Much like its owner.
She certainly wouldn’t trade one for the other any day. Not even when her own little cottage felt as chilled and unwelcoming as it did now. The central-heating timer must be on the blink again.
The weather too was as different as it could be from the mild temperatures she had left behind in Spain. Here in Yorkshire, the wind was a biting, bitter chill, and the forecast was for it to get even colder over the weekend. There were even suggestions of a storm. Certainly the sky had looked heavy enough as she had driven back up the steep winding road that led from the library to her home. She just prayed that the heating would work once she checked on it and switched it on manually.
The house was just beginning to lose the chilly edge from the temperature and she had started to prepare an evening meal when there was an unexpected ring at the doorbell.
Who could that be? She wasn’t expecting anyone and the cottage was far enough from the village to deter casual callers, with no one living near enough to be described as a neighbour. Wiping her flour-covered fingers on a handy tea towel, she hurried down the corridor to answer the summons.
With no glass pane in the door to give her any clue, no way of seeing just what sort of a figure might be at the door, she had no warning. And so the sight that met her eyes when she pulled it open had her losing all her breath in one shocked gasp and taking a couple of stunned, shaky steps backwards.
Santos Cordero stood there, big and dark and large as life. Or perhaps even larger than life, because that was how he seemed with his powerful frame filling the small doorway, his broad shoulders almost blocking out the view of her slightly unkempt garden, his black hair blown wildly over his forehead by the whirling winds that howled amongst the trees. His eyes were almost as cold and bleak as the darkening sky and it seemed that the weather prediction of hailstorms had been an accurate one, with white pellets spinning in the air, and some of them had settled on his head, glistening among the black strands like melting diamonds.
‘Santos!’
‘Buenas tardes, señorita.’
If the faint flicker of something across his sensual mouth was supposed to have been an attempt at a smile then it failed completely, switching on and then off again with a speed that made her wonder if it had ever been there. His dour frown and hooded eyes seemed much more his natural expression, destroying the memory of the devastating smile she had experienced so very briefly only the week before.
But nothing could wipe away the sheer impact of the man. Even now, huddled into a navy-blue coat, shoulders hunched against the icy winds, he was still the most shockingly handsome man she had ever seen. And his naturally golden skin seemed even more exotic when contrasted with the dull tones of the wintry landscape surrounding him.
‘What are you doing here?’
She knew she sounded ungracious but shock had pushed the words from her mouth. He was the last person she had expected or wanted turning up on her doorstep. Or at least that was what her rational mind allowed her to admit to. The real truth was that some wickedly unwanted, instinctive inner response had made her heart clench in instant reaction in the moment that she had recognised his dark, stunning features.
‘I came to return your property.’
Santos lifted one hand to display a silvery plastic carrier bag that looked strangely out of place in his strong masculine grip.
‘My …? What property?’
‘Your shoes.’
‘You have to be joking! If you think that I would believe that anyone would travel all the way from Seville, fly across the Channel and then drive here, just to return a pair of shoes, then …’
She broke off hastily, choking to a halt as Santos lifted the carrier bag even higher and opened it at the top, just enough for her to be able to get a glimpse of its contents. The sight of the pale pink leather sent a hot tide of blood rushing into her cheeks. And the gleam of something darkly wicked deep in those unusual eyes only added to her embarrassment.
‘You did that! There was no need!’
Santos shrugged off her protest.
‘I wanted to return your property, but that was not the only reason I came here.’
‘Putting them in a parcel and posting them off would have been enough.’
Belatedly, Alexa realised that she had talked across Santos, her voice covering the second part of his statement. But now the truth of what he had actually said hit home.
‘It wasn’t? So why else are you here?’
‘Perhaps if you would let me in, then we could talk?’
The suggestion was an obvious one. Or at least it would have been if her relationship with this man was a normal one. Relationship? She didn’t have a relationship of any sort with him. But politeness cost nothing and she couldn’t keep him standing on the doorstep for ever in this weather. Much as she might want to.
But to invite him in suddenly seemed to have so much more significance than it deserved. Simply because he was Santos and because of the way they had parted after the reception.
‘What do we need to talk about?’
‘It would be easier if you let me in.’
And if she didn’t let him in then he was saying nothing, that much was obvious. With a resigned sigh, Alexa held open the door.
‘Come in, then …’
She had been outmanoeuvred and she knew it—and so did he. She fully expected him to murmur ‘Checkmate’, or whatever the Spanish equivalent was, as he moved past her into the narrow hallway.
She’d regretted her action as soon as she had opened the door. He was the last person she wanted inside her home. And yet her heart gave a strong kick of excitement as he moved past her into the confined space of the tiny hall. How was it possible to wish that he was anywhere but here in the same breath as she acknowledged the fact that now he was here she couldn’t take her eyes off him?
The cottage had low ceilings which made him look impossibly tall, and the width of his shoulders was emphasised by the heavy jacket he wore. He brought in a rush of cold, damp air with him and as he turned to face her, she saw that wide, devastating smile on his face.
‘What?’ she asked sharply, that smile setting her pulse pounding, her legs feeling like cotton wool underneath her as she fought against the temptation to lean back against the wall for support. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Not funny, but …’
Santos leaned forward and brushed the pad of his thumb across her cheek, his touch warm and soft. And suddenly her heart seemed to stop beating, her breath coiling tight in her throat.
‘You have flour on your face. There …’
He held up his hand to show her the streaks of white but apart from one brief glance Alexa couldn’t look at it and away from his face. Her eyes were drawn to his, her gaze held transfixed, and although that smile had faded there was still some lingering warmth that heated her skin more than the old-fashioned central heating clanking its way through the radiators.
Memories surfaced. Memories of a beautiful Moorish-style house, a pink bedroom, and the softness of that touch that had soon become so much more. Memories she didn’t want to recall and that she had to crush down with an almost vicious effort as heat flooded her face.
‘Thanks …’ It was a growl of embarrassment.
Automatically she raised her own hand to wipe at the spot, but then, seeing the flour on her fingers, shook her head and dropped it down again.
‘Come in.’ She made her tone unnecessarily brisk to hide the confusion that had her in its grip.
Santos’s next move was perfectly natural, perfectly logical, but as she moved to push open the door into her sitting room he pushed the front one closed, so that it slammed into the frame with a worryingly ominous thud that made all the hairs on the back of her neck lift in sudden apprehension.
Had she made a foolish move inviting him in like this? Never before had she been so aware of the fact that the cottage was isolated and with the weather closing in around them she was very much
alone. The sooner she got this over with and sent Santos on his way, the better. She was not going to offer him a drink, she resolved as she led the way into the sitting room. That would make it look as if she wanted him here.
‘So what is this about?’
Alexa moved carefully to position the coffee table between herself and the big, dark man standing before her, making the sitting room look almost like something out of a doll’s house with all the furniture out of proportion and far too small in contrast to his size.
‘And don’t expect me to believe that it has anything to do with the shoes that you used as an excuse to worm your way into here.’
‘Not worm my way, querida ‘ Santos had the nerve to make his words sound like a reproach as he shook his dark head in rejection of her accusation. ‘I simply said that we needed to talk.’
‘But to talk about what—just why are you here?’
‘Why? I would have thought that was obvious.’
Why was he here? Santos had asked himself that question a hundred times on the journey from Spain. He knew what had sparked the decision to make the journey. It had been made in the black fury that had descended on his brain when he had got back to the bedroom after taking the phone call. A too long, impatient phone call in which he had cut off one of his managers with harsh ruthlessness in order to hurry back to where Alexa was.
Or, rather, where he had thought Alexa was.
Instead the room had been empty, the door wide open, and no sign of the woman who had been in his arms, responding so passionately to his kisses, his caresses, such a short time before. The only evidence that she had ever been there was the dishevelled quilt, the dent in the pillow where her head had lain.
He’d known then what had happened, though he hadn’t quite been able to believe it. And the red mist that came up before his eyes threatened his ability to think straight enough to believe, or to doubt. A hurried search, an even more hurried questioning of some members of staff had only confirmed his furious suspicions and that was when all rational thought had fled his brain, driven out by the roar of pure fury that totally consumed him.
She had run out on him.
A second Montague daughter had turned tail and run just like her sister. The whole family had slashed at his pride and his reputation—and taken the money he had been foolish enough to let them have at the start. Someone would have to pay.
And that someone was going to be Alexa Montague.
He could of course have simply called in her father’s debts, and sent the lying fool to prison for embezzlement, as he had originally planned, but that thought no longer satisfied him. The one thing that had been clear in his mind was that he was going to find Alexa Montague.
It had been a simple matter to track down her address. Her witch of a stepmother had been only too keen to supply it, and her weak, greedy father had gone along with it, seeing his own hope of escape by doing so. Her family had handed her to him on a plate.
And as soon as she had opened the door to him this evening he had known exactly why. He had never been able to get Alexa out of his mind. Ever since she had disappeared, her image had been in his thoughts, stopping him from thinking clearly, preventing him from sleeping.
In fact, if he was being honest, she’d been in his head from the first moment they had met. Petra might have described her as dull and dowdy, but there had been something about her that had caught on his senses and wouldn’t let go. Even when he’d thought her cold and stiffly distant, he had been intrigued by her. The woman who had come to tell him about her sister’s disappearance had been someone else again, the one he held in his arms as they had danced another person entirely. Then there was the woman whose hair he had released until it fell in a cloud of soft silk about her face, whose eyes had glistened in the moonlight as her body strained towards him, whose mouth had practically begged for his kisses until he had thought that he would groan aloud with the strain of withholding them. But it was the woman he had taken to bed who had eclipsed them all.
That woman had haunted his nights, keeping him from sleep, or, if he did slide into a doze, had made his slumber restless and uneasy as heated erotic images walked through his dreams, murmuring his name, offering her mouth to his, her body opening to his caress.
And when he had woken, sweating and shaken, with his heart racing at twice its normal speed, he had found himself hard and aching, his body aroused by the night’s imaginings and clamouring for the release it needed. A release that Alexa’s flight had forced him to deny it.
But not any more. In the moment that she had opened the door, he had known exactly why he was here. The shoes were no real excuse; revenge might be part of it but sheer physical craving was more, so much more. Seeing her as he had never seen her before, with the soft cherry-red jumper and the tightly clinging jeans emphasising gentle curves, her hair tumbling in loose waves, her beautiful skin touched with just the smallest trace of make-up, he had felt his heart kick hard in his chest. The fierce sting of hunger had started up lower down in his body, so strongly that it had been an effort to speak and not just to reach out and drag her into his arms, kissing her until they were both senseless with need and passion.
‘I’m here to finish what we started,’ he declared, the twist of sexual hunger making his voice raw and rough. ‘I’ve come for you.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘COME FOR …’
Alexa couldn’t believe what she had heard. Panic was buzzing inside her head, making her thoughts reel, so she was sure that she hadn’t actually caught what he had said. That he couldn’t have said …
He just couldn’t have said ‘I’ve come for you.’
Could he?
But Santos stood there, big and dark and dangerous, with his scarred hand raised to unfasten the buttons of his heavy coat. And with that gleam in his eyes, the taunting one that she had come, through painful experience, to recognise as meaning trouble for someone—and in this case that someone was very definitely her.
Even if he was just teasing then it was a cold-blooded, wicked teasing, one that made her nerves twist in apprehension and lifted the hairs on the back of her neck in a way that made her shiver inwardly.
‘What do you mean, you’ve come for me? There’s nothing for you here. Nothing about me that you could want or can have.’
‘Are you so sure of that?’ Santos shrugged himself out of his coat and tossed it aside so that it landed on one of the twoseater settees that furnished the room, the navy cashmere heavy and dark against the soft pale grey cotton that covered it.
‘Of course …’
That fiendish gleam had brightened disturbingly and the faint lift of one straight dark brow in cynical enquiry was more worrying that any more blatant threat.
‘You’re forgetting something,’ he drawled softly, the fascinating accent deepening on the silky words so that in spite of herself Alexa couldn’t suppress the recognition of how attractive that voice was, how it tugged at her sensuality, sending prickles of awareness down her spine. She didn’t want to find anything about this man attractive but she just couldn’t deny the almost shocking appeal he had for her.
‘Oh, really—and just what is it that I’ve forgotten?’
‘That your family owes me a wife. The wedding that never was,’ Santos elaborated coolly when her head went back in shock, her eyes widening in disbelief and she struggled to accept that he had actually said what she thought she had heard. And, even worse, that he had meant it.
‘My sister’s wedding!’ she protested. ‘She was the one who was supposed to marry you.’
‘Exactly.’
It was crisp and cold as the hail that was whirling outside, blown wildly up against the window and forming a thick curtain so that it was almost impossible to see through to the garden beyond.
‘But—how can my family owe you a wife—owe you anything? I know that Natalie broke her promise to marry you but surely you aren’t going to—’
‘There was more to it
than that. So much more.’
‘More in what way?’
‘Oh, come on, Alexa …’
That now familiar arrogant gesture with his hand dismissed the question as not even worth bothering with, never mind answering. And if she had thought that the wild storm outside had looked cold then it was as nothing when compared to the ice in his eyes as they blazed at her across the room, chilling her blood so that she feared that she would never, ever be warm again.
‘Let us not play games here. We both know what I mean.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘It would be better if we were straight with each other.’
‘I don’t know how to be anything but straight because I don’t know what you mean!’
It was impossible to control the tremble in her voice, impossible to stop it rising in fear and uncertainty. She was still struggling so hard to come to terms with what he had said and to work out just how he might actually mean it.
I’ve come for you …
Your family owes me a wife.
The two phrases couldn’t be connected—they just couldn’t. And there really was no way that they could mean what she feared—that he had come for her because he believed that her family owed him a wife and she was the wife he had in mind.
No, it was impossible. She couldn’t believe it. And yet there had been that appalling proposition he had flung in her face on the evening of the wedding.
And did she mean feared—or something else entirely?
She had been unaware of the way that she was shaking her head in frantic denial until she heard Santos’s voice again, cold and incisive, cutting through the blur of confusion in her brain.
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