STAG: MC ROMANCE (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 7) (39 page)
Read STAG: MC ROMANCE (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 7) Online
Authors: Samantha Leal
Had she seen these? Of course she had.
Hurriedly he shoved his legs into his pants and dragged a tee-shirt over his head. He barely remembered to shove his foot into his loafers before he was barreling towards the elevator. He reached her room and shoved open the door; it was just as he had feared! All her belongings were gone.
Cursing in rapid Spanish,”Mierda, mierda, mierda” Leandro rushed downstairs, his heart in his throat as he looked over the crowd for any glimpse of her.
“Where is she?” he demanded of the receptionist.
The young woman took one look at him. All of the staff knew exactly who he was. She responded without asking who he meant, “She left Sir. She checked out.”
“When?” he bit out so furiously, that the startled receptionist drew back.
“A few minutes ago Sir. She was in quite a hurry.”
“Did you see which way she went?”
“No. But I’ll take a wild stab and say she was heading for the airport.”
Leandro didn’t wait to hear more; he left at a run, searching even as he headed for the door. But she was already gone. Weakly, he sank onto the pavement in front of the hotel. Whatever brightness had illuminated his day a scant twenty minutes ago had gone out completely.
Chapter Six
Alexandra Jordan was a mess. It had been seven weeks since she’d left Hawaii and while Lead Inc had not contacted them at all, she had been unable to get its conniving CEO out of her mind.
She had also been a nightmare to be around at work because she was so sensitive these days that the least thing set her off. In a single day, she had berated her CFO, fired a janitor and sent two new interns crying from her office after an intense scolding.
Three weeks after she had returned, the tension around her had been so palpable that Claire had pulled her aside and reminded her she was supposed to have gone on the break to relax and not to return an ogre. She had the temperament of a bear with a sore paw and she knew it.
When she had noticed that her normally stoic secretary now blanched every single time she so much as looked at the woman, and that even Claire was giving her a wide berth, she had gone home and had a good crying session just to get it all out of her system. These days she was more withdrawn and quiet which was a decided improvement from her earlier raging-bitch persona.
The past week, she had forced smiles until her cheeks hurt. She had smiled for real though when she learned that
Beautiful Designs
had somehow clinched the Alistairs Plc contract. Things were looking up, she had thought as she joined her colleagues for a toast in celebration.
But just when she had started to convince herself that Leandro was not worth her tears, her doctor had delivered what might have been amazing news under other circumstances, but felt pretty grim as things stood now; she was pregnant!
She had lost some weight, rather than gain some as one might expect, and the bags under her eyes were so prominent they threatened to dwarf her nose. She hadn’t been sleeping much either, she admitted but all that had to change now that she had a baby to think of. She looked around at the park; it was midday and she was pretty much alone. A few kids played in a nearby swing set while adults sat on some benches similar to hers, watching over them.
Alexandra’s hand rested both pensively as well as protectively on her stomach as she leaned back against the park bench and shut her eyes. She wasn’t showing yet but she already loved the tiny human being inside of her with all her heart. It wasn’t its fault that its father was a two-faced rat! But still, this was not how it was supposed to be!
“May I sit?” an achingly familiar voice said from right in front of her.
Alexandra’s eyes flew open disbelievingly. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The two-faced rat was standing right in front of her looking so unbearably handsome that she unconsciously started to grind her teeth. He was wearing a pair of well-washed jeans and a tee-shirt with simple sneakers and yet somehow he managed to look utterly respectable, male and delicious. He was also slimmer than she remembered; he actually looked a little gaunt.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, her throat almost closing up. She had been torturing herself with images of his handsome, lying face since Hawaii but seeing him in the flesh was even more painful than her fevered anticipation had imagined.
“I need to talk to you Alexandra. You left the Island in a hurry and I had no chance t
o
”
“To seduce me further just so you could get me to reveal secrets about my business? Well you failed; we got the contract!” she cut in acidly.
“
Cara mia
, I’ve hurt you but you will let me make amends yes?” he said, his Spanish accent thicker as he dropped his long frame onto the bench beside her.
Alexandra felt as though the entire air around them reverberated with the very force of his presence and vitality. She edged away from him a little on the bench.
“Alexandra? Come on, don’t avoid me,
Cara mia
,” he pleaded, his hand grabbing hers to still her nervous movements.
“You have a lot of nerve showing your face here,” Alexandra spat jerking her arm from his light grasp. “So all you wanted was a contract and you had to sleep with me too? The humiliation couldn’t just end at me warming up to you? You could have simply asked me to withdraw as a friend and I would have considered it. You didn’t have to pretend to like me and actually fucking take me to your bed!”
Pun was really not her strong suit, she thought distractedly.
“It looks bad I know, but I swear it was nothing like that,” he said gruffly, taking her hand in his.
She sprung to her feet, flinging off his hand, her heart racing as she said frigidly, “Leave me the hell alone.”
Something glinted fleetingly in his dark eyes but was gone before she could ascertain what it was and he said, “I can’t. I have tried a thousand times to let you go but I can’t. I tried to forget you. I can’t undo what is done.”
“You’re damn right you can’t! I hate you and I curse the day I met you,” she lied.
Leandro looked weary and deflated all of a sudden and Alexandra felt her heart constrict in her chest as she looked at him. In this moment he didn’t look the part of some corporate raider as she had painted him; he looked almost like a little boy whose heart was breaking.
“I never set out to seduce you. I came to Hawaii to persuade you to withdraw Beautiful Designs from the bid. Lead Inc has been trying to take over some companies, mostly subsidiaries of Alistairs Plc and this contract would have been like a leg in the door for us. Before I met you, it was just business, but once I saw you, I had to have you. I wanted to be with you, I should say. Seducing you was never my agenda. I swear it. I tried everything I could to stay away but I just could not forget you. Now that I know you exist, nothing is the same. All that I have accomplished means nothing without you. I was going to tell you everything that last day but you found out on your own before I had the chance.”
“Yeah you should have done a better job of hiding the papers I said,” she said bitingly.
He sighed, “That was the worst day of my life.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“Alexandra, I pulled Lead Inc out of the bid. That was the first thing I did when I returned. You can verify from them, I swear. I didn’t want to take it away from you; not if it meant I would lose you.”
Her heart thudded in her chest. He had pulled out of the contract when it meant so much to his company?
Alexandra took a quick step back as Leandro rose to his feet and took her hand in his once more. “I’m sorry Alexandra. Please forgive me? I feel like I know you as much as I know my own self. Can’t you see? You are a part of me and I am a part of you. Our meeting was a gift. Can’t you see that?”
“You only know so much about me because you read it up in some report!”
“I never read the report. In fact I had only just printed them out that same morning. I never read them I swear. Our connection surprised me too. You are the funniest, kindest, sweetest, most beautiful woman I know.”
His dark eyes stared into hers, open and searching and she read the blazing sincerity and remorse in his gaze. She believed him, she realized.
Her resistance melted away and she nodded, “Okay fine. No harm done.”
“There’s something else.”
“Huh?”
Before her surprised eyes, he went down on one knee and pulled a little black box from his pocket, his dark eyes gleaming as he looked up at her. Alexandra’s throat closed up as she stared at him, her hands flying to her mouth when the box opened to reveal the biggest and most amazingly cut diamond she had ever seen in her life.
“I love you Alexandra. I know I absolutely do not deserve you but will you make me the happiest man on earth and say you’ll marry me?”
“
I
I’m pregnant,” she blurted instead.
His eyes widened in surprise even as his gaze automatically dropped to her flat stomach before flicking up to her face.
“You’r
e
” he began hesitantly.
Alexandra nodded, happy tears springing into her eyes as she grinned down at him. He rose to his feet immediately and gathered her into his arms, his hands encircling her waist as he crushed her to him.
“You’re perfect. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” he breathed against her lips. His kiss was tender and gentle. His tongue stroked hers sweetly sending waves of a calm and soothing peace shooting through her nerve endings as she clung to him. An almost indescribable feeling of happiness washed over her.
“You never answered my question,” he reminded her, lifting his head and looking into her eyes with all the love in the world shining from his.
“Yes Leandro, I’ll marry you. I love you too,” she told him.
As she kissed him, all the walls around her heart melted away completely leaving her free to embrace this wonderful love that was hers to savor forever.
THE END
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Copyright ©2016 by Leela Ash. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Layne's heart was in her throat as the footsteps behind her receded. It had been a long time since she'd had a confrontation with one of the tribes. This time she'd gone to the wrong watering source. She thought that the public pool would be safe, for some reason. Although most of them were dried up, you could usually find at least a supply of sunscreen to protect you from the harsh sunlight, or if you were really lucky, there would be enough clean water left to quench your thirst and fill your bottle.
She'd been due for a refill for a while now and although it was reckless, she had been desperate enough to get herself into danger. She had a bottle of beer left from the last batch she'd brewed, but that was strong enough to dull her senses and get her into trouble. Besides, it would just dehydrate her more. She would have to remember that this area was ruled by the Jackals – the name for the small gang of people who had claimed this turf. After the virus hit and wiped out most of the population, leaving only a few lucky survivors in every city, the tribes had been a way to find peace and security amongst other people who were dealing with the same crisis. There had been safety in numbers, or so they told themselves. While many had been afraid to wander the deserted world alone, moving forward with others didn't seem that bad.
She herself had been part of a group in those first few chaotic years. Being a talented chemist, she'd aligned herself with a team of doctors claiming to seek a cure to the problem, but as it turned out most of them were frauds and civilians, delusional with a self-important mission they weren't educated enough to accomplish. Everybody was hoping for a miracle and she'd been lured in by their pretense. Ultimately, the group split due to bruising of egos and no real direction and she'd been on her own ever since then, trying to make sense of how things had gotten so far out of hand.
As a scientist, she had to trace the line of cause and effect. A pharmaceutical company had ordered vaccinations against what they claimed was an alien virus from space – which was absurd, but everybody was so desperate for answers that they accepted the explanation. Now everybody knew that the first guess had been way off, but back then that was the government's grounds for getting as many people as possible under the needle for a miraculous vaccine that they had commissioned the company, Grow Inc, to develop. In a sad, ironic twist of fate, the virus they thought came from a meteorite that had landed in St. Petersburg, had actually been the result of lax safety precautions, as a team of scientists experimented with a cure for the common cold. They'd flown the team to Russia to try and evade SFT (Safety in Future Technology) safety standards, and the end result had been disastrous.
The antivirus had been promising, and they had been convinced that by pushing the envelope, it would be successful. In initial experiments it had a 100% success ratio, though it hadn't been tested over the long term. After the meteorite crashed into the yard outside the Russian facility where the American scientists had been mentoring a group of people who were working together to rid the world of disease, that was when the results of the virus began to be seen, and how the SFT had gotten involved, claiming that the virus, because it was so difficult to contain and treat, had extraterrestrial origins.
If they had checked more closely, they would have seen that the people that they had injected with the initial strain of vaccination had become carriers of the malicious virus, infecting everybody they came into contact with without even knowing it. A few cases had been reported in America shortly after the scientists returned, and before long half of St. Petersburg was in chaos. People were coughing up blood and begging for release from a pain that nobody could pinpoint, but everybody could agree was the worst they had ever felt. It seemed to move throughout the body, inflaming certain parts for a small amount of time before retreating and coming back with double the force.
Because of the rapid spread in St. Petersburg, everybody assumed that was the origin of the virus, and the city was put under strict quarantine. Unfortunately, it was no use. It spread all over the world with startling speed. Nobody thought that the virus might be in the vaccination. Ironically, the claim was that because the first vaccination had been successful enough during the preliminary trials, it should be utilized now, in this time of crisis. The SFT felt they had no choice and allowed the vaccinations to reach the mainstream market. Every day, for weeks, hundreds of people lined up to receive their vaccine, thinking it would be the only thing that might save them.
Carriers were being created left and right, but those whose immune systems weren't as strong, or whose bodies didn't contain an immunity in their genes, were left defenseless against it. Days after the vaccination, the coughing would begin, until finally people began to catch on that it wasn't an alien virus that was killing people – it was one being spread by the vaccine.
But it was too late. Within a few years, almost everybody was gone. With the exception of a few green-tinged carriers who had made it through, a few genetically privileged people, and some who had managed to escape both the carriers and the vaccinations until the virus finally became dormant. Life as they knew it had crumbled. Layne had no family or friends left, and she had felt so lost and alone, crying on her doorstep when the small group of “scientific” people had wandered past. They saw that she lacked the green-tinge of the carriers and the paleness of the infected, and welcomed her into their group saying they were heading somewhere safe, somewhere far away from there, and they were going to find the cure. Would she help?
She didn't want to leave, but she also knew that she couldn't stay. From that point forward, her survival would depend upon her ability to move on, and that's all she needed to know.
