﻿‘How can you claim anything so ridiculous—so preposterous—as to say that you—you’ve…?’

‘That I’ll take you as my wife? Why not? I never wanted your sister as I want you.’

‘But you—’ Alexa began, but then the realisation of just what he had said sank in to her numbed brain. ‘Is that the truth?’

‘Why should I lie to you, belleza?’

Santos’s tone was suddenly soft. His gaze still held hers as he spoke, his eyes so deep and clear that she felt they were like a still, smooth pool in which she risked drowning, going in over her head completely.

Alexa wished that she could look away, but she found it impossible to drag her gaze away from that mesmerising stare of his, the look that seemed to search right to the depth of her soul and know exactly what was hidden there.

‘But—’ Her head was spinning, the room seeming to blur around her. ‘But how can you know that? You haven’t even kissed me…’

‘That is something that is soon remedied.’

Kate Walker was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots are there. She met her husband at university, and originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats, and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre, and, of course, reading.

You can visit Kate at www.kate-walker.com

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CORDERO’S FORCED BRIDE

BY

KATE WALKER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CORDERO’S FORCED BRIDE

For Helen

CHAPTER ONE

IF SHE WAS going to do this, then she had better get on with it, Alexa told herself firmly. In fact, she had better get on with it right now, she added fiercely, knowing there was no other way forward.

Because the truth was that she did have to do this. Somebody had to, that was for sure. No one else was going to do it. And definitely not Natalie.

Natalie would never have coped with this. She’d have given in, gone down under pressure, and she’d have ended up saying the exact opposite of what she’d come to say—what she needed to say.

If Natalie had had to face Santos Cordero then she would have agreed to go through with this wedding she didn’t want, just as she’d been agreeing to do right from the start. She’d go through with it and as a result she’d miss out on her chance of a real relationship, real love. No, Natalie was better being on her way to the airport and a new life.

Leaving her older half-sister to tidy up after her. It was now Alexa’s job to clean up, apologise, explain.

That thought was enough to have Alexa’s feet slowing as she moved away from where the car had just delivered her to the main door of the huge, elegant cathedral of Santa María de la Sede in the centre of Seville. Glancing upwards briefly, towards where the bell tower known as La Giralda was etched against the clear blue sky, she drew a deep, calming breath and squared her shoulders. At her back the crowd of paparazzi gathered to record the event called for her attention, and the flashing of cameras sounded like a fusillade of bullets, one she struggled to ignore as she climbed the couple of worn stone steps into the porch, her fingers reaching out for the heavy wrought-iron handle of the big, carved wooden door.

‘You’re not getting trapped that way, Nat. Not any more.’

She spoke the words out loud, shaking her head as she did so in an attempt to give them more emphasis, to make them mean more and have more effect. But even as she heard them she knew that they lacked the conviction she’d been aiming for. They weren’t going to be able to give her the strength she needed to walk into the cathedral, announce what had happened and deal with the chaos that followed. And that was what she had to do. Because there was no one else.

‘Come on, Alexa. You know you have to do this!’

Sighing with resignation, she accepted the truth as she forced herself forward again, curling her fingers around the big iron handle and gripping hard.

There was no one else who could sort this out. If she didn’t do something then the whole dreadful, ugly mess would stay just as it was—in fact it would probably get so much worse. The explosion was going to be nuclear as it was. All she could hope to do was to try to contain some of the fallout so that the repercussions were at least manageable.

Nervousness made her palms damp so that her fingers slipped on the metal handle, foiling her first attempt to open the door.

‘Oh, damn it!’

With nothing else available, she had no choice but to wipe her hands down the long skirt of her dress in an attempt to dry them off. The gesture did nothing for the appearance of the expensive pink satin, but then right now that was the least of her concerns. The ceremony that the dress had been planned for wasn’t going to go ahead today after all, so it didn’t matter at all what it looked like.

Besides, the dress wasn’t really her style at all. It was the sort of glamorous look that her stepmother had chosen for the society wedding she had always hoped for for her daughter, and Alexa knew that the colour wasn’t the most flattering for her dark brown hair and hazel eyes. But that had been all right when she had believed that the wedding was what Natalie wanted. It was Natalie’s day and nothing was going to spoil her half-sister’s wedding, even if it was to a man that Alexa felt was not right for her.

A wedding that was now no longer going to take place, Alexa reminded herself ruefully, reaching for the door handle again. She was going to need all her courage to go into the church and tell everyone that.

Her stepmother would probably have hysterics. Her father— and Natalie’s—would become even stiffer, even more withdrawn, his mouth clamping tighter than ever before. And the groom…

And the groom…

The thought made a sensation like the frantic flutter of butterfly wings start to beat high up in Alexa’s throat as the great door swung slowly open, to land with a hollow, sepulchral thud against the worn stone wall, the noise making everyone inside the church turn and stare in expectation.

She had no idea what the groom would say or do. No idea at all just how Santos Cordero would react to the news that his bride-to-be had jilted him at the altar, running away from her marriage and heading for the airport and another man. But just the thought made her shiver as her blood ran cold through her veins.

She had only met the man her half-sister was marrying once, at the family dinner in Santos’s beautiful Moorish-style home just a few miles from Seville on the night of her arrival in Spain, two days before. But she’d heard so much about him. And she’d seen the effects that his influence had had on her father ever since the two men had embarked on a business deal together. It seemed now that every time she saw Stanley Montague he looked older, thinner, greyer. More shrunken somehow and clearly desperately stressed. Her dad was just not used to dealing with the financial sharks, and Santos Cordero was one of the biggest sharks of all.

Not for nothing was he known as el Brigante—the Brigand. A nickname that she had heard he lived up to in more ways than one.

‘Just wait till you see him! He’s such a hunk! And rich as sin,’ Natalie had said, sounding so very enthusiastic.

Too enthusiastic, Alexa now realised, hearing in memory what she hadn’t recognised then as the forced note in her sister’s voice, betraying the careful effort Natalie had been making to sound like an excited young bride desperately in love with her husband-to-be.

But Natalie had been right about one thing at least—Santos was every bit as stunning as everyone had told her he would be. There was no denying that he was one of the most devastatingly handsome men she had ever met in her life. Tall, raven- haired, with a leanly powerful frame and powerfully carved features, he was a man for whom the description ‘darkly dangerous’ had to have been coined.

Hunk he might be, Alexa had told herself later when she had been introduced to Santos. But when she had come up close, close enough to shake his hand, close enough to look into his face, she had known intuitively that the ‘dangerous’ part of that description was not just fantasy or her imagination running riot.

His grip on her hand had been cool and firm, his careful smile polite and practised, but she had found herself looking into the coldest, iciest eyes she had ever seen. A unexpectedly pale grey gaze that seared over her with the cruel force of a focused laser. Her skin had prickled all over and she had felt alternately hot and then shiveringly cold as if she were in the grip of some horrible fever. Murmuring some inane politeness, she had made her escape as soon as possible and from then onwards had tried to avoid Santos for the rest of the evening. But all the time she had felt the burn of his palm against hers, and her body still tingled under the impact of that scorching gaze.

‘Alexandra?’

It was her father’s voice, blurred and almost covered by the murmurs of surprise from the congregation, coming to her from where he had been waiting just inside the church—waiting not for her but for his younger daughter to arrive. Natalie had made the excuse that she didn’t want to overtire him, had insisted that her father went on ahead, rather than following tradition and travelling to the church in the same car as the bride.

‘Alexandra…’

‘What has happened?’

Another voice sliced into the buzz of interest that had filled the church with the realisation that the new arrival through the door had been not the bride they were expecting but the chief bridesmaid. A pale-faced, uncomfortable-looking bridesmaid at that, Alexa reflected miserably as the cold, incisive tones of the groom’s question carried clearly down what seemed like miles and miles of aisle and made every other conversation and comment die away, like the tide ebbing back from the sand.

‘What has happened?’ he demanded again and unwillingly Alexa’s eyes went to where he stood at the altar, tall and darkly, dangerously imposing.

If he had looked stunning in the sombre black and white of the evening dress of the night of the party, so now, in the formal morning coat, waistcoat and elegant cravat, he had an impact that made her head spin. And from the moment that her eyes clashed with his, green-brown locking with glittering grey, it was as if there were only the two of them in the world. The rest of the congregation, her surroundings, the flickering candles and the gorgeous flowers all merged into just one great blur, at the centre of which was a dark, strongly carved face, a tight, set mouth and burning, molten eyes.

‘Tell me!’ Santos Cordero said, and it was an autocratic command, flung at her with all the force of a perfectly aimed arrow, right from the far end of the church.

The impact of it flung her head back, bringing her chin up as her eyes flashed a defiance of his dictatorial tone and she watched his eyes narrow in swift assessment, his beautiful mouth tightening sharply.

‘Per favor,’ he added with such a bite and an obviously carefully controlled effort that it was like a slap in her face. Stinging hard.

It wasn’t a ‘please’ at all, she thought furiously. It was just another way of phrasing a command, and in a tone that made her want to toss something rude at him and turn on her heel and march out. Either that or fling the shocking truth in his face and watch that arrogant glare fade from his face, the ‘lord of all I survey’ stance falter just a little so that his straight shoulders weren’t held so high, the elegantly booted feet not planted quite so firmly on the stone-flagged floor of the church.

But even as the angry thoughts crossed her mind, a sense of decorum and a touch of unwilling compassion pushed them out again fast.

Arrogant brute though he might be, Santos Cordero was still a bridegroom on his wedding day. He had come here today believing he was going to be married to her half-sister, Natalie.

The same Natalie who had fled from her hotel and was probably at the airport now with the man she had admitted she really loved.

Leaving it to her sister to explain just what was happening.

The thought dried her mouth, tightening her throat, and just for a moment she actually allowed herself the luxury of considering turning and running too, getting away from here as fast and as far as she could. This wasn’t her problem; her responsibility. Let someone else explain to this arrogant Spaniard that his bride-to-be had had second thoughts. Let someone else…

There was no one else.

At the far end of the church, Alexa could see that her stepmother, resplendent in emerald-green and a hat with swirling peacock feathers, was twitching uncomfortably in her seat, her narrow face pale and taut as if she already suspected that something had gone very badly wrong. And her father…

No, she didn’t dare to look into her father’s face, knowing that he would guess she had brought the worst of news. And being her father he would probably erupt in a rage. Which could be the worst possible response right now.

‘Señorita…’

Santos Cordero’s pointed hint that she continue sounded gentle, but looking into his dark, set face, Alexa suddenly knew that gentle was the exact opposite of just what he was feeling. He had barely controlled his impatience, reining it in only with the most ferocious power. And even now it was very close to breaking free if the harshly drawn white lines about his nose and eyes, etched around that sexy mouth were anything to go by. Say the wrong thing and he would explode, the top blowing off his mental volcano and the red-hot lava of fury flowing out to engulf them with spectacularly nasty results if she wasn’t very much mistaken.

This was the Santos Cordero she had been led to expect. This was el brigante, whose reputation for arrogance and ruthlessness had reached her even in Yorkshire, where her home was, miles away from the family house in London.

When her father had first announced that he was negotiating a business deal with Santos he had sounded so excited, totally confident that this partnership would make him a fortune and so ease all his financial problems. But it hadn’t been long before everything had seemed to change. It was obvious that the deal was not the success Stanley had dreamed of but instead a source of great stress. Though just lately those worries seemed to have been buried in the unexpected rush to organise Natalie’s wedding.

‘Señorita…’

Once more those softly deadly tones drew her eyes to the face of the man her half-sister was supposed to have been marrying today. And once she had looked into those burning, deep-set eyes, even from this distance, she found it impossible to look away. She couldn’t drag her own gaze from the mesmeric force of his and once more she had that shocking sense of tunnel vision. Of being at the far end of a long, long channel from where the only thing she could see was the tall, powerful form of Santos Cordero, every ounce of his attention totally focused on her.

‘What is it that you have come here to say? Because you have come to say something, I assume?’

Drawing in her breath sharply, Alexa struggled to ignore the sting of that sarcastic tone, which had a bite like the flick of a whip.

‘I have to speak to you,’ she managed, the words coming out as breathlessly as if she had just run the couple of miles from her half-sister’s hotel room to the cathedral. ‘Please…’ she added with renewed urgency when she saw the way that his black brows snapped together in a dangerous frown.

‘Then speak.’

An autocratic flick of one long, bronzed hand emphasised the command with all the arrogance of a long-ago emperor.

‘I for one am impatient to hear what you have to say.’

He was impatient all right. He couldn’t make that any plainer. And she would tell him. But not right here, right now. Not like this with close on six hundred guests now openly gawping in her direction, fascinated by what was going on and anxious to view the next ‘episode’ in this soap-opera drama that had suddenly been staged before them.

With her heart beating so high up in her throat that breathing normally was a complete impossibility, she made herself take the necessary steps forward down the aisle that brought her near to him. And as she went she tested possible openings over and over inside her thoughts, trying each one for size and discarding them as too stupid, too contentious, too clumsy or just plain wrong. And even if she had any hope of an idea it fled from her mind in the moment that she looked up into his dark, shuttered face and saw the way those cold, hunter’s eyes were burning down into her.

She knew that it wasn’t possible but she suddenly felt that he was even bigger, leaner, stronger than he had appeared on the night she had been introduced to him. The formal tailoring of his wedding suit emphasised the straight width of his shoulders, the broad chest, narrow waist and long, long legs. And against the immaculate white of his shirt, the golden tones of his skin stood out in dramatic, powerful contrast.

‘Can we go somewhere more private, please?’

Her voice was thin and uneven on the words but she knew that he had heard her even though he inclined his dark head to one side, frowned faintly, as if he had not quite caught what she had said.

‘Perdon?’

He took a step forward as he spoke and she was close enough now to see the way the powerful chest rose and fell with his breathing, even see the faint shadow on his jaw where already the darkness of stubble was just visible below the surface. She almost believed she could actually feel the heat of his strong body reach out to enclose her, carrying with it the subtle tang of some citrusy cologne, enhanced and deepened by the clean, personal scent of his skin. Her heart was thudding even harder now, but this time she realised on a sense of shock that it was not just the sense of apprehension that gripped her but a sudden rush of a purely female response to the presence of a powerful, sexually alluring male. And that was the last thing she wanted to feel towards this man whose presence in their lives seemed to have created nothing but problems for her family.

‘Can we go somewhere more private, please?’

She forced herself to say it again, more firmly and a touch louder this time, though she really wanted to hiss it at him in the most controlled of whispers, for his ears only.

‘Somewhere we can be alone.’

‘Alone?’

This time those black brows drew together with such sharp force that she almost heard the snap and it was impossible to misunderstand just what was in his mind. Alexa could feel the hot tide of blood race through her skin, heating it with embarrassment.

‘Señorita, I am about to be married.’

‘Not like that! I didn’t mean it like that!’ she hissed at him. ‘And you’re—’

With a sense of horror she choked off the appalling declaration— you’re not getting married. She couldn’t just come out and say it. Not like that. Just as she couldn’t give him the devastating news right here and now, in front of this audience.

Because he had to be devastated, didn’t he? Even if he was big and strong, and ruthless as they came, he had after all asked Natalie to marry him, to be his wife, for better, for worse…

‘You really need to hear what I have to say,’ she managed, praying that the emphasis she was putting on the words hid the sudden huskiness that seemed to have affected her voice.

‘You think I do.’

He was looking down his long, straight nose at her now, that broad forehead creased in a disapproving frown, silvery eyes darkened with frank disdain and total scepticism.

‘You think I should hear what you have to say—but you give me no reason why you should march in here like this, without a word of explanation and demand that I—’

‘I’m trying to explain!’ Alexa snapped in total exasperation.

Couldn’t he see that this was important? That she wouldn’t have ‘marched in here’ like this if it weren’t? Couldn’t he see…?

No, she acknowledged to herself privately. He couldn’t see at all. It was the last thing that would possibly cross his mind.

Of course el brigante would never consider that his bride might not turn up. That she might abandon her wedding, jilting her bridegroom and leaving him waiting at the altar. It would just never enter his handsome, arrogant head. Instead he had supreme confidence that she would be here, just as he had arranged, just as he wanted, and go ahead with the marriage— because he wanted it.

The immovable arrogance of the man was beginning to grate so much that she found she was actually clenching her teeth hard so as not to let rip with a furious and totally unvarnished declaration of the truth.

‘But I think that you’d prefer it if we were alone to talk.’

‘What I would prefer is not to be alone with an unknown woman just moments before my wedding ceremony. Can you imagine what the gutter Press would make of that?’

‘Oh, if you’re interested in preserving your reputation then you needn’t worry! I can assure you that I have no designs on…’

Alexa’s voice faded away as she caught the piercing, cynically sceptical look he slanted at her from those burning, silvery eyes. He really thought she was here as some sort of reputation- ruining exercise? What sort of life did this man lead that he had become so totally cynical, so appallingly suspicious? Did he truly believe that she would use the time they were alone together to blackmail him later—demanding a small fortune not to ‘kiss and tell’?

Well, she had no intention of kissing at all…

That thought sent her unwary gaze flying to Santos’s mouth, lingering just a moment too long on its sensual shape, the cynical half-smile curling the corners, and her heart skipped a beat. Kissing those lips would be an experience, one that set off flares of warning in her mind at just imagining it.

But ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ as her mother was fond of quoting. And everything she had heard about Santos Cordero put that ‘handsome does’ part of the saying very much in doubt.

‘I prefer not to know what designs you might have…’

The icy tones of the Spaniard’s attractively accented voice dragged her thoughts back from the foolish path they were travelling, giving her a hint of perhaps one of the reasons why her half-sister had decided that she couldn’t go through with this wedding.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, you impossible man,’ she exploded. ‘I’m trying to save you from embarrassment here.’

‘Alexandra…’

It was her father who stepped forward, obviously determined to intervene, his face alternating between red and pale, his tone and his use of her full name a brusque reproach.

‘Alexandra—please…’

But he stopped dead at a sudden lift of the Spaniard’s hand, an autocratic signal to stop—stay away. Obviously something in what she had said had caught Santos Cordero’s attention. That ‘you impossible man,’ Alexa strongly suspected. She doubted very much that he was regularly subjected to such a contemptuous description—if ever.

‘If you’re really afraid, then we can leave the door ajar so that someone will hear your screams when I…’

But no, she’d gone too far there. If she had meant to provoke him into a decision and action, then she had succeeded. More than succeeded. She had pushed him over some sort of edge that she hadn’t even known was there and he had lost whatever remaining grip he had had on his tolerance, moving from an irritated, barely reined-in impatience in the blink of an eye. She could see it in the flash of cold fire in his eyes and in the way that his beautiful mouth thinned to a brutal, hard line.

And suddenly her heart was thudding in a very different way from the purely feminine response of just moments before. From being at least on secure ground, if not at all confident of her reception, she now felt as if the earth had shifted beneath her feet, opening up the stone flags to reveal a nasty, sucking, dragging swamp that was closing over her feet, starting to drag her in—drag her down.

Her throat was painfully dry and her thoughts spun as she slicked a nervous tongue over parched lips.

‘Believe me, it really would be better if we spoke in private—in there perhaps…’

She waved an arm in a wild gesture towards a door that she presumed led to the church vestry.

Just what she was going to do if he dug in the heels of his highly polished handmade shoes and refused to go anywhere, she had no idea. But it seemed that she didn’t even need to consider the possibility because from his obdurate refusal to co-operate, Santos now launched, suddenly and fast, into action. Swift as a striking snake, his hand came out and clamped hard fingers around her upper arm, their tips digging into the skin.

‘You want to talk?’

His voice was harsh and thick with anger, his accent sounding strongly deep in his throat.

‘Then we’ll talk.’

And he marched her across to the arched wooden door that she had indicated, wrenching on the handle to push it open with scant ceremony. Bundling her inside, he kicked it closed behind him with equal disregard for both the church fitting and, obviously, the idea he had formerly held that being shut in a room with her might prove compromising.

Clearly that idea was long gone. In fact, to prove the point, he leaned back against the old, dark wood and folded his arms firmly across the width of his chest. If she had thought that his jaw was set, his mouth closed tight before, then it was nothing when compared with the hardness of his face now, the ruthless control of all but the single tight muscle that worked in his jaw.

‘Pues,’ he declared after a single flashing glance at the gold watch he wore on his left wrist. ‘You have three minutes in which to explain just what all this is about—and believe me the explanation had better be good—otherwise…’

He let the threat trail off but all the same it still had enough force and note of danger in his tone to send an apprehensive shiver running down Alexa’s spine.

‘So? What do you have to say that is so important?’

‘I…’

Twice she tried to get the words out and both times her voice failed her. Looking into his hard, set face was a mistake. It froze her throat around the words until she could hardly breathe. But looking away was no help either. How could you tell a man that the future he thought was his had been snatched away from him without looking him in the eye?

But looking him in the eye was quite beyond her.

‘You’ve already wasted thirty seconds,’ Santos gibed. ‘Another couple of minutes and I will walk back out there and—’

‘Natalie isn’t coming!’

The words broke from her as any attempt at restraint or control, or even coherence, was impossible. There wasn’t a right way to say this, she told herself, not a good way and definitely not an easy way, so the only thing she could do was to fling the words out into the open and then hope to make a tactical withdrawal, flinching back out of the way of the fallout from the violent explosion that had to result when she made her announcement.

‘Natalie isn’t coming. She’s changed her mind.’

Astonishingly the explosion she had been anticipating didn’t come. But, if it was possible, the sudden dark and dangerous silence that greeted her outburst was actually worse. It was so long-drawn-out and so deep that she felt it take her nerves with it, stretching them out so painfully until she thought she might actually scream out loud with the tension.

‘Changed her mind?’ Santos finally echoed the words as if he couldn’t believe what he had heard or if he did then he didn’t understand just what it meant. ‘Explain!’ he rapped out, the cold command having the force of a bullet fired from a gun.

Well, he’d asked for it. She’d tried to be fair. She’d tried to be considerate. But it seemed that fair and considerate were concepts that Santos Cordero just didn’t understand or appreciate.

‘Natalie isn’t coming to the wedding. She doesn’t want to marry you after all.’

‘Where…?’ Another question was barked at her, the single syllable seeming to spark with anger in the air as it was flung from his lips. ‘Where the devil is my bride?’

Alexa would have sworn that it was impossible for his black brows to draw together any more sharply or for the burnished eyes to blaze any more furiously without smoke actually starting to fill the room, but somehow Santos managed to rein in his anger even though she could practically hear it crackling hot in his veins in contrast to the icy control of his beautifully accented voice.

‘And why is she not here, at my side—before that altar, as she should be?’

‘Oh, please!’

Alexa felt she couldn’t take any more. His anger was one thing, when directed at her, but those words ‘my bride’ had almost destroyed her.

My bride. A word that should have meant the promise of love and joy and happily-ever-afters. But he made it sound so possessive.

‘I’m sorry, but she’s never going to be here, at your side, before that—that…’

The word eluded her overstressed brain and she could only manage a wild wave of her hand in the direction of the doorway against which he stood, meaning to indicate the church and the altar beyond it. The church where everyone—her family and his, his friends—were all still waiting for the wedding to begin. The wedding that would never begin now. Never take place.

‘She’s not coming. She’s not going to marry you. She went to the airport but she’ll be through to the departure lounge by now. She was taking a plane to America with the man she really loves. The man she really wants to marry.’

‘She’s gone.’

That icy precision was back in his voice, making her wince in sharp distress when she heard it. She had never felt quite so low and nasty as she did now, and it wasn’t even her own battle she was fighting. But she couldn’t have let Natalie go through with this marriage, the prospect of which was obviously making her so unhappy.

‘Your sister—has run out on her wedding.’

There was a darkly dangerous note in his use of the word ‘sister,’ one that caught on something raw in Alexa’s heart and twisted, cruelly, painfully. But she didn’t dare to absorb the impact of it, take it out and look at it closely to see what it was really implying or what lay behind it. She didn’t have time either. She’d finally almost managed to complete the mission that had brought her here. She’d told Santos the truth and she could now hope to leave, get out of here as fast as she could.

‘She has jilted me—left me for some other man?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘She really should not have done that.’

‘I know, and I am sorry—she should have told you before now, should have admitted to you that she didn’t love you enough to marry you. I know you must be hurt—’

The tumbling words were starting to fall over each other, tangling together in her nervous haste, but they suddenly froze, shutting off completely in shock, as Santos’s response broke into them.

And it was because it was not at all the response she expected that it caught her up short. In fact it was so much the opposite of the response she had been anticipating that she could only stand and stare, hazel eyes widening in stunned disbelief.

Because Santos had laughed.

When she had said that she understood how he must be hurting he had actually flung back his dark head, closed his silvery eyes briefly and laughed out loud. And it was not a pleasant laugh. It had nothing of any real humour in it, no warmth at all. It was a cold laugh, a harsh and bitter laugh, one that made a thousand tiny electrical shivers skitter over her skin and turn her veins to ice.

‘Santos?’ she queried, wondering if after all she had actually got through to him.

In her nervousness had she really made any sort of sense or had she just confused him? Was it possible that she had somehow made him think that this was some sort of joke—a very dark, sick one, but a joke none the less?

‘Santos—did you hear what I said? You have to understand…’

‘Oh, I heard, belleza, and I understand only too well. Your sister has reneged on her promise and run out on me, leaving you to pick up the pieces. That I understand only too well. What I do not get is why in hell you think I should care.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT?’

Alexa found that she was blinking in confusion, trying to make sense of Santos’s words, but most of all trying to understand or even believe in his reaction.

If that laugh had been unexpected, then the rest of his words sounded almost surreal. When she had been expecting distress, anger, bitterness at the way that he had been betrayed and left at the altar by the woman he wanted to marry, instead there was dark cynicism, and an almost careless dismissal of what she had just said.

‘You don’t care? But surely…?’

Santos’s response was a shockingly indifferent shrug of his broad shoulders under the fine cloth of his immaculately tailored jacket, and he pushed both hands through the gleaming darkness of his hair as if relaxing after a long day.

But relaxed was the last word she would use to describe the set of his face, the tight compression of his sensual mouth, the way that a taut muscle jumped in his jaw. And the glittering look he turned on her had nothing that was comfortable or easygoing in it. Instead she was reminded of how, on the day she had first met him, she had believed that he had the coldest eyes of anyone in the world.

‘You expect me to act as if your sister has broken my heart? As if I have lost the love of my life and cannot find the strength to go on—to live for the future?’ he questioned cynically, biting the words out as if they were bones he wanted to snap. ‘Well, then you could not be more wrong. I will have no trouble going on with my life after this—though your family might find it harder to pick themselves up as a result. In fact—’

He broke off as a sharp rap came on the door, someone knocking on the heavy panels from the other side, in the church.

‘Alexandra? Alexa?’

It was her father’s voice, coming sharp and concerned through the thickness of the wood.

‘Is everything all right? What’s going on? Cordero—what—’

‘Momento!’ Santos snapped, tossing the word over his shoulder, his burning eyes still fixed on Alexa’s bewildered face. ‘We will be out in a second and then we will explain all. Or rather…’

The cold, curt tone slid into something else as his eyes seared across her skin, seeming to strip away a necessary protective layer and leave her nerves raw and exposed underneath.

‘You will do the explaining,’ he said and for all the sudden softness and smoothness of his tone Alexa could be in no doubt that it was an autocratic command, one that he expected to have obeyed without hesitation or argument. ‘You will tell your father—your family—what has happened.’

‘But I…’ Alexa began, her voice failing her, the words drying in her throat as she tried to protest. ‘It isn’t up to me now—surely you…’

She couldn’t go out there and tell everyone why she was here. Tell them that Natalie had run out on her wedding— the wedding that had been described in the newspapers and the gossip columns as the Wedding of the Year, the joining together of huge wealth and aristocratic beauty. It was to have been the union of one powerful rich, ultra modern bloodline of the billionaire entrepreneur, and the old, patrician lineage of Natalie Montague, twenty-year-old daughter of Lord Stanley Montague. Santos Cordero who had made his fortune with his own hands and brain, dragging himself up from his lowly and impoverished beginnings to the height of his wealth and power, was marrying into the British nobility, a family whose name had been amongst the highest in the land for centuries past. It had been the stuff that fairy tales were made of, especially when the bride was acknowledged to be a stunning beauty and the groom a hunk whose carved, handsome features and lean, powerful frame had featured in many photographs in the gossip columns and in magazines, usually with some supremely decorative female draped on his arm.

‘I don’t think…’ she tried again, feeling even more lost and adrift than in the first moments when she had arrived in the church and had come under the scrutiny of those coldly burning eyes as she walked up the aisle towards him.

Because the truth was that she didn’t know what she was meant to say or how—and what—she was supposed to explain. Nothing had been as she had expected it. But then how did you know what might happen when you had to break up a wedding by announcing to the groom that his fiancée had jilted him? It wasn’t exactly something that you did every day.

But Santos wasn’t listening to her protests. Instead he had levered himself away from the door and taken two swift strides towards her, his hand coming out and clamping over her arm, just above the elbow, hard fingers digging into her skin as he swung her round to face the door at his side.

‘You will do it,’ he declared, cold and brusque. ‘Your family has messed up my life enough already, so now…’

He was interrupted by another rap at the door and her father’s voice again, sharper this time.

‘Alexandra—what’s going on in there…?’

‘Nothing—I mean, it’s fine,’ Alexa managed when Santos turned a forceful glare on her, the burnished eyes directing a silent command that she should respond. ‘We—we’re coming out now and I’ll…I’ll explain.’

She had no option, it seemed, because that hand that gripped her arm was now pulling her forward, leaving her no choice but to follow.

‘Let go of me!’ she spat in furious protest. ‘OK, so I had to bring you bad news—but there’s a saying about not shooting the messenger. And that’s all that I am—the messenger. Natalie’s the one—’

‘But your sister is not here.’

It was a low growl and he didn’t look at her, didn’t slow his steps towards the door, yanking it open as soon as he reached it.

‘So don’t take it out on me! You can’t drag me about like this—’

She’d taken her attention off her own feet for a moment and as a result she caught her toe against one of the uneven flagstones, stumbling awkwardly in the unaccustomed high-heeled shoes. For a second she thought she would fall but then that cruel grip around her arm tightened even more, holding her upright by sheer force.

‘Don’t yank me about!’

‘I was trying to help.’

The cold flash of his brilliant eyes warned her not to argue but her own temper was bubbling up sharply and she was having to struggle to contain it. How had this happened? How had she come from being just, as she had said, the messenger of bad news, to being the victim of Santos Cordero’s dark disapproval, hauled out into the church by him to face the congregation assembled for his society wedding, without even being aware of just what was involved?

Because something was involved, that much was obvious.

‘Then don’t help.’ She laced her tone with sarcasm to make it clear that helping was the last thing she thought he was doing. ‘I can manage quite well enough on my own.’

‘You might be able to manage,’ he flung back from between gritted teeth, keeping his voice low so that no one, not even her stepmother in the front row, or her father, still waiting by the altar steps, could catch what he was saying. ‘But I would prefer it if you didn’t fall flat on your face and then blame it on me. And I want to make sure that you don’t take off like your sister and disappear out the door.’

‘What would it matter if I did?’

For a second Alexa was tempted to aim a hard, pointed kick at Santos’s ankle but another of those flashing sidelong glances seemed to catch her intent and a grim smile crossed his mouth as he brought them both to a halt right in front of the altar.

‘Alexa,’ her father began once more but silenced himself hastily when Santos turned a burning glare on him.

‘Ladies and gentlemen…’

He barely had to raise his voice to be heard, the church had fallen so silent as soon as they had appeared. Every eye in the place was fixed on them, some faces frowning in confusion and puzzlement, others, like those of her father and stepmother, looking pale and taut with tension. Just what was going on here? What were the undercurrents she was just not picking up on? The things she didn’t understand?

But Santos didn’t seem to be aware of them as he continued to speak as calmly and as confidently as if he were making his after-dinner speech—the one that now would never have to be made.

‘There has been a slight change of plan…’

Slight?

That brought Alexa’s head round to his in a reaction of stunned shock. How could he describe Natalie’s jilting of him, her flight to the airport, as a ‘slight change of plan’?

But Santos ignored her total consternation, her wide, shocked eyes and continued with total control.

‘The wedding is not going to take place.’

‘Not…’

The word was choked from her father as he took an unsteady step backwards. And in the front pew. Alexa saw how her stepmother went even whiter, one expensively manicured hand flying to her mouth as if to hold back the cry of shock and disbelief that almost escaped her.

‘What…?’

It was Stanley Montague, trying again to make his tongue work, to ask the question that was so obviously whirling round and round in his head. Alexa had rarely seen her father looking so shocked and upset. In fact, his reaction seemed out of all proportion to the situation. OK, so it was bad, there was going to be a terrible embarrassment to face, and the aborted wedding would be the talk of their friends—and probably the gossip columns for some weeks to come.

But surely that was better than Natalie making a huge mistake and marrying a man she didn’t love? Better to call the wedding off now than to face a costly divorce—costly in more ways than financial—maybe just months from now? But her father was looking as if the end of the world had come and…

Alexa had no chance to think things through further because at that moment Santos’s firm grip on her arm propelled her forward so that she was standing just in front of him, facing the gaping congregation.

‘Natalie is not coming,’ he said coolly. ‘She has run out on me—that is what her sister came here to tell me. And now she’s going to explain it all to you.’

A forceful little push made her take another step forward in the same moment that it pointedly told her that now was the time for her to speak—to tell everyone the truth.

But what was the truth? Suddenly Alexa was not quite sure. She only knew that it had been obvious that Natalie didn’t want to go through with the wedding. But why had she ever agreed to it in the first place? That question made the earth seem to shift beneath her feet. But she didn’t have time to consider the possible implications of that before her father found his voice.

‘Alexandra? What is happening?’

‘Tell him,’ Santos prompted harshly when she still hesitated. ‘Tell them.’

‘I’m afraid San—Señor Cordero is right…’

The way that her words echoed round the silent church had an eerie, hollow sound but at least her voice had more strength than she had anticipated and she sounded as if she knew what she was talking about. How far that was from the truth only she knew.

‘Natalie has changed her mind. She doesn’t feel it would be right to marry him. Not when she realises that she truly loves someone else.’

And that at least she could say with conviction. In her mind she still had a clear image of the moment that she had looked into her sister’s hotel room and seen Natalie sitting on the bed, staring at the beautiful wedding dress that hung in the wardrobe, her face pale and drawn, her eyes flooded with tears.

‘I thought I could do this, Lexa,’ her sister had said. ‘I really wanted to—but it just isn’t going to work now. If John hadn’t come into my life I would have gone ahead…but he did…and meeting him has changed everything.’

‘She’s truly sorry to have messed everyone about…but she knew it was better to break it off now than to go into a marriage that she knew wasn’t really right for her—’

‘And she did not have the courage to come and tell me herself?’

It was Santos who spoke, his low, darkly dangerous tone drawing her eyes to his face. The black fury that blazed in those eyes, the bitter, insulted pride that tightened his jaw, turned his mouth to a thin, hard line, sent a shiver down her spine as his hard, unyielding gaze locked with hers. Privately she acknowledged that she couldn’t blame Natalie for not wanting to face him. When he looked like this she couldn’t imagine why her sister would ever have wanted to marry him in the first place.

‘No,’ she managed uncomfortably. Natalie hadn’t even dared to face her mother and father with the truth. ‘I’m sorry.’

If the slight inclination of his proud head was meant to be an acknowledgement of her apology then it failed to have any impact. There was no lightening of the coldness of his eyes, no easing of the tightness of every muscle in his powerful frame. And to think that she had once worried that the news of Natalie’s flight might hurt him!

This man looked as if nothing could touch him. As if nothing could penetrate that armoured hide and reach through to find his heart. Right now he didn’t even look as if he had a heart to touch.

‘So where is Natalie now?’

Another question from her father drew Alexa’s attention back to where Stanley was standing, hands clenched tightly together, a frown creasing his forehead.

‘On her way to the airport—no…’

A quick glance at her watch confirmed her suspicion.

‘She must be through to Departures by now. She was getting a plane…’

‘Oh, no! Natalie!’

It was Petra Montague, Stanley’s second wife, reacting in exactly the way that Alexa had anticipated that her stepmother would. Her narrow hands had come up before her face, fluttering weakly against her sculpted cheeks. Above the long, dark red nails her wide blue eyes appeared to glisten with tears that she was fighting not to shed.

‘What has she done? What will we do?’

‘Hush, my dear.’ Stanley’s response sounded almost like a reproach rather than an attempt at consolation as he stepped forward to take his wife’s hands in his and hold them tightly, looking deep into her glistening eyes.

‘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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