Книга - Married By Arrangement

Married By Arrangement
LYNNE GRAHAM


The aristocrat’s fair lady?Children were a distant speck on the horizon for bachelor Antonio Rocha, Marques de Salazar, until he unexpectedly becomes guardian to his niece. In order to protect the Rocha legacy, he will raise her as his own.Only Sophie Cunningham stands in his way. The stunning spitfire is joint guardian to his niece and she’s refusing to give up the girl, daring to call him an arrogant stranger!She might not speak - or live - like a lady, but Sophie is about to join the Spanish aristocracy. If she won’t give up her claim on his niece, then Antonio will claim her too – as his convenient wife!












is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!







LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon


reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.




Married by Arrangement

Lynne Graham










www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CHAPTER ONE


‘BUT why didn’t Belinda tell us last year that she had given birth to Pablo’s child?’ Antonio Rocha, Marqués de Salazar, demanded of his grandmother, lingering astonishment etched in the hard set of his sculpted cheekbones, his lean, darkly handsome face grim.

‘We barely got to know Belinda while your brother was alive.’ Doña Ernesta’s fine-boned features reflected her regret over that state of affairs. ‘How could we expect her to turn to us for help after he had abandoned her?’

‘I tried several times to set up a meeting with Belinda. She always made excuses,’ Antonio reminded the older woman. ‘Finally, she insisted that she didn’t need our help and she made it clear that she no longer regarded us as being related to her.’

‘Her pride may have spoken for her. I imagine Pablo left her with little else. Now that we know that he must have deserted her when she was pregnant, my heart is even heavier,’ Doña Ernesta confessed. ‘Yet when he married her, I truly believed that he might finally settle down.’

Being an incurable cynic, Antonio had had no such hopes. After all, his younger brother had broken the heart of his own family long before he had graduated to wreaking havoc beyond that select circle. Although born with every advantage into the most élite stratum of Spanish high society, Pablo had started getting in trouble at an early age.

His parents had found it impossible to control him. By the time Pablo had reached his early twenties, he had dissipated a substantial inheritance and defrauded several relatives and friends of large amounts of money. Throughout those troubled years, countless people had made repeated efforts to understand, correct and solve Pablo’s problems. All such attempts had been unsuccessful, not least, Antonio believed, because his brother had got a huge kick out of breaking the law and swindling the foolish.

It was three years since Pablo had come home to mend fences and announce his intention of marrying his beautiful English girlfriend. Overjoyed by his return, Doña Ernesta had insisted on throwing the wedding for the happy couple while at the same time making them a very generous gift of money. The marriage, however, had failed and Pablo had returned to Spain twelve months ago. Soon afterwards, the younger man had lost his life in a drunken car crash.

‘It astonishes me that Pablo could have kept such a secret from us,’ Doña Ernesta lamented. ‘It is even more sad that Belinda could not trust us enough to share her child with us.’

‘I’ve made arrangements to fly over to London tomorrow morning,’ Antonio told her, frowning when the elderly woman seated by the elegant marble fireplace continued to look deeply troubled. ‘Try not to dwell on your sorrow. As a family, we did all that we could and we will now do our very best for Pablo’s daughter.’

It was only that afternoon that Antonio had received an urgent call from the family lawyer, who had in turn been contacted by Belinda’s solicitor in England. Antonio had been sincerely shaken by the news that his brother’s widow had not only given birth to a child six months earlier, but had died from pneumonia just a fortnight ago. He had been relieved that, independent though Belinda had evidently intended to be, she had still had the foresight and sense to nominate him in her will as the guardian of her daughter, Lydia. At the family lawyer’s instigation, however, Antonio had also agreed that, even though he had no reason to doubt that the little girl was his brother’s child, DNA testing, distasteful though it was, would be a sensible precaution.

The lawyer had then informed him that Belinda’s sister, Sophie, was currently looking after the child. Dismayed by that information, Antonio had appreciated that his own intervention was immediately required. Sophie was far too young for such a responsibility and he thought it unlikely that her lifestyle would be conducive to the care of a baby.

Antonio had met Sophie when she had acted as a bridesmaid at her sister’s wedding. The pronounced differences between the two sisters had disconcerted his conservative family. While Belinda had had the confident gloss and clear diction of the British middle class, Sophie had appeared to hail from a rather less privileged background. Indeed Antonio’s English had been much more grammatically correct than hers had been. As he recalled those unexplained discrepancies his incisive gaze veiled. An involuntary memory of Sophie with her tumbling fall of blonde curls and glinting green eyes assailed Antonio. Not a beauty in the classic elegant style of her sister, certainly. Even so, Antonio had found his attention continually returning to the youngest, smallest bridesmaid that day and he had been equally quick to notice that there wasn’t a man in the room impervious to her appeal.

But her apparent appeal had been very short-lived, Antonio reminded himself grimly, his expressive mouth curling with disdain. Sophie had been sparkling, sexy and intensely feminine. But as he had discovered she had also been a slut. Watching her trail back into her hotel at dawn with her youthful lover and with her clothing dishevelled from a night of passion on the beach had been a salutary lesson. Clearly, she had been no more particular in her habits than the many tourists who came to Spain to indulge in rampant casual sex and an excess of alcohol.

‘A little girl. My first great-grandchild,’ Doña Ernesta remarked with a tentative smile softening her rather severe features, her well-modulated speaking voice breaking into what was a rare moment of abstraction for her grandson. ‘Lydia. It is a pretty name. A baby will transform the castillo.’

Antonio resisted a dismayingly strong urge to wince while inwardly acknowledging that he had been in no great hurry to embrace fatherhood. He was barely thirty years old. He had yet to experience the faintest glimmer of a desire to produce the next generation and had never had the slightest interest in babies. In fact he generally gave the rug rats a fairly wide berth at family events. Doubtless the perceived charm of a howling baby lay in the fond eye of its parent and magically enabled the parent to overlook the fact that babies were horrifically noisy and messy.

‘I imagine so,’ Antonio murmured wryly, resolving to have the nursery suite in the little-used east wing renovated at speed. He would also ensure that a full complement of staff was hired to service the child’s every need.

He was not ashamed to admit that he liked his life just as it was. He had had to work incredibly hard for a very long time to repair the damage done to the Rocha family fortunes by Pablo’s ceaseless depredations. While his brother had been running wild and free on his ill-gotten gains, Antonio had been working eighteen-hour days. Self-indulgence, personal interests and relaxation had all been luxuries out of Antonio’s reach. Having since amassed sufficient wealth to be judged a billionaire, Antonio now relished his own highly sophisticated existence, his fantastic social life and his freedom to do exactly as he liked.

But he was equally well aware that change was in the air: Pablo’s daughter was now his personal responsibility. It was his duty to take charge of the orphaned infant and bring her back to Spain. It was right and fitting that this should be the case, Antonio conceded. The baby was of his blood and part of his family and he would raise her as though she were his own daughter.

‘You’ll have to get married, of course,’ his grandmother murmured in a voice as soft and light as this-tledown.

Startled by that disconcerting assurance, Antonio swung back to survey the old lady, who was carefully addressing her attention to her needlework. Grudging amusement glinted in his clear dark golden eyes, for he was well aware that his grandmother was eager for him to take a wife. ‘With all due respect, Abuela…I don’t think that a sacrifice of that magnitude will be necessary.’

‘A baby needs a mother. I’m too old to take on the role and the staff cannot be expected to fill the gap. You travel a great deal,’ Doña Ernesta reminded him. ‘Only a wife could ensure the continuing level of care and affection which a young child will require.’

As Antonio listened the amusement slowly evaporated from his gaze. ‘I don’t need a wife.’

Glancing up without apparent concern, Doña Ernesta treated her grandson to an understanding smile. ‘Then, I can only offer you my admiration. Obviously you’ve already thought this matter over—’

‘I have and in depth,’ Antonio slotted in rather drily, for he was unimpressed by his wily grandmother’s pretence of innocence.

‘And you’re prepared to sacrifice all your free time for your niece’s benefit. After all, with only you to depend on, she will need so much more of your attention.’

That angle had not occurred to Antonio. His brilliant eyes grew bleak. He was most reluctant to contemplate that level of commitment. He could not imagine assuming the role of a hands-on parent in constant demand. The very idea of such a thing was ridiculous. He was the Marqués de Salazar, head of an ancient and noble family line, as well as being a powerful and influential businessman on whom many thousands of employees depended. His time was too valuable. His importance to the success of his business projects was limitless. What did he know about children? Babies?

At the same time the very idea of embracing the imprisonment of marriage banged the equivalent of a sepulchral cell door shut in Antonio’s imagination and made him pale.



In the act of changing Lydia’s T-shirt, Sophie succumbed to temptation and blew a raspberry on her niece’s tummy. Convulsing with chuckles, Lydia held up her arms to be lifted, her little face below her soft brown curls lit by a sunny smile.

‘I don’t know which one of you is the bigger kid!’ Norah Moore quipped while her stocky, well-built son, Matt, set the old highchair out beside the pine kitchen table.

Tiny in stature and slender as a ribbon, Sophie thrust her own curls back off her brow in a rueful gesture and resisted the urge to admit that grief, stress and a heavy workload were combining to make her feel more like a hundred years old. Staying financially afloat was a constant struggle and since Lydia’s birth had required her to do two jobs. Her main income came from working as a cleaner for the Moores. Mother and son owned the trailer park where she had lived for almost four years. At present she cleaned the caravans that were rented out as holiday lets. But quite a few were lived in all the year round by people like herself who could not afford more expensive accommodation. She made extra cash from embroidering clothes for an exclusive mail order firm. Her earnings might be poor in comparison to the hours she put in but she was grateful for any work that she could combine with caring for Lydia.

‘But I know which one of you is the prettiest,’ Matt declared with a meaningful look in Sophie’s direction.

As Sophie strapped Lydia into the high chair she contrived to evade his admiring gaze and wondered why Mother Nature was always encouraging the wrong men to chase her. She liked Matt. She had tried, she really had tried to find him attractive because he was hardworking, honest and decent. He was everything her irresponsible father had not been and a solid gold choice for a sensible woman. As always she wished that she were less fanciful and more prudent.

‘Right now, I should think Sophie’s more concerned about what this solicitor might have to say to her,’ Norah, a thin woman with short grey hair, told her son brusquely. ‘I can’t understand why Belinda even bothered to make a will when she had nothing to leave.’

‘She had Lydia,’ Sophie pointed out to the older woman. ‘Belinda had the will drawn up after Pablo died. I think it must’ve been her way of making a new start and showing her independence.’

‘Yes, your sister was very keen on her independence,’ Norah Moore said with a sniff. ‘And not so fond of being tied down to a kiddie once Lydia was born.’

‘It was hard for her.’ Sophie lifted a slight shoulder in a noncommittal shrug because it hurt that she could not actively defend Belinda’s rash behaviour during the last months of her life. At least, not to a woman who had repeatedly helped her out with the task of caring for Belinda’s daughter. But then that was what she most liked about the Moores, she reminded herself. They spoke as they found and there was nothing false about them.

‘It was even harder for you,’ Norah told her squarely. ‘I felt very sorry for Belinda when she first came here. She’d had a tough time. But when she took up with that new boyfriend of hers and landed you with Lydia, I lost patience with her silliness.’

‘I loved being landed with Lydia,’ Sophie declared staunchly.

‘Sometimes what you love may not be what’s good for you,’ the older woman retorted crisply.

But at a time when Sophie’s heart still ached from the cruelly sudden death of her sister, her baby niece was her only real comfort. Although Sophie and Belinda had had different fathers and had not met until Belinda had sought Sophie out. Sophie had grown very fond of her older sister. Belinda had, after all, shown Sophie the first family affection that the younger woman had ever known.

Yet the stark difference between their respective backgrounds might more easily have ensured that the two sisters remained lifelong strangers. While Belinda had grown up in a lovely country house with her own pony and every childhood extra her parents could afford, Sophie had been born illegitimate and raised in a council flat by a father who was always broke. Sophie was the result of their mother, Isabel’s extramarital affair. After her infatuation had subsided, Isabel had won her estranged husband back by leaving Sophie behind with her lover. Sophie’s feckless father had brought her up with the help of a succession of girlfriends. She had learned when she was very young that her wants and wishes were rarely of interest to the self-seeking adults who surrounded her.

At first meeting, Sophie had been in awe of her beautiful, sophisticated sister. Five years older, Belinda had been educated at a fancy boarding-school and she had talked with a cut glass accent that put Sophie in mind of the royal family. Her warm and affectionate nature had however soon won Sophie’s trust and love. Perhaps more slowly and rather more painfully, Sophie had come to appreciate that Belinda was not very clever and was extremely vulnerable to falling for handsome men who talked big and impressed her. But wild horses would have not have dredged that unhappy truth from Sophie, who was loyal to a fault.

Leaving her niece in Norah Moore’s capable care, Sophie climbed into Matt’s pick-up. He gave her a lift into Sheerness and, stopping right outside the solicitor’s office, he offered to wait for her.

As always in a hurry to escape Matt’s hopeful air of expectation, Sophie had already jumped out onto the pavement. ‘There’s no need,’ she said breezily. ‘I’ll catch the bus.’

Matt behaved as if she hadn’t spoken and told her where he would be parked.

A young car driver waiting at the lights buzzed down his window to call, ‘Hiya, sexy!’

Sophie flung him a pained glance from eyes as deep and rich and green as old-fashioned bottle glass. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

He looked startled by the comeback. Sophie pondered the decided embarrassment of still looking like a sixteen-year-old when she was almost twenty-three years old. She blamed her youthful appearance on her lack of height and skinny build. She kept her hair long because, although she would not have admitted it to a living soul, she was always terrified that her slender curves might lead to her being mistaken for a boy.

As she entered the legal firm’s smart office she tugged uneasily at the hem of her denim skirt, which rejoiced in floral cotton frills. The skirt was well out of fashion and she had worn it only because she thought it looked more formal than the jeans that filled her limited wardrobe. All her clothes came from charity shops and none were of the designer cast-off variety. Without complaint, she hovered while the receptionist chatted to a colleague and answered a call before finally deigning to take note of her arrival.

In the waiting room, Sophie took up a restive position by the window. She watched a limousine force its passage along the street outside and cause traffic chaos. The long silver vehicle came to a halt and a uniformed chauffeur emerged. Impervious to the car horns that protested the obstruction that the limo was creating, he opened a rear door for his passenger to alight.

As the passenger sprang out and straightened to an imposing height the breath caught in Sophie’s throat. Her green eyes widened with disbelief. It couldn’t be, it simply couldn’t be Pablo’s autocratic big brother, Antonio Rocha! She shrank back to the side of the window but continued to stare. It was Antonio all right. He had the impact of a tidal wave on her self-command.

There he was: the male who had made mincemeat of her every prejudice, overpowered her defences and reduced her to a level of eyelash-fluttering, giggly compliance. She suppressed a quiver of shame at that recollection. For nearly three years since that awful day, Sophie had told herself that Antonio could not possibly have been half as devastatingly attractive as she had believed him to be. And now here he was in the flesh to destroy even that comforting lie with his smooth aristocratic façade that set her teeth on edge and his altogether more disturbing quality of raw sexuality.

His gleaming black hair was cut fashionably short. His lean, classic features were stamped with a bold masculinity that attracted female admiration wherever he went. He was a work of art, Sophie acknowledged grudgingly. Not only did he look like some mythical Greek god, he was also built like one with broad shoulders, a narrow waist and long, powerful legs. Dressed in a trendy dark designer suit, he looked achingly handsome. Only when he strode into the same legal practice did she break free of her paralysis and sincerely doubt the evidence of her own eyes.

Why would Antonio Rocha be over in England? What was he doing on the Isle of Sheppey where the titled rich were scarcer than hens’ teeth? Surely he could only be in Sheerness on this particular day to keep the same appointment that she had been asked to attend? No other reason could rationally explain such a coincidence.

Sophie hurried over to the door that led back into the reception area where an alarming amount of activity had broken out. The once laconic receptionist was standing to attention with a megawatt smile of appreciation and a well-dressed older man was greeting Antonio with a horrendous amount of bowing and scraping. ‘Your Excellency,’ he murmured obsequiously.

As though some sixth sense warned him of her presence, Antonio turned his proud dark head. Eyes as rich as gold ingots in sunlight encountered hers. Her tummy flipped and her mouth ran dry and her heartbeat escalated as though she were trying to run up a hill. It was like being hit by a truck at breakneck speed and she reacted with panic.

‘Just what the heck are you doing here?’ Sophie asked belligerently.

Taken aback though Antonio was by her unexpected appearance, he betrayed no visible sign of the fact. In the space of a moment, he had absorbed every facet of the slender woman poised by the door. She had the fine bones and grace of a dancer and the transient air of a butterfly ready to take wing at the first sign of trouble. Her toffee-blonde hair fell in a riotous mass of curls round her delicately pointed face, framing wide green eyes bright and sharp as lancets, a freckled nose turned up at the tip and a full sweet cupid’s bow mouth. His keen gaze semi-cloaked by the lush density of his lashes, he tore his attention from the provocative appeal of that very feminine mouth and struggled to suppress a primitive and infuriatingly inappropriate flare of pure lust.

Sophie folded her arms to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. ‘I asked you a question, Antonio—who asked you to come here?’ she demanded.

‘His Excellency is attending this meeting at my request, Miss Cunningham,’ the solicitor interposed in a shocked tone of reproof.

Antonio moved a step closer and extended both his lean brown hands. His stunning dark deep-set eyes met hers in a head-on collision. Before she even knew what she was doing she was uncrossing her defensive arms and freeing her fingers to make contact with him, for a yearning she could not deny had leapt up inside her.

‘I know how close you were to your sister. Allow me to offer you my deepest condolences on her death,’ Antonio breathed with quiet gravity.

Hot colour rose like a flood tide to wash Sophie’s pale complexion. Her small hands trembled in the warm hold of his. Ferocious emotions gripped her and threatened to tear her apart. She could not doubt his sincerity and his compassion pushed her to the brink of tears. With his immaculate sense of occasion, social sophistication and superb manners, he had put her in the wrong by answering her less-than-polite greeting with courtesy. For that alone, Sophie could have screamed at him and wept in rage. She refused to be impressed. She also refused to think about how much he had hurt her almost three years earlier. Instead she concentrated on a more relevant line of attack. Where had Antonio Rocha and his rich, snobby family been when Belinda had been desperate for help and support?

She jerked her hands free in stark rejection. ‘I don’t want your precious condolences!’ she told him baldly.

‘Nonetheless they are yours,’ Antonio purred smoothly, marvelling at the level of her aggression and the novelty value of her rebuff. Women were never aggressive towards Antonio or ungrateful for his consideration. Sophie was the single exception to that rule.

‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,’ Sophie said stubbornly.

‘I was invited,’ Antonio reminded her gently.

‘Your Excellency…please come this way,’ the solicitor urged him in a pained tone of apology.

Although Sophie had grown increasingly pale with discomfiture and nerves, her chin came up. ‘I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me what’s going on! What gives you the right to hear what my sister said in her will?’

‘Let’s discuss that and other issues in a more private setting,’ Antonio suggested quietly.

Once again Sophie’s face flamed pink with chagrin. Squirming embarrassment afflicted her when she unwillingly recalled the consequences of her visit to Spain nearly three years earlier. His rejection had hurt like hell and devastated her pride. She had been too pathetically naïve to recognise that the blue-blooded Marqués de Salazar was simply amusing himself with a bit of a flirtation. It was an effort for her to repress that wounding memory and concentrate on the present.

Her slender spine stiff, she sank down in a seat in the spacious office. Determined to emulate Antonio’s cool, she resolved to resist the temptation to give way to any further outbursts and she compressed her lips. At the same time she was frantically striving to work out why Antonio Rocha should have been asked to come all the way from Spain. After all, Pablo’s haughty brother had not bothered to get in touch before, nor had he shown the smallest interest in the existence of his infant niece. An enervating frisson of anxiety travelled through Sophie.

The solicitor began to read the will with the slight haste of someone eager to get an unpleasant task out of the way. The document was short and simple and all too soon Sophie understood why Antonio’s presence had been deemed necessary. However, she could not accept what she had heard and questioned it. ‘My sister nominated Antonio as a guardian as well?’

‘Yes,’ the solicitor confirmed.

‘But I’m more than capable of taking care of Lydia,’ Sophie proclaimed brightly. ‘So there’s no need for anyone else to get involved!’

‘It’s not quite that simple,’ Antonio Rocha slotted in smooth as a rapier blade, but a faint frown line now divided his ebony brows. He was surprised that the will had made no mention of the disposition of Belinda’s property and was about to query that omission.

Sophie spared the tall Spaniard her first fleeting glance since entering the room. Her troubled green eyes telegraphed a storm warning. ‘It can be as simple as you’re willing to make it. I don’t know what came over Belinda when she chose to include you—’

‘Common sense?’ Antonio batted back drily.

‘I suppose Belinda must’ve been scared that both her and me might be involved in an accident,’ Sophie opined heatedly, fingers of pink highlighting her tautening facial bones as she fought to maintain her composure. ‘We’re talking worst-case scenario here, but luckily things aren’t as bad as that. I’m young and fit and well able to take care of Lydia all on my own.’

‘I would take issue with that statement,’ Antonio murmured.

Her teeth gritted. ‘You can take issue with whatever you like but it’s not going to change anything!’ she shot back at him.

‘Your sister nominated you and the marqués as joint guardians of her daughter,’ the solicitor expanded. ‘That means that you have equal rights over the child—’

‘Equal rights?’ Sophie gasped in rampant disbelief.

‘Equal rights,’ Antonio repeated with a silken emphasis he could not resist.

‘No other arrangement is possible without application to the courts,’ the solicitor decreed.

‘But that’s utterly outrageous!’ Sophie launched at Antonio.

‘With all due respect, I would suggest that my family is entitled to assist in the task of raising my brother’s child to adulthood.’

‘Why?’ Sophie slung back wrathfully as she leapt to her feet. ‘So that your precious family can make as big a mess of bringing up Lydia as they did with her father?’

Angry disconcertion had tensed Antonio’s lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Both our siblings are now dead. Let us respect that reality.’

‘Don’t you dare ask me to respect Pablo’s memory!’ Sophie flared back at him in disgust. ‘Your brother wrecked my sister’s life!’

‘May I speak to Miss Cunningham alone for a few minutes?’ Antonio enquired of the solicitor.

The older man, whose discomfiture during that increasingly heated exchange of views had been extreme, got up with relief at the request and left the room.

‘Sit down,’ Antonio instructed coolly, determined not to rise to the bait of her provocative accusations. ‘Appreciate that I will not argue with you. Recriminations are pointless and wrong in this situation. The child’s interests must come first—’

Sophie was so furious that only a scream could have expressed her feelings. Denied that outlet, she coiled her hands into tight little fists of restraint by her side. ‘Don’t you dare tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. Let me tell you—’

Antonio rose upright with unhurried grace. ‘You will tell me nothing that I do not ask for, as I will not listen. You will lower your voice and moderate your language.’

‘Where do you get off talking to me like that? Like I’m some stupid kid?’ Sophie launched at him. ‘You walk in here, you start laying down the law and acting like you know best—’

‘I most probably do know best,’ Antonio incised and not in a tone of apology. ‘I recognise that you have suffered a recent bereavement and that grief may well have challenged your temper—’

‘That’s not why I hate your guts and that is not why I am shouting at you!’ Sophie informed him fiercely, green eyes bright with fury. ‘Your rotten brother robbed my sister of everything she possessed and left her penniless and in debt. He was a hateful liar and a cheat. He took her money and threw it away at the gambling tables and at the racetrack. When there was nothing left he told her he’d never loved her anyway and he walked!’

Antonio was perturbed but not that surprised by those revelations. He felt it would be tactless to point out that, even before Belinda had wed his brother, he had made an unsuccessful attempt to warn Sophie’s sibling of her future husband’s essential unreliability when it came to money. ‘If that is the truth I am sorry for it. Had I been made aware of those facts, I would have granted Belinda all the help that it was within my power to give.’

Sophie snatched in a jagged breath. ‘Is that all you have got to say?’

Antonio had a low tolerance threshold for such personal attacks. In his blood ran the hot pure-bred pride of the Spanish nobility and a long line of ancestors to whom honour had been a chivalrous, engrained concept of prime importance. He had lived his own life within those tenets and his principles were of the highest. He had a profound dislike of being upbraided for his brother’s sins, for which he had too often paid a high personal price. His strong jaw line squared. He had no intention of getting dragged into an exchange that was only likely to exacerbate hostilities.

‘It is an unhappy fact that I cannot change the past,’ Antonio pointed out flatly. ‘The only subject I’m willing to discuss at this moment is your niece’s well-being.’

Eyes glinting a ferocious green, Sophie surveyed him in raging frustration. Nothing fazed him. Nothing knocked even a chip off that cold, smooth, marble façade of his. He was neither shamed nor affronted by his younger brother’s appalling mistreatment of her poor sister. Indeed there he stood, all six feet three inches of him, wonderfully insulated by his great wealth and aristocratic detachment from the harder realities of those less fortunate in life. He lived in a castle with servants. He had a private jet and a fleet of limos. His fancy suit had probably cost as much as she earned in a year. He would never know what it was to struggle just to pay the rent at the end of the month. He had even less compassion to spare for Belinda’s sufferings.

‘I’m not going to discuss Lydia with you!’ Sophie snapped in the feverish heat of her resentment. ‘You’re as much of a bastard as your sneaky brother was!’

Dark colour accentuated the superb slant of Antonio’s fabulous cheekbones. His brilliant eyes suddenly flared gold as the heart of a fire. ‘On what do you base your abuse? Ignorant prejudice?’

‘I’ve got personal experience of what kind of a guy you are!’ Sophie declared in a tempestuous surge of hurt and anger. ‘Not my type anyway!’

‘Sorry, I’m just not into tattoos,’ Antonio murmured in a sibilant tone designed to wound.

‘Tattoos?’ Sophie parroted in response to that particular taunt, feeling the image of the butterfly she had acquired at eighteen burn through the flesh of her shoulder like a brand. A fresh spurt of angry mortification took hold of her. ‘You total snob and snake! How dare you sneer at me like that? You act like you’re so superior and so polite, but you strung me a line and let me down and misjudged me that night!’

Antonio’s intent dark golden gaze was welded to her flushed heart-shaped face and bright green eyes. Her passion fascinated him. Temper was running through her like an electric current and she could not control it. He was grimly amused and unexpectedly pleased to discover that his justifiable put-down that night still rankled with her nearly three years after the event.

‘I don’t think so. I think you resent the fact that I saw you for what you were—’

Sophie was trembling with the force of her feelings. ‘And how did you see me?’ she challenged.

‘You don’t want to know,’ Antonio asserted lazily, dangling that carrot with every hope of provoking her further. She was already so mad she was practically jumping up and down on the spot and he could not resist the temptation to see just how much further he could push her before she lost it altogether.

Sophie took a hasty step closer and stared up at him with outrage stamped in her delicate features, her hands on her hips like a miniature fishwife. ‘Tell me…go on, just tell me!’

Antonio lifted and dropped his wide shoulders in an infinitesimal shrug of dismissal, deliberately prolonging the moment to the punchline. ‘In common with most men, I confess that I can really enjoy a wanton woman, but I’m afraid that promiscuity is a real turn-off. You missed your chance with me.’

Sophie hit him. She tried to slap him, but she was not tall enough. His reactions were also faster than her own and he sidestepped her so that her palm merely glanced off his shoulder, leaving him infuriatingly unharmed. ‘You pig!’ she seethed up at him. ‘You think I care about missing out with you?’

‘Attempted assault on that score nearly three years later rather speaks for you, querida,’ Antonio shared in his dark-timbred drawl, only dimly wondering why he was enjoying himself so much.

White with shock and chagrin at her own behaviour and the biting effect of his derision, Sophie headed to the door. ‘I refuse to have anything more to do with you.’

‘Perhaps just once you could exercise some discipline over your temper and think of the child whose future is at stake here.’

Sophie froze as if his words had plunged a dagger into her narrow back. Guilt and shame engulfed her. Stiffly she turned and tracked back to her seat without once looking in the direction of her tormentor.

‘Thank you,’ Antonio Rocha murmured smoothly.

Her fingers carved purple crescents of restraint into her palms. Never in her life had she hated anyone as she hated him at that moment. Never in her life had anyone made her feel so stupid and selfish. He invited the solicitor back in. Initially she was silent for fear of letting herself down by saying the wrong thing, but she had been planning to ask questions. However, there was no need for her to do so. Antonio requested the clarification that she might have asked for her own benefit and the answers told a chastened Sophie what she least wished to hear.

All arrangements for Lydia would have to be reached by mutual agreement between her and Antonio. Either of them could refuse the responsibility or relinquish rights to the other. But, as executor, the solicitor was empowered, if he thought it necessary, to invite social services to decide how Lydia’s needs would best be fulfilled. Adequate security and funding to support a child would naturally have to be taken into consideration.

‘So as I’m poor and Antonio’s rich, I can’t possibly have equal rights with him over my niece, can I?’ Sophie prompted tightly.

‘That is not how I would view the situation, Miss Cunningham.’ Dismayed by such blunt speech, the solicitor glanced at Antonio for support.

Antonio Rocha, Marqués de Salazar, rose unhurriedly upright a split second after Sophie scrambled to her feet, eager to be gone. ‘I see no reason why Miss Cunningham and I should not reach an amicable agreement,’ he drawled with all the controlled calm and cool of a male who knew he had beaten an opponent hollow. ‘I’d like to see Lydia this evening. Shall we say at seven? I’ll call at your home.’

‘I’m sure you’re not giving me a choice,’ Sophie framed bitterly.

Having taken complete charge, Antonio accompanied her out to the narrow corridor. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way between us,’ he murmured huskily.

‘How else could it be?’ she heard herself prompt.

He was so close that she could have reached out and touched him. The very sound of his rich, deep-pitched drawl was incredibly sensual. She let herself look up and it was a mistake. He took her breath away and rocked her world on its axis. In the blink of an eyelid it was as though time had slipped and catapulted her back almost three years. Meeting the slumberous darkness of his spectacular eyes, she trembled. Treacherous excitement seized her and made a prisoner of her. For a wild, endless moment, she was so fiercely aware of him that it was agony not to make actual physical contact with his lean, powerful frame. She heard the roughened catch of his breathing and imagined the burn of his beautiful mouth on hers. Only the humiliating memory of his comments earlier forced her back to solid earth again and left her bitterly ashamed of her own weakness.

‘Do you honestly think I’m stupid enough to fall for the same fake charm routine you used on me the last time?’ Sophie asked with stinging scorn, sliding sinuously past him with the quicksilver speed that characterised all her movements. She had vanished round the corner at the foot of the corridor before he was even properly aware that she had gone.

Antonio swore long and low and silently and with a ferocity that would have astounded those who knew him.




CHAPTER TWO


ON THE drive back home, Sophie gave Matt a brief update on events and then fell silent. She was too upset to make conversation.

Shattered by the contents of Belinda’s will, Sophie was simply terrified that she was in serious danger of losing Lydia and shell-shocked by meeting up with Antonio Rocha again. How could her sister have chosen Antonio to be her child’s guardian? After all, Belinda had had virtually no contact with her Spanish in-laws after her wedding. She had once admitted to Sophie that Pablo had never got on with his relatives and that that was why he preferred to live in London. When Antonio had contacted Belinda after Pablo’s death, Belinda had been almost hysterical in her determination to have nothing further to do with her late husband’s family. Even when Belinda had mentioned the will she had made, she had not admitted to Antonio’s place in it. Sophie had been totally unprepared for her sibling’s evident change of heart.

Nevertheless, Sophie could also understand exactly why Antonio had been selected: Belinda had always had enormous respect for money and status. It was rather ironic that her sister had actually been rather intimidated by the sheer grandeur of her husband’s family, who lived on a palatial scale. She thought that Belinda had most probably been hedging her bets when she had named Antonio in the will. Knowing that Sophie was poor as a church mouse, she could only have hoped that including the mega-rich Antonio might result in his offering to contribute towards his niece’s support. Sophie clutched at that concept and prayed that Pablo’s brother would have no desire to become any more closely involved in Lydia’s life.

Sophie had come to love Lydia as much as if her niece had been born to her. The bond between Sophie and her infant niece would always have been strong because, having suffered leukaemia as a child, Sophie was painfully aware that the treatment that had saved her life might also have left her infertile. Her attachment to her sister’s baby had been intensified, however, by the simple fact that from birth Lydia had been almost solely in Sophie’s care.

Initially Belinda had not been well and she had needed Sophie to look after her daughter until she was stronger. Within a few weeks, though, Belinda had met the man with whom she had been living at the time of her death. A successful salesman with a party-going lifestyle, Doug had shown no interest whatsoever in his girlfriend’s baby. Having fallen for him, Belinda had been quick to pass all responsibility for Lydia onto Sophie’s shoulders.

On many occasions, Sophie had attempted to reason with her sister and persuade her to spend more time with her baby daughter.

‘I wish I’d never had her!’ Belinda finally sobbed shamefacedly. ‘If I have to start playing Mummy and staying in more, Doug will just find someone else. I know I’m not being fair to you but I love him so much and I don’t want to lose him. Just give me some more time with him. I know he’ll come round about Lydia.’

But Doug did not come round. Indeed he told Belinda that there was no room for a child in his life.

‘That’s why I’ve reached a decision,’ Belinda told Sophie tearfully two weeks before she died. ‘You probably can’t have a baby of your own and I know how much you love Lydia. You’ve been a terrific mother to her, much better than I could ever be. If you want Lydia, you can keep her for ever and that way I can at least see her occasionally.’

That day Sophie deemed it wisest to say nothing, for she was convinced that Belinda’s affair with Doug was already fading and that her sister would soon bitterly regret her willingness to sacrifice even her child on his behalf. Sophie had grown up in a household where her father’s lady friends had almost always had children of their own. She knew that there were plenty of men who refused to take responsibility for anyone other than their own sweet selves. Her father had been one of that ilk, a work-shy charmer of colossal selfishness, but he had never been without a woman in his life. All too often those same women had put his needs ahead of their child’s in a pointless effort to hold on to him.



‘My goodness…fancy Belinda not even telling you!’ Norah Moore exclaimed in astonishment when she heard about Antonio Rocha’s appearance at the solicitor’s office. ‘That sister of yours was a dark horse, all right.’

Engaged in cuddling Lydia close and rejoicing in the sweet, soft warmth of her niece’s weight in her arms, Sophie sighed, ‘Belinda probably put Antonio’s name down and never thought about it again. She didn’t keep secrets from me.’

‘Didn’t she?’ the older woman snorted, unimpressed. ‘I reckon Belinda only ever told you what she thought you wanted to hear!’

Sophie stiffened. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you teasing me?’

Reddening, Norah looked discomfited. ‘Of course I am,’ she said awkwardly.

It was not the first time that the older woman had hinted that Sophie might not have known her sibling as well as she thought she did. Sophie was irritated but placed no credence in that suggestion. She was well aware that Norah and Belinda had merely tolerated each other. Norah had been too rough and ready for Belinda’s refined standards and had been hurt and offended by the younger woman’s coolness.

With Lydia in her pram, Sophie left the Moores’ neat little bungalow and walked back to the static caravan where she lived. Belinda had totally loathed living there and had been delighted to move into her boyfriend’s smart apartment in town. But Sophie looked on the caravan as her home and loved the fact that the big front window looked out on a field where sheep sometimes grazed. Indeed, high on her agenda was the dream that some day she might be in a position to stop renting and buy a more up-to-date model.

Changing back into her jeans and gathering up her cleaning materials, Sophie was in a hurry to make up the time she had lost from her day’s work. Try as she might, she found it impossible to lock her memories of Belinda’s wedding and her first meeting with Antonio out of her thoughts…

Sophie had been thrilled when she was asked to be a bridesmaid. Some of her enthusiasm had waned, however, once she’d realised that Belinda wanted her to conceal her humble beginnings and avoid any close contact with Pablo’s blue-blooded family. Only her sister’s frantic pleas for her to share that special day with her had persuaded Sophie to overlook those embarrassing strictures.

Belinda had paid all her expenses and it had been cheapest for Sophie to travel to Spain on a five-day package holiday at a nearby resort. Sophie’s father, his then girlfriend and her son had decided to take advantage of the low prices and share the same apartment. The day of their arrival, and the night before the wedding, Sophie had accompanied Belinda to a social evening at the imposingly large home of one of Pablo’s relatives.

Sophie had felt like a prune in the fancy pink suit that Belinda had insisted on buying for her. Worried that she might mortify her sister by saying or doing the wrong thing in such exalted company, Sophie had taken refuge in the billiards room. It was there that she had met Antonio for the first time. Glancing up from the solo game she had been engaged in, she had seen him watching her from the doorway. Drop-dead gorgeous in an open-necked black shirt and chinos, he had simply taken her breath away.

‘How long have you been standing there?’ she asked.

Antonio laughed huskily. ‘Long enough to appreciate your skill,’ he replied in perfect, accented English. ‘But you’re not playing billiards, you’re playing snooker. Who taught you?’

‘My dad.’

‘Either you’re a born player or you must have practised a great deal.’

Sophie resisted the urge to admit that when she was a kid her father had often kept her out of school so that he could take her into bars at lunchtime and place bets on her ability to beat all comers at snooker. Her father had only stopped that lucrative pastime when the authorities had given him a stern warning about her poor school-attendance record.

‘I guess…’ she muttered, biting her lower lip while all the while studying him from below her lashes and feeling horribly shy. She had an innate distrust of handsome men and he was dazzling. She was also noticing the subtle signs of expensive designer elegance in his apparel and going into automatic retreat. ‘I shouldn’t be in here.’

‘Why not? Are you not a friend of the bride’s?’

Remembering Belinda’s warning, she nodded grudging agreement.

‘And your name?’ Antonio prompted, strolling silently closer.

‘Sophie…’

He extended a lean brown hand. ‘I am Antonio.’

Awkwardly she brushed his fingertips and backed towards the door. ‘I’d better get back to the other room before I’m missed. I don’t want to insult them—’

‘Them…?’ He quirked an amused dark brow. ‘All those terrifying Spanish people next door?’

‘It might seem funny to you, but I don’t speak the lingo and the ones that speak English can’t seem to understand my English and keep on asking me to repeat things… It’s a nightmare!’ she heard herself confiding, desperately grateful just to find someone who could follow what she was saying.

‘I shall go and tell them off immediately. How dare they frighten you into hiding in the billiard room?’ Antonio teased.

Sophie lifted her chin. ‘I don’t hide from people.’

‘Let’s play…’ He presented her with the cue she had abandoned. ‘I’ll teach you the game.’

‘I’ll beat you hollow,’ she warned him.

His stunning dark eyes gleamed with pleasure at that unashamed challenge to his masculinity. ‘I don’t think so.’

In fact she played the worst she had ever played. She was so intensely aware of him that she was quite unable to resist the need to keep on looking across at him. She was terrified of the strength of his attraction for her. Young though she was, she was painfully aware of the havoc that tended to result from such wayward physical enthusiasms. It was almost a relief when Belinda interrupted them, aghast to find her little sister in Antonio’s company. Making an excuse, Belinda was quick to separate them.

‘Didn’t you realise who he is?’ she scolded Sophie. ‘You shouldn’t even be talking to him. That’s Pablo’s big brother…the one with the title and the castle… the Marqués of Salazar.’

For a real live Spanish marquis, Antonio had, on first brief acquaintance at least, seemed refreshingly hip and normal. Sophie was savagely disappointed to discover how far he was out of her reach and annoyed that Antonio had not spelled out exactly who he was. Impervious to Belinda’s clumsy attempts to keep them apart, Antonio intervened to sweep Sophie off to meet some of the younger people present. When the evening came to a close, it was Antonio who had to drive Sophie back to the holiday resort: in all the excitement of being the centre of attention as the bride, Belinda had forgotten about her sister’s transport needs.

‘I can’t understand why you are not staying with your sister at my grandmother’s home,’ Antonio admitted, assisting her into a long, low-slung fire-engine-red sports car that would have looked at home in a Bond movie.

‘I didn’t want to intrude—’

‘I’m not happy that you should be staying in an apartment alone. I do not wish to imply criticism of your sister, but you should be relaxing and enjoying my family’s hospitality. I’ll wait while you pack,’ Antonio imparted with the quiet but absolute authority of a male accustomed to instant obedience to his every expressed wish.

‘But I’m not alone…er, I’m with friends,’ Sophie protested awkwardly, recognising the impossibility of naming her father when Belinda had begged her not to tell a living soul that they were actually only half-sisters because their late mother had had an extramarital affair. Her sibling had been ashamed of that history, had already refused to share it with Pablo and had been determined that his aristocratic relatives should not find out about it either.

‘Friends?’ Antonio queried, his bewilderment visibly growing.

‘Yes, I decided to make a holiday out of my trip over here…nothing wrong with that, is there?’

‘No, there is not,’ Antonio drawled in a measured tone. ‘But you only arrived in Spain this morning and are perhaps not the best judge of good accommodation. My cousin owns a local business and he tells me that the tourist complex where you are staying has a bad name. The police are often called there to deal with fights and drunks.’

She resisted a flippant urge to tell him that her father would be very much at home there. ‘I’m not a delicate flower…I’ll manage.’

‘But you should not have to manage,’ Antonio murmured gently.

The idea that she might look to a man to protect her from the evils of the world was a really novel concept to Sophie. She lay awake that night on her uncomfortable sofa bed in the apartment’s tiny reception area. While she strove to block out the noise of the argument between her father and his girlfriend in the room next door she discovered that she could not stop thinking about Antonio.

At every point where she had consciously expected Antonio to reveal his male feet of clay, she had been confounded. He had listened to every little thing she’d said as if he was interested. He had not once shouted at her or sworn at her or eyed up other girls. He did not drink and drive. Nor had he at any stage attempted to ply her with alcohol or make a pass at her. Indeed Antonio Rocha had in some mysterious and romantic way contrived to make Sophie feel special and cosseted and worthy of attention and care for the first time ever.

At twenty years old, Sophie had never had a serious boyfriend. She was a virgin because she was totally terrified of sliding down the same slippery slope that had wrecked the lives of most of her father’s girlfriends. Unlike them, she hadn’t had to worry about becoming a mother at too young an age. But she had observed that placing faith and energy in countless casual relationships could result in low self-esteem, even a disrupted education and poor employment prospects, thus trapping one in poverty. She had told herself that she was too clever to succumb to the dangerous allure of casual sex, but the real truth was that she had never been remotely tempted to succumb to the coarse advances she had met with.

Never before had she lain awake until dawn counting the hours until she would see a guy again. Never before had she agonised over whether or not a man liked her or whether in fact he was simply being polite. Never before had she fantasised like mad over what it would be like if that same man were to kiss her. In fact her imagination was so extravagantly exercised by Antonio that when she saw him face to face again embarrassment afflicted her with blushes, stammers and painful shyness for the first time in her life. She had floated through Belinda’s wedding festivities on a cloud of such intense happiness that the wake-up call of cruel reality had been all the harder to bear twenty-four hours later…



Antonio stayed behind at the solicitor’s to clarify certain matters for his own benefit. Even the vague facts that he was able to establish stamped the kind of reflective frown to his lean, dark features that put his employees on their mettle.

Evidently, Belinda had been penniless at the time of her death and working as a barmaid. Yet when she had married Pablo, the beautiful blonde had been a receptionist in a London modelling agency, her comfort and security ensured by the healthy amount of cash and property she had inherited from her parents. Antonio had little need to wonder who or what had been responsible for bringing about Belinda’s reduced circumstances and angry regret gripped him. That his late sister-in-law had been living with another man did go some way to satisfying his need to know why Belinda had apparently been determined not to ask her late husband’s family for help.

It took a lot to shock Antonio but he was stunned when, having asked for Sophie’s address, he learned where exactly she was living. He could not initially credit that she resided in a trailer park. Was his criminally dishonest brother responsible for her impoverishment as well? The limousine paused outside the entrance while his chauffeur double-checked his destination with his employer. Alighting outside the run-down office, Antonio decided that Sophie was a problem best cured by the liberal application of money.

Sophie was cleaning the floor in one of the smarter mobile homes on the site when a brisk knock sounded on the door. Scrambling up, she pushed it open and froze when she clashed with dark-as-midnight eyes set below level black brows. She knew she should not but she stared, drinking in the dark, sexy symmetry of his bold, masculine features. Her heart started to beat very, very fast. ‘You said seven o’clock,’ she reminded him. ‘What are you doing here this early?’

‘Is this not a good time for you?’ Antonio enquired, his keen gaze raking from the torrent of her curls gilded to gold by the sunlight to the vivid intensity of her animated face and then back to centre on the soft, ripe curve of her mouth. Taken individually her features were ordinary and flawed, he reflected grimly. But that did not explain why she continually gave him the impression of being ravishingly pretty.

‘No, it’s not… I mean, I’m working and Lydia’s asleep and it’s just not convenient,’ Sophie broke into an enervated surge of protest.

‘I appreciate that but I have nothing else to do in this locality while I wait. I’m also understandably eager to meet my niece,’ Antonio responded without apology. There was a brooding coolness in his decisive scrutiny as he suppressed the absurd spark of desire she always generated. He could only think she had the deceptive allure of the unfamiliar for him. ‘May I come in?’

Feeling ridiculously flustered, Sophie edged back into the trailer’s small lounge area and surreptitiously moistened her dry mouth. He strolled up the steps and took up what felt like every square inch of space.

‘You’ll have to wait until Lydia wakes up from her nap.’

Impatience tautened Antonio’s striking bone structure. ‘Meeting her uncle should be rather more fun than sleeping. I haven’t got much time to spend in the UK. I’d be grateful if you tried not to make matters more complicated than they need be.’

By the end of that little speech Sophie was breathing a little heavily. She had put Lydia down for a nap so that the baby would be less tired when Antonio made his visit. His early arrival had thrown that schedule into chaos. Her small, slight body stiff with annoyance and concern, she bent her curly head and pinned her lips tight on the tart comments eager to flow from her ready tongue. Antonio Rocha, Marqués of Salazar, was loaded. The solicitor had treated him like royalty and had treated her like trash to be tolerated. The warning was clear: she could not afford to make Antonio a bitter enemy. If push came to shove, he would always win the upper hand by virtue of his wealth and status. Therefore, even if it choked her, she had to be polite for Lydia’s sake and swallow Antonio’s every demand with as much grace as she could manage.

‘Lydia will be a little cranky if we waken her before she’s ready,’ Sophie said hesitantly.

‘I want to see my niece now,’ Antonio decreed, having decided that Sophie responded best to firm authority.

After a pause for consideration, Sophie nodded, for she wanted to be fair. There had been a lot of little boys and girls at Belinda’s wedding and her sister had once told her that the Spanish were particularly fond of children. Antonio was obviously accustomed to babies and confident of being able to handle his niece. She pushed open the door of the narrow bunkroom where she had stowed Lydia to sleep undisturbed in her little travel cot.

Antonio gazed down at the small hump under the blanket, which was topped by a fluff of light brown curls. His niece looked worryingly tiny. Both Pablo and Belinda had been tall. On the other hand Sophie barely reached the top of Antonio’s chest, so it was perfectly possible that the baby was naturally undersized and still quite fit. He reminded himself that when he took Lydia back to Spain she would be checked over. The family doctor, who was an old friend, had suggested that giving the baby a full medical examination would be a wise precaution: one or two babies in the most recent generation had been born with heart murmurs.

Mastering his own reluctance, Antonio decided to show an appropriate level of interest in the child by lifting her out of the cot for a closer inspection. He brushed back the blanket and scooped the baby up.

Almost instantly, the baby went as stiff as a tiny steel girder and looked up at him with enormous stricken brown eyes. Her mouth opened wide enough to treat him to an unwelcome view of her miniature tonsils and a yell that would have roused a graveyard exploded from her. Her face turning scarlet, the baby shrieked blue murder as if she were being attacked. Antonio stared down at his niece in paralysed horror.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ he demanded.

‘Have you ever been snatched out of bed by a stranger and dangled in mid-air like a toy?’ Sophie asked fiercely, resisting the urge to haul Lydia from his inept and unfeeling hands.

Hearing Sophie’s voice, Lydia twisted her little head round. The baby squirmed like mad and stretched out her hands towards her aunt in a movement that was as frantic as it was revealing.

‘Perhaps you should have made the effort to introduce us first,’ Antonio censured, and without further ado he deposited the screaming bundle into Sophie’s waiting arms.

His sculpted mouth curling, his ears still ringing from that appalling bout of shrieking, he watched his tiny niece clamp onto Sophie’s shoulder like a limpet restored to its favourite rock. An immediate and very welcome silence fell. While the baby clung with what he considered to be quite unnecessary drama, Sophie rewarded that show of extreme favouritism with an enormous amount of petting and kissing and soothing whispers.

‘I had no idea that the child would be quite so attached to you,’ Antonio admitted flatly.

‘I’ve been looking after Lydia since she was born.’ Restless with tension, Sophie moved out of the bunkroom and back into the lounge. ‘Belinda was ill at first…and then later, well, there were reasons why she wasn’t able to spend as much time as she would have liked with her daughter.’

‘What reasons?’ Antonio prompted.

‘Belinda started seeing a bloke who wasn’t fussed about kids and when she moved in with him, Lydia stayed on with me,’ Sophie explained grudgingly.

‘Here…in this place?’

‘We should be so lucky.’ Sophie loosed an uneasy laugh. ‘This is a luxury holiday home. The one I live in is at least twenty years older and without frills.’

Antonio spread his attention round the confines of a room that he found claustrophobically small. Frills? What frills? The décor was abysmal and so jazzy and cheap it offended his eyes. This was what she called luxury? He bit back an incredulous comment.

‘If you don’t live in this, why are you here?’

‘I’m cleaning it for the holiday-makers coming to stay tomorrow.’

Appalled by that admission, Antonio stared at her with concealed disbelief. ‘You are employed on the park as a cleaner?’

Sophie curved Lydia even closer to her taut length. ‘Have you got a problem with that?’

His strong jaw line squared, for he had hoped she had been joking. ‘Of course not. You said that my brother robbed your sister. Did you lose money too?’

‘I’ve never had money to lose,’ Sophie answered in surprise, and then, realising that he did not understand why that should be the case, she sighed and surrendered to the inevitable. ‘There’s a skeleton in my family cupboard and Belinda didn’t like me to talk about it. Belinda and I may have had the same mother but we had different fathers. I didn’t meet my sister until I was seventeen.’

‘All families have their secrets,’ Antonio murmured, relieved to finally have some explanation on that score. ‘Let us be candid with each other.’

Sophie tensed again. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you any lies.’

Picking up on her anxiety, Lydia lifted her head and loosed an uneasy little cry.

Antonio spread expressive lean brown hands. ‘I do not want to argue with you.’

‘Good…but between you and me and the wall there, you and I would always argue.’

‘I don’t accept that.’ Antonio angled a smile at her, dark golden eyes cool and confident. ‘A child’s future is at stake here and after what you’ve undergone in recent months, it is natural that you should be under stress.’

‘I haven’t undergone anything,’ Sophie asserted tightly. ‘I love Lydia and I enjoy looking after her. Worrying about what’s going to happen now that you’re in the picture is all that’s stressing me out.’

Two pairs of eyes, one green, one brown, were anxiously pinned to him, both fearful. For the first time in his thirty years of existence, Antonio felt like the wolf in the fairy tale, guilty of terrorising the innocent and the vulnerable. At the same time being treated like the bad guy infuriated him and stung his strong pride. He decided that it was time to drop the diplomatic approach. If he made his intentions and his expectations clear there would be no room for misunderstandings.

‘Why should you worry about what’s going to happen now that I’m here to help? I must assume that you intend to insult me—’

‘No, I didn’t intend that!’ Sophie interrupted in dismay at that interpretation of her words.

Lean, strong face hard, Antonio dealt her a stony appraisal. ‘My intervention can only be of advantage to my niece when she is currently living in appalling poverty. You have done your best in most trying circumstances and I honour you for your efforts on the child’s behalf and thank you for your concern,’ he drawled smooth as glass. ‘But Lydia’s best interests will be met only when I take her back to Spain and ensure that she receives the care and privileges which are hers by right of birth.’

As he spoke every atom of colour slowly drained from Sophie’s shattered face. ‘We don’t live in appalling poverty—’

‘On my terms, I’m afraid that you do. I do not wish to offend you but I must speak the truth.’

‘You can’t take her away from me…and back to Spain,’ Sophie breathed shakily, feeling so sick at that threat she could hardly squeeze out sound. The very idea of losing Lydia hit her as hard as a punch in the stomach, winding her, driving her mind blank with gut-wrenching fear.

‘Why not?’ Antonio quirked an ebony brow. She was white as snow and clutching the baby to her like a second skin. A mixture of frustration and anger gripped him, for he knew that his intentions were pure and his solution the only sensible one. ‘I can see no alternative to that plan. If you love the child, you won’t stand in her way. I will give her a much better life.’

Sophie took a step back as if she could no longer bear to be that close to him. ‘I honestly think I will die if you take her away from me,’ she framed unsteadily. ‘I love her so much and she loves me. You can’t just throw me out of her life as though I’m nothing just because I’m poor.’

Antonio stilled. Faint dark colour illuminated the spectacular slant of his carved cheekbones. He was severely disconcerted by the tears swimming in her eyes and her raw emotion. She had abandoned all pride, dropped her tough front. She looked like a tiny teenager striving to stand up to a bully. The baby, evidently picking up on her aunt’s distress, was sobbing into Sophie’s slight shoulder.

‘It is not a matter of throwing you out of her life…This is the language of emotion, not of intellect,’ Antonio censured in exasperation.

Sophie dragged in a deep, tremulous breath and treated him to a look of fierce condemnation. ‘I’m not ashamed of that…as far as I’m concerned love would win over money every time—’

‘According to what I understand, you’ve never had any money, so are scarcely qualified to make such a sweeping statement—’

‘I love her…you don’t!’ Sophie launched at him.

‘If you love her why don’t you restrain your temper and stop scaring her?’ Antonio asked with lethal effect.

Sophie gave him an anguished look and turned away, soothing the anxious child in her arms.

Antonio decided that it had been a definite mistake to try to cut to the baseline as if he were dealing with a business issue. There was nothing businesslike about Sophie. Nothing practical, nothing sensible, nothing controlled. In fact he had never seen a woman betray that amount of emotion and the freedom with which she showed it held an almost indecent fascination for him. She was a powder keg of passionate feeling. Sexual curiosity threatened to seize him and he fought it off, angry with her, angry with himself. But even anger could not make him unaware of a very powerful urge to just grab her up and flatten her to the nearest bed. Scarcely an appropriate response to her distress, he acknowledged. He despised the primitive reactions she had always stirred in him.

‘I want you to think over what I’ve said,’ Antonio continued, deciding that attempting further discussion in the current atmosphere would be unprofitable. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow morning at eleven. If you need to talk to me before then, you can reach me at this hotel.’ He passed her a card. ‘Tell me where you live.’

‘In the blue van at the far end…the one parked right by the field,’ Sophie told him chokily.

‘I have no desire to sound like an actor in a bad movie but I can improve your life as well as Lydia’s. You don’t need to live at this level.’

‘Oddly enough, I’ve never met any baby thieves living like this, only decent people who don’t think money and social status is the be-all and end-all of life!’ Sophie tossed back accusingly.

Antonio decided to prove his maturity by not responding to that taunt. ‘I think it would be less upsetting for the baby if she was…resting when I call tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to think about how much Lydia will be upset if I suddenly vanish out of her life,’ Sophie retorted thickly.

Antonio was sufficiently impressed by that warning to glance at the baby. He could not evade the suspicion that his brother’s child had inherited Sophie’s overly emotional temperament and was more sensitive than most. He had only lifted the child and it had gone off like a burglar alarm on hyper alert. For a split second he imagined carrying the baby away with both Sophie and the baby screaming and sobbing at high volume and he barely managed to repress a very masculine shudder.

Discovering a depth of imagination that he had not known he possessed, he even considered the risk of tabloid headlines and interference. Baby thief. No, he would be careful to do nothing likely to rouse such hysterical publicity. He was, he reminded himself, a highly intelligent and shrewd businessman. He was renowned for his logic and subtlety and his willingness to consider fresh and innovative approaches to find workable solutions. He was confident that he would find a way to persuade Sophie to accept the inevitable with good grace.

‘You don’t care about how I feel or how she feels, do you?’ Sophie accused as she thrust wide the front door, descended the steps and proceeded to buckle Sophie into her buggy.





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