Grapes of Wrath (Billionaires' Secrets Book 2) Read online

  She gasped. Her nipple tightened under his palm. And she didn’t step back.

  Desire spiked through him as he cupped her breast. Peered into her mysterious dark eyes. Her mouth closed, then opened again. A silent protest? Her lips were naturally dark, the color of smashed berries, and he longed to crush his mouth over them and drink deep.

  One more step brought his chest within inches of hers. His hand still on her breast, testing, teasing, he inhaled the scent of her in the hot afternoon air.

  He could already taste her desire on his tongue, smell it on the wind. Also her fear.

  He slid his hands around her back, pulling her close. She stood like a statue, the air between them thick with tension.

  He laid his palms over the dip of her waist, enjoyed the curve of her backside. He could hear her breathing, feel her arousal swelling like a bud thickening and preparing to open.

  Against her will.

  If he lifted her dress he’d bet her panties were already damp with longing. His erection strained against his zipper.

  Maybe he’d take her here, on the hard stone of the patio, under the unforgiving sun. With the mountains watching in stern silence.

  Her lips parted and a shaky breath escaped. Her eyes slid closed for a second as her insides quivered under his fingers. He felt her muscles contract under her neat dress.

  Waiting for him.

  Hoping.

  Their tongues clashed as he kissed her, hot and hard. The taste of her was intoxicating, a drug he’d craved.

  Her body crashed against his, lithe with passion as she kissed him back, clutching his face to hers with eager hands.

  A low, guttural moan escaped her as he lifted her dress and tested her slick heat with his fingers.

  He slid a finger into her silky depths and she rocked against him. He held her steady with one hand behind her back as he brought her swiftly to climax with his finger and thumb.

  His power over her was absolute at this moment. Eyes closed, she gave herself over to the fierce magic of the moment.

  The tremor raged through her and he caught her as she almost lost her footing. Panting, she rested against him for a second.

  Then she must have realized he’d stopped and was just standing there.

  Staring at her.

  Prim and proper Susannah Clarke’s eyes were black with passion. A dark flush heightened her proud cheekbones and her long dark hair hung about her shoulders, wild from his caresses.

  He let her dress fall back to her calves.

  Didn’t say a word.

  Her glaze of passion lessened and confusion flickered in her eyes.

  Good.

  She smoothed the front of her dress, suddenly self-conscious. He could see her nipples, still peaked under the soft fabric.

  “You don’t find it easy to say no to me, do you?”

  His cruel question made her blink.

  Why should he be the one lying awake, tormented by memories of that night? Let her suffer. So cool and calm and collected, as she delivered her life-shattering news.

  She checked the buttons on the front of her dress.

  “Don’t worry, you still look virginal.”

  His mocking tone made her blink again.

  “Though, of course, we both know better.” He tilted his head. Contemplated the possibility of touching her firm breasts again. “What would your big boss say, if he knew?”

  Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t?”

  “How do you know? I’m a virtual stranger. We spent one day together.” He licked his lips. “And one night.”

  She backed away. This time he let her.

  “You know me as Amado Alvarez, of Tierra de Oro.” He snorted. “Or at least that’s who I used to be until you showed up.” He hesitated. Watching her squirm. “He would have kept your sexy secrets. Amado Alvarez was a man of honor.”

  He inhaled, then let out a long, slow exhale. “But apparently, I’m not the man I thought I was. I’m the son of this...Tarrant Hardcastle.” He spat the name like a bad taste. “Who knows what I’m truly capable of?”

  The patio doors flung open and Ignacio crashed out onto the terrace. “What the hell is she doing back here?” he raged, eyes bulging.

  Amado froze. He’d never seen his father like this. Ignacio could express strong feelings in an argument, or when his favorite football team was losing, but Amado had never seen him yell at a woman.

  Since Susannah showed up, bringing the ugly truth about his parentage, everything had changed. He didn’t know who he or anyone else was anymore.

  Susannah shrank away, tugging her jacket over her dress as if covering her nakedness.

  Ignacio moved toward her. “Get out, now! I’ve never laid a hand on a woman, but by God, I’ll throw you out myself if you don’t—”

  “Calm yourself.” Amado stepped forward and grabbed his father’s arm. “Susannah is here on business. He shot her a dark look.

  She made a vain attempt to tuck her gorgeous wild hair behind her shoulders.

  “She has no business here but to disrupt our lives.” Susannah stepped back. Amado couldn’t resist a powerful urge to defend her. “She brought the truth, didn’t she?”

  His father frowned.

  “The truth that you planned to keep from me. Don’t I have a right to know the circumstances of my own birth? To know who brought me into this world?”

  The force in his own voice surprised him. But suddenly he did feel strongly about it.

  “It was for the best.” His father rubbed his temples. “I thought it was for the best.”

  Anger heated Amado’s blood as long-buried resentments rose to the surface. Nagging doubts he’d silenced for years now crept out of the darkness. He was beginning to suspect he had every reason to despise Ignacio for his lies. “Is that why you drove away Valentina?”

  He still remembered the heated shouting matches he’d had with his father when he was nineteen and desperately in love. Ignacio had point-blank forbidden the marriage, saying she was unsuitable as an Alvarez bride.

  He’d wondered at the time if Ignacio was secretly behind her sudden change of heart. Now Amado saw the ugly truth unfold in front of his eyes. “You wouldn’t accept her as my wife, not because she was illegitimate, but because you didn’t want anyone to find out that I am, too?” Ignacio hesitated. Rubbed a hand over his face. “If you’d married as a minor, they would have seen your birth certificate.”

  The confession chilled his blood. He’d suspected the truth all along, but never been sure. Her change of heart had been too sudden, too final.

  Now, he knew. The man who called himself his own father had driven away the woman he loved. “You chose your lie over my life.”

  Amado shoved a hand through his hair. The injustice burned him. Years of lies that had warped his existence. His comfortable life here at Tierra de Oro came at a harsh cost, especially to the two woman who should have been closest to him.

  “All this time, Marisa has been a silent shadow. She was the sister I never knew and who I knew nothing about. It’s not right. She was a real person.”

  He realized his fist was clenched, but he couldn’t seem to unlock it. “She was my mother and you shouldn’t have swept her story out the door with yesterday’s dust.” His voice trembled with rage.

  “She died so young.” His father shook his head. Amado resisted the urge to step forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “She never had a chance to become a woman.”

  “She was a woman. You may not have wanted to accept it, but your little girl grew up. She bore a child.”

  “I don’t—I don’t—” his father spluttered.

  “You don’t want to think about that.” Amado’s words shattered the stunned quiet. “You never did. You just wanted her to be your little girl forever, which is probably why she ran away to New York in the first place. You can’t keep everything the same as it was in the nineteenth century. Like the estate, we must change and grow in order to keep living.”
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  “If only she’d never met that Tarrant Hardcastle.” The words dripped from his father’s tongue like acid.

  “But she did. And now I must meet him, too.” The resolve formed in Amado’s mind as he said the words. This family was done with ignoring unpleasant realities. He wanted to face them head on.

  For years, he’d tried to forget the pain of losing his fiancée. He’d always suspected that Ignacio had had a hand in Valentina’s leaving, but to hear him admit it—

  Adrenaline flashed through his muscles and he struggled to keep himself under control.

  He was done being played. Perhaps meeting his birth father would bring some reality back into this charade.

  “I’ll meet Tarrant Hardcastle and make up my own mind about him.”

  “He’s not your father. He didn’t raise you.”

  “He bears half the responsibility for bringing me into this world, whether he wanted to or not.” He drew in a breath as anger heated his blood. “Now he thinks he can fold me to his bosom like a long-lost sheep?” He blew out a hard breath. “We’ll see. For now, I want to look into the face of the man who left my mother to die.”

  He glanced at Susannah, who’d watched their exchange, her kiss-reddened lips parted in stunned silence.

  He cursed the strong feelings Susannah herself had awakened in him. He couldn’t seem to get her out of his mind. Her solemn gaze haunted him, and her hungry passion.

  And he had to admit that, along with the chaos she’d unleashed, came the fresh air of truth.

  He drew in a deep breath and stared at her. “I’ll come to New York with you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Susannah and Amado stood side by side in the elevator, ascending to Tarrant’s private office on an upper floor of his Fifth Avenue retail palace. Amado’s tailored suit gave him a formal, distant air. Usually unruly and windblown, his dark hair was slicked back to reveal his strong features.

  He didn’t speak. He seemed lost in thought—and who wouldn’t be?

  Tarrant, his wife Samantha, daughter Fiona and newfound son Dominic were waiting for them.

  Susannah was only there because Amado wouldn’t let her go.

  He’d insisted that she spend the night with him in his room at The Pierre. There he drew her into the tight circle the two of them made, away from prying eyes. He worked his dark, sensual magic on her, turning her inside and out in a realm of intense pleasure.

  She didn’t even try to resist.

  He needed her. Longing and tension snapped in the air. She could taste his anger in the heat of his skin. Smell his hunger in his musky male scent.

  His lovemaking was aggressive, demanding, unbearably erotic.

  Afterward, they’d lain tangled in the expensive sheets, exhausted and more wound-up than ever.

  Ding.

  The elevator stopped. Amado hooked his arm around her elbow as if to foil any attempted escape.

  She tried to pull her arm back. “What if they think we’re...?” Panic rippled through her.

  “What if they do?” His voice had an edge to it that she hadn’t heard before. He didn’t look at her.

  “But this is my job,” she rasped.

  “And you do it so well.” He raised an eyebrow before coolly withdrawing his arm from hers.

  A chill descended as her arm fell to her side.

  He thought she’d slept with him to get the job done?

  Had she?

  “Amado!” A slender blonde raced into the reception area. She clapped her hands to her mouth at the sight of him, apparently overwhelmed by emotion.

  Amado stopped.

  Susannah realized introductions were up to her. “Amado, this is Samantha Hardcastle, she’s your...your father’s wife.”

  His third wife, to be precise.

  Amado held out his hand and shook Samantha’s. He murmured a polite greeting in his accented English.

  Susannah could see he was surprised by how young Samantha was. Maybe even younger than him.

  Susannah thought that, underneath her polished society-wife exterior, Samantha Hardcastle was one of the nicest and most genuine people she’d ever met. Still, she refrained from pointing out to Amado that she was now officially his stepmom.

  “Tarrant wanted to come out and meet you himself but he’s weak today. I’m sure Susannah told you that he’s ill.” Samantha’s eyes shone with emotion. “Please come in. We’re all so happy you’re here.”

  Amado’s expression was unreadable.

  Susannah tensed with anticipation. Please let it go well. Let Amado find some happiness in this family drama she’d laid at his door.

  She hung back as Samantha led Amado into Tarrant’s spacious office. Dazzling afternoon light streamed through the tall windows that looked down over Central Park.

  Dominic, the first unclaimed son of Tarrant’s to be located, stepped forward. He ushered Amado into the hushed space, shook his hand formally, then—as if on instinct—pulled him into a deep embrace.

  Dominic had been chosen to replace Tarrant as President after Tarrant’s death, despite a publicized scandal about his affair with a corporate spy at Hardcastle Enterprises.

  Bella Soros, the scientist and mole he’d uncovered both literally and figuratively, was now his wife and a key figure at Hardcastle. Susannah spotted her standing to one side, watching her husband’s newfound brother with her perceptive gray gaze.

  Emotion crackled in the air as Amado bent to greet the sickly tycoon, who could barely rise from his chair. Tarrant clasped Amado’s hand in both of his, “My son, I’m so glad we found you.”

  Susannah found herself getting choked up. Perhaps because Tarrant seemed so frail—so old, even though he was only sixty-seven. He looked like a man with a short time left to live and she prayed that Amado would be gentle with him.

  To err is human. Forgiveness is divine. The familiar words from her childhood rang in her mind.

  Would she be able to forgive a sin of the magnitude of Tarrant’s?

  Tarrant praised Amado’s wines in appreciative detail, which brought Amado out and engaged him in conversation. He stood tall and dignified, polite and reserved, as Tarrant introduced him to his daughter Fiona.

  The only child actually born to Tarrant within the confines of a legal marriage, Fiona was the daughter of his second wife. Susannah thought her somewhat spoiled and flighty, no doubt a result of her indulgent surroundings. She worked at Hardcastle Enterprises but seemed to drift from one department to the next, without settling into a real career.

  Fiona was tight-lipped, barely verbal, her abundant red hair pulled back into a tight chignon. Amado shook her hand, then leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek, which caused a flicker of emotion in her green eyes.

  It must be hard to be Tarrant’s only child for so long, then have the limelight stolen by the tall, handsome men Tarrant now claimed as his sons and heirs.

  Amado, proud and restrained, murmured that he’d like to speak to Tarrant Hardcastle—he called him by his full name—alone. Susannah hurried from the room, heart pounding, and slipped away to her office.

  The door closed behind his newfound brother and sister, leaving Amado alone with his father.

  His father.

  The man who sowed the seed that would become him, then abandoned the garden.

  “You’re angry.”

  Tarrant’s words startled him.

  “Yes, I am.” He looked down at the thin, suntanned face, with its high cheekbones and piercing blue-green eyes. The man who’d left his mother to die.

  “I didn’t know about you.” Amado studied Tarrant’s face as he spoke. “Ignacio Alvarez raised me as his son, and his wife claimed to be my mother.”

  “You were lucky to be raised by such caring people.” Tarrant’s platitude heated Amado’s blood. “Lucky indeed. After being abandoned by the man who gave life to me.”

  “I know apologies are inadequate. There’s no excuse for what I did. I was young and stupid.”

>   Tarrant’s chest heaved inside his crisp blue shirt. “I knew your mother was pregnant. I told her to take care of it, that I’d reimburse her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I told her that if she didn’t, she’d see no more of me.”

  Tarrant paused and frowned. “I never saw her alive again.” He looked up at Amado, eyes shining with unshed tears. “She chose you over me. And a very wise choice it was.”

  Amado’s heart seized at the honest confession. Then his muscles tightened. “I wish I had known her myself.”

  “It’s my great sorrow that you never will.” Tarrant pushed long, tanned fingers through his thick silver hair. “She was a beautiful, lively woman. A talented painter with a big future ahead of her. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to throw that away to take care of a child.”

  “She faced up to her responsibility.” Amado spoke through gritted teeth.

  “Something I could never bring myself to do. I don’t ask you to forgive me, because I know you won’t. You can’t. I only hope that you will consider yourself a part of our family.” Tarrant took a drink from a glass filled with clear liquid. “It means so much to my wife to bring you together with Dominic and Fiona. I think she’s afraid the Hardcastle family will disintegrate after I die. She never had children of her own and she sees you all as her family.”

  Amado blinked. Tarrant’s wife? The stylish blonde who looked all of twenty-five? She’d be a merry widow laughing all the way to the bank.

  “Is this why you brought me here? To make your wife happy?”

  Had his life been turned upside down to provide entertainment for his father’s bored trophy wife? His blood surged near its boiling point.

  Tarrant rose from his chair. It took considerable effort, from the pained expression on his face. Amado found himself reaching forward to offer a helping hand under his elbow. “No. I wanted you here. For me. The selfish wish of a dying man to meet his son.”

  Amado swallowed. The emotion plain in Tarrant’s face tugged at his heart.

  “I’m so proud of what you’ve accomplished. Susannah brought me your wines and told me you’ve been developing the vineyards since you were a child. You deserve all the success you’ve worked hard for and so much more. And I hope that we at Hardcastle Enterprises can help you expand your business to the next level.”