The Spaniard's Woman

“Rosie, I should regret what happened, apologize, but in all honesty I can’t. You were so…” He paused, as if his aptitude for the English language had suddenly deserted him. His fingers slid from her jawbone and tracked gently down the side of her throat. “Sensational.”

The intensity of his level silver gaze, the stark masculine beauty of his features, the touch of his hand against her skin made her feel helplessly dizzy. She wanted to hold him, to wrap her arms around him and tell him how swollen her heart felt, swollen with so much love she could hardly contain it. But his next statement made her go cold all over.

“As this was your first time, I don’t expect you’re protected.”

Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t given the matter any thought at all.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

SEBASTIAN GARCIA’S mood was blacker than a coalminer’s finger-nails as he faced the rambling sixteenth-century façade of Troone Manor. His smoke-grey eyes narrowed then glittered with angry determination. He’d claw his heart out of his breast with his own hands before he’d allow Terrina Dysart to get her gold-digger’s talons on his godfather’s extensive property!

For the first time in his twenty-nine years a visit to the charming old house that had been like a second home to him for most of his life was lacking in anything remotely approaching pleasure.

The cold March wind pushed icy fingers through the sleek blackness of his hair, reminding him that his family home in Southern Spain and the village of Hope Baggot in the uplands of west Shropshire might as well be poles apart.

Firming his already hard jaw, he reached a leather suitcase from the back seat of the silver Mercedes and strode over the circular sweep of gravel to the main door where Madge Partridge was waiting to greet him. His tersely snapped, ‘Is everything in hand?’ wiped the welcoming smile from the housekeeper’s lined face, and she took a flinching step backwards.

Silently cursing himself for losing his cool, he dredged up a smile. A lift of one ebony brow was enough to have his business staff jumping if the occasion demanded it. But dear old Madge was his godfather’s housekeeper and she was only following Marcus’s orders—as he himself was reluctantly doing. And making good and sure Marcus Troone got to see what Terrina really was, was his problem, not Madge’s.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised through the smile he was doing his best to keep in place. ‘I didn’t mean to bite your head off.’ He lifted wide, leather-coated shoulders in an expressive shrug. ‘I’ve been driving through the night; put it down to that and forgive me?’

‘Of course.’ Briefly, Madge put a workworn hand to the side of his face, her gaunt features relaxing as she grumbled at him, ‘You wouldn’t take the easy way out and fly over in comfort, get a driver from the London office to meet you at the airport and chauffeur you here, not you!’

Her brown eyes glinted with affectionate amusement as he walked past her into the huge, raftered hall where a log fire was burning brightly in the stone fireplace. ‘The first time you ever stayed here without your parents—you’d have been six years old—you decided that coming down to breakfast via your bedroom window and the wisteria would be more of a challenge than using the stairs. So nothing’s changed, has it?’

The memory of the truly awe-inspiring scolding he’d received from Tia Lucia on that long-ago occasion made his heart dip with sadness. Marcus Troone and Sebastian’s father, Rafael, had been business partners and Marcus had married Rafael’s younger sister, Lucia. They had regarded themselves as one family. Sebastian had spent long weeks every summer at Troone Manor, and life had seemed happy and uncomplicated.

But shadows had invaded the scene, invaded and deepened. To their sadness, his aunt and Marcus—who was also his godfather—had remained childless, and he had been approaching his eighth birthday when the unthinkable had happened and his lively, loving Tia Lucia had been stricken with multiple sclerosis. The next time he’d visited she’d been confined to a wheelchair, almost as helpless as a baby.

Two years ago Lucia had died and now Marcus, lonely and childless, was on the point of marrying a gold-digging witch!

‘Not knowing exactly when to expect you, I held lunch back. It will be about an hour, so would you like coffee before you freshen up?’

With difficulty, Sebastian hauled himself out of the pit of his seething anger and grunted an affirmative to the housekeeper’s question, dumping his case on the worn flagstones and following her through to the comfortably homely kitchen regions.

The whole place reeked of fresh emulsion. It made him shudder. Not the smell of the paint itself, but the implications. If Terrina got her hands on this property, the comfortable, slightly shabby ambience of what he’d always regarded as the essence of an English country house would be replaced by smart, over-decorated, expensive tat.

Not that he begrudged his godfather the happiness and companionship of a second marriage—Lord knows his role of husband had been reduced to that of dedicated carer for well over twenty years—but marriage to a greedy little harpy who would do anything, say anything, to get her hands on his enormous wealth and then, inevitably, break his heart—no way!

‘Sir Marcus is more himself now?’ Madge asked, motioning Sebastian to the old armchair at the side of the vast kitchen range as she busied herself with the coffee things. ‘I was shocked, but not surprised, when he collapsed just before Christmas. He’d been working himself to a standstill since Lady Troone passed away, poor thing.’

‘Much better,’ Sebastian conceded as he accepted the coffee she handed him; strong, black and un-sweetened, just the way he liked it. ‘A few weeks on the warm shoreline below Jerez with my mother to cluck over him, and me, as his partner since my father’s death, to report back on both the London and Cadiz ends of the business, and he’s fighting fit again.’

‘Must be, if he’s gone and got himself engaged.’

He noted the questioning tone, the undercurrent of anxiety, understood exactly where she was coming from, but decided to ignore it. Faithful and loyal though the good soul was, there was nothing the housekeeper could do. It would be unkind to tell her of his own deep misgivings and add to her worries. It was his problem and, utterly distasteful though it was, he knew how he had to handle it. But, for the time being at least, he would comply with his godfather’s request.

‘The decorators have finished?’ He deliberately changed the subject.

‘Yesterday.’ She sat at the central scrubbed pine table and ladled sugar into her milky coffee. ‘Sir’s instructions were just a plain, freshening-up job. No doubt his new wife will have her own ideas of how she wants to redecorate the house.’

Visions of expensive designer chic—stark, shiny and completely soulless—flooded his brain again. He quickly ousted them and asked, ‘And the temporary staff?’

‘Ah.’ Madge’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Only two responded to the advertisement so it was Hobson’s choice. Sharon Hodges from the village—you might have seen her around? Big, bulgy, mouthy lass. Knowing that feckless, lie-abed family, I insisted she live in for the full six weeks; that way I can make sure she gets out of bed and starts work on time. And the other girl comes from Wolverhampton. A little bit of a thing, she is. Looks as though a puff of wind would blow her over—I did explain there was a good deal of hard physical work involved, but if that bothered her she didn’t say so. Come to think of it, she didn’t say much, just that her mother had died a few months ago and she wanted a stop-gap job while she decided what she wanted to do. Name of Rosie Lambert. She’ll be twenty the day after tomorrow, blushes if you so much as look at her and hangs her head as if she’s got something to be ashamed of.

‘Still.’ Madge Partridge heaved a resigned sigh. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers. They both moved in yesterday and they’ve started on the bedrooms, getting rid of the paint splodges the decorators left. Quite frankly, I don’t think either of them will be what I’d call satisfactory.’

‘Leave them to me.’ Sebastian gave her the benefit of his warmly confident smile. If anyone knew how to get the best out of hired staff, he did. Madge had enough on her plate and for the time being, until he worked out exactly how and when and with the least hurt he could wipe the scales from his beloved godfather’s eyes, he would go along with his instructions.

‘The whole place has been run down for years,’ Marcus had confided. ‘Madge can’t cope with a place that size on her own and what help she has been getting from a village daily doesn’t make much difference. My fault. I should have had a firm of cleaners come in regularly, but Lucia, bless her, was dead against it. She couldn’t stand the upheaval and hated the thought of strangers touching her things. So hire a gang of live-in temporary domestics to get the place spotless before I bring Terrina back to organise the engagement party she’s set her heart on. After we’re married she can decide what she wants to do about staffing the place.’ His smile had broadened into what Sebastian had described to himself as a grin besotted enough to earn the title of imbecilic. ‘The first on her list of priorities will be a nanny!’

In the way of manipulative, greedy women the world over—and Sebastian had had enough experience of the breed to recognise one when he saw one—Terrina had quickly found her prey’s Achilles’ heel. Marcus’s abiding regret was that his marriage had been childless. Armed with that knowledge, Terrina had allowed her sweetly confided desire to have a large family to become sickeningly repetitive.

Making a conscious effort to stop himself from scowling, Sebastian announced, ‘Don’t worry about it, Madge, I’ll stick around long enough to make sure the show’s well on the road,’ before taking himself off to the room he’d always occupied on his visits there.

Rosie Lambert sat back on her heels and pushed a descending strand of long pale blonde hair out of her eyes with a rubber-gloved hand. It left a trail of scrubbing water down the side of her face. Two tears slid down her cheeks, adding to the mess. She could feel a huge sob building up inside her narrow ribcage as she fumblingly tried to mop her face on the sleeve of the giant brown overall Mrs Partridge had given her to wear.

She truly wished she had never come here, wished she’d never found the letter that had told her who her father was, wished she’d never listened to her friend and erstwhile employer, Jean Edwards.

It had been a quiet Monday morning in the street corner mini-market owned by Jean and Jeff Edwards. Rosie had been working there full-time since her mother’s death and had gratefully accepted the invitation to move into the spare room in the living premises above until she found her feet. Anything to escape the flat in the high-rise block on the sink estate where she and Mum had lived for the past nineteen years.

‘You won’t want to work as a check-out girl and shelf-stacker all your life—not a bright girl like you,’ Jean had stated unequivocally. ‘You could even try to take the place at university you gave up when your poor mother became so ill.’

Rosie had had no idea about the direction her life would take. She’d been angry, saddened and confused since absorbing what her mother had told her a few days before her death, since finding that letter afterwards. Not a state of mind conducive to clear forward thinking. And, because her mother had refused to let her have anything to do with the other children who roamed the estate like packs of half-wild little animals, Rosie hadn’t a friend in the world except Jean and her husband Jeff.

She’d needed to confide in someone and Jean had listened. Two months later, on that quiet Monday morning, the older woman had produced the local paper she’d taken from her sister-in-law’s house in Bridgnorth when they’d been visiting the day before.

‘I was just glancing through it and saw this. It’s fate. Got to be. Read it.’

And there, in the Situations Vacant column, something that had made Rosie’s heart emulate a steam hammer:

Temporary live-in domestic staff required for six weeks from the beginning of March. Excellent pay and conditions. Apply Troone Manor, Hope Baggot.

Followed by a phone number.

‘Apply,’ Jean had advised when Rosie had got over her shock sufficiently to stop shaking. ‘You needn’t actually take the job, but getting interviewed would give you the chance to at least get a look at the village where your grandparents lived and where your mother was born and grew up. You could get a look at your father, too—there’s obviously no doubt about Marcus Troone being the selfish wretch who got your poor mum pregnant, not from what you’ve told me—and decide whether you take to him enough to want to take it further. And, even if you loathe him on sight, he owes you big time. Stands to reason.’

Like the clown that she obviously was, Rosie had truly expected to be interviewed by Sir Marcus Troone himself and had steeled herself to decide whether she wanted to explain who she was, or whether she’d hit him with her handbag for treating her poor mother so badly and risk being charged with criminal assault.

Of course he wouldn’t lower himself to interview a humble cleaner, she’d chided herself, when she’d faced Mrs Partridge over the kitchen table. And had gone on to remind herself bitterly that Sir Marcus would only notice an employee if she happened to be young, pretty and a likely pushover.

Towards the end of her life her mother had confessed that she’d fallen in love with the man who had fathered Rosie while working in the gardens of his home during the long summer break from the horticultural college she was attending. And, after finding the letter on the Troone Manor headed notepaper, that snippet had fallen neatly into place. Her grandfather had worked in the Manor’s gardens; she knew that much. What would be more natural than that he should choose his daughter to help out during her summer break when temporary staff would be taken on to help with the extra seasonal work?

Her mother had gone on to confide that her lover had been married and that they’d both known that what they were doing was dreadfully wrong but had loved each other so much they simply couldn’t help themselves.

A likely story! Rosie had thought, hanging her head in case Mrs Partridge should see the burning mixture of anger and pain in her eyes and think she was demented. She knew her mother had adored her lover, but what kind of man would leave the girl he’d seduced—barely eighteen years old at the time—to abandon her career to care for the child he refused to acknowledge or support, to live out her life in borderline poverty?

And the wretch wasn’t even here! During the interview it had been revealed that Sir Marcus was in Spain and would be returning in a few weeks’ time with his new wife-to-be, which was why the neglect of years had to be swept, dusted and polished away.

At that point Rosie had known she should terminate the interview, apologise, and walk away. But doubts, and, let’s face it, she told herself now as she bent to her task of locating the off-white spots of paint on the broad oak boards, the need to find out everything she could about her father and hope to goodness he wasn’t as black as her imagination had painted him, had her dumbly accepting the offered temporary position.

A big mistake. She felt really sneaky and it wasn’t a nice feeling.

‘Hunt him down! He should know who you are,’ Jean had said. But it was unworthy. Her mother had been wise enough to put the past behind her, accept that the father of her child was no part of her life, and in honour of her memory Rosie knew she should have done the same.

More tears threatened. Rosie sniffed loudly and started to scrub ferociously at a spot that stubbornly refused to budge.

Sebastian walked through the open door of his usual bedroom and did a double take at what appeared to be a mound of brown nylon fabric, the soles of a pair of beat-up plimsolls and a bucket.

The mound emitted a loudly prolonged sniff and a smile played at the edges of his mouth in instinctive male appreciation as a neat little backside began to sway to and fro as the scrubbing brush was wielded in a sudden burst of savage energy.

This was not the big, bulgy girl of Madge’s description so it had to be the other. Rosie Lambert. That bobbing backside couldn’t be called big by any stretch of the imagination. Neat, curvy and very, very feminine.

He cleared his throat brusquely to slap down his libido and gain her attention. Then widened his eyes as ‘the little bit of a thing’ scrambled to her feet as if she’d been shot, clutching her scrubbing brush in front of her in rubber-gloved hands.

The vulnerable beauty of her wide sapphire eyes stunned him. She’d been crying. Bright drops were tangled in her thick lashes and when the scarlet receded, leaving her delicately hollowed cheeks milky pale, he could see grubby streaks marring the perfection of her skin.

Compassion, or something very like it, stirred sharply inside him. Hadn’t Madge said she’d recently lost her mother? What about her father, siblings? Such a little scrap of a thing needed someone to look out for her!

Surprised by the powerful intensity of his thoughts, he placed his suitcase at the foot of the bed, black brows meeting in a frown. Such fraternal feelings were totally unlike him and he didn’t know where they were coming from. He’d naturally felt protective towards his mother and Aunt Lucia. And that was it. In his experience, the female of the species was pretty good at looking out for number one.

‘You must be Rosie,’ he stated softly when he became aware that his scowl was making the poor scrap quiver, his eyes drawn, for some reason, to her parted lips. Bee-stung? Rosebud? He searched for the most appropriate adjective and whimsically decided on kissable.

Dios! He was either losing his marbles or he had been without a woman for far too long! Plastering a smile that he hoped was reassuring on a face that felt oddly stiff, he introduced himself, ‘I’m Sebastian Garcia. I’ll be around for a while making sure that everything’s as it should be when Sir Marcus returns.’

‘You know my—’ Rosie smartly zipped her mouth. Heaven help her—she’d been about to say ‘father’ and had only just stopped herself in time. Blushing hotly, she lowered her head and added, ‘Employer?’

Oh, my, she didn’t know what had come over her; she really didn’t. When she’d heard that masculine attention-commanding throat-clearing thing she’d immediately and foolishly assumed that the father she had never known had unexpectedly returned.

Wild and conflicting emotions had propelled her upright at the speed of light and she’d found herself staring at the most compulsively attractive male she’d ever clapped eyes on. So heart-thumpingly sexy she just couldn’t force her eyes off him.

Gorgeous smoky-grey eyes with unbelievable dark lashes, midnight hair, a thin blade of a nose that made him look a real aristo and a wide narrow mouth that sent unaccountable shudders up and down her spine. Add a lean but powerful physique and a slight but oh-so-sexy Spanish accent and it was no wonder she was feeling a bit—overwhelmed.

‘Marcus is my business partner, my godfather and a long-time family friend.’ A slight smile curved the sculpted lines of that wicked mouth and Rosie felt her stomach turn over. A lump of irrational disappointment lodged behind her breastbone; she had hoped he was just another employee, more on her level, not a member of the wealthy, exalted clan she and her poor dead mother had been excluded from. Though why she should think that way, she had no idea. Except—

To her shame she felt another of those wretched blushes crawling over her face and dipped her head so that her hair, which had finally escaped its ponytail, fell forward and hid her burning cheeks. Trust her to have silly thoughts about a man who was so far out of her reach he might just as well be inhabiting a parallel universe, a man who had the kind of looks which only existed in female fantasies!

Sebastian grinned with wry amusement. Females who moved in his social circles didn’t blush when spoken to. They bridled, pouted, husked, and sent explicit messages from calculating eyes. Rosie Lambert’s reaction to him was a new and intriguing experience. And she had beautiful hair. It fell around her face like a waterfall of softest, palest silk and a curl of string, presumably used to tie it out of the way, was tangled up in the silky strands.

Ignoring the impulse to pluck the string away—she would probably faint like a Victorian virgin if he so much as touched her—he heard her mumble, ‘I’ll get out of your way.’

Her slight body was trembling as she turned back to her bucket, her spine rigid with tension. Unaccountably, he had a compelling urge to ask why she was so uptight, try to help. Sensibly, he ignored it. She would probably run a mile if he became personal on such a short acquaintanceship. It would have to wait. Instead, he said blandly, ‘No, please carry on with your work. It’s got to be done and you won’t be bothering me.’

Somehow Rosie found the strength to turn and look at him. He was shrugging out of his leather jacket, revealing a torso of utterly perfect proportions covered by a dark, fine wool sweater. And he had endless legs; sexily narrow hips. Her mouth ran dry and she couldn’t breathe, because there was the strangest, most unnerving sensation of heat deep inside her.

And, for a big man—he had to be well over six feet tall to her diminutive almost three inches over five feet—he moved with surprising grace, she noted as he walked to the vast hanging cupboard to stow away his jacket.

Sebastian Garcia was the first man who had ever made her feel this weird, almost as if she no longer had any control over her body or her thoughts. But thankfully he hadn’t noticed the way she was gawping at him or suspected the effect he was having on her, she told herself as she finally turned back to her bucket and dropped down on her knees.

As he’d said, her presence in what was obviously his bedroom didn’t bother him. Why should it? She attacked the few remaining drops of dried paint with a violent surge of energy. She was just a cleaning lady—someone who, if she wasn’t being given instructions, became completely invisible.