IT WAS THE PERFECT day for a wedding.
As Ellie stepped out of the hired limousine, sweet-scented blossoms from the village’s cherry trees floated through the warm spring breeze, as lush and fragrant as her pink-and-green bouquet. She could hear the sound of birds singing in the cloudless blue sky, soaring high over the white clapboard church.
It was the perfect day to start her new life as a happy wife and mother-to-be. The perfect day to forget Diogo Serrador’s existence.
So why did she feel so miserable? Why had she cried for the last six hours straight, all across the Pennsylvania highway and through her hour at the hairstylist’s?
“Steady,” her grandmother said gruffly, taking her arm as they reached the doorway of the white church. Lilibeth’s gray, bushy eyebrows quivered as she looked up at her taller granddaughter. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Ellie muttered. But she wasn’t ready at all. She’d left Timothy eight messages on the trip from Manhattan, but he hadn’t answered his cell. He was likely getting in his last billable hours at his new, thriving private practice before they departed for their Aruba honeymoon.
Timothy was determined to be rich for her, he said. He didn’t believe Ellie when she said she didn’t need to be rich. All she wanted was to feel safe.
Safe, and to never have her heart broken again.
But she couldn’t marry Timothy without telling him she was pregnant. She couldn’t. She had to give him the option to back out of their marriage. Her hands tightened. Part of her even hoped he would back out…
“Careful—your flowers!” her grandmother protested.
“Sorry.” With every minute that passed, Ellie’s heart was pounding harder and faster. She was starting to feel dizzy. Her voice was a squeak as she said, “You promised you’d find Timothy first?”
“Are you really sure?” Lilibeth Conway squinted at her doubtfully. “It’s bad luck for a man to see his bride before the ceremony.”
“Please, Gran!”
Her grandmother sighed. “All right, all right. It’s your day.” She pushed her into a tiny antechamber inside the church, past the ushers and last few arriving guests. “Wait here.”
Ellie waited. And waited. She paced, staring out the tiny window.
In the distance, she saw the rolling hills and green forests. But it wasn’t all beautiful. She could see the stacks of the old, abandoned steel mill. The boarded-up storefronts. Flint, Pennsylvania, was only four hours from Manhattan by car, but felt like a world away.
She and Timothy had both grown up poor here. Returning this past Christmas as a wealthy lawyer, he’d been welcomed back to town like a hero. Timothy had already bought the nicest mansion in town and was fixing it up for her. He was spending money all over Flint, hiring carpenters and cleaners, sparing no expense. He would do anything, he’d told her, to make her love him. Anything.
But before they could marry, she had to tell him she was pregnant. Then let him decide if he still wanted to marry her.
Was it even fair to marry him like this? She took a deep breath. In spite of all his assurances that she would grow to love him, the idea of being his bride somehow felt… wrong.
But her instincts were plainly screwed up. Ellie’s short-lived affair with Diogo had proven that. The night Diogo had taken her in his arms in Rio, it had felt so right. When he’d kissed her on the street, amid the explosion of music and bright color, she’d felt truly alive for the first time in her life.
Passion was dangerous. She had to try to learn to make choices with her head, not her heart.
Taking care of her mother over her long years of illness, Ellie had spent many dark nights yearning for adventure in far-off lands. For the hot kisses of scandalous men. But Diogo’s hot embrace had seared her to the core. He’d arrogantly changed her whole life—and he didn’t even care.
She’d wanted to tell him the truth—but how could she? Even just knowing half of the truth, he’d assumed the worst about her, that she was a calculating gold digger who would use an innocent baby to trap a man into marriage. He’d coldly and cruelly insulted her.
He didn’t know her at all—and he never had!
“Ellie.” Timothy’s voice was muffled through the door, but she could still hear his affectionate exasperation. “Don’t you know we’ve got three hundred people waiting? What do you want to talk to me about?”
“Timothy.” Her whole body was still shaking from remembering what Diogo had said to her. She forced herself to take a deep breath. To steady her hands. She had to forget Diogo. She had to erase him from her mind completely and try to be glad that she would never see him again. She licked her dry lips. “Will you please come in here?”
“No—it’s bad luck!”
“That’s just a superstition!”
She heard him laugh. “It’s taken so long to convince you to marry me, I’m not taking any chances.”
Was she supposed to shout out her pregnancy confession through a door, to the shock of his ushers and the last guests walking into the church? “Please. I really, really need to talk to you!”
He paused. Then he spoke, and his voice glowed. “Whatever you have to say, I’m longing to hear it. Just wait a few minutes more, and you can tell me every day for the rest of our lives.”
Horrified, she realized he thought she finally meant to tell him she loved him. Her forehead broke out into a cold sweat. This was getting worse and worse. “Timothy, you don’t understand—”
She had no choice.
“I’m pregnant!”
There was a pause. Then the door flung open.
Timothy’s pale, thin face was ghostly white—but he looked like he was breathing fire. He slammed the door closed behind him and grabbed her wrist.
“How is that possible,” he ground out, “when we have never slept together?”
His eyes were so hard through his wire-rimmed glasses, his face so wild and different from his usual placid expression, that she backed up a step.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was a mistake. I never meant to hurt you…”
“Who’s the man?” he demanded, his slender hand tightening around her wrist.
She shook her head desperately. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll never see him again.”
“Who is he?”
“You’re hurting me!”
He tossed her arm aside. “So that’s why you suddenly agreed to marry me? Because you were pregnant and your lover had deserted you?”
“No!”
“But you made a mistake if you planned to pass this baby off as mine,” he sneered. “Even I’m not stupid enough to believe you’re pregnant with my child, when you never let me touch you!”
“It was a mistake!” she cried. “The worst mistake of my life! I just found out I was pregnant this morning. I never intended to deceive you!”
“Right,” he said sarcastically. He ran his hand through his blond, thinning hair. “Sure.”
She watched him miserably. “I understand why you want to call off the wedding. It’s probably for the best…”
He looked at her sharply. “What do you mean? I’m not calling anything off.”
“But…”
“You’re not backing out. Pregnant or not,” he said in a hard voice, “you’re going to marry me. Today.”
She swallowed. “And the baby—”
His lip curled. “I’ll take care of it.”
He threw the door back with a bang and stalked out.
Take care of it?
Timothy was willing to be her baby’s father?
He was truly willing to help her raise her child?
Dazed, she stumbled out of the room. She’d thought, really thought, he would call off the wedding. But he hadn’t—so that meant…
She was getting married. Right now. In just moments, she would be Timothy’s wife—for the rest of her life. She heard the string quartet finish Pachelbel’s “Canon in D major.” He’d spent a fortune on this wedding, inviting the whole town to see them wed like some kind of royal coronation. As if to force everyone who’d ever treated them badly to see them crowned king and queen of the town.
Lilibeth came toward Ellie, reaching up to kiss her cheek before pulling the gauzy veil over her face. “I couldn’t help but overhear!” she said joyfully, her lips pressing an air kiss of her signature orange lipstick. “Pregnant! Oh, Ellie, I’m so happy for you, my dear!”
Happy that Ellie was marrying a man she didn’t love?
Happy that the man she had loved was a selfish, critical, amoral bastard who didn’t deserve to be any baby’s father?
“But, Gran…” Ellie said softly. “I don’t love Timothy.”
Her grandmother’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “You will,” she said briskly. “You’re going to have his baby.”
The doors to the nave opened, and the wedding march rolled over her like a wave. People turned around in the pews, craning their heads to see her.
Standing alone at the end of the aisle, Ellie’s body trembled. Her wedding bouquet shook in her hands as if an earthquake moved beneath her feet.
“Walk,” her grandmother whispered with a smile, taking her arm.
Feeling numb, Ellie walked forward with Lilibeth at her side.
This felt so wrong. But how could she trust her own feelings? Her instincts had only steered her wrong. She’d fallen in love with the worst possible man in New York. Surely, she was marrying the right man now?
And she’d already treated Timothy so badly. She couldn’t humiliate him further by running out of the church… Could she?
Flowers and candles were everywhere. She could feel the sharp eyes of the society matrons on her, hear the whispers of people she’d known since childhood. Old Mrs. Abernathy, who’d told her she’d never amount to anything. Candy Gleeson, the former cheerleader, who’d mocked her shabby clothes in high school and called her Stork because she’d had such a thin, ungainly body. They all now watched with envy, believing the fairy tale.
When she reached the end of the aisle, Lilibeth handed Ellie into Timothy’s keeping. He held her hand tightly, looking down at her face with a strange, almost demented look in his pale blue eyes.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”
Compared to the broil of emotions inside her, the ceremony was so civilized. So hollow. The minister’s beautiful words had nothing to do with how she felt inside.
She—Timothy’s wife? To love him? Share his bed? Raise his children?
It had to be. Anything was better than to love someone only to be brutally rejected by them again and again. That must be how Timothy had felt, loving her for so long.
She would learn to enjoy his tepid kisses somehow. She would earn his forgiveness for her mistake, even if it took a lifetime. She would.
But when she closed her eyes, the memory of her night with Diogo still overwhelmed her. The way he’d ruthlessly spread her virgin lips with his own. He’d taken her innocence carelessly, like a conqueror. All the tenderness of her first kiss, the sweetness she’d timidly dreamed of sharing with a man she could love, Diogo had scornfully swept away, leaving in its place something hot and dark that burned her through, melting her to ash.
She desperately pushed the thought away. Struggling to calm the pounding of her heart, Ellie clenched her hands tighter around the green stems of her bridal bouquet. Pink and white petals fluttered slowly to the flagstones.
“Do you, Timothy Alistair Wright, take Ellie Jensen to be your lawfully wedded wife…”
Even in the midst of her wedding, she couldn’t stop thinking about Diogo!
The bastard. The lying bastard.
“… for as long as you both shall live?”
Timothy looked at her. Bright light from the soaring church windows shimmered off his wire-rimmed glasses, illuminating his pale, thin face. “I do.”
The minister turned to her. “And do you, Eleanor Ann Jensen, take Timothy Wright—”
The church doors opened, banging against the walls.
“Stop!”
At the harsh sound of the voice, the crowd gasped. Ellie whirled around.
Diogo.
He was dressed as she’d left him in New York, in a crisply cut gray suit and blue tie that elegantly clung to his hard-muscled body. But he no longer looked anything like a civilized man of business. His footsteps echoed against the worn gray stones as he stared at her with a ruthless, demanding intensity.
“How dare you come here, Serrador?” Timothy’s voice hit a high note, and he furiously cleared his throat. “You have no right—”
“You.” Diogo stared at Timothy. Then he gave a hard laugh. “I should have known.”
Ellie saw a depth of darkness in the Brazilian billionaire’s eyes. Black, she thought with a shiver, black as a coal mine twisting deep into the earth.
“Get out of here, Serrador,” Timothy spat out. “This is no business of yours.”
“Is it?” Diogo turned to her with a searing intensity. “Is it my business, Ellie?”
He knew!
She took a deep, shuddering breath. She couldn’t tell him he was the father of her baby. Timothy might forgive her eventually, but not if he knew that the real father was Diogo. The two men had had some kind of falling out at Christmas, and she still didn’t know why.
But she did know that Diogo Serrador was as hard and unfeeling as the diamond on her finger….
He leaned forward, looking straight into her eyes.
“Is it true, Ellie?”
Biting her lip, she looked away, hiding her face beneath her veil’s thick waves of netted tulle.
He ripped back her veil, and she cried out in shock. His face was so close to hers, she saw him clearly—his angular cheekbones, his rough jaw, his scarred temple, his nose that had been broken at least once.
The facade of wealthy playboy and international steel tycoon was gone. Diogo Serrador grabbed her with the brutality of a Viking barbarian claiming his woman. And a sensual current rocked Ellie’s body like lightning cracking through stone.
“Tell me the truth.”
She shook her head, unable to speak. She felt burned, electrified by his touch. He leaned forward, his face inches from hers, and she knew he was going to kiss her—right there in the church! While she was standing in front of the minister with another man!
And yet she couldn’t lift a hand to stop him. Her knees trembled beneath her. Her bouquet dropped unheeded from her senseless fingers, falling in a splash of pink flowers against stone.
“Tell me, damn you!” His hands tightened on her shoulders. His voice rang through the church. “Am I the father of your baby?”
Three hundred people gasped aloud. She heard her grandmother give a little choked sob. She could feel the stares of the guests. Of the shocked minister. And worst of all, she could feel Timothy goggling at her, pitiful, humiliated fury on his face.
A slow burn went through her, making her cheeks feel hot as flame.
“You have no right to humiliate me like this,” she whispered. “You’re the bastard, Diogo. You’re the liar.”
“Him?” Timothy turned on her with a look of rage. “You’ve kept me at arm’s length for all these years—so you could give yourself to Serrador?”
“Ah.” Diogo’s lips curved darkly upward. His body relaxed, and his gaze glinted with sudden amusement. “So he’s never even touched you. Strange way to trap a man into marriage…”
Anger raced through her. “I didn’t trap anyone into anything,” she spat out. “Timothy loves me. He doesn’t care I’m pregnant. He said he’ll take care of it!”
Diogo’s eyes narrowed. In an instant, he became a totally different man.
“Take care of it?” He grabbed her arm. “What do you mean, take care of it?”
She felt the sizzle up and down her body. How was it possible to be so electrified by his touch—and yet so afraid? She struggled to pull her arm away.
“What difference does it make? It’s not your baby. It can’t be. You can’t get a woman pregnant, right?” she taunted.
His dark eyes seared through her. “I am the father. Can you deny it?”
She couldn’t. But she knew Diogo Serrador hadn’t come to take responsibility for the child he’d created—he just couldn’t bear for any other man to tread on his territory. With the arrogant machismo of a Brazilian fighter, Diogo Serrador believed he had the right to own everything and everyone. To keep them and discard them solely at his pleasure.
He didn’t deserve to be a father.
“Answer me.” Diogo’s hand moved down her neck to the bare skin on her collarbone, to the first swell of her breasts above the white taffeta bodice. The sizzle intensified, causing her breath to come in little gasps. All the faces of guests she’d known since childhood—some watching with shocked pity, others with malicious glee—seemed to whirl around her.
Then she saw her grandmother, chalky white with orange lips. Lilibeth was the one person who’d always believed in Ellie. She’d baked her cookies on the days her mother was mean. Told her she didn’t need a high school diploma to be smart. Supported Ellie during the long years she’d nursed her mother’s final illness. Ellie’s success had become Lilibeth’s.
And now it was all ruined. Lilibeth would never be able to hold her head high in the grocery store again. Because of her.
“I—I—” Ellie suddenly felt faint. “I… think I’m going to…”
She couldn’t even finish the sentence before her knees started to give way beneath her. Diogo caught her up in his arms before she could fall.
“Put her down!” Timothy cried furiously.
Diogo didn’t even glance his way. His dark gaze held Ellie’s, reaching down into her very soul.
“The baby,” he said in a low voice. “Tell me.”
“No,” she gasped.
He glanced at the audience gawking from the pews, then gave a single nod. “Tá bom.”
Turning on his heel, he carried her down the aisle. He held her so close to his muscular chest that she could feel the beat of his heart.
It felt like some strange dream. The sunlight from the windows shimmered and shone around her, blurring the bright colors of ladies’ dresses in the pews. Her ripped veil fluttered forlornly around her, her white taffeta train dragging behind them as he carried her out of the church, stealing her from her own wedding like a Roman centurion with a Sabine maiden.
“Come back here!” Timothy’s voice was a furious squeak as he followed behind them like a yapping terrier. “She’s mine, you Brazilian bastard! Do you hear me? Mine!”
Ignoring him, Diogo flung open the tall double doors.
The bright spring sun outside hit her like a slap in the face. Two of Diogo’s bodyguards slammed the church doors shut behind them, trapping all the guests inside as Diogo set her gently on her feet.
But she found herself face-to-face with Timothy.
“I can’t believe you did it.” His wire-rimmed glasses trembled on his nose. His eyes were red and wet, fogging up the glass. “I waited for you nearly ten years. I did everything I could to win you. And you spread your legs for Serrador, who treats his women like whores?”
Every word was like a stab in her heart. “I…”
“You are mine, Ellie,” he cried, reaching for her. “Mine—”
Diogo stepped between them. Carelessly, he tucked his hands into fists, widening his muscular legs into a confident stance that suggested he was ready for anything. Even in his perfectly tailored gray suit, he looked like a warrior who could fight—and kill—at will.
“Ellie’s not yours. Neither is her baby. What exactly were you planning, Wright?”
Timothy’s face blanched with fear. He backed away.
“Now,” Diogo said softly, turning to Ellie. He brushed a tendril of hair away from her face in a gesture that was deceptively gentle. “You’ll tell me the name of your baby’s father.”
She rubbed her forehead. “You swore on your honor you couldn’t get me pregnant,” she muttered. “Your honor.”
Diogo’s dark eyes swept her face, pulling out every secret she’d ever tried to keep, leaving her vulnerable and bare. He tightened his hold on her, causing her to cry out. “I’m the father, Ellie. Say it!”
“I hate you,” she whimpered.
“Say it!” he thundered.
“All right!” she shouted. Tears of grief and rage streamed down her face. “You’re the father!”
Timothy gave a loud, high moan. She turned to him desperately. “I’m so sorry. So sorry…”
She tried to reach for him, but he slapped her hand away. Bitterly, he turned to Diogo.
“Take her, and be damned. She’s filled with your child. It disgusts me. Another whore for you. Another bastard—”
Diogo punched him hard across the jaw. Ellie screamed as Timothy dropped like a stone into the lush green grass.
The Brazilian turned to her, and the rage in his eyes made her draw back in confused fear. He blinked, staring at her. His dark eyes suddenly looked sad, as if haunted by shadows and ghosts of long ago.
Then he abruptly turned away without a word. At his signal, two black sedans pulled forward on the street. As a bodyguard opened the door, Diogo pushed her gently into the backseat, holding her against the leather as he drew the seat belt over her body. She struggled, but his grip was implacable. His hands were like iron shackles wrapped in silk.
And every accidental brush of his fingertips made her feel fire in her veins. How could she fight her own desire? How? She swallowed, trying to control the pounding of her heart as she glanced through the back window.
“Timothy—”
“He’ll have a headache.” His teeth gleamed in a feral growl. “He deserves worse.”
Why? What had Timothy done? But she didn’t have the nerve to ask. She had far more pressing issues to worry about. “Where are you taking me?”
“To the airport.” He sat next to her as the driver pulled away. She could feel his thigh pressing against hers through the layers of her wedding dress.
He looked down at her, his eyes black as onyx. Then he gave her the heavy-lidded half smile that had led so many women to ruin.
“Now,” he said, “you belong to me.”