“I missed that,” he said before he took a sip of his coffee.
“What?”
“Your bluntness.”
Not the most swoonworthy of compliments. So why did his words fill her with warmth?
Because you’re just like your mother. You thought you were so strong all these years, but you’re not. You’re weak.
Her spine straightened as the heat in her veins turned to ice. The child growing inside her needed her to be strong. Needed her to stop her fantasizing and take charge of the situation.
“If you’re hungry, the chef laid out quite the spread.” He nodded toward a table on the far side of the room.
She nodded and walked over. She needed time to think, to regroup. Seeing him barely clothed had knocked her off balance. But as she put toast, sliced banana and a hard-boiled egg on her plate, her resolve strengthened. When she turned back toward the table, her walls were firmly back in place.
“How did you know I was here?”
He pointed to a mirror hanging on the far wall as she sat. “Not very sneaky.”
“I wasn’t trying to sneak.” She took a bite of bread and let out a sigh. Lightly buttered, toasted to perfection.
A strangled sound came from across the table. But when she looked up, Alejandro was reading the paper in his lap.
“It sounded like Adrian thinks I’m trying to trap you.”
Alejandro shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter what he thinks. He’s in big brother mode. Wants to make sure I don’t make a mistake.”
“Like marrying me?”
He let out a bark of laughter as he looked up. “I think we both know that would never happen.”
Even though she had absolutely no desire to be shackled to him, or anyone for that matter, his emphatic statement still hurt.
“You do. I do. But your brother doesn’t.”
Years of suppressing her emotions helped her stay calm as she continued to eat her breakfast under his watchful gaze. But finally, after she’d taken another bite of toast and eaten half the banana, she looked up at him in irritation.
“It’s rude to watch someone eat.”
“Shouldn’t you be eating more?”
Her fingers tightened around her fork. “On the list of things you can’t tell me what to do, how much I eat is number two.”
One eyebrow arched as his lips quirked. “And what’s the first?”
“How to raise my child.”
His feet dropped down as he spun in his chair, sitting up straight and leaning forward over the table. It should have looked comical, a shirtless man sitting amid the backdrop of so much luxury.
But the look on his face was anything but funny. Eyes narrowed and crackling with intensity, lips thinned, jaw tight. In that moment, he looked more like his brother than she’d ever seen him.
Except this was...more. She and Adrian had shared a similar disposition. When they took charge, they grew cold. Their command partially came from their ability to show as little emotion as possible.
Alejandro, on the other hand, channeled his usual charm and energy into a threatening force that threw her off balance.
“Ourchild.”
His voice vibrated with suppressed anger.