies, mostly subsidiaries of Alistairs Plc and this contract would have been like a leg in the door for us. Before I met you, it was just business, but once I saw you, I had to have you. I wanted to be with you, I should say. Seducing you was never my agenda. I swear it. I tried everything I could to stay away but I just could not forget you. Now that I know you exist, nothing is the same. All that I have accomplished means nothing without you. I was going to tell you everything that last day but you found out on your own before I had the chance.”

“Yeah you should have done a better job of hiding the papers I said,” she said bitingly.

He sighed, “That was the worst day of my life.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“Alexandra, I pulled Lead Inc out of the bid. That was the first thing I did when I returned. You can verify from them, I swear. I didn’t want to take it away from you; not if it meant I would lose you.”

Her heart thudded in her chest. He had pulled out of the contract when it meant so much to his company?

Alexandra took a quick step back as Leandro rose to his feet and took her hand in his once more. “I’m sorry Alexandra. Please forgive me? I feel like I know you as much as I know my own self. Can’t you see? You are a part of me and I am a part of you. Our meeting was a gift. Can’t you see that?”

“You only know so much about me because you read it up in some report!”

“I never read the report. In fact I had only just printed them out that same morning. I never read them I swear. Our connection surprised me too. You are the funniest, kindest, sweetest, most beautiful woman I know.”

His dark eyes stared into hers, open and searching and she read the blazing sincerity and remorse in his gaze. She believed him, she realized.

Her resistance melted away and she nodded, “Okay fine. No harm done.”

“There’s something else.”

“Huh?”

Before her surprised eyes, he went down on one knee and pulled a little black box from his pocket, his dark eyes gleaming as he looked up at her. Alexandra’s throat closed up as she stared at him, her hands flying to her mouth when the box opened to reveal the biggest and most amazingly cut diamond she had ever seen in her life.

“I love you Alexandra. I know I absolutely do not deserve you but will you make me the happiest man on earth and say you’ll marry me?”

“
I
I’m pregnant,” she blurted instead.

His eyes widened in surprise even as his gaze automatically dropped to her flat stomach before flicking up to her face.

“You’r
e
” he began hesitantly.

Alexandra nodded, happy tears springing into her eyes as she grinned down at him. He rose to his feet immediately and gathered her into his arms, his hands encircling her waist as he crushed her to him.

“You’re perfect. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” he breathed against her lips. His kiss was tender and gentle. His tongue stroked hers sweetly sending waves of a calm and soothing peace shooting through her nerve endings as she clung to him. An almost indescribable feeling of happiness washed over her.

“You never answered my question,” he reminded her, lifting his head and looking into her eyes with all the love in the world shining from his.

“Yes Leandro, I’ll marry you. I love you too,” she told him.

As she kissed him, all the walls around her heart melted away completely leaving her free to embrace this wonderful love that was hers to savor forever.

THE END

Leela Ash

Copyright ©2016 by Leela Ash. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Table of Contents

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8

1.

Alisa Craig heaved a heavy sigh as she shelved the books left over on the cart. It was the end of the day, so everybody had left the library, which was normally a good thing. Today though, it wasn't. It meant that she was alone with her thoughts, none of which were particularly pleasant.

Things hadn't been going well at home. She had married her high school sweetheart, and had believed that they were the perfect couple. She was a librarian and he was an accountant; two boring, meticulous people who only had eyes for each other.

Lately though, she wasn't so sure. She had been getting a lot of signs that Carl might not be as honorable as she thought. He was being secretive and strange. She wondered if he might have hit his midlife crisis early. It was beginning to make her nervous. He had begun to surprise her with random gifts.

In most relationships it would be a nice way to spice up the marriage, but it just made Alisa nervous. She couldn't help but wonder if he was feeling guilty about something. Carl was a man who held on to every penny that came into his grasp, and to see him parting so easily with his money on trivial things like flowers and jewelry was a huge warning bell.

Alisa sighed. Where had she gone wrong? They had been married for six years, ever since they were both twenty. Maybe they had married too early after all, just as her mother had told her. But then, her mother had never really liked Carl. She said he was bad news, and claimed she knew through a mother's intuition. She took her Scottish roots seriously, and had a lot of superstitions that Alisa never really understood.

Normally she would be able to take comfort in her appearance. If he was being fishy because there was another woman, did he think she was slacking off with it? The thought was absurd. She still turned heads wherever she went. Her long, golden blonde hair fell over her shoulders, making her look glamorous even on the worst of days. And most men couldn't take their eyes off of her full pink lips, even though she never painted them in seductive shades of red. And she could always rely on her soulful blue eyes to hold others rapt in her attention for as long as she wanted them there. Her beauty wasn't a gift she had found particularly useful though, and thought it attracted too many questionable people to her.

She had been happy to settle down with Carl. He was the sweet, quiet guy of her dreams; a man she believed could see past her beauty and into her truest self. That was something he liked to pretend he could do, while the rest of the male population were busy tripping over themselves to check out her ass.

No, she hadn't slipped up on her appearance. In fact, she found that she was getting more attention than ever lately. On a daily basis she could count on at least three library patrons complimenting her or trying to get her phone number. Most of the men didn't care that she had a wedding ring on. She knew it made Carl madly jealous. Maybe he had finally become so paranoid that he convinced himself that he wasn't worth her full attention, so she must be having it off with some other man who was more worthy of her than he was.

It would make her furious if that was the case, and he was using it to justify cheating on her. She pushed a book into its place hard, nearly cracking the binding. She felt suddenly irresponsible as a librarian and pulled the book back out to make sure she hadn't damaged it, at least not too badly. When she saw the cover of the book, she was startled by a vibrant image of Scotland, a place she knew well from lore and paintings.

She had been craving tales of Scotland lately. She used to curl up with her mother for hours and listen to her speak about the mystical and mysterious place. She would have done anything to listen to another tale about her distant highlander relatives.

Unfortunately for her love of the old tales, her mother had shared the same love and succumbed to the deep, burning desire in her heart of hearts to use her retirement fund to move back to Scotland. This left Alisa alone, and saddened by the fact that she would no longer be able to listen to her mother weave the tales she loved so much.

Maybe this book would help her to fill the void. It also gave her a comforting thought. Maybe, if worst came to worst with Carl, a visit to her mom's wouldn't be such a bad idea. If her suspicions were proven true, it would be a nice excuse to escape life for a while and soak up the intoxicating tales her mother shared with her.

She flipped through the book, her eyes hungrily taking in the words. It seemed like a romance story, one that was captivating and engaging. It wouldn't hurt anything to take the book home. She could see to any repairs that might need to be made and use it as a way to distract herself from the emotional toll she was dealing with as a result of her suspicions of Carl's cheating. There was no way to know for sure, and sometimes she felt guilty for even considering it, but she was only human.

***

That night, Alisa sat in her study, fingering a piece of ancient tartan cloth that her mother had given to her. Her mother had always kept a huge sheet of it close in a wicker basket beside her chair. It was a family heirloom, she had told Alisa, and although she wanted to keep part of it for herself, she had cut it up and divided it among Alisa and her four brothers and bestowed it upon them with its tale when they each turned sixteen. She had been the last to hear the tale from her mother, and had kept the cloth close by her ever since.

As legend had it, a handsome Highland devil, Lord Blane Wyndham, had been traveling for days, hoping to wreak havoc on the lowland settlement that liked to try policing his clan's ways. He was rounding the bend, nearly there after his long journey, when he ran into a beautiful woman. She was unlike any he had ever seen, and her clear eyes held him still in his tracks. She saw he had a mischievous glint in his eyes. He could tell she was not highland stock, for she was scrawny and pale. Still, he had never seen anyone more beautiful.

“You up to no good, highlander?” she asked him.

“Aye,” he said with a charming smile.

As it happened, the woman was a noble lady, daughter of Blane's most hated enemy. They began a forbidden, elicit romance, one that nearly started a war between the highland clan and the lowlander's settlement. Finally, highlander and lowlander came to an agreement – a peace treaty, if the two young lovers would be allowed to live in their own way.

Everything was going well until, one day, the young woman was approached by a group of huge men.

“You're making a mistake, getting involved with Lord Blane,” the leader told her. “He is already engaged to be wed, and to a highlander. We don't need lowlanders contaminating our stock.”

“Nothing you can say will dissuade me from marrying him,” the plucky lass said, unintimidated by the three men. “He is my true love, in any time, in all ways.”

“This is Lord Todd,” the leader said, gesturing to a stern man. “His clan outnumbers Blane's by hundreds. If you don't make yourself scarce, he will attack, and the blood will be on your hands.”

The three men left, and the lass was left to ponder their threat. She wanted to speak to her betrothed about it, but before she reached him, she was intercepted by Lord Todd.

“You'd best keep your mouth shut lass, or we'll take care of you and your family. They'll regret making peace with the highlanders.”

The lady returned to her family home in the lowlands, where she tossed and turned, before finally falling into a fitful sleep. She had been having dreams of a faraway place, somewhere strange and different but so vivid that it seemed she could reach out and touch it if she tried.

The wedding was set for the next day, and she awoke feeling scared and concerned. There was nobody whose counsel she trusted, and so she held the terrible secret in her breast. When she walked toward her beloved to tie the knot, he looked at her with such love and tenderness that she almost fainted with worry. His life was in danger if she said yes.

The lass approached Lord Blane, touching his cheek gently, silently telling him her good byes. Tears streamed down her face and her hands trailed down his body, until they rested on his waist, fingering his tartan kilt. She knew she couldn't marry her beloved, not if it put his life in danger, but there was nowhere she could go, and no explanation she could give him that would be sufficient to break the peace treaty.

She heard a faint noise behind her beloved and looked up to stare into the fierce eyes of Lord Todd, who was hiding in the trees. He was gripping a broadsword, and she paled. In her fear and disdain, she remembered the vivid images she had seen while she slept and closed her eyes tightly. If only she could go where nobody would make such impossible demands on her, and keep her lover and his clan safe!

Suddenly, she disappeared before everybody's eyes and was brought into the world of her dreams.

Lord Blane went nearly crazy with worry as he searched for his lost love, unable to explain the event that had happened right before his eyes. He spent his life obsessed with following her, and sought help from oracles and sorceresses. Finally, one asked him to bring her the last item his lost love had touched. He thought immediately of his kilt, and she charmed it so that what was lost would quickly be found. Unfortunately, before the kilt could bring back his lost love, Lord Blane was killed. His clan was under attack by Lord Todd, despite his word that they would leave him alone if the lass left. Apparently he was jealous that such a beautiful woman would be interested in Lord Blane, and not himself. He took it out on the lot of them.

The kilt had survived through the ages, along with the tale. Since then, it had been said that the tartan could make the lost found again and bring good luck to those who touched it. Alisa's mother swore by the tartan's powers. Whenever Alisa or one of her brothers had lost something, their mother could find it, and she always said it was due to the charm put on the tartan cloth in her wicker basket.

Alisa stroked the tartan cloth now as she opened the book to check its binding, slipping on her glasses and peering closely at it. She could repair it easily, that was the good news. The bad news was that Carl had bought her a dozen roses and was downstairs watching a football game. He had never had any interest in football before, but now he seemed to have suddenly found it fascinating. He had come home that evening and been so sweet that she'd almost felt guilty suspecting him of cheating. But then she smelled something – perfume – as he walked by, and her guilt turned to nausea and anger.

Now she opened the book, noting how coincidental it was that she should be holding an ancient piece of tartan as she read about a hot and heavy romance between a noble woman and a powerful, masculine highlander. The passion between them brought a blush to her cheeks, and she stroked the tartan cloth absently as she read, her mind on the hills of Scotland and the legends that had fascinated her since she was a young girl. She had always wanted a place among the legends.

At the very least, since she turned sixteen, she had a piece of mystical cloth for herself. She wasn't sure how she would use it, but she felt comforted as she held it close, reading about the romance between the noble woman and the highlander hero, trying to distract herself from Carl and wishing that she had her own bare-chested hero to carry her off, into the beautiful hills of Scotland.