At Fairholme, in the snowy garden that cold January night, when Belle had wept in Santiago’s arms as if her heart was breaking, she’d been lying.
When he’d softly stroked her long dark hair in the moonlight and whispered that everything would be all right, and Belle had looked up, her big dark eyes anguished beneath trembling lashes, she’d been lying.
When she’d told him she could never, ever get pregnant, and lowering his head, he’d kissed her beneath the moonlight scattered with snowflakes, as he tried to distract her from her grief, she’d been lying.
Santiago had known Belle was an actress. He’d just had no idea how good. He hadn’t been fooled in such a way in a long time.
After she’d invaded his cocktail party and dropped the bomb of her pregnancy news, he’d paced and snarled at his gu
ests, wondering what he’d do when Belle finally returned to make her financial demands. If she was truly pregnant with his child, she had leverage. Because as much as Santiago despised the idea of love and marriage, he would never abandon a child the way he himself had once been doubly abandoned.
What would Belle ask for? he’d wondered. Marriage? A trust fund in the baby’s name? Or would she eliminate the middleman and simply ask for a billion-dollar check, written out directly to her?
He’d waited that night, nerves thrumming, but she’d never returned to his town house. The next morning, he’d discovered she’d left New York, just as she’d claimed she intended.
Now, after three days, he knew everything about Belle, except for her medical records, which he expected to have later today. His investigator had easily found her home address in Texas. The GPS of her phone had been tracked through means he didn’t care to know, and someone had watched for her highly visible blue 1978 Chevy at the gas station two hours to the east, the only gas station for miles in this empty Texas prairie. He’d simply taken the helicopter here from his large ranch in south Texas.
But he could hardly be expected to reveal his strategies to an enemy. Which was what Belle now was.
From the day they’d met, she’d acted like she hated him. But he’d never hated her.
Until now.
Santiago stared down at her beneath the unrelenting furnace of the sun blasting heat from the Texas sky. He felt a prickling of sweat on his forehead. Wearing a vest, tie and long-sleeved shirt along with tailored wool trousers, he found the temperature brutal. And it wasn’t even noon.
Santiago set his jaw. He wouldn’t allow Belle to control the situation. Or his baby. He didn’t know her goal, but the way she was playing the game—like a professional poker player without a heart—the amount she wanted must be astronomical. And why would it ever stop, when she’d have the leverage to control him for the rest of her life? She could try to control custody, or make their child hate him through her lies. She could leave Santiago like a fish gasping on a hook.
Belle had deliberately misled him, saying she couldn’t get pregnant. Later, she’d ambushed him with her news and then fled New York, just to show him she meant business. She’d done all this for a reason. To get the upper hand.
But he wouldn’t let her use their innocent baby as a pawn. He couldn’t be forced or tricked into abandoning a child. Not after what he’d endured himself as a boy. Belle didn’t know who she was dealing with. Santiago would scorch the earth to win this war.
His eyes narrowed. She thought she could defeat him? He’d fought his way from an orphanage in Madrid, stowing away at eighteen on a ship to New York City with the equivalent of five hundred dollars in his pocket. Now, he was a billionaire, the majority owner of an international conglomerate that sold everything from running shoes to snack foods on six continents. You didn’t do that by being weak, or letting anyone else win.
Belle was in his world now. His world. His rules.
“I’ll never marry you,” she ground out, her brown eyes shooting sparks. “I’ll never belong to you.”
“You already do, Belle,” he said flatly. “You just don’t know it yet.” Turning, he made a quick gesture to his helicopter pilot, who started the engine.
She gave an incredulous laugh over the rising noise of the helicopter. “You’re crazy!”
Santiago looked down at her. Even now, despising Belle as his enemy, he felt more drawn than ever. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, perhaps, but somehow she was more seductive than any woman he’d ever known. His eyes unwillingly traced the curve of her cheek. The slope of her graceful neck. The fullness of her pregnancy-swollen breasts.
Belle was right, he thought grimly. He was crazy. Because even knowing her for a lying, almost sociopathic gold digger, he wanted her in his bed more than ever.
“I’d be crazy to abandon my child to you,” he said evenly. He looked over his shoulder at the wooden house in the barren sagebrush field, with only a few wan, spindly trees overlooking a dry creek bed. “Or to this.”
Following his gaze, she looked outraged. “You’re judging me because I don’t live in a palace?”
“I’m judging what you’ve done to escape it,” he said grimly. He knew all about how she’d been raised here, and only left a year and a half before. He wondered if her dream of Broadway stardom had always been a cover story, and she’d planned to hook a rich man from the beginning. Maybe even her friendship with Letty had been contrived, to better throw Belle in the path of wealthy targets.
The only thing good about this isolated, bare land was the view of the endless blue sky. The sky above the dry grass prairie was starkly dramatic. You could see forever. The freedom. The unending loneliness.
But there were all kinds of loneliness. You could be lonely surrounded by others, as he’d learned as a child.
His own son or daughter would never know that kind of loneliness. He or she would never feel unwanted, or alone. He would see to that.
He turned away. “Let’s go.”