Wed for the Spaniard's Redemption

by Chantelle Shaw

  There was a collective gasp from the people in the room and the old man swore. He flicked his sharp black eyes over Poppy before he spoke to Juliet in English. ‘Were you a widow before you married my grandson?’

  Confused by the question, she shook her head. ‘No. I’ve never been married before.’

  His implication suddenly became clear, and a terrible certainty slid into her mind when the man whom she realised was Hector Casillas glared at Rafael.

  ‘Tu esposa y su bastarda son de la cuneta!’ he hissed in a venomous voice.

  He was white-lipped with anger, but his grandson laughed.

  ‘What is the matter, Abuelo?’ Rafael drawled. ‘You demanded that I marry and I have done what you asked.’

  * * *

  ‘There is something you should know.’

  Juliet’s teeth were chattering so hard that she could barely get the words out. Anger burned like a white-hot flame inside her, but she was determined to control her temper in front of Poppy, who was running around in the little courtyard behind the kitchen. Her daughter had been subjected to enough ugly emotions from Rafael’s grandfather.

  Rafael. Judas.

  ‘What should I know?’ he said indifferently.

  ‘I understand Spanish. I learned to speak the language when I lived with my aunt Vivian and her husband Carlos, who is Spanish by birth.’

  His brows lifted. ‘Ah...’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’ she choked.

  She wanted to scream at him. Worse than her rage was her sense of hurt, which felt like an iron band wrapped around her chest that was squeezing the breath from her lungs.

  ‘Your grandfather said that I am from the gutter and he called Poppy a bastard.’ Juliet swallowed hard. ‘Technically, I suppose it’s true. Poppy’s father did not offer to marry me when I fell pregnant, and he refused to have any involvement with his daughter when she was born. But I don’t regret for one second having my little girl, and I will not allow your grandfather or anyone else to upset her.’

  ‘My grandfather has very old-fashioned views.’ Rafael gave a shrug. ‘He is disappointed because he hoped I would marry the daughter of a duke. Hector sets great store on aristocratic titles,’ he said drily.

  ‘You threw me to the lions deliberately. Your grandfather said those awful things about me and you didn’t defend me.’

  It was not just raw emotion that was making it hard for Juliet to swallow. Her throat was sore and she recognised that the shivery feeling and her jelly-like legs were signs of a flu-like virus, the start of which must have been the sickness she’d experienced that morning.

  ‘Mummy, can I give some yoghurt to the cat?’

  She forced a smile for Poppy. ‘I don’t think cats eat yoghurt, darling. And I want you to sit down and finish your tea.’

  Juliet lifted her daughter onto a chair at the wooden table in the shade of a pergola. Although Poppy could not have understood the things that had been said by Rafael’s grandfather, she had sensed the tension in the room and burst into tears. Rafael had brought them to the kitchen and asked the cook to find some food for the little girl.

  Luckily Poppy had been distracted when she’d seen a tabby cat in a pretty courtyard where terracotta pots were filled with a profusion of herbs.

  While Poppy tucked into a bowl of fresh fruit and yoghurt, Juliet said in a low tone to Rafael, ‘I don’t understand why you chose me to be your wife if you knew that your grandfather would not approve of me.’

  She stared at him and saw a ruthlessness in his hard-boned face that sent a shiver through her.

  ‘That was the point, wasn’t it?’ she whispered. ‘You were angry that your grandfather had insisted on you being married before he would make you CEO, so to pay him back you married a woman you knew he would despise—a single mother from the gutter.’

  She was mortified to think of the vision she must have presented to Rafael’s family, looking like Little Orphan Annie in her horrible dress and scuffed boots, with a child on her hip.

  ‘You are not from the gutter.’ Rafael sounded impatient rather than penitent.

  ‘I come from a run-down council estate where the police have given up trying to arrest the drug dealers because there are too many of them,’ she said flatly.

  Juliet wasn’t ashamed of her background. Her parents had worked hard in low-paid jobs to give her the chance to pursue her dream of being a ballerina. And most of the families living in that tower block were good people who struggled to make ends meet.

  None of them had judged her for being a single mother—like Rafael’s grandfather had and perhaps Rafael himself did. One thing was certain—she did not belong in the Casillas mansion with Rafael’s sophisticated relatives.

  ‘I can’t stay here knowing that your family despise me,’ she told him. ‘More importantly, I don’t want Poppy to meet your grandfather again. I’ll book us onto the next available flight to England.’

  She kept a credit card for extreme emergencies and her current situation definitely qualified as an emergency. Poppy had been terrified when Rafael’s grandfather had shouted at them. But Juliet had no idea how she would pay the credit card bill, or where she would go when she reached London. Perhaps Agata would allow her and Poppy to stay at her flat for a few days.

  ‘My grandfather will calm down,’ Rafael told her. ‘Even if he doesn’t, you are my wife and there is nothing Hector can do about it.’

  ‘You can’t use me and especially not my three-year-old child as pawns in your row with your grandfather. I don’t understand why such bitterness exists between the two of you. There is poison here in paradise and I want no part in an ugly war of wills between two men who have more money than people like me—people from the gutter,’ she flung at him, ‘can only dream of.’

  She could tell from the way his dark brows slashed together like a scar across his brow that he hadn’t expected her to stand up to him.

  It was about time she grew a backbone, Juliet told herself grimly. But even though she had discovered the unedifying reason why Rafael had married her she still could not control the heat that coiled low in her pelvis when he pushed himself away from the wall that he had been lounging against and crossed the small courtyard to stand in front of her.

  Too close, she thought, lifting her hand up to her throat to try and hide the betraying leap of her pulse.

  ‘You became part of this when you signed our marriage agreement and it is too bad if you don’t like it,’ he said curtly. ‘Let us not forget that your motives were hardly altruistic, chiquita. You sold yourself to me for five million pounds.’

  ‘I see now that I sold my soul to the devil.’ She put her hand on his arm and felt the iron strength of sinew and muscle beneath his olive-gold skin. ‘It’s not too late to end this madness. We can have our marriage annulled.’

  ‘And give up what should be mine?’ Rafael gave a harsh laugh. ‘I am afraid not. I will be CEO, whatever it takes. We are in this together.’

  A violent shiver shook Juliet and she gripped the edge of the table as the ground beneath her feet lurched.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Rafael demanded. ‘You’re even paler than you were at the register office.’

  ‘I’ve been feeling unwell all day,’ she admitted.

  She turned away from him and started to walk across the courtyard, but the ground tilted and she felt herself falling. From a long way off she heard Rafael call her name.

  She mustn’t faint because Poppy would be frightened, she thought before blackness blotted out everything.

  * * *

  When he was growing up Rafael had learned to run fast—to escape his father’s temper, or shopkeepers who chased him for stealing food, or to avoid the dealers who forced the slum kids to deliver drugs.

  As an adult he still ran to escape his demons. His favourite route took him through t
he Albufera Natural Park, where a huge freshwater lagoon was separated from the sea by a narrow strip of coastline. There he could run along the beach before heading into the sand dunes and the pine forest beyond.

  The Casillas mansion overlooked the beach, and right now Rafael, gazing out of an upper-floor window, would have liked nothing better than to be pounding along the shoreline, with the sea breeze ruffling his hair and the sun on his back. Running gave him the head space to find solutions to his problems—but there was no easy solution to the situation he found himself in, with a marriage that he had been forced into against his will.

  There had even been a chance of a reprieve. It might not have been necessary to go ahead with the wedding at all. He would have paid Juliet off and thought it a small price to pay for his freedom.

  An opportunity had arisen to buy out a popular American fashion brand, and Rafael had spent the past month in California, determined to secure the deal which would give the Casillas Group a major stake in the US clothing retail market. The acquisition would, he hoped, prove to the board members and shareholders that he should be CEO.

  But even his success had not been enough to persuade his grandfather to withdraw his marriage ultimatum.

  ‘A wife will be good for you. Now that you are thirty-five it is time for you to settle down and think about the future,’ Hector had said when Rafael had phoned to tell him that the Casillas Group now owned the US fashion brand Up Town Girl. ‘I am an old man, and when I die I want to be certain that the next generation of my family will lead the company into the future.’

  If Hector believed that having great-grandchildren would be ensured by forcing his eldest grandson to marry he was going to be disappointed, Rafael brooded. He had no burning desire to have children. His parents had hardly been ideal role models, and although he was fond of his nieces he was too driven by his ambition to believe that he could be a devoted parent like his sister, or like Juliet.

  His wife.

  Dios. He pictured the sickly waif who had occupied his bed for the past two nights while he slept on the sofa in his dressing room. He hadn’t thought about what he would do with Juliet once he’d married her, and he resented his nagging conscience which insisted that he was now responsible for her and her child.

  Damn his grandfather for issuing his ridiculous marriage ultimatum. Rafael’s jaw clenched. Once his temper would have made him lash out and punch something—or someone. At fifteen he had been expelled from an exclusive private school for fighting with another pupil who had taunted him for his rough manners.

  ‘You grew up in the gutter, Mendoza. You call yourself Casillas but everyone knows your father was a gitano.’

  Rafael had wiped the grin off the other boy’s face with his fists, but when he’d cooled off he’d felt ashamed of his behaviour. As a child he had often been on the receiving end of his father’s violent outbursts, but he wanted to be a better man than Ivan Mendoza and prove to his grandfather that he deserved the name Casillas.

  From then on he’d learned to control his emotions. Don’t get mad, get even had become his mantra.

  At a new school Rafael had ignored the boys who’d reminded him about his background. Instead of losing his temper he had focused his energy on his studies, determined to catch up on the education he’d missed while he’d lived in the slum.

  That single-mindedness had seen him gain a master’s degree from Harvard Business School before he had joined the Casillas Group in a junior role and worked his way up the company ladder.

  He pulled his mind back to the present when a small hand slipped into his, and glanced down at Juliet’s daughter. Poppy was an enchanting child, with a knack of disarming Rafael’s defences which he would have sworn were impenetrable.

  ‘Will you read me a story, Raf?’

  He hunkered down in front of her. ‘Go and find a book from the shelf. I’ll read you a story and then we will go and see if your mamà is feeling better.’

  Across the room Rafael caught his sister’s amused expression.

  ‘Raf?’ Sofia murmured.

  ‘My name is unfamiliar for the child, and hard to say, so she shortens it to Raf. I seem to have made a hit with her,’ he said ruefully.

  ‘“The child” has a name,’ his sister reproved him. ‘Poppy is younger than the twins and you are the only person she knows in a house full of strangers. It’s hardly surprising that she wants to be with you while her mother—your wife—is too unwell to look after her.’ Sofia sighed. ‘What made you do it, Rafael?’

  He did not pretend to misunderstand, or to try to convince his sister that his marriage was anything other than a calculated ploy which would give him what he wanted.

  ‘Abuelo blackmailed me into choosing a wife by threatening to name Francisco as his successor if I did not marry. The CEO-ship should be mine—and not only by birthright. I don’t feel a sense of entitlement,’ he insisted. ‘When I joined the company I started at the bottom—sweeping the floor in a warehouse. Hector did not want me to receive special favours just because I am his eldest grandson. I quickly rose through the managerial ranks because I worked harder than anyone else. I have proved my worth.’

  Rafael’s gaze met his sister’s eyes, which were the same shade of olive-green as his own. Their unusual eye colour was a physical sign of the difference that set them apart from the rest of the Casillas family.

  ‘You and I are still seen as outsiders. Especially me,’ he muttered. ‘You smile and say the right things, and you are not viewed as a threat to Madre’s ambition to see her beloved Francisco—the true Casillas heir, in her opinion—made CEO.’

  Sofia moved to break up a squabble between her two daughters. ‘Ana, give the doll to Inez if she was playing with it first. Your uncle says he will read a story. Why don’t you help Poppy choose a book?’

  She turned her attention back to Rafael.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here two days ago, when you introduced your wife to the rest of the family. Madre says the girl you have married is so thin and pale perhaps she is a drug addict.’

  ‘Dios!’ Rafael growled, biting back a curse when he caught his sister’s warning look to remind him that children were present. ‘Juliet fell ill with a gastric virus shortly after we arrived.’

  He was angered by his mother’s unjust accusation. But his conscience pricked. When he had first met Juliet her hollow cheeks and extreme pallor had made him suspicious that she was a drug user. And her drab appearance was one reason he had picked her for his bride, he acknowledged, feeling a faint flicker of shame as he pictured her in the ghastly creased dress she’d been wearing when he had introduced her to his grandfather.

  He hadn’t realised that she was ill when they had arrived at the Casillas mansion. With another stab of discomfort Rafael admitted to himself that he’d been busy taking a vicious pleasure in Hector’s fury when he’d announced that the waif clutching her illegitimate child in her arms was his wife.

  Juliet was as far removed from any of the high-society daughters of Spanish aristocratic families whom Hector had expected him to marry as chalk was from cheese. But her lack of sophistication did not warrant his family’s scorn.

  ‘Juliet is a devoted mother—which is more than can be said for our mother,’ he said harshly. ‘Delfina is embarrassed by us because we remind her that she was once married to a low-life drug dealer. Sometimes I think she would have preferred it if Hector hadn’t found us and brought us into the family.’

  Sofia looked at him closely. ‘I hope you have not led your wife to believe that you are in love with her?’

  ‘Juliet understands that we have a business deal and she will be well recompensed after she has served her purpose.’

  ‘Oh, Rafael,’ his sister murmured. ‘I worry about where your ruthless ambition will lead you. When can I meet your bride?’

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps later today. The
doctor I called in to examine her has said that the virus hit her hard. But the nurse reported that Juliet’s temperature was nearly back to normal this morning and she should be well enough to attend Hector’s eightieth birthday party on Saturday evening.’

  When he would be named as his grandfather’s successor, Rafael thought with satisfaction. He had met the old man’s stipulation for him to marry and now it was time for Hector to publicly recognise his firstborn grandson as the true Casillas heir.

  There was a knock on the door and the butler entered the nursery. ‘Yes, Alfredo, what is it?’

  ‘Señor Casillas wishes to speak to you,’ the butler told Rafael. ‘He is waiting for you in his study.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RAFAEL LOOKED DOWN at Poppy, who was holding a book out to him, before he responded to the butler. ‘Tell my grandfather that I am with my stepdaughter and I will be along in ten minutes.’

  ‘Why do you have to antagonise Hector?’ Sofia demanded when Alfredo had left.

  ‘He needs to realise that I am not one of the yes-men he surrounds himself with,’ Rafael muttered. ‘I am sick of his attempts to manipulate me. Besides, I promised to read to Poppy.’

  He had felt oddly protective of Juliet’s daughter since the ugly scene with his grandfather when they had arrived at the house had upset the little girl.

  ‘You and Abuelo are both too proud,’ Sofia said impatiently. ‘It’s like a clash of bulls.’

  She broke off as the nursery door was flung open.

  Rafael glanced across the room and saw Juliet standing in the doorway. She was wearing a pair of baggy pyjamas that had faded to an indeterminate colour and her hair was scraped back from her white face.

  ‘Where is my daughter?’

  She gave a low cry when she saw Poppy, and flew across the room to scoop the little girl into her arms.

  ‘Oh, munchkin, there you are. I was scared I’d lost you.’ Juliet’s relief was palpable and tears spilled down her cheeks as she looked at Rafael. ‘I thought you had taken Poppy away. I woke up and I didn’t know where she was. I thought...’ She shook her head and hugged her daughter to her. ‘I hope that no one has upset her. Your grandfather...?’