“It was business first,” he said coolly. “Layton International was no longer relevant. You need me to keep you viable in today’s marketplace.”
“You?” She shifted forward on the seat, her eyes glittering with sudden anger. “What do you know about relevancy, Alejandro? Until a few years ago, you were no one in this industry! What you know about this business could fill a thimble compared to what my father knew, what he taught me—”
“Oh yes,” he ground out, “your precious father, who sent you to do his dirty work instead of facing me like a man. Spare me your analysis, Rebecca. I’m still the one in control of Layton International.”
He thought she would say something else, would let her true colors show now that she’d pointed out his inferior past, but she drew in a shaky breath and fixed her gaze on a point outside the window. The car had been crawling forward for some time. Now it drew to a halt in the Puerta del Sol. Alejandro swore. Women with placards marched and shouted, blocking the square that was the heart of Old Madrid. Protests were common there and they could do nothing but wait as the policiá directed cars down the side streets.
“I have a life. I’d like to get back to it,” Rebecca said after they’d sat in silence for nearly ten minutes. “If you plan to fire me, why don’t you just get it over with and put us both out of our misery.”
“Layton International is your life.”
She bristled. “I have an apartment. Friends. I can’t stay here forever wondering what your plans are.”
He was in no mood to be delicate with her. “You don’t even have a pet fish, Rebecca. You have nothing in your life but work and one or two friendships you maintain.”
Her mouth dropped open as she looked at him. She snapped it shut. “How do you know I don’t have a cat or a dog? Or a boyfriend?”
“I know that you eat Chinese takeout with a friend from a restaurant called Tai Pan on Friday nights when you’re in town, that you buy flowers from a shop called Robertson’s, and that you have a grocery store across the street from your apartment but rarely visit it.”
His investigators were very thorough, though they couldn’t tell him everything. Like when she’d last spent the night with a man. He’d wanted to know, but he’d steadfastly refused to ask for that kind of information. It would show a level of interest in her life he no longer had. All he’d really needed to know was that she had no long-term entanglements. Other than a couple of friendships with other women, there was no one in her life.
He watched as shock and hurt chased each other across her face. Now why did the hurt pierce his conscience?
“You had me watched?”
He shrugged. “I am very thorough when taking over a company.”
It was several moments before she spoke. “Oh God, I can’t believe…” She clasped her arms around her waist, her chest rising and falling faster than before. “You… spied… on me. You—”
She bent double, air whistling in and out of her body as she took deep breaths.
Alarm snaked across his nerve endings, prickled the hair on his arms and neck. Of all the things he’d expected her to say or do, this hadn’t crossed his mind as a possibility. “Querida, what is wrong?”
She didn’t answer, just kept breathing hard. She was on the verge of hyperventilating and they were stuck in the Puerta del Sol.
Dios, he felt so helpless, like the night Anya—
No. He had to do something. Now.
“Rebecca, hold on,” he said, reaching for the door. “Just hold on.” He had to get help, had to get one of the policiá to radio for an ambulance. He could call, but the police would be faster.
“I have to get out of here,” she wheezed. “Have to… go.”
Before he could stop her, she reached for the opposite door and slipped out into the churning crowd.
16
Already, she could breathe again. Rebecca hugged herself tighter and forged through the crowd. She’d forgotten her wrap, but she wasn’t going back. He’d had her watched. Investigated. Her privacy invaded. What else did he know? That she hadn’t had sex in a year and a half? That she’d kept on taking birth control pills in the pitiful belief she might someday find a man she could love the way she’d once loved Alejandro?
It was pathetic. She was pathetic. She swiped at her cheeks, ignored the catcalls and whistles of the men she passed. She was vaguely familiar with the Puerta del Sol, but not enough to understand where it was in relation to anything. She knew there was a department store on one side, El Corta Inglés, but that was in the direction of the protestors, who congregated around the statue of a Spanish king on a horse. To one end of the square was the red neon Tio Pepe sign. Ahead, there was nothing but a steady trail of people who seemed uninvolved in the protest. That was the direction she’d first headed and the one she kept going in.
She didn’t know where she was going or what she would do when she got there, but she couldn’t sit in that car with him and know he’d spied on her. Like she was a monkey in a cage! An image of Parker Gaines—his smooth lies, the voice recorders he’d used to capture their conversations, the humiliating meeting with her father when it all came to light—flashed into her mind. She thrust it out again with a growl.
The cobblestone walk sloped upward, toward an archway in the
