Honour-Bound Groom / Cinderella & the CEO. Maureen Child

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СКАЧАТЬ warmth of his breath against the shell of her ear sent a tiny tremor down her spine. He exaggerated the two syllables of her name, emphasizing the last to give it an exotic resonance totally at odds with her everyday existence here on the station.

      “Nobody needs to deal with anyone,” she replied. She cast a stern look at Naomi. “Mother, you are forgetting your manners. That is not the way we treat guests here at the Simpson Station.”

      “Guests are one thing. Ghosts from the past are quite another.”

      Naomi threw herself into the nearest chair and glared at Alex.

      “I’m sorry, Alex, she’s not normally so rude,” Loren apologized. “Perhaps you should go.”

      “I think not. There are matters that need to be discussed,” Alex answered, his attention firmly on Naomi’s bristling presence.

      He guided Loren to one of the richly upholstered sofas before settling his long frame at her side. A shiver of awareness rippled through her as his presence imprinted along her body.

      “I believe you know why I’m here. It is time for Loren and me to fulfill our fathers’ promise to one another.”

      Naomi’s snort was at total odds with her elegant appearance.

      “Promise? More like the ramblings of two crazy men who should have known better. No one in the developed world would sanction such an archaic suggestion.”

      “Archaic or not, I feel bound to honor my father’s wish. Much as I imagine Loren does, also.”

      Loren felt that shiver again as Alex responded to her mother’s derision. Naomi wasn’t the kind of woman who liked to be contradicted. She ruled the station with an iron fist and a razor-sharp mind and was both respected and feared by her staff. Despite her designer chic wardrobe and her petite frame she was every bit as capable as any one of the staff here. A fact she had proven over and over again. But she was very much accustomed to being in charge, with her decrees accepted without question. The problem was, Alex was used to that, too. This confrontation could get messy, especially once her mother realized whose side Loren was on.

      “Loren.” Her mother turned to her with a stiff smile on her carefully tinted lips. “Surely you’re not going to take this seriously. You have a life here, a job, responsibilities. Why on earth would you even consider this outrageous plan?”

      Why indeed, Loren wondered as she looked around her. Yes, she had a life here. A life she’d been dragged to, kicking and screaming and full of sullen teenage pout. She’d never wanted to live with her mother but her father hadn’t contested his wife’s petition for full custody of their only child. Loren had later realized that had in part been because he’d never believed Naomi would actually go through with the divorce and relocate to the opposite side of the world. But his apparent indifference had hurt at the time and she’d arrived here at the Simpson Station feeling as though her entire world had been ripped apart. With that kind of beginning, it was hardly surprising that she’d learned to accept her place at the station, but she’d never learned to love it.

      And as for her work here and her responsibilities? Well, it would only be Naomi who missed her, and then only for as long as it took to browbeat some other assistant into docile submission. No. Loren had nothing to hold her here. She and Naomi had never enjoyed the kind of mother-daughter relationship that Loren knew others had and she had learned very early that it was easier to accede to her mother’s wishes than fight for her own. On Isla Sagrado, Loren had been almost solely her father’s child, and Loren had always believed her mother had taken her from the island more as a punishment for Francois Dubois than out of any kind of maternal instinct.

      She’d missed Isla Sagrado every day of the past ten years. Of course that pain of loss, the wrench of being repatriated, had dimmed a little over time, but it was still as real now as the man seated alongside her.

      Seeing him again was as if he’d brought with him the heat and splendor and lush extravagance of Isla Sagrado. Not to mention the promise of the revival of a passion for living that had lain dormant within her since she’d left the country of her birth.

      Yes, her initial reaction to Alex’s arrival here had been shock and disbelief. But it was clear he meant what he said. Why else would he have traveled half the world to come and see her?

      Thoughts spun through her mind with lightning-fast speed. Her earlier objections, as weak as they were, had come reflexively—a direct result of surprise at the manifestation of the man who’d been a part of her dreams her entire life. She’d wanted—no, she’d needed—to hear him refute her doubts to her face. To tell her they belonged together as she’d always imagined, as she’d pretty much lost hope of imagining.

      Now she knew what it was like to be in his arms, to feel truly alive for the first time she could remember, there was no way she was going to turn her back on her destiny with the only man she’d ever loved.

      “Why would I consider marrying Alex? I would have thought that was quite straightforward,” Loren responded with as much aplomb as she could muster under her mother’s piercing gaze. “Inasmuch as Alex wishes to honor his father, so do I mine. I’ve always understood that this would be my future, Mother.” She turned her face to look at Alex. “And it’s what I’ve always wanted. I would be honored to be Alex’s wife.”

      “How on earth could you know what you want?” Naomi demanded, pushing up out of her chair and pacing back and forth between them. “You’ve barely been off the station since we’ve lived here. You haven’t experienced the world, other men, anything!”

      “Is that what it really takes to make a person happy? Are you truly happy?” Loren held her mother’s gaze as her questions unerringly hit their mark. Naomi gaped for a moment, clearly surprised to hear Loren fight back. But even Naomi couldn’t deny the truth of what Loren had said.

      Naomi’s affairs were legend in New Zealand—her power and beauty made for a magnetically lethal combination—and yet, even though many had tried, no man had captured her heart. Loren knew she didn’t want that life for herself.

      “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you—your future, your life. Don’t throw it away on a pledge made before you can even remember. You are worth so much more than that, Loren.”

      Loren felt the walls, her mother’s walls, closing in around her and she pushed them back just as hard.

      “Exactly, Mother.” Loren sat up straighter, confidence coming from Alex’s warmth against her side—confidence to speak her mind at last and say the words she’d locked down deep inside for too long. “I stayed here because I had nothing else to do. Growing up on Isla Sagrado, I believed I had a purpose, a direction. When you and Papa split up I lost that. You took me away from the only future I ever wanted.”

      “You were just a child—”

      “Maybe then, yes. But I’m not a child any longer. We both know I’ve been marking time these past few years. You know my heart isn’t in the station like yours is. You always felt displaced on Isla Sagrado. That’s how I feel here. I want to go back.

      “As you so correctly pointed out, we are talking about my future and my life—and I want that to be on Isla Sagrado, with Alex.”

      He could hardly believe it had been so easy. Alex savored the exhilaration that surged within him as Loren’s СКАЧАТЬ