She nodded. “Yes.”
He thought that if Jackson Layton were alive right now, he’d throttle the man. “All the time?”
Her head snapped up. Tears glinted in her eyes. Something tightened in his chest. He reached up to rub absently at the spot, then realized what he was doing and dropped his hand again.
“He might have. I don’t really know any longer.” She lay her head back against the seat, closed her eyes. He found himself thinking how fragile she looked. She’d been almost a shadow of herself when he’d seen her in New York last week. Since returning to Spain, he’d put Señora Flores to work feeding her. She had more color in her cheeks, and she was starting to fill out a little bit. Soon, she would be big with his child. The thought made him irrationally possessive.
“Why would he do this to you?”
She took a deep breath, let it out again. “Because I was a girl, Alejandro. He wanted a son to leave the business to.” She looked at him. “He thought I would be weak, that I would lose my head over a man. Because that’s what women do, naturally.”
“Not you,” he said and meant it. One of the things he’d always been impressed with was her sense of the hotel business. They’d spent hours talking about every aspect of the business when he was still new to it. And after he’d taken her company, he’d watched her in the boardroom, reviewed her management of Layton International, and realized who’d really steered the company into a freefall. The only weak Layton was her father.
“He had cause to think so,” she said quietly.
“Because of me?”
“No, someone else.”
Something very like jealousy sliced into him. “You were in love?”
She’d told him she loved him. He’d believed it until she betrayed him. But to think she’d loved someone else? Really loved him? He had an urge to slam his fist into something.
“It was a couple of years before I met you, the summer I was twenty. Parker Gaines was very sophisticated, very suave. He was a con man, though I didn’t know it of course.”
She bowed her head, spoke to her lap. “My father wanted to test me. Or so he said. He hired Parker to ‘breach my defenses’ as he put it. I was young enough and—” She laughed bitterly, brokenly. “—lonely enough to believe Parker’s lies. He seduced me, claimed to love me, and stole money from me. Worse, he got the combination to the safe in my office. He stole documents, checks, and plans for future developments. Father was furious.”
Alejandro seethed. Dios, was her father insane? He did not doubt for a moment that she spoke the truth. She was too devastated, her fingers trembling as she talked, her voice breaking on the name Parker Gaines.
“Why would your father do this?”
She shrugged as if it didn’t mean anything, but he knew that was far from true.
“He wanted to teach me to be ruthless. He called me to his office after I’d discovered the extent of Parker’s theft. And Parker was there, drinking scotch and smiling like he’d won the lottery. He’d recorded our conversations, played back some of the juicier ones for my father while I tried to defend myself.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “It was humiliating. But I learned my lesson. I was very careful who I let into my life after that.”
Alejandro frowned. She was supposed to be a spoiled heiress, not this ravaged woman pouring out her private pain to him. Alejandro didn’t know he’d reached for her until he gripped her hand in his, felt the small bones and cool skin. Delicate.
But not fragile. Rebecca was made of sterner stuff than her father had given her credit for.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, querida.”
Though he would never say so to her, he was also glad Layton was dead. It saved Alejandro the trouble of killing the man himself.
She didn’t say anything, just nodded, her head turned toward the window. When her shoulders shook silently, he squeezed her hand. Nothing more, though it went against every instinct he had not to drag her into his arms and hold her.
27
Why had she told him those things? Rebecca splashed cool water on her face in the ensuite bath and looked at her red-rimmed eyes in the mirror. Stupid hormones were making her weepy. She could cry over anything these days. But to cry over old humiliations that were firmly in the past? Was she insane?
Alejandro had been horrified, like any rational person would be, but no doubt he viewed it more as a curiosity outside his sphere than something that touched him personally. He had been kind to her, but that was all.
If she’d hoped for a connection with him, she’d been wrong. She’d let her guard down, but she had to be careful in future and keep her feelings hidden. She would not give him the power to hurt her ever again.
When they arrived back at the villa, he’d wasted no time getting away from her. He’d gone into his office and shut the door. She didn’t blame him. It was a pitiful story, but not truly tragic in the way losing a child had been. Nothing her father had done to her compared to that.
Rebecca pressed her hand to her stomach, her heart fluttering at the thought of losing this baby. “You will be well, little one. I know you will. Your daddy is big and strong, and you will be strong just like him.”
Saying it didn’t make it true, but she was determined not to allow any negativity to creep into her thoughts about this child.
For the rest of the evening, she didn’t see Alejandro. He was still in his office, door closed, when she returned from the kitchen where she’d had a small helping of Señora Flores’s wonderful paella.
Rebecca could hear him barking out orders to someone on the other end
