‘Which never should have happened.’
He shook his head emphatically. ‘It would have happened sooner or later, Rowan. The truth is I desired you from the moment I saw you. I just hid it under very elaborate plans to marry you to further my career in Europe. I had an agenda and nothing was getting in my way. You see, I’d never planned on marrying for love or desire, after seeing what it did to my parents. When my sister and I were in our teens my father was driving home one night. He and my mother were having one of their passionate arguments and he crashed the car, leaving her paralysed from the waist down.’
An image of the tiny woman dressed in black in a wheelchair at their wedding came into Rowan’s mind. The bitterness etched into her face. Isandro’s voice dragged her attention back.
‘My father was so racked with guilt for ruining his wife’s life that he took an English mistress and broke my mother’s heart. And my sister’s. That’s the root of her own unhappiness at our union. But in truth I think she would have been unhappy with anyone I chose to marry. When my father failed her so badly, she put me on a pedestal instead.’
Rowan was feeling unsteady. This conversation was going into unknown territory that she wasn’t prepared for. He had desired her all along? She tried to focus.
‘When I saw you across that room and then found out you were Carmichael’s daughter. I told myself the desire I felt was for power, pure and simple.’ He shook his head, his eyes burning into hers. ‘But that night, our wedding night, when we slept together that first time …’
Rowan blushed and looked away. She’d practically thrown herself at him. He guessed what she was thinking and put a hand to her chin, bringing her round to face him, ‘No. It was mutual. I don’t take women to bed out of pity, Rowan. And I don’t keep taking them to bed unless I desire them.’
Her heart stopped.
‘I … I always thought. And then when I was so.’ She was blushing so hard now that her cheeks were literally burning.
Isandro rubbed the back of a hand across one hot surface. ‘It was like that for me too. But then when you retreated into your shell … which I know now was after you’d been to the doctor.’
Rowan fought to stay sane despite the heated intensity in his eyes. He was guessing, knowing too much, nearly everything. She had to remind him before she duped herself into believing she was reading something in his eyes.
‘But there was that conversation.’
His eyes didn’t change; they blazed harder. ‘Which was a mistake that you shouldn’t have had to overhear. My sister was demanding to know how I felt about you. She’s poisonous in her anger and her hatred of our father. If I had told her that I had feelings for you, she’d have gone out there and annihilated you. And, apart from that noble desire, I was an abject and miserable coward.’
Rowan frowned slightly.
‘I was so confused about how I was feeling that I wasn’t in any shape to articulate that to Ana.’
Feelings? He just meant friendship … warmth … respect.
Rowan felt as if she had to say something to avoid the awful moment when he would confirm that. ‘Look, Sandro. I like you too. I liked you from the start. I had no choice but to marry you … my father … the bank. My inheritance.’ She had to convince him.
He shook his head and sent up a silent plea. ‘I don’t believe you.’ He held her hands even tighter.
Rowan’s skin prickled and her belly fell. He wasn’t going to do this to her, was he?
‘Sandro, please …’ she begged, trying to pull her hands away from his. ‘I don’t know what you want to hear.’
‘You’re a strong woman, Rowan. I think you’ve more than proved that you don’t do anything you don’t feel passionately about. And your inheritance? I don’t think that’s ever really mattered a damn. All I want to hear is the truth …’
The truth.
She shook her head helplessly, and to her chagrin her eyes filled with hopeless tears. ‘You know. You know. That’s why you’re doing this … to make me agree … but I can’t, Sandro. I can’t.’
The blue of his eyes was hypnotic. ‘Tell me,’ he demanded hoarsely, not giving her an inch to back away.
And then the fight was too much. She was too tired. Did she really have the strength to walk away from a lifetime with Isandro even if he didn’t love her? She knew the answer.
Her hands lay limp in his, and she looked to a spot over his shoulder. Anything to avoid the laser-like gaze. ‘If I hadn’t got sick I never would have left. I would have hoped and dreamt that some day you’d come to feel about me the way I felt for you.’ She looked at him then, her eyes clear and true. ‘I think I’ve loved you since our wedding night. I told myself I didn’t love you any more when I saw you in London, but I knew I did. I was just trying to protect myself.’
She steeled herself. ‘And I do now.’ She shrugged one shoulder then, in an endearingly vulnerable gesture. ‘You and Zac. My deepest most secret dream through all those months was of us as a family together … healthy and happy.’
Isandro took up her hands, and Rowan was surprised to feel his own hands shaking violently. He bent and pressed a kiss to her palms. ‘Gracias, mi querida.’ He pressed another kiss to her hands, the other side. ‘Mi vida.’
Rowan still felt slightly shell shocked at what she’d just said. The urge to self-protect was still strong. Her back was still tense. ‘Sandro.’
He lifted his head and he was smiling, grinning inanely. She’d never seen him look so happy. ‘Rowan … querida … I fell in love with you too along the way. Somewhere you crept into my heart. When you gave birth to Zac—in that moment … I knew it then.’
A shadow crossed his face. He sobered. Rowan was holding her breath. Surely he wouldn’t go this far just to get her to comply?
‘When I came back and found you gone … found that note …’
He looked so bleak for a moment that Rowan had to believe. Tentative wings of joy started to take off in her heart.
‘You were right. I was so angry, so incensed, that I damned you to hell and told myself I’d been the biggest fool. But the hurt didn’t go. It festered. I told myself I’d been stupid to trust you when all along you’d turned out to be the same as every other money-hungry social climbing.’ He stopped. ‘That day when you walked away you didn’t just walk out on Zac … you walked out on me, and I didn’t think I could ever forgive you for it.’
Rowan’s whole body and head were going into meltdown. ‘I had no idea I meant anything to you at all. It was that that gave me the courage to go. I didn’t want to burden you with a terminally ill wife you felt nothing for. I wanted you to be free to remarry … someone you loved and desired. And I couldn’t bear for Zac to know the pain of separation …’
His hand came and cupped her jaw, his thumb catching a tear that she hadn’t even been aware of. ‘You’re the only one, Rowan. I love and desire you, no one else. The other night … I know you read me wrong in the morning. I never meant that I didn’t want to make love to you. I felt like a crass schoolboy when I should have been offering you nothing but comfort … yet I couldn’t help myself. I haven’t even been with another woman since you left. I couldn’t. I told myself it was anger hampering me. I couldn’t even go looking for you … the hurt was too intense.’
‘Oh, my love.’ Rowan’s heart overflowed. If she was dreaming then she never wanted to wake up. She pressed a kiss to his palm and, unable to hold back any more, Isandro pulled her forward and crushed her against his chest.
‘I love you, Rowan. You’re my life.’ He smiled ruefully for a second. ‘I called you my mistress … that thought lasted about two minutes. I just couldn’t see you like that, no matter how much I tried to distance myself.’ He was serious again. ‘When you and Zac were taken … when I saw you in that awful room …’
A shudder ran through his big frame, and Rowan welcomed him when his head bent and his mouth met hers in a searing kiss.
When they broke apart Rowa
n was crying in earnest. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you straight away … I just … couldn’t …’
‘Shh.’ He kissed her again, pulling her close. ‘It doesn’t matter now. You’re here, you’re well, you’re going to be well. Zac is well. We’re together, and that’s all that matters.’
Rowan nodded tearily.
Isandro gestured with a shoulder and sent a quick glance around the room. ‘I brought you here because I want this to be a new start. We never had a honeymoon.’
Rowan shook her head in acknowledgment.
Isandro kissed her hand again. ‘Well, now we will. Starting tonight. With dinner overlooking the Eiffel Tower.’ He smiled a little ruefully, almost shyly, and it made Rowan’s heart soar even higher. ‘I know it’s a bit of a cliché, the table overlooking the Eiffel Tower … the room … the champagne … I have so much catching up to do with you, Rowan. This is just the start of it … I promise.’
She shook her head vaguely, too entranced by his eyes and his words to be able to begin to tell him that it was all okay. Fine. Perfect. His words were washing over her like a healing balm.
And then he reached into a pocket and took something out. She looked down. In his palm he held her wedding and engagement rings. She watched wordlessly as he took her hand and slipped them onto her ring finger one by one. He’d had them resized and now they fitted perfectly.
Rowan reached up to touch his mouth with a finger, her eyes dropping in an innocently provocative gesture before looking back up. Her hand shook with the emotions running through her. ‘You were so sure?’
He shook his head then, that vulnerable light still in his eyes, and caught her finger and kissed it. ‘No, I wasn’t sure at all … but I prayed to every god I know that you felt something for me … that you would at least agree to stay married.’
They shared a long intense look.
‘Do you know what day tomorrow is?’
‘Of course I do. It’s Zac’s birthday,’ Rowan said huskily.
He smiled. ‘So tomorrow, early, we go home, we wake up our son, and we give him a very special birthday—the first of many, together.’
Rowan smiled a wobbly smile. She was sure she must look a sight, but with Isandro gazing at her as if she were the Venus de Milo she didn’t care. She let him take her hand, pull her up and lead her out to the terrace.
In the warm spring air of a beautiful night in Paris, they started again.
Four years later.
Rowan looked down in wonder at the small head full of dark auburn hair nestled against her breast. Watched the tiny puckered frown, the rosebud mouth suckling fiercely as if her life depended on it. A small hand curled around her little finger with a strength that was truly unbelievable. Her daughter. Alégria. Joy. Because that was what her pregnancy had been. One of hope and joy. There had been every chance that after the chemotherapy her fertility might have been irreparably damaged, but Alégria was proof otherwise.
The door opened with a burst, and a flash of blond barrelled in, followed by Isandro, tall and so handsome that Rowan smiled and her heart clenched as it always did. They shared a look, and then she turned her smiling attention to Zac as he clambered up onto the bed.
‘Mamá, mamá—look what I drew for Légria!’
‘It’s Alégria sweetie …’
Zac clearly wasn’t interested and chattered on, showing Rowan a drawing of Papá, Mamá, Zac and the new baby. Tears filled Rowan’s eyes and Isandro saw them. He came and pressed a lingering kiss to her mouth. She just looked at him mutely, with everything written on her face, in her eyes. The moment was huge. Love blazed between them, strong and true.
Isandro just smiled at her. ‘I know, querida. I know …’
Cordero’s
Forced Bride
Kate Walker
About the Author
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
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.
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