was, telling her it was his father who’d sent the wedding planner and that it was deliberate.
She could hardly wrap her mind around it. Worse, she feared he was right in at least one respect. She’d run away because she couldn’t take it, because she’d already shown poor judgment once before. She hadn’t trusted herself to make a sound decision. She’d needed distance, time, and space to think.
She’d gotten her time, and plenty of it. “You should have made me understand,” she forced from her dry throat. Could it possibly be true that his family had wanted to manipulate him into a wedding? That his father would do such a thing?
Why not?
Her own father had gone to extraordinary lengths hiring Parker to insinuate himself into her life. All to prove a point to her. A painful point about her own vulnerability and neediness. Rebecca shivered as she stared at Alejandro. He was fully capable of lying to her in order to make her feel worse than she already did about what had happened between them.
He stood before her, devilishly dark and deliciously handsome in his custom fit tuxedo. His skin had darkened beneath the hot Arabian sun over the last few days, setting off the lightning-silver of his eyes. Eyes that speared her with scorn.
“Perhaps you should have trusted me,” he bit out. A second later, he raked a hand through his dark hair and swore in Spanish. “As if it would have mattered. No, your plan was always to ruin me, to take what you could and destroy Ramirez Enterprises in the process. You nearly succeeded.”
Her throat ached with denials. But what was the point? Though her mother couldn’t say definitively whether or not she’d told Rebecca’s father about the aborted affair, it was still Jackson Layton’s threat to take his business elsewhere that cost Alejandro the deal he’d worked hard to procure. Like it or not, the Laytons were responsible.
But she could defend her motives without hesitation. “You haven’t proven anything to me, Alejandro. My only plan when I came to the Villa de Música was to see the restoration. I didn’t plan to meet you, and I certainly didn’t plan to fall in love with you. It would have been so much easier if I’d never met you.”
Five long years and she’d never really succeeded in forgetting him. Before he’d summoned her to Madrid, she could still blissfully deceive herself that the years had done their work. But she hadn’t forgotten after all, and every day she spent with him only made the memories more painful.
“Yes, it is hard to look a man in the eye before you cut him down,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I have no time for this now, but be assured I have no need to lie. It matters not whether you believe me.”
“Then why did you say it?” she asked, her throat tight. What if he was telling her the truth? What if she’d been as mistaken about his engagement as he was about her motives?
He shrugged. “Because I am tired of your self-righteousness.”
Rebecca blinked. “Self-righteous?” Who was he kidding? He was the most self-righteous man on the planet. She snatched up the folder she’d been working on. She couldn’t deal with this right now. She needed time alone, time to think. “I’m going inside now. Have a nice time.”
Alejandro caught her arm as she turned away. “You’re coming with me.”
“What? Where?” she stammered. He was wearing a tuxedo, not a casual pair of trousers and a shirt. Wherever he was going, she couldn’t show up in a tank top and wispy skirt. “I have work to do. I can’t go with you.”
“This is not a request, Rebecca. You will come. Now.”
“I don’t have anything suitable to wear,” she said, thrusting her chin up and stating the obvious. Or the not so obvious if the way he looked at her was any indication.
“There is a boutique in the hotel. You will buy a dress. Now come, we are out of time.”
“But Alejandro, really—”
“Need I remind you I am the one in control here?” he ground out, slamming the door on her protest. “You have no choice, Rebecca.”
She gripped her briefcase, her knuckles whitening. She had an urge to close her eyes and count to a hundred before speaking, the way her mother used to make her do when she was upset and crying over something. It worked to calm her down when she was ten, though it also made her