Honour-Bound Groom / Cinderella & the CEO: Honour-Bound Groom

Honour-Bound Groom

Yvonne Lindsay

Cinderella & the CEO

Maureen Child

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Honour-Bound Groom

Yvonne Lindsay

His lips were only millimetres from hers. Already he could feel her breath against him.

“Alex, wait!”

He drew in a shuddering breath, constraining his desire.

“Don’t worry, Loren. I will make tonight one you will never forget.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said, pulling out of his arms. “It’s about us. Our marriage.”

“Us?”

What was she talking about? They were married.

Tonight would see the consummation of that marriage.

“Yes, Alex, us. I love you. I’ve always loved you one way or another. And even knowing you don’t love me, I agreed to marry you in part because of my feelings for you, but also to honour my father, and his promise to yours.” Her eyes glistened in the candlelight with unshed tears. “Can you honestly tell me that you have done the same?”

Dear Reader,

When this trilogy first started to grow in my mind I really let my imagination wander. Initially this was going to be a royal trilogy, because doesn’t everyone love a royal? Well, after a little gentle guidance from my editor at the time, I was persuaded away from the over-the-top fairy-tale aspects of the stories I’d initially outlined and my mind spun off on another tangent. A wealthy family bound by a three-hundred-year-old legend and a curse, and living on a totally fictional Mediterranean island called Isla Sagrado. Just goes to show that all those years of daydreaming in class (and my school reports will support this) were worthwhile after all.

So here we have it. Book No. 1 of Wed At Any Price—Alexander and Loren’s story. My working title for this was The Spaniard’s Honour Bride, which kept me focused on the deep sense of honour Alex has in his duty to the people of his country and to his family. Of course, his bride was a girl promised to him virtually from the cradle and who has loved him her whole life. The challenge of bringing them together and keeping them together was great grist for this writer’s mill.

I hope you enjoy Honour-Bound Groom and that you look forward to the next instalment in the trilogy, Stand-In Bride’s Seduction, where Alex’s brother, Reynard, meets his match and learns that love is not all about appearances.

Happy reading and very best wishes,

Yvonne Lindsay

New Zealand-born to Dutch immigrant parents, YVONNE LINDSAY became an avid romance reader at the age of thirteen. Now, married to her “blind date” and with two surprisingly amenable teenagers, she remains a firm believer in the power of romance. Yvonne feels privileged to be able to bring to her readers the stories of her heart. In her spare time, when not writing, she can be found with her nose firmly in a book, reliving the power of love in all walks of life. She can be contacted via her website, www.yvonnelindsay.com.

This book is dedicated to all my wonderful readers,

who make it possible for me to keep writing books.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Prologue

Isla Sagrado, three months ago …

“Abuelo is losing his marbles. He talked again of the curse today.”

Alexander del Castillo leaned back in the deep and comfortable dark leather chair and gave his brother, Reynard, a chastising look.

“Our grandfather is not going mad, he is merely growing old. And he worries—for all of us.” Alex’s gaze encompassed his youngest brother, Benedict, also. “We have to do something about it—something drastic—and soon. This negative publicity about the curse is not just affecting him, it’s affecting business, too.”

“That’s true. Revenue at the winery is down this quarter. More than anticipated,” Benedict agreed, reaching for his glass of del Castillo Tempranillo and taking a sip. “It certainly isn’t the quality of the wine that’s doing it, if I say so myself.”

“Put your ego back where it belongs and focus, would you?” Alex growled. “This is serious. Reynard, you’re our head of publicity, what can we do for the family as a whole that will see talk about this stupid curse laid to rest once and for all?”

Reynard cast him a look of disbelief. “You actually want to lend credence to the curse?”

“If it means we can get things on an even keel again. We owe it to Abuelo, if not to ourselves. If we’d been more traditional in our ways then the issue would probably not have arisen.”

“The del Castillos have never been renowned for their traditional outlook, mi hermano,” Reynard pointed out with a deprecating grin.

“And look where that has put us,” Alex argued. “Three hundred years and the governess’s curse would still appear to be upon us. Whether you believe in it or not, according to the legend, we’re it—the last generation. If we don’t get things right, the entire nation—including our grandfather—believes it will be the end of the del Castillo family. Do you want that on your conscience?” He stared his younger brother down before flicking his gaze to Benedict. “Do you?”

Reynard shook his head slightly, as if in disbelief. He seemed stunned that his eldest brother had joined their grandfather in the crazy belief that an age-old legend could be based in truth. And more, that it could be responsible for affecting their prosperity, indeed, threatening their very lives today.

Alex understood Reynard’s skepticism. But what choice did they have? As long as the locals believed in the curse, bad publicity would affect the way the del Castillo family could do business. And as long as Abuelo believed, the paths he and his brothers chose could make or break the happiness of the man who had raised them all.

“No, Alex.” Reynard sighed. “I do not want to be responsible for our family’s demise any more than you do.”

“So what do we do about it?” Benedict challenged with a humorless laugh. “It’s not as if we can suddenly drum up loving brides so we can marry and live happily ever after.”

“That’s it!” Reynard declared with a shouted laugh and pushed himself up and out of his seat.

His abrupt movement and shout unsettled the dogs sleeping in front of the fire, sending them barking around his feet. A clipped command from Alex made them slink back to their rug and assume their drowsing state.

“That’s what we need to do. It’ll be a publicity exercise such as Isla Sagrado has never seen before.”

“And you think Abuelo is losing his marbles?” Benedict asked and took another sip of his wine.

“No,” Alex said, excitement beginning to build in his chest. “He’s right. That’s exactly what we must do. Remember the curse. If the ninth generation does not live by our family motto of honor, truth and love, in life and in marriage, the del Castillo name will die out forever. If we each marry and have families, well, for a start that will show the curse for the falsehood it is. People will put their trust in our name again rather than in fear and superstition.”

Reynard sat back down. “You’re serious,” he said flatly.

“Never more so,” Alex answered.

Whether he’d been kidding around or not, Reynard had hit on the very thing that would not only settle their grandfather’s concerns but would be a massive boost to the del Castillo name. Its ongoing effect on the people of Isla Sagrado would increase prosperity across the entire island nation.

While Isla Sagrado was a minor republic in the Mediterranean, the del Castillo family had long held a large amount of influence on the island’s affairs, whether commercial or political. As the family had prospered so, by natural process, did the people of Isla Sagrado.

Unfortunately, the reverse was also true.

“You expect each of us to simply marry the right women and start families and then, hey, presto, all will be well?” Reynard’s voice was saturated with disbelief.

“Exactly. How hard can it be?” Alex got up and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good-looking guy. I’m sure you have plenty of candidates.”

Benedict snorted. “Not the kind he’d bring home to Abuelo, I’d wager.”

“You can talk,” Reynard retorted. “You’re too busy racing that new Aston Martin of yours along the cliff road to slow down long enough for a woman to catch you.”

Alex walked over to the fireplace and leaned against the massive stone mantel that framed it. Carved from island rock, the hearth had seen generation after generation of his family sprawl in front of its warmth. He and his brothers would not be the last to do so. Not if he had anything to do with it.

“All joking aside, are you willing to at least try?” he asked, his eyes flicking from one brother to the next.

Of the two, Benedict looked most like him. In fact some days he felt as if he was looking into a mirror when he saw his brother’s black hair and black-brown eyes. Reynard took after their French mother. Finer featured, perhaps more dramatic with his dark coloring because of it. Female attention had never been an issue for any of them, even from before they’d hit puberty. In fact, with only three years in total separating the brothers, they’d been pretty darn competitive in their playboy bachelorhood. They were all in their early thirties now and had mostly left that phase behind but the reputation still lingered, and it was that very lifestyle that had brought them to this current conundrum.

“It’s all right for you, you’re already engaged to your childhood sweetheart,” Benedict teased him with a smirk, clearly still not prepared to take the matter seriously on any level.

“Hardly my sweetheart since she was only a baby when we were betrothed.”

Twenty-five years ago their father had saved his best friend, Francois Dubois, from drowning after the latter had accepted a dare from their father to swim off Isla Sagrado’s most dangerous beach below the castillo. In gratitude, Dubois had promised the hand of his infant daughter, Loren, to Raphael del Castillo’s eldest son. In a modern society no one but the two men had ever really given any credence to the pledge. But the two men were old-school all the way back down their ancestral lines and they’d taken the matter very seriously indeed.

Alex had barely paid any attention at the time, despite the fact that, virtually from the day she could walk, Loren had followed him around like a faithful puppy. He’d been grateful when her parents had divorced and her mother had taken her away to New Zealand, clear on the other side of the world, when Loren had been fifteen. Twenty-three years old at the time, he’d found it unsettling to have a gangling, underdeveloped teenager telling his girlfriends that she was his fiancée.

Since then, the engagement had been a convenient excuse to avoid the state of matrimony. Until now, he hadn’t even considered marriage, and certainly not in the context of Francois Dubois’s promise to Raphael del Castillo. But what better way to continue to uphold his family’s honor and position on Isla Sagrado than to fulfill the terms of the spoken contract between two best friends? He could see the headlines already. It would be a media coup that would not only benefit the del Castillo business empire, but the whole of Isla Sagrado, as well.

He thought briefly of the dalliance he’d begun with his personal assistant. He didn’t normally choose to mix business with pleasure, especially from within his own immediate work environment. But Giselle’s persistent attempts to seduce him had been entertaining and—once he’d given in—very satisfying.

A curvaceous blonde, Giselle enjoyed being escorted to the high spots of Sagradan society and entertainment. Certainly she was beautiful and talented—in more ways than one—but wife material? No. They’d both known that nothing long-term would ever have come of their relationship. No doubt she’d be philosophical and he knew she was sophisticated enough to accept his explanation that their intimacy could no longer continue. In fact, he’d put a stop to it right away. He needed to create some emotional space between now and when he brought Loren back to be his bride.

Alex made a mental note to source a particularly lovely piece of jewelry to placate Giselle and turned his mind back to the only current viable option for the position of his wife.

Loren Dubois.

She was from one of the oldest families here on Isla Sagrado, and had always taken great pride in her heritage. Even though she’d been gone for ten years, he’d wager she was still Sagradan to her marrow—and as devoted to her father’s memory as she had been to the man during his lifetime. She wouldn’t hesitate to honor the commitment made all those years ago. What’s more, she’d understand what it meant to be a del Castillo bride, together with what that responsibility involved. And she would now be at the right age, and maturity, to marry and to help put the governess’s curse to rest once and for all.

Alex smirked at his brothers. “So, that’s me settled. What are you two going to do?”

“You have to be kidding us, right?” Benedict looked askance at Alex, as if he’d suddenly announced his intention to enter a monastery. “Lanky little Loren Dubois?”

“Maybe she’s changed.” Alex shrugged. It mattered little how she looked. Marrying her was his duty—his desires weren’t relevant. With any luck she’d be pregnant with his child within the first year of their marriage and too busy thereafter with the baby to put any real demands upon him.

“But still, why would you choose her when you could have any woman alive as your wife?” Reynard entered the fray.

Alex sighed. Between them his brothers were as tenacious as a pair of wolves after a wounded beast.

“Why not? Marrying her will serve multiple purposes. Not only will it honor an agreement made between our late father and his friend, but it will also help relieve Abuelo’s concerns. And that’s not even mentioning what it will do for our public image. Let’s face it. The media will lap it up, especially if you leak the original betrothal story as an appetizer. They’ll make it read like a fairy tale.”

“And what of Abuelo’s concerns about the next generation?” Reynard asked, one eyebrow raised. “Do you think your bride will be so happy to ensure our longevity? For all you know she may already be married.”

“She’s not.”

“And you know this because?”

“Abuelo had an investigator keep tabs on her after Francois died. Since his stroke last year, the reports have come to me.”

“So you’re serious about it then. You’re really going to go through with a twenty-five-year-old engagement to a woman you don’t even know anymore.”

“I have to, unless you have any better suggestions. Rey?”

Reynard shook his head. A short sharp movement of his head that bore witness to the frustration they all felt at the position they were in.

“And you, Ben? Anything you can think of that will save our name and our fortunes, not to mention make Abuelo’s final years with us happier ones?”

“You know there is nothing else,” Benedict replied, resignation to their combined fates painting stark lines on his face.

“Then, my brothers, I’d like to propose a toast. To each of us and to the future del Castillo brides.”

One

New Zealand, now …

“I have come to discuss the terms of our fathers’ agreement. It is time we marry.”

From the second his sleek gray Eurocopter had landed on the helipad close to the house she’d wondered what had brought Alexander del Castillo here. Now she knew. She could hardly believe it.

Loren Dubois studied the tall near stranger commanding the space of her mother’s formal sitting room. Her eyes drank in the sight of him after so long. Dressed all in black, his dark hair pushed back from his forehead and his brown-black eyes fixed firmly on her face, he should have been intimidating but instead she wondered whether she’d conjured up an age-old dream.

Marry? Her heart jumped erratically in her chest and she tried to force it back to its usual slow and steady rhythm. Years ago, she’d have leaped at the opportunity, but now? With age had come caution. She wasn’t a love-struck teenager anymore. She’d seen firsthand what an unhappy alliance could do to a couple, as her parents’ tempestuous marriage had attested. She and Alexander del Castillo didn’t even know one another anymore. Yet, for some reason, the way he’d proposed marriage—in typical autocratic del Castillo fashion—made her go weak at the knees.

She gave herself a swift reality check. Who was she kidding? He hadn’t proposed. He’d flat out told her, as if there was no question that she’d accept. It didn’t help that every fiber in her body wanted to do just that.

Wait, she reminded herself. Slow down.

It had been ten years since she’d laid eyes on him. Ten years since her fifteen-year-old heart had been broken and she’d been dragged to New Zealand by her mother after the divorce. A long time not to hear from someone by any standards, let alone from the man she had been betrothed to from the cradle.

Even so, a part of her still wanted to leap at the suggestion. Loren took a steadying breath. Although their engagement had always been the stuff of fairy tales, she was determined to stay firmly rooted in the present.

“Marry?” she responded, drawing her chin up slightly as if it could give her that extra height and lessen Alex’s dominance over her. “You arrive here with no prior warning—in fact, no contact at all since I left Isla Sagrado—and the first thing you say to me is that it’s time we marry? That’s a little precipitate, wouldn’t you say?”

“Our betrothal has stood for a quarter of a century. I would say our marriage is past due.”

There it was—that delicious hint of accent in his voice, characteristic of the Spanish-Franco blend of nationalities of their home country, Isla Sagrado. It was an accent she’d long since diluted with her time in New Zealand, yet from his lips the sound was like velvet stroking bare skin. Her body responded to the timbre of it even as she fought down the wave of longing that spiraled from her core. Had she missed him that much?

Of course she had. That much and more. But she was grown-up now. A woman, not a child, nor a displaced bratty teen. Loren attempted to inject a fine thread of steel into her voice.

“A betrothal that no one seriously expected to be fulfilled, surely.”

Somehow she had to show him she wouldn’t be such a pushover. In all the time since she’d left Isla Sagrado he’d made no contact whatsoever. Not so much as a card at Christmas or her birthday. His indifference had hurt.

“Are you saying that your father made such a gesture lightly when he offered your hand?”

Loren laughed, the sound of it hollow even to her ears. She still missed her father with a physical ache, even though he’d been dead these past seven years. With him had gone her last link to Isla Sagrado and, she’d believed, to Alex. But now Alex was very much here and she didn’t know how to react. Stay strong, she told herself. Above all, stay strong. That’s the only way to earn the respect of a del Castillo.

“A hand that was little more than three months old when it was promised to you—you yourself were only eight,” she said with as much bravado as she could muster.

Alex moved a step toward her. She almost felt the air part to allow him passage; he had that kind of presence. Despite her inexperience with men of Alex’s caliber, it was one she responded to instinctively.

Alex had always been magnetic, but the past ten years had seen a new maturity settle on his broad shoulders, together with a stronger and more determined line to his jaw. He looked older than the thirty-three years she knew him to be. Older and harder. Certainly not a man who took “no” for an answer.

“I’m not eight anymore. And you—” he paused and ran his eyes over her body “—you are most certainly no longer a child.”

Loren’s skin flared hot, as if he’d touched her with more than a glance. As if his long strong fingers had stroked her face, her throat, her breasts. She felt her nipples tighten and strain against the practical cotton of her bra. And the longing within her grew harder to resist.

“Alex,” she said, her voice slightly breathless, “you don’t know me anymore. I don’t know you. For all you know I’m already married.”

“I know you are not.”

He knew? What else did he know about her, she wondered. Had he somehow kept tabs on her all this time?

“It would be foolish for us to marry. We don’t even know if we’re compatible.”

“We have the rest of our lives to learn the details of what we can do to please one another.”

Alex’s voice was a low murmur and his eyes dropped to her mouth. Please or pleasure? Which had he really meant, she thought, as she struggled against the urge to moisten her lips with her tongue. The longing sharpened and drew into a tight coil deep within her. Loren fought back a moan—the pure, visceral response to his mere gaze shocking her with its intensity.

Her lack of experience with men had never bothered her before this moment. All her dealings with guests and male staff here at her mother’s family’s sheep and cattle station had been platonic and she’d preferred it that way. It had been difficult enough to settle into the isolation of the farm without the complications of a relationship with someone directly involved with the day-to-day workings of the place. Besides, anything else would have felt like a betrayal—to her father’s promise and to the lingering feelings she still bore for Alex.

Now, that lack of experience had come back to haunt her. A man like Alex del Castillo would certainly expect more than what she had to offer. Would demand it.

In her younger years, she’d adored Alex with the kind of hero worship that a child had for an attractive older person—and, oh yes, he’d been attractive from the moment he’d drawn his first breath. She’d seen the photos to prove it. She’d believed that adoration had deepened into love, love not dimmed by Alex’s vague tolerance of the scrawny kid who followed him like a shadow around the castillo that had been his family home for centuries.

For as long as she could remember she’d plagued her father to repeat the story of how Alex’s dad, Raphael, had saved him from drowning on the beach below the castillo after a crazy dare between friends had almost turned deadly. And she’d hung on his every word as he’d reached the part where, in deepest gratitude, he’d promised his newborn daughter in marriage to Raphael’s eldest son.

But her childish dreams of happily ever after with her fairy-tale prince were quite different from the virile, masculine reality of the man in front of her. Every move he made showed that Alex had a degree of sensual knowledge and experience she couldn’t even begin to imagine, much less match. It was exciting and intimidating all at once. Was she already in over her head?

“Besides,” Alex said, his voice still low, pitched only for her ears, “it is time now that I marry and who better than the woman to whom I’ve been affianced all her life?”

Alex’s dark brown eyes bored into hers, daring her to challenge him. But, surprisingly, beneath the dare, Loren saw something else reflected in their depths.