The Spanish Aristocrat's Woman (12 page)

He’d used his resources and had found her in Monte Negro, but had no idea what to do now that he’d found her. He knew that she would need a big gesture from him. Hell, what she needed was his love and he didn’t know if he loved her. Didn’t know that he could ever say to a woman that he loved her.

But this wasn’t just any woman. Kara was the woman who’d changed his life and made him realize that he had something worth losing. How could one person impact his life this much?

Even his sisters were at odds with him because he’d let Kara slip away. With his family upset with him and having other things to deal with, he had nowhere to turn other than to Christos and Tristan, who’d always had his back.

After two days of drinking on Christos’s yacht, the other men were restless to get back to their brides. But the bond of friendship was strong, and they were still here with him.

He took a sip of coffee and stared at the horizon.

“Why did you ask her to marry you?” Christos asked.

He shook his head. He’d sound like a total bastard if he told them his real reason. “I like her.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t at my reception. You barely knew her. Sheri said she thinks you were afraid that Christos and I would leave you behind now that we’re both married.”

Gui snorted. “What kind of idiot gets married because his mates have?”

“One that looks like you,” Christos said with a laugh.

Gui flipped him off. “I’m not married.”

“That’s the problem,” Tristan said. “You let it go too long. You should have hustled her up the aisle as soon as she said yes.”

“I’m not into rushing,” Gui said, taking another sip of the strong Greek coffee. These days were endless, and he felt the emptiness of Kara’s presence in a way he’d never expected to. How could one woman change his life in such a short time? And why hadn’t he realized it before she’d left?

“Liar. You run through life where everything else is concerned.”

“Christos, you’re supposed to be my friend.”

“I am. That’s why I’m being blunt. And we don’t have the luxury of letting you take three months to decide what to do the way you did with Elvira.”

“Well, that worked out the way it was supposed to,” Gui said.

“But Kara is different, and so are you when you are with her. You’ve done nothing but talk about her since we got here. You need to go after her. Enough sitting here drinking and talking.”

“I don’t know how to win her back, Tristan. I hurt her. Told her I didn’t need her, and then went to comfort another woman.”

“So tell her you’re an idiot and give her something expensive,” Christos said.

“Did that work with Ava?”

“No. But she wanted something else from me.”

“What did she want?”

“None of your damned business.”

Gui smiled at Christos. He knew what his friend was getting at. This wasn’t the kind of problem that could be solved in discussion with his friends. He needed to do something that would show Kara exactly how much he loved her.

Oh, hell, did he love her? Was that why he’d had this dull ache inside his body since she’d left?

“Gui?”

“Hmm?”

“You okay?”

“I think I’m in love.”

Tristan spit his coffee out and started laughing. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is, because I have no idea what to do. How to get her back. And I’ve just realized that I don’t think I can live without her.”

“That’s love. You know, the bigger you screwed up the bigger the gesture has to be.”

“I told her I didn’t believe in romantic love.”

“You’re screwed. She’s not going to believe you’ve changed your mind.”

“Unless I do something that proves it beyond a doubt to her.”

“Unless you do that,” Christos said. “So what do you have in mind?”

He had no idea. Kara was a generous person and she gave so much of herself to everyone around her. He needed to give something to her. Something that she’d never ask for or expect. He needed to prove to her—and to himself—that she was the woman he loved. The woman he wanted to be the center of his world.

And there was only one way to do it, he thought. Only one way to make her believe it. He was going to have to make a big public gesture. And it couldn’t just be a gesture, because Kara would sense that and reject him.

He had to really believe in what he did. He had to act from the heart and convince her that she was the woman he loved. The woman he needed in his life. Not just for now, because it was convenient for them to marry, but because she was the only woman he could picture his future with.

How was he going to do that? he wondered.

One thing she had noticed while she’d been in the seaside town—men were paying attention to her. When she left Gui, she’d taken with her a new confidence in herself. By not staying with a man who didn’t love her, she’d realized that she had her own power and her own beauty.

Of course, that realization had taken a few days, but it hadn’t been hard to work out. She didn’t have to take whatever scraps Gui handed her. She deserved real love. She wasn’t the fat sister anymore. She was a beautiful woman who deserved Gui’s love.

She wondered if she’d been too hasty in leaving. So what if he’d said he didn’t need her? He’d sort of reached out to her again that night. Leaving was a cowardly thing to do. But staying while Gui comforted Elvira wasn’t something that she would have been able to live with. Not when he wasn’t committed to
her
completely.

She shook her head. Asking her to marry him wasn’t enough. Gui had to love her, too. They could have a once-in-a-lifetime love. At least, as far as she was concerned. So letting him go was the stupidest thing she’d ever done.

But going back…She had no idea how she could go back to the way things were. It would give him license to treat her poorly for the rest of their lives together. It would be like saying to him, I love you, so you can walk all over me.

And there was no way she could live with herself if she did that. So here she was, spending her days in a luxury hotel, sunbathing, eating gourmet meals and pretending she was okay when in reality she wasn’t.

In reality, she was heartbroken. Wounded from loving the wrong man. And she couldn’t even comfort herself by pretending she no longer loved him. She did.

And maybe he wasn’t the wrong man, she thought.

Every day, she woke up and hoped that he’d come for her. Which was stupid, because he wasn’t going to make that kind of gesture. She wasn’t the kind of girl men like Gui chased after. He’d expect her to come back to him. Especially after the way he’d come back for Elvira and she’d moved on. She knew she was waiting for nothing.

She was giving herself time to recover from loving him so much. How did that happen? How had she let herself fall for him when she’d decided to be smart?

She still hadn’t found the answers she’d been seeking when she left Madrid. She’d run away, and that was the plain truth of the matter. For the first time in her life, she’d done something irresponsible, and she was struggling with it. She was needed back at her job, and she knew she owed Gui an explanation, but the truth of the matter was she just couldn’t face anyone right now.

She had to figure out for herself where her life was heading and why she had fallen in love with a man who couldn’t—or rather, wouldn’t—love her. It was hard to take. Hard to believe that, for a smart woman, she’d made such a stupid mistake.

Leaving had been stupid. Rina had been right. If she wanted Gui, she should be willing to fight for him. She needed to get herself back to Madrid and let him know what was acceptable and what wasn’t. She needed him to be her man. And he’d asked—no, he’d
told
—her to marry him, so he needed to step up and love her as well.

“Ms. deMontaine?”

She glanced at the short man standing next to her table. She’d stopped for lunch at one of the seaside cafés. It was a nice spring day in a paradise, she thought, in this A-grade resort town for the rich and famous. And forlorn.

“Yes, I’m Kara deMontaine.”

“I was asked to give you this.”

He handed her a large padded mailing envelope. She reached for her handbag to tip him, but he shook his head. “I’ll be over there, waiting for your response.”

He stepped a few feet away and Kara opened the envelope. A flat box with a green ribbon tied around it came out. She removed the ribbon and opened the box. There was an embossed card on top of the tissue paper. She lifted it out and saw a note from Gui.

Her heart leapt and started beating so fast she was sure she was going to have a heart attack on the spot.

Guillermo

She turned Gui’s note over and wrote her response across the back accepting his invitation. “Please take this back to the Count.”

“Yes, ma’am. A car will be waiting in front of your hotel at seven-thirty.”

She nodded. She finished her drink and looked back at the box. It wasn’t that large, so she ruled out clothing, and it was too big for jewelry.

She pushed the tissue paper aside and saw that it was a book. She lifted it out of the box and stared down at the cover. It looked like an illuminated manuscript from medieval times. On the cover was a knight in shining armor on a horse. The knight was looking up at a castle, and in the tower was a woman who looked at lot like her. She had long, black curly hair like Kara’s. And her eyes were gray, just like hers.

She lifted the book up, looking more closely at the knight, and noticed this time that he looked like Gui.

She opened the book and saw that it was the story of Gui and Kara. The book was written just like a fairy tale. Starting with Once Upon A Time…

She flipped the pages to see what happened in the story, reading along. The book was exquisitely made and on each page were hand-painted drawings that depicted another scene of the knight and his princess. Gui must have paid a fortune to have it made so quickly.

But the story ended abruptly when the princess disappeared. The knight was looking for her—and then there was nothing but blank pages. She closed the book and put it back in the box. She wasn’t too sure what Gui had in mind for this evening, but it was clear to her that he had come for her.

And that meant the world. She wished she knew where he was, because she didn’t want to waste another second without him by her side.

She paid her tab and left the restaurant, walking up the avenue to her hotel.

Leaving Madrid felt like a hundred years ago. She had no idea what had happened after she left. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t followed Juan’s funeral in the news. But now she had hope bubbling up inside her. That same hope that she’d felt the first moment she’d realized that she loved Gui.

And there was nothing to stop it. She had never believed she was the kind of woman who would have a great love in her life. It just didn’t seem like something that would happen to someone as practical as she was. But Gui had found her, and she had fallen in love with him. And now she was beginning to believe that he loved her, too.

It had taken him three days to get the book made and to get everything in place to come and woo her back into his arms.

He had been a jerk the day of the accident, and a part of him knew that Kara would cut him a certain amount of slack for some of the things he’d said, but when it got down to it, he’d let her go. He’d pushed her away because he’d been afraid of acknowledging that he had deep emotions for her.

Hell, he loved the woman and he was still afraid to say it. Even to himself. Damn, what would he do if he couldn’t convince her to come back into his life and marry him?

He followed her into the lobby of her hotel, making sure she was safely inside and on the elevator up to her room before he went to the house he’d rented. He gave Vincent orders to make sure that everything was perfectly prepared for the evening.

At six o’clock their friends and family started to arrive. Kate, Emily and Courtney were friendly to him, a marked difference from two days ago when they’d barely spoken to him. Rina still wasn’t sure that she believed he could fix the hurt he’d delivered to her sister.

Christos and Tristan gave him a clap on the back and wished him luck, and Ava and Sheri kissed his cheek approvingly.

He went in the car to pick her up, and when he arrived at her hotel and saw her in the lobby, his breath caught in his chest.

“Kara.”

“Gui.”

“You look gorgeous tonight,
bebe.
”

“Thank you. You look very nice as well.”

He nodded to her. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Thank you for the gift you sent this afternoon.”

“You are welcome. Did you like it?”

She smiled up at him and he felt lighter than he had in days. How had he thought he could live without this woman? “I loved it.”

“Well, you are going to have to write the ending. I’m out of ideas.”

“I think you still have a thing or two up your sleeve.”

“Maybe one last effort to show you that I’m sorry for my behavior.”

“I didn’t leave because of the way you acted on that last night.”

“You didn’t?” he asked. They were outside now. Vincent held open the back door of the Rolls-Royce that he’d rented.

She slid into the backseat, and once he was inside and they were on their way, she turned to him. “I left because I realized I couldn’t stay with you and continue to love you when you didn’t even want to acknowledge that you needed me in your life.”

“I was a complete jerk when I said that.”

She shook her head. “I understood you were having a terrible day. And I was a little jealous of the time you’d spent with Elvira.”

“She means nothing to me other than a friend. And I can’t turn my back on friends.”

She nodded. “I didn’t mean to imply that you should. It’s just that she was…Well, she was responsible for everything between us. And…”

“What?”

“She’s beautiful, and a part of me felt like I’d never be able to compete with her. I left partly because of vanity, Gui. I never wanted you to see Elvira and me photographed together and feel like you got stuck with the runner-up.”

He caught her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Kara, never say that again. You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me. You. No one else. I can’t imagine loving anyone else as much as I love you.”

She shook her head. “But you don’t believe in romantic love.”

“I was an idiot. I think a part of me was always afraid to admit that I believed in love because I never planned to experience it. But with you, I have no choice. I love you, Kara. And I can’t live without you.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I never say things I don’t mean.”

“Oh, Gui. You’re the man I’ve always secretly dreamed of finding and having for my own. I love you very much.”

He drew her into his arms and kissed her full on the lips. But he was careful not to let their passion get out of control.

They arrived at the house a few minutes later and Vincent opened the door for them. Gui got out first and then reached down, offering Kara his hand. She took it and got out. When she was standing by his side he couldn’t resist wrapping his arm around her waist and leading her up the steps of the house.

She hesitated when he opened the door and she heard the voices from the patio area. “Who’s here?”

“Only the people who are most important to us. This is an important night and we need our friends and family around us.”

“For dinner?” she said.

He heard the hope and the concern in her voice. “A bit more than dinner.”

He led her out to the patio, where she was greeted by her friends. As she was welcomed to the house, Gui went to make sure he had everything he needed for his part of this night.

“You seem nervous,” Tristan said, coming up next to him.

“I am. But I know that I need her in my life and I need her to believe how much I love her.”

Tristan clapped him on the back.
“Bon chance, mon ami.”

“Gracias.”

When Kara was done greeting everyone, he drew her to a platform that he’d had set up next to the pool. Candles floated on the surface of the pool, illuminating the entire area.

He pulled a microphone from his pocket. “Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming here tonight.”

“What are you doing?” Kara asked in a soft voice.

“Something I really should have done back in the beginning,” he said to her, then brought the microphone back to his mouth and said, “Many of you know that Kara and I are engaged. And those of you who know me probably already guessed that instead of asking her to marry me, I just told her we should get married. But tonight I want to fix that.”

He turned to Kara and got down on one knee. “Kara deMontaine, I love you more than I thought I’d ever love a woman. Will you make me the happiest man alive and marry me?”

She nodded and sank to her knees in front of him. She threw her arms around his neck. “Gui, I love you so much. I will marry you.”