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‘Petra—don’t…’
Alexa took a couple of steps forward, then stopped, knowing that her stepmother would not want her attempts at comfort. In fact, she would probably repulse them as dramatically as she was now clinging to her husband’s hands and gazing up forlornly into his eyes.
‘Surely it’s better this way than for her to realise later that she’s made a terrible mistake,’ she repeated.
Oh, she was good, Santos told himself, watching the way Alexa had moved forward then hesitated, noting the quiet, soothing note of her voice. Listening to her, watching her, he could almost believe that she was genuine. That she believed every last word of the story that had dropped so convincingly from her pretty mouth.
But of course that couldn’t be true. She had to be in this right up to her elegant neck. She must have known that her sister was going to run out on him; why else would she time her arrival at the church so perfectly that it was impossible for anyone to go after Natalie and bring her back?
They were all in it together—the whole family. And he had been foolish enough to let them persuade him to let his guard down and, for the first time in his life, make a bad decision.
As a wedding present for your bride… He could still hear Petra Montague’s beseeching voice inside his head. You wouldn’t want to see your father-in-law thrown out into the street…
Dios! What had he been thinking? Never before had he paid out anything on a contract before the whole deal was signed and sealed, but this time he’d let his guard slip just a centimetre and the damn Montague family had taken full advantage of it.
‘You must want Natalie to be happy.’
‘She would have been happy with Santos!’ Petra wailed. ‘We would all have been happy with things that way!’
‘But she wasn’t happy,’ Alexa protested. ‘She just didn’t dare say it, once the wedding had been arranged and everything planned.’
From where he stood slightly to the side, all that Santos could see was this Alexa’s face and body in profile, and, having looked at her once, he suddenly found it impossible to look away.
‘Plain’ was the way her stepmother had described her. ‘Dull and old-fashioned’. But even at the pre-wedding party he had not seen her in that way. She didn’t have Natalie’s dramatic colouring, her stunning beauty. In the older girl, everything was toned down, her sister’s blonde hair subdued to a dark brown, and no blue, blue eyes but an unusual hazel of the sort that could be green or brown depending on the light and her mood. And her clothes had been so much simpler than her sister’s, more demure than Natalie’s ultra-fashionable style, perhaps, but not ‘dull’ or old-fashioned.
Now, even under the appallingly unflattering and over-elaborate hairstyle, her profile had a purity that caught the eye and held it. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent and the length of the lush, curling eyelashes that rested on her cheeks as she looked down seemed almost as if they might waft a breeze across the church with each movement of her eyes.
Her figure was tall and slender, slight in comparison to her sister’s voluptuous curves, but she held herself with a natural elegance. She might not be as stunning a beauty as her sister but there was something about her that drew his attention to her.
Something that hooked him and held him watching, caught by her stillness, her composure. Something that intrigued him and wouldn’t let him go.
On the day they had met she had been so cool, so distant, the ice maiden personified, that he had disliked her on sight. She had turned those hazel eyes on him in the sort of look that he had seen too often as he was growing up. The expression that reminded him he had clawed his way out of the gutter and that he still carried the taint of the slums along with him. It was a look that he had vowed he would never let anyone subject him to ever again and, seeing it, he had told himself that if he had had to choose then he would have preferred Natalie to this cold, stiff, unwelcoming woman.
Now he was no longer so certain.
‘But one thing’s for sure,’ she was saying now, the calm, soft tones of her voice carrying clearly even above her stepmother’s near-hysterics, her father’s attempts at soothing. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t going to be a wedding here today. I just couldn’t let Natalie go through with it.’
Couldn’t… The word swung round and round in Santos’s head, sending warning echoes out like the ripples in a pond when a pebble was thrown into it. I just couldn’t let Natalie go through with it.
Couldn’t, be damned. She had been part of this all along. She’d known that Natalie was going to break her promise, had helped her run out on the wedding.
Helped her humiliate him in this public way.
‘I’m sorry that you’ve all had a wasted journey, but I’m sure you’ll understand. And now I suppose the only thing we can do is to go home and get on with our lives.’
She was moving forward as she spoke, making it plain that she was about to do just that, about to walk down the aisle, out of the church…
‘So if you’d all like to leave…’
‘No!’
That was not going to happen. She wasn’t going to just walk away from this, walk out on the mess she and her family had created, and leave it all behind without a backward look. The furious feeling that he had been duped and robbed was like a blaze in his mind, obliterating rational thought, driving him into action. His hand shot out and fastened around her arm again, pulling her to a halt with such force that she actually spun round again, coming face to face with him. Natalie might be beyond his reach, but her sister was not.
The Montague family owed—and he didn’t care who started paying. Only that someone did. And this other daughter seemed a good place to start.
But first he had to make sure that she didn’t get away from him now, running out on him fast like her deceitful, lying little sister.
‘No,’ he repeated even more forcefully. ‘You are not going anywhere—you are coming with me.’
‘Why?’
Once again Alexa was strongly tempted by the idea of a swift kick on the ankle bone of the haughty, autocratic male who held her captive as he glared down into her face, just inches away from his. Only the thought of the audience still seated in the pews behind them kept her from actually physically attacking him, though she glared up into his arrogantly handsome face, praying that her defiance and determination showed in her own eyes as they locked with his.
‘Why on earth would I want to go anywhere with you?’
‘Because I am asking you to,’ Santos said with a swift, totally unexpected smile.
The transformation in his face was so sudden, so astonishing that it made her blink in total disbelief. From being coldly tyrannical and domineering, he had suddenly switched to deliberate and persuasive charm.
And it was working, she admitted unwillingly to herself as she felt the unexpected change in her pulse rate, the new unevenness of her heartbeat in response to the softening of his expression, that stunning smile. She didn’t want to feel that she was weak enough to respond to the practised charm of an experienced male seducer, but the truth was that she couldn’t stop herself. When that smile curved the sensual lips and the light illuminated his burnished eyes, then she suddenly found some of the prickly defensiveness with which she had confronted him melting away and being replaced by an intensely feminine and totally instinctive response.
‘Look…’
The way he raised his voice, the swift gesture of his hand towards the congregation was a move to include everyone in what he was saying. But the direction of his eyes, the burn of their focus was meant for her and for her alone. And the sheer force of it knocked her off balance before she had a chance to collect herself, win back her much needed control.
‘The wedding may have to be cancelled—this part of things spoiled—but does the whole of the day have to be ruined? I have a reception prepared back at my home. My staff and the caterers have been working for days to get things ready. It would be a crime to let everything go to waste.’
For a moment longer he held her gaze and the searing intensity of his eyes made her head spin with the message it seemed to be giving before he suddenly glanced up again, looking out at their audience and switching on another of those impossible, seductive smiles.
‘As Señorita Montague says, so many of you have had a long journey here. What sort of a host would I be if I let you leave again without any refreshment, anything to eat? I invite you all back to the house. There might no longer be any need for a wedding reception but I hope you will enjoy my hospitality just the same.’
Alexa could scarcely believe what she was hearing. She knew that just a few minutes before, there, in the little room just off the altar, he had asked her why he should care that his bride had jilted him at the altar. But could he really just turn and walk away from what was supposed to have been his wedding—and invite all his guests along to share in the abandoned reception?
The cold-eyed man she had first met might be able to. But would the man with the lethally charming smile she had just seen? And which one of them was the real Santos Cordero?
‘You—you won’t want us there…’ she managed. ‘The Montague family would be the last people you’d want to come along. The spectres at the feast, as it were…’
Her voice trailed off again as once more she was treated to that brilliant, enticing smile, but one that she felt was touched with an iciness that was infinitely disturbing.
‘On the contrary, you are more than welcome.’
Was she fooling herself or had there been a deliberate emphasis on that you? Surely he couldn’t mean just her?
‘I am sure that you will want to help me get through this time that I should have been spending with my new bride.’
Now that had very definitely been laced with something darker, more ominous, the hint of a threat that made her skin crawl in uncomfortable response.
‘I think not…’ Alexa tried but Santos ignored her and swept on as if she hadn’t even attempted to speak.
‘And I am sure that your stepmother would prefer to have somewhere to regain her composure before she has to face the paparazzi.’
‘The paparazzi?’
She hadn’t thought about that. The truth was that she hadn’t been able to think beyond the actual delivery of her sister’s message. After that, her imagination hadn’t been able to stretch to consider the possibilities.
‘But of course.’
This time Santos’s smile was pure ice; nothing charming or even pleasant about it at all. It was a smile that destroyed all the warmth that had filled her just moments before, leaving her feeling drained and lost and suddenly very fearful for the future, though for no reasons she could put her finger on.
‘You don’t think that they will let a scoop like this pass them by without comment? The wedding of the year turning into the non-event of the year. It will be just the sort of thing they’d love to report. And they’ll tear your family to pieces to get it.’
The pale grey eyes slid to where Petra was still wailing her distress on the front pew, with Stanley struggling to soothe her but actually looking as pale and worried as his wife himself. Once more Alexa shivered as she felt that sensation like something cold and slimy crawling over her skin. She could just imagine how her stepmother would go to pieces in front of the cameras, the pictures that would appear in the gossip columns the next day.
‘And you could stop that?’
‘I have men employed to make sure that the Press don’t get too close. And I have a fleet of cars waiting to take everyone from the church to the reception.’
Alexa nodded silently. She’d travelled to the church in one of those cars. Big, sleek limousines with smoked-glass windows that provided the occupants with efficient protection from the flash of camera lights, the prying lenses. And she’d seen the efficient security that had ringed the cathedral, making sure that no one who wasn’t on the guest list could get through.
‘Why would you do that—for us?’
‘Obviously I have my own reasons for not wanting the story of what has happened here today plastered all over the scandal sheets. Once inside my home, we can all relax.’
Relax. The word had so much appeal to it. Alexa’s whole body was starting to ache as if she had been holding herself tense for so long that she had forgotten how it had felt to be any other way. Every muscle was tired and her head was starting to pound.
‘Then thank you. I’ll tell my father—get him and Petra into a car.’
‘No. Miguel will see to that.’
One hand lifted in a silent signal to someone at the back of the church in the same moment that Santos moved once more to hold her back. But this time his powerful fingers laced with hers, closing tight over her hand as he restrained her. Alexa’s heart jumped painfully as she felt the warmth of his palm curve against hers, heating her blood and sending it pulsing up her arm towards her heart. Her fingers tingled, her skin felt scorched and her mouth seemed to dry suddenly in the heat so that she slicked her tongue over parched lips to ease the sensation.
He had moved closer too and the scent of his body seemed to surround her like a warm mist, tangy with some light cologne overlaid by the muskier, more intimate aroma of his skin. Just inhaling it set all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck lifting in sensitive response, and her heart thudded even harder, forcing her to snatch in a swift, sharp, much needed breath of air.
‘You will come with me.’
It was a command, not a suggestion. The tone of his voice said that he wouldn’t listen to any argument, and the way that his hold on her hand tightened meant that she could not pull away as he headed away from the altar, dragging her with him.
She should be worried—probably even a bit frightened, Alexa admitted to herself as she trotted in his wake, trying to keep up with the long, powerful strides that took him down the aisle at a pace she couldn’t quite manage. And she was just a bit of both.
But right at this moment, discretion very definitely seemed the better part of valour in this situation. Digging in her heels, refusing to move, would only cause another, bigger scene, and she had already had more than enough stress and emotional tension for one day.
In one thing at least, Santos was right. With the paparazzi baying at the door of the church, they would soon suspect that something was wrong when they realised that the bride was not going to turn up, and then they were going to have a field day. The sooner everyone got out of here the better.
The journey back to Santos’s elegant mansion would only take a few minutes, and once there she would be able to escape, lose herself in the crowd of guests, the force of his presence diluted by the presence of so many others.
Surely the worst was over and things could only get easier from now on?
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