CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Three weeks later

SILVER MOONLIGHT CREATED a mystical glow on the ocean, the waves rising and falling beneath a dark sky speckled with stars. Calandra sat on the beach, one hand draped across her belly.

The ocean had looked incredible from the porch, the muffled roar calling to her. The view from her attic bedroom was nothing compared to the beauty laid out before her. Waves crashed on a smooth beach, the white-capped peaks glowing in the moonlight, the water tumbling over itself in frothy splendor to almost kiss her bare feet before receding. Stars spiraled above her head.

She kept her eyes on the barest glint of a horizon, where the midnight blue of the sky met the even darker blue of the ocean. Beneath her fingertips, something fluttered.

A sad smile tugged at her lips. She’d felt it this morning, the briefest twinge. She’d chalked it up to muscle spasms. But the fluttering had grown stronger, until it had been impossible to deny that she was feeling her baby move inside her for the first time.

Johanna had insisted on baking a cake to celebrate the occasion. A yellow cake frosted with caramel and topped off with sprinkles in the shape of baby rattles she’d served after dinner.

For all the years that Calandra had spent taking care of Johanna, her sister had repaid the favor twice over in the three weeks Calandra had been home. She’d picked her up at the airport, held her while she forced out the whole story on the couch with thankfully minimal tears. She’d arranged a meeting for Calandra with a finance student from her college to help her decide how best to manage the five-hundred-thousand-dollar deposit that had appeared in her account twenty-four hours after she’d left Marseille.

An email had also been sent with an attachment, a formal letter of recommendation from Alejandro Cabrera himself, head of Cabrera Shipping.

Last week she’d been mindlessly flipping through late-night movies, unable to sleep, when The Scarlet Pimpernel had come on. She’d changed the channel with a savage push of a button, then changed it back again. Landing on the scene where the beautiful, tortured Marguerite had looked at Percy with sad eyes and whispered, “This is some absurd role you’re playing. I don’t know why. But I’m sure it is. Perhaps to keep the world at a distance. Only now you’re shutting me out as well,” it had plunged a knife into her heart so deep it had made her eyes burn.

She’d done the right thing. He hadn’t been playing a role when he’d flat-out told her he didn’t know if he wanted her in his life, wanted their child in his life. A definitive answer. One that had nearly killed her.

Better to know now, before the baby came and could get attached to a father who would disappear from its life, than to suffer that heartache later.

It didn’t stop the wondering. Or the memories. The dreadful, horrid, wonderful memories of a week when she’d climbed the Eiffel Tower, seen the Mediterranean from the deck of a yacht and knelt down to smell a sprig of lavender in front of a historic abbey.

At least Alejandro had given her that, she consoled herself. She’d lived more in the past week than she had in years. That little taste of life had come just in time. When their—her, she corrected herself—her child arrived, she would make sure it got that same taste of life, that same joy in both the big and small.

And through that, her child would at least know their father a little.

A breeze blew in, bringing with it the scent of sea salt. Out of the corner of her eye, something appeared. She turned her head and gasped. A yacht glided across the water, elegant and glowing white under the kiss of moonlight. If she squinted, she could just make out letters written in graceful red cursive.

Her heart thudded. It wasn’t possible. She was imagining things. Or hallucinating.

The yacht stilled, bobbing gently up and down on the waves. She pushed to her feet, eyes trained on the boat as her heart pounded in her throat. Was it him? Did she want it to be him? After nearly a month of silence—no texts, no phone calls, no letters—what was left to be said?

A shape appeared out of the ocean, a ghost emerging from the water. She took a few steps back, fear mixing in with her adrenaline.

“Kitty Hawk’s nice this time of year.”

The husky voice echoed up over the beach. Her mouth dropped open as Alejandro walked out of the water, white shirt clinging like a second skin to his muscular chest, black pants pasted to his legs. With dark curls plastered to his forehead and that wicked grin flashing in the dark, he looked like a hero from one of her old paperback romances.

“You’re wet.”

His laughter, deep and rich, chased away the chill that had settled on her skin when she’d first seen the yacht.

“Nothing gets by you, does it?”

“Rarely.” She crossed her arms over her middle, partly out of instinct to protect the baby now fluttering wildly in her stomach, and partly to keep herself from running down the beach and throwing herself into his arms. “Once in a while, though, I’ve been known to make a mistake.”

The barb hit home. His grin faded as he smoothed the wet hair out of his face.

“So have I. In fact, I made a big one pretty recently.”

“Aside from swimming in the Atlantic at night?”

“Yeah.” He took a step toward her. She didn’t move. She wouldn’t back down. “I let the woman I love walk away.”

Love. That word echoed in her head, over and over again. She wanted to reach out, grab it, hug it to her chest. He loved her?

Don’t. Don’t let him in.

“Hmm.”

“Hmm,” he repeated. “As in, ‘hmm, I like what I’m hearing’ or ‘hmm, go jump in the ocean, you bastard’?”

“I haven’t heard enough to make a decision.” Her eyes slid back to the yacht. “Seriously, why did you jump in the ocean?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” He gestured at his soaking-wet clothes. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have worn this to go swimming. I planned on mooring the boat, coming ashore via the dinghy and kidnapping you. Unfortunately, I haven’t taken it out by myself in quite some time.” He gestured at the dark waves. “It’s now a permanent addition to the bottom of the Atlantic. But I’m a good swimmer, and that’s not important. What is important is I need...” Even at this distance, she could see, feel, the intensity of his gaze sharpen as he stared at her like they’d been parted for years instead of just a few weeks.

“I need you, Calandra.”

Hadn’t she just been ruminating on how she hadn’t really been living her life? Had let fear mask itself as discipline and kept herself emotionally distant from everyone and everything? Alejandro was offering her the chance to break free from the past.

“You were going to kidnap me?” she finally asked.

“Romantically kidnap you. With your permission, of course.”

Damn her lips for twitching. She’d missed him. His humor. His charm. The way he looked at her like she was the only one in the world. But she’d allowed herself to be suckered in once. To open her heart and believe he could be different. Would it be fear to reject him, or practicality?

“Do you still feel about me the way you did when we left Provence?”

Her mouth dried up as heat blossomed inside her. “What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean, Calandra. I saw it in your eyes. I know what you were going to tell me the night of the party.”

“You said we both had our answer. Nothing more needs to be said.”

Long strides ate up the distance between them. She stood, frozen in place by desire and want and the dread that if she moved a muscle she’d break down, throw her arms around his neck and ask him to never leave again.

“Much more needs to be said.” He laid a hand on her cheek, the gesture so gentle and tender it brought a lump to her throat. “For starters, I am not like my father.”

He sucked in a deep breath as he savored the feel of her skin. He’d been an idiot to wait as long as he had to come for her. But it had taken the past three weeks and several long, difficult conversations with his father, his mother, Adrian and even Everleigh to make him see sense.

“Do something incredibly romantic,” Everleigh had encouraged.

So he’d ordered The Scarlet Pimpernel to make the crossing from Marseille to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and moor right in front of her aunt Norine’s ramshackle beachfront cottage. A storm had slowed their journey by a few hours so that instead of arriving just before sunset as he’d planned, they’d sailed in under the light of the moon. His captain had tried to discourage him from taking the dinghy out with the waves as high as they were, had offered to take the yacht to the nearest marina and call Alejandro a car. But the marina was an hour away by boat, and he hadn’t wanted to wait.

His pride smarted a little from getting tossed into the ocean. He’d envisioned striding up the beach with the confidence and swagger of Douglas Fairbanks, not a drowned rat. But it had been worth it to reach Calandra as soon as he could.

God, she was beautiful. Dark hair flowing past her shoulders, arms crossed over her belly, now slightly rounded and peeking out from beneath the hem of her shirt. The need to hold her, cradle her stomach and the life growing inside her, feel her curl into his body the way she had all those nights ago, almost overpowered him.

First things first. Apology. Explanation. More apology.

“I’m so sorry, Calandra.” He placed his forehead against hers, exhaled sharply when she didn’t pull away. Even if she pushed him into the ocean and told him she never wanted to see him again, he would savor every touch she allowed him. “That night on La Reina, what you overheard was the first time my father and I have had a conversation about anything other than my behavior or business. He told me things about his affair that put it in a very different light. That rendered most of my life obsolete.”

Calandra leaned back and his stomach dropped.

“I don’t understand.”

“I lived most of my life, my flings, my ability to remain unattached, my exploits, to punish my father.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Only to find out that my entire existence was built on a misunderstanding. An assumption I made that turned out not to be true. Suddenly...” He raked a hand through his hair. “I had no idea who I was. I was faced with nearly twenty years of distance and foolish decisions and a persona I’d concocted that wasn’t really me. It made me question everything. Including whether I was pursuing you and being a father for the right reasons.”

He waited for the shutter to drop down, for her beautiful, misty eyes to turn steely gray and her voice to whip out an order to leave and never come back.

Hope bloomed, tiny but fierce, as she stayed put, continued to look at him thoughtfully instead of with the disgust and fury he’d anticipated.

“So what did you decide?”

He barely resisted kissing her for uttering her question in that prim, controlled voice that drove him crazy. Crazy because he admired her, how she managed to lead and coordinate and do all the amazing things she did for her career. Crazy, too, because he wanted to kiss her senseless until the primness was replaced by that breathy moan that set his blood on fire.

“Cabrera Shipping became the first thing I really wanted in life for me. Making it a success because I wanted to build something. La Reina was the second, and the first thing that was truly my own. I never thought anything could be more important than La Reina.”

He reached out, slowly, giving her plenty of time to back up, before he placed his hand on her belly. She didn’t lean into him, but she didn’t pull away. He knelt down in the sand, gave in to temptation and placed the softest of kisses on her stomach.

“You, and our child, are more important to me than anything in the world, Calandra.” He looked up at her, letting every emotion he’d repressed show. If he lost, at least he’d know he gave it his all. “It started out with me wanting more purpose in my life. The chance to be the father mine had never been. And then I realized that it wasn’t just our child, but you that I wanted, too. The woman I’ve been falling in love with for the past three years.”

A tear traced its way down her face, leaving behind a trail on her cheek that glistened in the silver light. He stood and hurriedly wiped it away.

“Calandra, I—”

“I’m sorry!” she cried out and flung her arms around his neck. He hesitated for half a second before wrapping his arms around her waist and hauling her against him, burying his face in her hair and breathing her in.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he whispered in her ear as he cradled her in his arms.

“But I do.” She pulled back to look him in the eye, her hands settling on his cheeks. “I heard enough of your conversation with your father to know how serious it was. You told me about your relationship with him, how tumultuous it was, but I focused on the little bit I heard and made it all about me and my past.” She wiped away more tears with the back of her hand. “I should have given you grace. I should have trusted you and told you how much I respect your drive, your dedication...how much I loved you. And instead I assumed the worst and I ran.”

He cradled her face in his hands and kissed the tears from her cheeks as joy filled him, true joy like he’d never known before.

“I’m not perfect, Calandra.”

A smile broke through her tears. “Trust me, I know.”

“Minx.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I mean that I’m just starting to get to know myself. It’s going to take a while. There will be days I struggle. It’s a lot to ask anyone to take on. Selfish, really.”

“And I’m just starting to confront my past,” Calandra said as she laid her hands on top of his. “I have trust issues. Big ones. I buried myself in routines and checklists and a job that required order. I struggle to share my emotions. I have a lot to deal with regarding my parents.”

“Well...” So much. So much pain on both sides. “Aren’t we a pair?”

Her eyes dimmed a fraction. “Do you think...”

“I think,” he replied as her voice trailed off, “that we both love each other. That we know each other better than anyone else does. And,” he added as he placed a hand on her stomach once more, “that that’s enough for a new start. I want to marry you, Calandra. I want to wake up to your face the rest of my life, to our baby in the nursery. I want you to drag me to little culinary schools and remind me that I’m being an ass and not let me get away with anything.”

A wobbly smile crossed her face as more tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Was that a proposal?”

He dropped back down on one knee and grabbed both her hands in his. “A horrible one, but yes. Let me try that again. Calandra Smythe, love of my life, will you marry me?”

With her breathy “yes” echoing in his ears, he surged to his feet, swept her into his arms and kissed her beneath a sea of stars.