Книга - The Secret He Must Claim

The Secret He Must Claim
Chantelle Shaw


An illicit encounter with the Spaniard…Heiress Elin Saunderson was instantly seduced by mysterious stranger Cortez. But after their sinful night together she was left alone…and pregnant! A year later, she learns that Cortez is the rightful successor to her adopted father’s fortune and penniless Elin finds herself at risk of losing everything – including her son!Cortez Ramos is set on claiming the secret Elin kept from him – but Elin proves as protective a mother as she is a tortuous temptation. His solution: demand a marriage of convenience which will legitimise his heir and return Elin to his bed!







An illicit encounter with the Spaniard...

Heiress Elin Saunderson is instantly seduced by mysterious stranger Cortez. But after their sinful night together she’s left alone...and pregnant! A year later, she learns that Cortez is the rightful successor to her adoptive father’s fortune, and penniless Elin finds herself at risk of losing everything—including her son!

Cortez Ramos is set on claiming the secret Elin kept from him—but Elin proves as protective a mother as she is a torturous temptation. His solution: demand a marriage of convenience, which will legitimize his heir and return Elin to his bed!


‘Ralph stated in his will that he wished for you to marry and provide your son with a father. Are you in contact with your child’s father, and do you intend to marry him in order to claim your inheritance?’

Cortez did not know why he had asked her when he really wasn’t interested in Elin’s private life. But he stared at her because he couldn’t help himself, and waited tensely for her answer.

He realised he was bracing himself for her to reply, but when she did he was unprepared for the shock wave that ripped through him.

‘You are my son’s father,’ she said, in the soft voice that had haunted him for the past year.


The Saunderson Legacy (#u22f8934d-e6c4-51e2-a156-7cfcba9ca0e0)

Jarek and Elin Saunderson had nothing until they were adopted into the high society of the Saunderson family.

Now, following the death of the parents they adored, they soon discover a maze of secrets which threaten to destroy their legacy—and lead them each to uncover unforeseen passions…

Find out more in…

The Secret He Must Claim

A shocking revelation in her adoptive father’s will forces Elin into a marriage of convenience with the father of her secret baby!

The Throne He Must Take

Playboy Jarek needs help to uncover the secrets of the past—if he can only resist the temptation in front of him…Dr Holly Maitland!


The Secret He Must Claim

Chantelle Shaw






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


CHANTELLE SHAW lives on the Kent coast and thinks up her stories while walking on the beach. She has been married for over thirty years and has six children. Her love affair with reading and writing Mills & Boon stories began as a teenager, and her first book was published in 2006. She likes strong-willed, slightly unusual characters. Chantelle also loves gardening, walking and wine!

Books by Chantelle Shaw

Mills & Boon Modern Romance

Acquired by Her Greek Boss

To Wear His Ring Again

A Night in the Prince’s Bed

Captive in His Castle

At Dante’s Service

The Greek’s Acquisition

Behind the Castello Doors

A Dangerous Infatuation

Wedlocked!

Trapped by Vialli’s Vows

Bought by the Brazilian

Mistress of His Revenge

Master of Her Innocence

The Howard Sisters

Sheikh’s Forbidden Conquest

A Bride Worth Millions

The Bond of Brothers

His Unexpected Legacy

Secrets of a Powerful Man

Visit the Author Profile page

at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/) for more titles.


For Arpita, who loves reading romance books as much as I enjoy writing them.

Thank you for being such a dedicated fan.

With love, Chantelle.


Contents

Cover (#u6cd51de1-d263-599f-8c2c-6a6849d647e2)

Back Cover Text (#u77c26a8b-1573-52b8-acbf-d2d8b46279f7)

Introduction (#ubc52024b-65c0-5a77-a415-82ef4822bde3)

The Saunderson Legacy (#ua16c4933-1ff0-5d53-ba58-83bc6519f05f)

Title Page (#u862ab589-0e27-5541-8a5d-d88f33abad7c)

About the Author (#u8f9b447f-bdda-5997-9060-251a13a71e77)

Dedication (#u461ae00e-f029-5534-bbd3-0e777567836e)

CHAPTER ONE (#uad1ca4cc-d315-5b62-82a9-1da5a01a65e8)

CHAPTER TWO (#ue8591e3a-ec41-595e-97be-9ce836500f41)

CHAPTER THREE (#u4210cdc0-efa3-578b-9a43-66ed32c412c4)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER ONE (#u22f8934d-e6c4-51e2-a156-7cfcba9ca0e0)

THE ROOM WAS SPINNING. Bright lights flashed in front of her eyes, forming colourful patterns as if she were looking through the lens of a kaleidoscope. Elin blinked and found she was staring up at the chandelier in the drawing room. She had never noticed before how the crystal prisms sparkled like diamonds.

‘Can I get you another drink?’ A voice sounded over the pounding beat of rock music. She felt disorientated and strangely disembodied, as if she were floating and looking down at herself. She tried to focus on the guy who had spoken to her, and vaguely recognised he was one of Virginia’s friends who had been at the nightclub earlier in the evening. Elin didn’t know half the people who had come back to her family’s London residence in Kensington to continue her birthday celebrations.

‘You can’t be on your own tonight,’ Virginia had insisted when the nightclub where they’d planned to spend the evening had closed early. ‘You’ll only feel miserable, remembering your mother. I’ll put the word around that the party is carrying on back at your place.’

Elin hadn’t argued because Virginia was right; she couldn’t bear to be alone with the memories of her adoptive mother’s shocking death six months ago. She’d told Ralph she was spending her birthday with friends in Scotland, but freezing fog had caused travel disruption at Gatwick and her flight had been cancelled. The person she most wanted to spend her birthday with was her brother, but Jarek was in Japan on business for Saunderson’s Bank. His trip was unavoidable he’d said, but Elin had a feeling that Jarek was avoiding her because he blamed himself for Mama’s death.

‘Elin?’

She jerked her mind back to the guy—Tom, she thought he’d said was his name. He was standing too close and looking at her in a way that made her wish she hadn’t worn the daringly low-cut dress Virginia had persuaded her to buy. The dress was little more than a wisp of scarlet silk and chiffon and the shoestring shoulder straps meant she couldn’t wear a bra.

Tom plucked her empty glass out of her hand. ‘Do you want the same again?’

‘I’d better not. I think I’ve had too much to drink.’ This strange feeling must be because she was drunk. It was odd because usually alcohol made her sleepy but she felt wildly energetic and euphoric. The exhausting grief of the past months seemed distant, as if she were detached from her emotions. Maybe the answer was to drink herself into oblivion, the way her brother had done too often lately, Elin thought bleakly. For a split second, misery ripped through her. But she couldn’t cope with it tonight. She was desperate to forget for a few hours the image of her mother collapsed on the floor and lying so still. Too still.

‘What was in the last cocktail you made me?’ she asked Tom. ‘It tasted different from a usual Manhattan.’

He gave her an odd look. ‘I might have added a dash too much Angostura bitters.’ He slid his arm around her waist and Elin repressed a shudder when she felt his hot breath on her cheek. He was good-looking and she guessed a lot of women would find him attractive, but there was something about him that repelled her and she stiffened when he murmured, ‘Let’s go somewhere where we can be alone, baby.’

‘Actually, I would like another drink,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m really thirsty.’ It wasn’t a lie. She had a raging thirst, and for some reason her heart was beating unnaturally fast. She watched Tom push his way across the crowded room to the sideboard which was being used as a drinks bar and hurried away before he returned.

In the lounge, someone had rolled up the Wilton rug so that people could dance. The music was even louder in here and the heavy bass throbbed through Elin’s body. Someone grabbed her hand and started dancing with her. The pounding beat was irresistible and she shook back her long hair and danced like she’d never danced before, wild and abandoned. Laughter bubbled up inside her. It was a long time since she’d laughed and it felt good.

Many times in the past months she’d tagged along to nightclubs with her brother so she could try to stop him drinking too much. She’d learned that the best way to distract the paparazzi’s attention away from Jarek was to grab the limelight herself, and so she’d thrown herself into partying and made sure it was her the press photographed falling out of a club in the early hours rather than her brother.

The tabloids had dubbed her an It Girl and said she was a spoiled socialite. She had been accused by some of the media of bringing shame to Lord Saunderson and to the memory of his wife.

What a way to repay the philanthropic couple who adopted Elin from an orphanage in war-torn Bosnia when she was four years old and gave her and her older brother a privileged upbringing!

That was what one journalist had written. Elin didn’t care what the tabloids said about her as long as Jarek’s name stayed out of the headlines and he did not earn even more of Ralph’s disapproval.

But tonight she wasn’t pretending to be having fun. Tonight she felt super-confident and carefree and if it was because she’d had too much alcohol, so what? It was her twenty-fifth birthday and she could do what she liked on her birthday. And so she carried on dancing and laughing because she was scared that if she stopped she would plunge back into that dark place of heartache and grief that had consumed her for six long months.

She had no shortage of dance partners. Men crowded around her and she flirted with them because for this one night she was a siren wearing a sexy red dress. At midnight Virginia brought out a cake covered with candles. ‘Don’t forget to make a wish,’ she reminded Elin.

A birthday wish was supposed to come true if you blew out all your candles with one breath. But a million wishes could not bring Mama back. Elin looked around at the party guests. Some were friends she’d known since her childhood after her adoptive parents had brought her to England. Others she’d never met before, but she guessed they belonged to Virginia’s wide circle of friends. Everyone was waiting for her to blow out her candles but she didn’t know what to wish for.

And then she saw him.

He was standing apart from the crowd. A lone wolf. The thought came into Elin’s mind and was immediately followed by the certainty that he was a dangerous predator. She stared across the room at him...and time simply stopped. The music and voices disappeared and there was nothing but him. The most beautiful man she had ever seen.

Taller than everyone else in the room and darkly handsome, there was something Byronic and brooding about him that made her think of Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights. On one level her brain registered surprise that she hadn’t noticed him all evening until now, but her rational thought process was overtaken by a more primitive reaction to his raw maleness.

He was dressed in black jeans and a fine-knit black sweater that clung to his broad chest. Over it he wore a brown leather jacket which was scuffed in several places and furthered the impression that he lived life on his terms and didn’t give a damn what others thought of him. His black hair was thick and tousled, as if he had a habit of raking his fingers through it, and the black stubble on his jaw and above his top lip added to his smouldering sex appeal.

Something visceral knotted in the pit of Elin’s stomach. So this was what desire felt like. This fire in her blood. Her breasts felt heavy and there was a dragging ache between her legs. She wasn’t a freak, as she’d assumed when her friends had talked about their love lives and she’d had nothing to say.

‘Maybe you’re gay, but you can’t face up to the truth about your sexuality,’ Virginia had suggested when Elin had admitted that she was still a virgin.

‘The truth is I’m not interested in having sex with anyone. I’ve dated a few guys but I’ve never wanted to take things further.’ Elin suspected that a psychologist might blame the traumatic first four years of her life spent at an orphanage in the middle of a war zone for her trust issues. Or maybe she was frigid, as one ex-boyfriend had told her when he’d failed to persuade her to sleep with him.

Her friend had refused to write her off. ‘I reckon you just haven’t met the right man yet. One day you’ll meet a guy who will flick your switch.’

Was this what Virginia had meant? As Elin stared at this modern-day Heathcliff she felt light and heat and energy explode inside her and suddenly she knew what to wish for when she blew out the candles on her cake.

Someone turned up the volume on the stereo and music pounded in the room, echoing the pounding of Elin’s blood in her veins as the crowd around her dispersed and she discovered the man was watching her. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, one foot casually crossed over his other ankle. He gave the appearance of being relaxed but his stillness reminded Elin of a jungle cat preparing to pounce. He did not move his gaze from her when she walked towards him, and it was as if he had taken control of her mind and she could not turn away from him even if she’d wanted to.

His eyes were the colour of sable flecked with gold, she discovered when she halted in front of him. Set beneath heavy black brows that drew together in a faint frown when she smiled at him.

‘You’re supposed to wish me a happy birthday.’ She did not recognise the teasing, flirtatious voice as hers, but then she didn’t recognise anything about herself tonight, especially the heat that blazed inside her and made her yearn for something she could not even explain.

Something flickered in his dark eyes but his stern mouth did not soften. ‘Happy birthday, Blondie.’

‘That’s not my name.’ She hated the nickname the tabloids had given her, with its implication that because she was pretty and blonde she must also be a brainless bimbo. ‘My name is Elin.’

‘I know.’

She tilted her head and studied him. The dimmed lighting in the room cast shadows over the hard angles and planes of his face and emphasised his austere beauty, making Elin long to explore the chiselled perfection of his jaw with her fingertips. As for his mouth... Her heart thudded as she imagined his sensual mouth covering hers. The knot in her belly tightened and every nerve-ending in her body felt fiercely alive.

‘How do you know my name?’ She was certain they’d never met before. Dear God, she would have remembered him.

She wondered if she’d imagined that he hesitated infinitesimally before he shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘I’m here at your birthday party and of course I know your name. There can’t be many people who haven’t heard of Elin Saunderson. Photographs of you falling out of nightclubs are a regular feature in the British popular press.’

Inexplicably she felt hurt by his cynicism, and she was tempted to explain that she’d deliberately courted scandal to turn the media’s attention away from her brother. But it would mean betraying Jarek and she would never do that, especially to a stranger. Even if he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever set eyes on. Her gaze locked with his and she saw his gold-flecked eyes blaze with a heat that burned her.

Every one of her heightened senses quivered with the realisation that he desired her. He might not want to want her, but he had no more control over the electricity that crackled between them than she did. He clearly believed she was the goodtime girl portrayed by the press so why shouldn’t she live up to her reputation for one night? Elin asked herself.

Some part of her recognised that this wild, reckless feeling wasn’t her. She shouldn’t want a complete stranger to cover her mouth with his and kiss her with the savage passion that she sensed he was capable of. She shouldn’t want him, but she did.

‘It would be good manners to introduce yourself.’

His mouth quirked then, not exactly a smile but it was enough to send scalding heat flooding through her. ‘There’s nothing good about me,’ he warned her in his deep, dark voice with a faint undercurrent of a Mediterranean accent. Once again he hesitated before he drawled, ‘My name is Cortez.’

‘You’re Spanish?’ His dark olive complexion and that raven-black hair indicated that he spent a lot of time in the hot sun. His name—Cor-tez... She silently repeated it the way he had pronounced it, emphasising the second syllable. It reminded her of a history book she’d read about the Spanish conquistadors who had invaded the Aztec and Inca civilisations in the sixteenth century. The conquistadors were reputed to have been utterly ruthless and she would be happy to bet that he was a descendent of those infamous adventurers.

‘Half-Spanish,’ he said after another pause, as if he had been about to say something else but had changed his mind.

She deliberately trailed her eyes over his chest and continued lower, down to his flat abdomen and lean hips, hugged by his black jeans. ‘Which half?’ she asked innocently.

He looked startled for a few seconds and then laughed. The sound was warm and golden, like liquid honey, Elin thought. ‘You are wicked,’ he told her. The bright flecks in his eyes gleamed and something almost feral flickered across his hard features. ‘And very, very beautiful.’

He stretched out his hand and wound a lock of her pale gold hair around his fingers. Elin could feel the frantic thud of her heart, and her breath caught in her throat. He must have heard the faint sound, and although he did not appear to move she sensed a sudden tension in him, as if he truly was a predator stalking its prey. He exuded danger and she should run for the hills, but the reckless feeling that had swept over her tonight made her ignore the voice of caution in her head.

The heavy bass music pounding in the room stirred her blood with its sensual rhythm. ‘Will you dance with me? You can’t refuse,’ she said when his eyes narrowed, ‘because it’s my birthday and I can have whatever I want on my birthday.’

He did not laugh now and the liquid honey in his voice was replaced by a harsh tone that sounded like rusty metal dragged across gravel. ‘What do you want, Elin?’

‘You,’ she heard herself say in a husky voice she did not recognise as her own. Once again she felt a peculiar sensation that she was floating outside her body and none of this was real. Perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps it was a dream, but it was a much better dream than her usual nightmare about her mother’s death.

Cortez swore softly. The gold flecks in his eyes glittered and he seemed to be waging an internal battle with himself before he shrugged. ‘So be it then,’ he muttered as he moved towards her. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her against him so that they were hip to hip.

The effect on Elin was electrifying. The brush of his thighs against hers as they moved with the beat of the music turned the heat inside her into an inferno. Cortez danced with a fluid grace that was entirely sensual, and she gasped when he slid one hand down to the small of her back and exerted pressure to bring her pelvis into closer contact with his.

Her senses went into meltdown as he clamped her against his whipcord body. He smelled divine, a mixture of spicy cologne and the dry heat of his body that had its own unique scent. She wanted to press her face into his neck and breathe in the essence of him, lick his olive skin and taste him. Her hands were lying flat on his chest and she felt his heartbeat accelerate beneath her fingertips. Startled, she tilted her head to look at his face, and saw a stark hunger in his eyes that made her tremble.

She’d never felt like this before and she’d certainly never behaved so impetuously. She felt crazily out of control. For the first time in six months she felt alive instead of numb. Life, she’d learned, could be taken away in an instant, in the release of a trigger and a bullet fired from a gun.

She wanted to grab hold of life with both hands, and more than anything she wanted to be even closer to this dangerously beautiful man who made her feel like no other man ever had. And so she slid her hands up to his shoulders and stretched herself up against him, pressing her breasts with their pebble-hard nipples into his chest. She heard him mutter something in Spanish as he sank his hand into her hair and lowered his face towards hers. His mouth was tantalisingly close and with a low moan she closed the tiny gap between them and pressed her lips to his.

The world exploded in a firestorm of heat and colour. Cortez hesitated for a fraction of a second but then a shudder went through him and he took control of the kiss and plundered her mouth like a conquistador claiming the spoils of his conquest. It was hotter and wilder than anything Elin had ever experienced before. She felt consumed by his kiss, by him as he moved his hand to cup her jaw and angled her mouth to his satisfaction before he pushed his tongue between her lips and tasted her.

The kiss went on and on, becoming deeper and ever more erotic, a ravishment of her senses, and Elin hoped it would never end. When Cortez eventually tore his mouth from hers to allow them to snatch air into their starved lungs, he stared at her as if he was trying to figure her out.

‘This is madness,’ he grated. ‘I should tell you...’ He broke off when one of the other guests who was dancing wildly stumbled into them. ‘Dios!’ Cortez tightened his arms around Elin and his protective gesture made her melt even more. ‘Is there somewhere we can go to talk?’

Over Cortez’s shoulder, Elin saw Tom, the guy who had been plying her with drinks earlier, walk into the room. Keen to avoid him, she led Cortez through a different door to the narrow hallway and staircase at the back of the house, which had once been used by servants. Even here there were people sitting on the stairs playing a raucous drinking game, and so she continued up to the second floor and along the corridor to her bedroom.

‘We won’t be disturbed in here,’ she told him as she ushered him inside and closed the door. After the loud music downstairs the room was quiet, with just the distant thud of heavy bass audible through the floorboards. On some level Elin knew she must be crazy to have invited a stranger into her bedroom. Except that he wasn’t a complete stranger, she reassured herself. She knew his name and she assumed Virginia knew him. Why else would he have come to the party unless her friend had invited him?

Even so, a tiny, sane part of her realised she was acting a little bit crazy tonight. She couldn’t explain the buzz of exhilaration that felt as if she were riding on a big dipper at a theme park, but she didn’t want the feeling to end. She stared at Cortez and thought how unbelievably gorgeous he was. No wonder Virginia had kept quiet about him. But he had kissed her.

In the mirror she could see her mouth was swollen from when he had crushed her lips beneath his. She hardly recognised herself in a sexy scarlet dress, with her hair dishevelled and her mouth reddened...and inviting. She looked back at Cortez and watched his eyes narrow as she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

‘You said you wanted to tell me something. Are you married?’

‘What?’ He looked startled. ‘No, of course not. I would not have kissed you if I were married.’

‘Why did you kiss me?’

‘Why the hell do you think?’ he said roughly.

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps you should kiss me again and I might work out the reason.’ There it was again, that teasing, flirty voice that she didn’t recognise as her own. But the truth was she wanted him to kiss her, and she wanted more. She wanted... Her eyes flicked to the huge double bed that she’d only ever slept in alone. She heard Cortez mutter something incomprehensible as he followed her gaze.

‘You are an irresistible temptation.’ He made it sound like an accusation as he closed the gap between them in a couple of strides. Her bedroom seemed to shrink and she could not tear her gaze from him. The golden gleam in his eyes promised he would make her birthday wish come true.

‘Are you going to resist me?’ she murmured when he stood in front of her and cupped her cheek in his big hand. The skin on his palm felt rough and she wondered briefly what he did for a living.

‘Not a chance,’ he growled as he pulled her against him, into his heat and strength and intoxicating maleness, and claimed her mouth in a kiss that plundered her soul.

‘Do you want this?’ he demanded, lifting his head and staring into her eyes as if he was trying to read her thoughts.

‘Do you have to ask?’ replied the voice she didn’t recognise that belonged to the bold creature who had taken over her body. It was that woman who wound her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers—a scarlet-clad temptress who murmured words of encouragement when he lifted her up and placed her on the bed before he stretched out on top of her.

His weight pinned her to the mattress and his muscular body felt alien and hard against her softness. He kissed her mouth, demanding a response she gave willingly. She wanted everything he could give her, and her urgency increased when he trailed his lips down her throat.

Their clothes were a frustrating barrier and she pushed his jacket over his shoulders while he tugged the straps of her dress down her arms. There was the sound of material ripping and then the feel of cool air on her bare breasts.

She moaned when he bent his dark head to her breast and took her nipple into his mouth. The sensation of him sucking her was exquisite, and flames shot down from her breasts to the molten place between her legs as he transferred his mouth to her other nipple and tugged on the taut crest.

‘Please...’ she choked. Instinct took over and she lifted her hips towards him as he thrust a hand beneath her skirt and skimmed his palm over the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. He dragged her panties down her legs, and then his fingers were there where she was desperate for him to touch her, probing her slick heat before he slid one digit, two, into her and moved them expertly so that within moments she was trembling on the brink.

‘I want...’ she gasped. She had never felt desire like this before, so fierce and urgent, making her shake with need.

‘I know.’ His voice was like rough velvet. He kissed her mouth again and in between hungry kisses he pulled his sweater over his head. His skin felt like satin overlaid with wiry chest hairs that scraped her palms as she moved her hands down to the zip of his jeans.

Everything was colour and heat and fierce, frantic need that built in intensity as he swirled his fingers inside her. Somehow Cortez was naked and the sight of his erection made Elin draw a swift breath. He was awesome—so beautiful, so big. But her faint doubt was obliterated when he twisted his fingers inside her and she shattered, her orgasm so overwhelming that she gave a keening cry.

‘I don’t have a condom.’ His harsh voice broke through the haze of sexual excitement fogging her brain and she heard him swear as he lifted himself off her. She didn’t want him to stop. Frantically she clutched his shoulders and remembered the packet of condoms which had been given out for free when she had been a fresher at university. She had shoved them into the bedside drawer, wondering if she would ever need them.

‘In the top drawer,’ she muttered.

It took him mere moments to locate the packet and don a protective sheath before he positioned himself over her and nudged her legs apart with his thigh. And then he entered her with a hard thrust that made her gasp. The slight discomfort was over almost immediately. She felt him hesitate, but the sensation of being stretched by him and filled by his steel-hard length was so incredible that she arched her hips and urged him to possess her utterly.

The intense pleasure of her first orgasm made her greedy for more and she dug her fingers into his shoulders, anchoring herself to his powerful body as he drove into her again and again, taking her higher and making her sob with need, until finally the world exploded and she heard him groan as together they fell over the edge of the abyss.

* * *

Elin stirred and the light hurt her eyes before she’d even opened them. Cautiously, she lifted her lashes and winced as a shaft of bright sunshine fell across her face. Her head felt strangely woolly and it took several minutes to register that she was in her bedroom at the house in Kensington. She pushed back the sheet and discovered she’d fallen into bed wearing her dress. The top half was pushed down around her waist, leaving her breasts bare, and when she moved her hand lower she discovered that her knickers were missing.

Dear God! Vague memories swirled in her mind. There had been a party, loud music, candles on a cake. She remembered dancing with various men—with one man in particular. A savagely handsome man with jet-black hair and gold-flecked eyes who had said his name was Cortez.

She jerked upright and the room spun. Her stomach churned but her symptoms didn’t feel like a hangover. Patches of her memory of the previous night were blank but others were shudderingly vivid. She remembered that she’d danced with Cortez and they had kissed. Embarrassed heat flooded her cheeks when she recalled that she had initiated the kiss before she’d invited him up to her room.

What else had she done?

She spied her knickers on the floor and the answer hit her in a tidal wave of shame. She’d had sex for the first time in her life with a man she’d never met before, and the fact that she had woken alone at—the clock showed it was midday—suggested that Cortez had long since gone.

‘Elin, are you in there?’ Virginia’s voice sounded from outside the door.

‘Just a minute.’ She grabbed her robe and pulled it on over her crumpled dress, desperate to hide the evidence of her night of shame. Virginia was her best friend but Elin did not want to tell anyone what she’d done, how she’d behaved like a slut. She wanted to crawl away and hide in a hole, but she forced herself to smile when she opened her bedroom door.

‘Are you alone?’ Virginia sounded surprised. ‘I saw you disappear from the party with a gorgeous guy and thought maybe you’d spent the night with him. Who was he?’

‘He said his name was Cortez.’ Elin swallowed. ‘I didn’t get round to asking his surname. But I thought he was a friend of yours. Didn’t you invite him to the party?’

‘I’d never seen him before he turned up here last night.’ Virginia frowned. ‘It’s a bit odd. I haven’t spoken to anyone who was at the party who knows him.’

Virginia dismissed the mystery of Cortez’s identity with an airy shrug that Elin envied. ‘You missed all the drama last night. A guy called Tom Wilson was arrested on suspicion of spiking my friend Lisa’s drink. Apparently she felt strange after drinking a cocktail Tom had made her but she assumed she was drunk. A while later he tried to get Lisa to leave the party with him, but someone else warned her that they’d seen Tom slip something into her drink. The police were called, and when they tested the dregs of drink in the bottom of Lisa’s glass they found evidence of a substance which is a well-known date-rape drug.’

Something clicked in Elin’s mind and she sank down onto the bed. ‘Do you know what the effects of taking the drug are?’

‘Lisa said she felt dizzy and out of control and she described feeling detached from reality. Oh, my God,’ Virginia said in a horrified voice as she noticed Elin’s white face. ‘Do you think your drink was spiked too?’

‘Tom made me a cocktail and I felt strange after drinking it. But, like Lisa, I thought I was drunk.’

‘You had better inform the police that it’s possible you were another of Tom’s victims. Some so-called date-rape drugs can cause blackouts and amnesia and if you unwittingly took the drug it would explain why you’ve been asleep for half the day.’

If her drink had been spiked it would explain her bizarre, out-of-character behaviour last night. But it was a cold comfort, Elin thought grimly. Cortez would have been unaware that she’d been drugged. However, he’d mentioned her reputation as an It Girl—how she detested the label—and he had clearly believed she made a habit of sleeping with men she’d just met. The fact that he had disappeared after they’d had sex, without waking her, made her feel like a tramp.

As soon as Virginia had gone, Elin stripped off the scarlet dress that had become her badge of shame and shoved it into the bin. She felt soiled, but when she took a shower no amount of hot water and soap could scrub away her self-loathing or the marks on her body left by Cortez. Padding from the en suite bathroom back into her bedroom, she stood in front of the mirror and allowed the towel she’d wrapped around her to fall.

The evidence of her guilt was branded on her body. There were red patches on her breasts where Cortez’s rough jaw had scraped her delicate skin, and although there were no visible signs of the ache between her legs, the dull throb was an uncomfortable reminder that she had lost her virginity having casual sex with a stranger.

Thank God he had used a condom. Elin held her hands to her hot cheeks and wished she did have amnesia. But memories of her wanton behaviour were painfully clear in her mind. Cortez hadn’t forced her or coerced her to have sex with him, and even discovering that her drink might have been spiked by another of the party guests did not make her feel any better about herself. She’d behaved like a whore, and her only consolation was that she was unlikely to meet the Spanish conquistador who had taken her self-respect along with her virginity ever again.


CHAPTER TWO (#u22f8934d-e6c4-51e2-a156-7cfcba9ca0e0)

One year later

AN ICY BLAST of air swept into the church and the ancient oak door creaked on its hinges, heralding the arrival of a latecomer to Ralph Saunderson’s funeral. Sitting in a front pew beside her brother, Elin felt the cold draught curl around her ankles and wished she’d worn her boots. But her black patent four-inch stilettos looked better with her nineteen-fifties style coat and matching black pillbox hat with a net veil that the milliner had said made her look like Grace Kelly, and Elin had learned when she was four years old that looks were everything.

A faint frown creased between her perfectly arched brows as she listened to footsteps ring out on the stone floor of the nave. When she and Jarek had followed their adoptive father’s coffin into the church she’d noted that every pew was filled. It seemed as though the entire population of Little Bardley had turned out to bid farewell to the squire of the pretty Sussex village on the South Downs. Elin had made a mental note of the many familiar faces in the congregation so that she could thank each person who had attended the funeral.

Who had arrived halfway through the service? She felt a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades and although she tried to concentrate on the minister while he gave the eulogy, she could not dismiss an inexplicable sense of unease. When the congregation stood to sing a hymn, she glanced over her shoulder and her heart collided with her ribs when she thought she recognised the man standing at the back of the church.

Cortez!

It couldn’t be him. Elin drew a shaky breath. Her brain must be playing a cruel trick on her. It was over a year since her fateful birthday party when she’d had sex with a stranger who she’d known only as Cortez. There was no reason in the world why he would have turned up at her father’s funeral.

She jerked her head round to the front and stared down at the hymn book that shook uncontrollably between her fingers. Her brother swore softly as he slid his hand beneath her arm.

‘You’re not going to faint, are you?’ Jarek muttered. ‘The press pack who are slavering outside the church would love to snap you being carried unconscious from a venue for the second time this week. Of course there would be speculation in the tabloids that you were drunk or high at your dear papa’s funeral.’

‘You know I’m neither,’ Elin said in a low voice, while the congregation sang the second verse of the hymn. ‘I explained that I fainted at Virginia’s hen party two nights ago because it was so hot and stuffy in the nightclub.’

‘A more likely explanation is that you are still not fully recovered from Harry’s traumatic birth. I know he is three months old, but you lost God knows how many pints of blood when you haemorrhaged after giving birth,’ her brother said grimly. ‘I told you before you went to London that I didn’t think you were fit enough to return to your frenetic social life.’

Elin was stung by the faint censure in his words. The only reason she had become a familiar face on the London club scene a year ago had been so that she could try and keep Jarek out of trouble and out of the tabloids’ headlines. At least she no longer had to worry that Ralph would lose patience with her brother. Their adoptive father had died a week ago, a month after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. Jarek was destined to take over as head of Saunderson’s Bank and even though many of the bank’s board members were concerned by his reputation as a risk-taker, no one could prevent Ralph Saunderson’s heir from becoming chairman.

Elin bowed her head while the minister intoned a prayer, but her mind was on the man she’d seen in the church. She’d only caught a glimpse of him, and of course he couldn’t be Cortez, she reassured herself. Although he had known her name and London address, he had never tried to contact her in the past year and, as she did not know his surname, she’d been unable to find him to tell him about Harry.

She thought of her baby son, who had been asleep when she’d left him with his nanny in the nursery at Cuckmere Hall. Harry was innocently unaware that he had been conceived as a result of a few moments of lust between two strangers. But when he was older he was bound to be curious about his father, and Elin planned to make up a story that Harry’s father was dead. It would be better to tell her son a white lie than for him to learn that his father had abandoned him before his birth, she reasoned.

She and her brother had been abandoned by their own parents when she was a baby. Jarek had been six and he had a few vague memories of their mother and father. But Elin’s earliest memories were of looking through the bars of a cot. Jarek had told her that at the orphanage the younger children had been left in their cots, often for days. She hadn’t learned to walk until she was over two years old, and only then because her brother had sneaked into her dormitory and held her hand while she took her first steps.

Her own son had been conceived as a result of her night of shame with a stranger, but she was determined to love Harry twice as much to make up for the fact that he would never know his father.

The ceremony finished and she walked with Jarek behind Ralph’s coffin as it was carried out of the chapel. She looked closely at the people in the congregation but did not see anyone who resembled Cortez. Her imagination must have played a trick on her, she told herself, yet her sense of unease remained.

The procession of mourners filed into the graveyard and gathered around a freshly dug grave next to Lorna Saunderson’s headstone. Tears welled in Elin’s eyes. It was eighteen months since Mama had died and she still felt a deep sense of loss. Willing herself not to cry in public, she stared across the graveyard, and her heart lurched when she glimpsed a tall figure half-hidden behind the thick trunk of an old yew tree. She could not see the man’s features clearly from a distance, but something about his proud bearing and the breadth of his shoulders were familiar.

She blinked away her tears and refocused but the figure had disappeared. A flock of crows flew out of the tree, cawing loudly as if something had disturbed them. Had she imagined that she’d seen someone? Elin forced herself to concentrate on the minister reciting a final prayer, and when he finished she stepped forwards and dropped a white rose into her father’s grave.

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ her brother told her later when they arrived back at Cuckmere Hall. ‘The old man is more likely to come back to haunt me than you. He did at least feel some affection for you,’ he added drily. ‘Ralph wanted to adopt a pretty little daughter but he was less keen to take on a ten-year-old boy with issues.’ Jarek strode into the house and took a glass of sherry from the butler, who was waiting in the entrance hall to greet them.

‘Ralph cared for both of us,’ Elin murmured, telling herself it was true. Admittedly she had not felt the close bond with her adoptive father that she’d had with Lorna Saunderson, but she’d been fond of the man who had been the only father she’d ever known. However, Jarek had struggled to settle into his new life in England and to accept Ralph’s authority.

‘We were his social experiment. Take a couple of kids from the lowest tier of society and see if he could mould them to fit in with the gentility.’ Jarek gave a sardonic smile. ‘It’s fair to say that Ralph had more success with you than with me.’

‘That’s not true. I’m sure he thought highly of you, and he respected your financial flair, which is why he appointed you in a senior position at Saunderson’s Bank.’

Elin took off her hat and coat and smoothed a crease from her black pencil dress. She declined the glass of sherry the butler offered her. ‘Baines, I noticed there is a car parked on the driveway. I presume that my father’s solicitor is here?’ She had hoped to run up to the nursery and spend five minutes with Harry, but she would have to wait until after the formal reading of Ralph’s will.

‘Mr Carstairs and his associate arrived ten minutes ago and I showed the gentlemen into the library.’

‘Business must be doing well for old Carstairs to drive an Aston Martin,’ Jarek commented. ‘I suppose he’s brought a trainee from the law firm with him, but there wasn’t much point. Ralph had no other family apart from us and his will must be straightforward. At least the reading of the will shouldn’t take long,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I’m racing later this afternoon.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t race that damned motorbike,’ Elin muttered as she followed her brother across the hallway. ‘It’s such a risky sport.’

‘Everything carries an element of risk.’ A nerve jumped in Jarek’s jaw. ‘No one could have predicted that a trip to a jewellers would cost Mama her life.’

Elin was saved from answering as she entered the library and Peter Carstairs immediately got up from an armchair. ‘Elin, Jarek, I am sure this is a difficult day for you and I will endeavour not to take up too much of your time.’

‘Thank you.’ Elin wondered why the normally affable solicitor seemed tense. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thank you. I think we should proceed.’ Mr Carstairs moved to the chair behind the desk and Elin followed her brother over to the sofa. She suddenly remembered that Baines had said he had shown two men into the library, but before she could suggest that they wait until the solicitor’s clerk returned—presumably he was visiting the cloakroom—Mr Carstairs picked up a document and began to read from it.

He began by announcing several small bequests that Ralph Saunderson had made to members of the household staff. ‘Next we come to the Saunderson’s estate winery.’ The solicitor cleared his throat. ‘I leave a fifty per cent share of the vineyards and winery to my adopted daughter Elin Dvorska Saunderson.’

Elin felt a jolt of surprise. She had assumed that Ralph would hand the entire ownership of the estate winery to her. She’d worked as production manager for the past eighteen months and was committed to fulfilling Lorna Saunderson’s vision of producing world class English sparkling wine. Jarek had never shown any interest in the vineyards and winery, but perhaps Ralph had hoped his heir would become more involved in developing Saunderson’s Wines, she reasoned.

She was vaguely aware of the library door opening and heard a faint click as it closed again, but her attention was on Mr Carstairs and she did not look round to see who had entered the room. The solicitor gave another nervous cough. ‘There is a stipulation attached to the bequest, Elin. Mr Saunderson decreed that you must marry within one year and provide your son with a father before you can claim your inheritance. If you choose not to fulfil the obligation, your share of Saunderson’s Wines will revert to your adoptive father’s main heir.’

Shock rendered Elin speechless. She knew her adoptive father had disapproved of her being a single mother but once Harry had been born he’d seemed delighted with the baby. ‘I can’t believe Ralph would really have expected me to meet the terms of his will,’ she said at last in a shaky voice. ‘Or that a judge would uphold such an outrageous stipulation if I contested the will.’

‘Mr Saunderson was completely within his rights to distribute his assets in any manner he saw fit,’ the solicitor murmured. ‘I have to advise you that there are no grounds on which you could contest your father’s wishes.’

Her brother reached over and squeezed Elin’s hand. ‘You know Ralph liked to play his little games,’ he said sardonically. ‘This is just his way of trying to maintain control from beyond the grave. Don’t worry, Ellie. Your share of the wine business will come to me if you haven’t married in a year and I’ll sign the whole of Saunderson’s Wines over to you. I have no desire to toil in the vineyards.’ Jarek glanced at the solicitor. ‘Do you mind getting on with it? I have other things to do today.’

Mr Carstairs cleared his throat again. ‘There are only two further items.’ He continued to read the will. ‘I leave two properties, Rose Cottage and Ivy Cottage, to my adopted children, Jarek and Elin, to live in or dispose of according to their wishes.’

Why had Ralph made the odd bequest? Elin’s feeling of unease grew. It did not make sense. Her brother was Ralph’s heir and would inherit the entire Cuckmere estate, which included Cuckmere Hall, two thousand acres of Sussex farmland, woodland and vineyards, plus thirty-five cottages and the pub in Little Bardley. She knotted her fingers together in her lap while Mr Carstairs continued.

‘Finally, I give everything I own at my death, excluding the aforementioned bequests, all monies and properties and also the position of chairman of Saunderson’s Bank, of which it is my right to appoint my successor, to my only natural son, Cortez Ramos.’

Silence. Lasting for what felt like a lifetime. Elin pressed her hand to her chest to try and ease the violent thud of her heart as the solicitor’s words reverberated around her head.

Cortez.

It couldn’t be the Cortez she’d had sex with a year ago. It must be a ghastly coincidence, she frantically told herself. But her sense of dread intensified when she remembered the dark figure she’d caught sight of in the graveyard. What did Ralph’s astonishing will mean for her and Jarek? For her son? Her heart felt as if it would jump out of her chest. Fear, she realised. The certainty of the future that she had taken for granted had just been blown apart.

She was aware that her brother had stiffened but as always he kept tight control over his emotions. ‘Is this some kind of joke, Carstairs?’ Jarek drawled. ‘You know full well that Ralph and Lorna Saunderson were unable to have children and so they adopted my sister and I. Ralph did not have a natural son and this Cortez Ramos, whoever he is, cannot have any legal claim to my adoptive father’s estate.’

Before Mr Carstairs could reply, a voice spoke from the back of the room. A deep voice with a husky accent that Elin had heard too often in her dreams in the past year. ‘Ralph did not have a legitimate natural son, but he had a bastard.’ The voice became harsh. ‘I am Ralph Saunderson’s biological son and heir.’

Elin felt her stomach twist. This can’t be happening, she thought, prayed. If I turn my head, he won’t be there and this whole nightmare will have been a dream. She jerked her head round and her heart juddered to a standstill. At her birthday party a year ago she’d thought him the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, but Cortez was even more stunning than her memories of him.

‘So it was you I saw in the church,’ she choked. ‘I thought I’d recognised you, but there was no reason why you should be there...or so I believed.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper as the shock of seeing him stole her breath from her lungs.

Jarek had leapt up from the sofa. He looked at Cortez and back to Elin. ‘Do you know this man?’

She swallowed, desperately trying to block out the images in her mind of Cortez’s naked, powerfully muscular body poised above her as she lay sprawled on her bed at the house in Kensington. His dark olive skin a stark contrast to her paleness as he pushed her dress up around her waist and nudged her thighs apart. A bold conquistador laying claim to his prize. At least all that sleek, hard beauty was clothed today, but the formality of his charcoal-grey suit that he wore with a black shirt and tie did not lessen the impact of his raw masculinity.

‘We...we met once,’ she managed. The gold flecks in Cortez’s dark eyes gleamed with what Elin furiously recognised was amusement. Never had she been more grateful for her reserved English upbringing with its emphasis on controlling her emotions. ‘It was an unmemorable event,’ she said coolly.

Her brother frowned. ‘Did you know of his alleged relationship to Ralph?’

‘Of course not.’ The faint suspicion in Jarek’s eyes felt like a knife in her heart. She owed her life to her brother. If it hadn’t been for him, God knew what would have happened to her when Sarajevo had been attacked and a bomb had landed on the orphanage. ‘If I’d had any inkling I would have told you.’

Elin bit her lip as her brother strode across the library and flung open the door. ‘Jarek—where are you going?’ She carefully did not look at Cortez as she hurried past him, but she was conscious of his tall, brooding presence and the evocative spicy scent of his aftershave tugged on her senses.

‘You know why Ralph has done this, don’t you?’ Jarek said bitterly when Elin caught up with him in the entrance hall. ‘He blamed me for Mama’s death. And he was right. I should have saved her.’

‘There was nothing you could have done against an armed raider. It wasn’t your fault. Jarek...’ Elin’s hand fell from her brother’s arm as he spun away from her and grabbed his motorbike helmet from the hall table.

‘If I hadn’t tried to be a hero, Lorna would still be here. I took a gamble when I tackled the gunman, but the gamble failed. I understand why Ralph excluded me from his will but he had no reason to cut you out.’ Jarek opened the front door and turned to face her. ‘Do you know what I wish?’ he said rawly. ‘I wish that when we were held hostage in the raid on the jewellers the goddamned gunman had shot me instead of Mama. It’s obvious that’s what Ralph wished.’

‘Oh, please be careful.’ Elin wanted to go after her brother when he ran down the front steps and leapt onto his motorbike parked on the drive, but Peter Carstairs came out of the library and spoke to her.

‘Mr Ramos was kind enough to give me a lift here and I arranged for a taxi to collect me,’ he said as a car turned onto the driveway. ‘I’m sorry to have been the harbinger of bad news, my dear. This must all be a great shock.’

The solicitor was the master of the understatement, Elin thought with a flash of macabre humour. ‘My father died from a brain tumour. Is it possible that he was not of sound mind when he made Cortez Ramos his heir? Do we even know for sure that Mr Ramos is Ralph’s son?’

She tensed when she saw Cortez standing in the doorway of the library and realised he must have overheard her. Too bad, she thought grimly. She was fighting for her and her brother’s inheritance and, more importantly, for her son’s future.

Harry was Cortez’s son.

Oh, God, she couldn’t think about the implications now, or how she was going to break the news to the granite-faced stranger she’d had sex with one time that he had fathered a child. She heard Jarek’s motorbike roar off down the drive and a knot of fear for his safety tightened in her stomach.

The solicitor shook his head. ‘Mr Saunderson was definitely of sound mind when he asked me to draw up a new will for him six months or so after his wife’s death. I believe he had suspected for some time that Mr Ramos could be his son and when a DNA test proved it, he invited his son here to Cuckmere Hall. He asked me to draw up the new will on the same day that Mr Ramos visited, on the third of March a year ago.’

‘The third of March is my birthday,’ Elin said faintly. The realisation that her adoptive father had written his extraordinary will, which effectively left her penniless, on her birthday, felt like a devastating betrayal. There was no possibility of her marrying within a year so that she could claim a fifty per cent share of Saunderson’s Wines.

She felt bombarded by one shock after another, and on top of the worry about her future she was terrified that her brother would risk his life riding his motorbike dangerously fast. She felt the same sensation of being unable to breathe that she’d experienced two nights ago in a crowded nightclub. Her legs buckled beneath her, and as if from a long way off she heard Cortez swear.


CHAPTER THREE (#u22f8934d-e6c4-51e2-a156-7cfcba9ca0e0)

ELIN WEIGHED NEXT to nothing, Cortez discovered as he sprang forwards and caught her before she hit the floor. Her fragility was the first thing that had struck him when he’d seen her standing at the front of the church. Was her slender figure the result of dieting to be fashionably thin, or was there a more sinister reason? he wondered as he strode into the library with her in his arms.

Two days ago, pictures of her being carried out of a London nightclub had been plastered over the front pages of the tabloids. There had been speculation that she’d taken cocaine or another recreational drug, popular on the club scene. Is this proof that Elin has resumed her party lifestyle? had been one headline.

Cortez had been annoyed with himself for pandering to his curiosity and buying the newspaper to read the full story. The references to Elin’s party girl reputation of a year ago, before she had mysteriously dropped off the paparazzi’s radar for a few months, had made him shove the paper into the rubbish bin in disgust.

What the hell had possessed him to have sex with her when he’d unwittingly gatecrashed her party? The answer felt like a punch in his gut. The same punch that had made him catch his breath when he’d watched her dancing at her party. Desire. Uncontrollable, ferocious desire had shot through him like a lightning bolt.

Unbidden memories pushed into his mind of Elin wearing a low-cut red dress that barely covered her pert breasts. Her pale blonde hair fell in a silken curtain around her shoulders, framing her exquisite face with its elfin features and a wide mouth that was entirely sensual. The moment he’d seen her he’d been unable to take his eyes off her. Even knowing what she was—a spoilt little rich girl who cared about nothing other than where the next party was being held and—if the press stories about her were true—where she could get her next fix—hadn’t lessened his hunger for her.

It was a little over twelve months ago when he had come to England after he’d received the result of a DNA test which confirmed he was Ralph Saunderson’s son. Ralph had invited him to Cuckmere Hall, and Cortez had gone because he could not deny he was curious to meet his biological father, who had abandoned his mother when she was pregnant. He had already discovered that Ralph was wealthy and the Saundersons were an old aristocratic family.

Driving through the vast Cuckmere estate on his way up to the mansion, Cortez had felt bitter remembering how his mother had worked herself literally into an early grave. Thirty-five years ago, Marisol Ramos had been pregnant and alone, abandoned by her lover and shunned by her family in Spain. She had managed to establish a small vineyard in Andalucía and from almost as soon as Cortez could walk he had helped his mother tend the vines and harvest the grapes. The bodega had produced a fine sherry, but it couldn’t compete with the big sherry producers in the sherry triangle in south-west Spain. Life had been hard, and when his mother had died at the age of forty-two Cortez had been convinced that she’d simply felt too exhausted to carry on living.

When he had finally met Ralph Saunderson the only emotion he’d felt was anger that his father had consigned his mother to a life of poverty and hardship. At the time of his visit to Cuckmere Hall the English press had been full of stories about Ralph’s adopted son and daughter’s jet set lifestyle, in particular Elin’s wild partying. But the pictures of her in the newspapers and her photo on Ralph’s desk that had caught Cortez’s attention had not prepared him for the impact she had on him when he saw her dancing at her birthday party.

He jerked his mind from the past as Elin’s eyelashes fluttered open. For a few seconds she stared at him with her dark blue eyes that had reminded him of sapphires when he’d danced with her a year ago. He recalled how she had pressed her body up close to his. As close as she was now, except that then she had been soft and pliant in his arms and she’d parted her lush mouth in an invitation he had been unable to resist.

That should have been a warning, he thought grimly. He never had a problem resisting women. He was always in control and when he took a mistress it was always on his terms, with rules and boundaries established first. Falling into bed with Elin had broken every rule he’d imposed on himself since he’d fallen in love with Alandra in his early twenties and she had shattered his illusions about love and his own judgement.

‘What are you doing? Put me down.’

Cortez heard panic in Elin’s voice and he felt a stab of irritation when he lowered her onto the sofa and she immediately recoiled from him as if he were infected with a contagious disease. She hadn’t behaved like that a year ago, he brooded. She’d been all over him then. He walked across to the desk, where the butler had left a tray of drinks, and tried to dismiss the memory of Elin sprawled on a bed with her red dress rucked up around her waist and her pale thighs spread wide open.

‘Here,’ he said curtly, returning to hand her a glass of brandy.

She shook her head. ‘I never touch spirits and in fact I rarely drink alcohol at all.’

How could she look so damned innocent when he had irrefutable proof that she was far from it? He remembered how she had flirted with him at her birthday party and he had been blown away by her sexual allure.

Cortez’s anger with himself increased when he found he could not tear his eyes away from Elin. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. The black dress she was wearing was a classic style reminiscent of a previous era when women had looked effortlessly elegant. Her pale blonde hair was swept up into a chignon that emphasised the incredible bone structure of her face, with those high cheekbones and perfectly arched brows above the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. He felt a sudden tightness in his chest and to his fury he was powerless to control the almost painful throb of his sexual arousal.

‘If you were not drunk when you had to be carried out of a nightclub the other night, then perhaps the recent lurid tabloid headlines alleging that you have a drug habit are true,’ he drawled.

Colour stained her porcelain cheeks. ‘The press print a lot of lies about me, but the truth is that I fainted in the nightclub because I’ve been unwell recently. I felt wobbly just now because it was a huge shock to learn that my father had excluded me and my brother from his will, and named you—his illegitimate son that no one knew existed—as his heir.’ Elin’s voice was icy but her eyes flashed with fury as she got up from the sofa and faced him.

‘Did you go to the house in Kensington and gatecrash my party so you could gloat? Ralph must have told you a year ago that he intended to make you his heir. Wasn’t it enough to know you would inherit Cuckmere Hall, the house in London and the chairmanship of Saunderson’s Bank, and you decided you would take me too?’

Cortez gave a hard smile, because here at last was proof that she might look like an angel, with her golden beauty and that ridiculous air of innocence that made his gut twist, but she was just another blonde who had satisfied his libido for a few hours, and she was no different to all the other blondes who regarded sex as a bartering tool. No doubt if he had stuck around after they’d slept together, Elin would have issued demands the way all women did.

‘As a matter of fact I did not know about the will,’ he told her. ‘After I met my father for the first time at Cuckmere Hall I had planned to spend the night at a hotel in London, but Ralph suggested I could stay at his house in Kensington and gave me a key. He said that you and your brother were both abroad and the house would be empty. When I walked into your party I had every intention of leaving, but you begged me to dance with you.’

Cortez was fascinated by the tide of scarlet that swept along her high cheekbones. ‘I did not take anything that was not offered freely,’ he said harshly. ‘You invited me into your bedroom and made it clear that you wanted sex.’ He shrugged. ‘Knowing of your reputation, I don’t flatter myself that I was your first or last one-night stand.’

The colour receded from her face. ‘You really are a bastard, aren’t you? That night I was under the influence of a drug which impaired my judgement and caused me to behave in a way I would never normally have done. As for my reputation—’ she gave a short laugh ‘—you know nothing about me.’

There was a strained note of what he could almost believe was hurt in her voice that made Cortez feel uncomfortable. He had no reason to feel guilty, he assured himself. Elin had just admitted that she’d taken drugs at her party and implied that she’d had sex with him because she had been high. But he’d been unaware she’d taken any kind of substance or that her behaviour was out of character. Everything he’d read about her in the press suggested she’d had many previous sex partners.

Memories of that night were crystal-clear in his mind, despite the distance of a year. He remembered that when he had pulled her beneath him and thrust himself into her with a desperation he’d never felt before, she had tensed and caught her breath. Dios, she had been so tight and so goddamned hot that he’d almost come instantly. But then she’d wrapped her legs around his hips and matched his pace when he began to move. Passion had blazed between them and he’d dismissed the unlikely notion that she was sexually inexperienced.

Maybe it was an act she put on with other men, Cortez thought darkly. He had proof that he could not have been her first lover.

‘I know you have a child.’ He wondered why he felt a simmering rage at the thought of her slender body wrapped around another man. He had been shocked when he’d heard during the reading of Ralph’s will that Elin had a son. It was odd the media had not reported that she had a child.

‘Ralph stated in his will that he wished for you to marry and provide your son with a father. Are you in contact with your child’s father, and do you intend to marry him in order to claim your inheritance?’

He did not know why he had asked her when he really wasn’t interested in her private life. But he stared at her because he couldn’t help himself and waited tensely for her answer. He realised he was bracing himself for her to reply, but when she did he was unprepared for the shockwave that ripped through him.

‘You are my son’s father,’ she said in her soft voice that had haunted him for the past year.

For a split second he wondered if it was possible, but... ‘No.’ He dismissed the idea. ‘You can’t pin the blame on me. Although I can see why it would be convenient if I was the father of your child,’ he said sardonically. ‘I would feel duty-bound to marry you, and you need a husband in order to meet the terms of Ralph’s will. Marriage to me would give you not only a share of Saunderson’s Wines but also everything you had expected to inherit from my father. As my wife, you could continue to live here at Cuckmere Hall and enjoy the affluent lifestyle Ralph provided, until he named me as his heir.’

He smiled cynically when she shook her head. ‘I’m not a fool, querida. I always practice safe sex. Perhaps you were out of your mind from whatever substance you had taken at your birthday party, but I’ll prompt your memory and remind you that I used a condom. I’m afraid you will have to look elsewhere for a husband and a father for your child.’

Elin swayed on her feet, whether for dramatic effect or because she hadn’t fully recovered from fainting a few minutes ago, Cortez did not know and he told himself he didn’t care. She swallowed before she spoke. ‘Only a fool would believe that contraception is one hundred per cent effective, and in our case it failed.’

She lifted her chin and met his gaze, and for some reason he was compelled to look away from her intense blue stare. ‘Believe me, hell will freeze over before I’d ever want to marry you,’ she said coldly. ‘Harry is yours, but I might have known you would shirk your responsibility for your son when you scuttled off without even having the decency to say goodbye after you’d had sex with me.’

‘You were in a deep sleep and I did not think you would appreciate me waking you,’ he bit out, incensed by her scathing tone and her insistence on continuing with what was undoubtedly a lie. He did not believe for a minute that he was the father of her child. Dios, after what had happened with Alandra he had taken care never to have unprotected sex.

Even so, he disliked the image Elin had presented of him hurrying out of her bedroom while she slept because he could not deny that was exactly what he’d done. He’d been rattled that she had made him lose control and he had left before he’d given in to the temptation to kiss her awake and make love to her again, slowly, taking his time to explore her beautiful body so that she gasped and moaned while he pleasured her.

Cortez swore silently as his body reacted predictably to his erotic thoughts, and he forced himself to focus on the present situation. He wasn’t surprised that Elin had played the oldest trick in the book to try to secure financial security for herself, after she’d learned that she and her brother had been excluded almost entirely from their adoptive father’s will. He could not imagine that ‘the party princess’—as one of the tabloids had nicknamed her—had ever held down a job. She needed a source of income, but what was surprising was how quickly she conceded defeat.

‘I’ve done my duty and informed you that you have a son,’ she said crisply. ‘I neither want nor expect anything from you, except for a few days’ grace while I arrange to move out of Cuckmere Hall.’ Her voice bore the faintest tremor and she pressed her lips together before she continued. ‘You are aware that Ralph left my brother and I each a property on the estate. But the cottages have been empty for several years and I don’t know what state they are in. I may need to have some renovation work done before I can take a baby to live there.’

He reminded himself that she did not deserve his compassion. She had enjoyed a privileged lifestyle, which had been denied to his mother and him when he was a child. But Ralph’s vile treatment of his mother was nothing to do with Elin, Cortez conceded. Nor was it her fault that she had grown up in the gracious surroundings of Cuckmere Hall, while he had spent his boyhood working in the vineyards in the blazing Spanish sun, helping his mother to eke out a living.

‘I’m going back to London to meet the board of Saunderson’s Bank this afternoon,’ he told her. ‘I have no plans to return to Sussex for a week or so. You and your brother can remain at Cuckmere Hall while you make arrangements to move into the cottages Ralph left you.’

‘I doubt Jarek will want to live in a cottage. He has his own home in London.’ She hesitated. ‘My brother had anticipated that he would become chairman of the bank. What will happen now? Will he continue in his current job?’

‘For the immediate future the situation will remain unchanged, until I have met the board of directors. When I have assessed all aspects of the bank’s business portfolio there are likely to be changes,’ he warned. ‘Ralph’s will was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you. I was informed of his death by Mr Carstairs and I attended the funeral to pay my respects to my father, even though he had never given my mother the respect she deserved.’

Cortez did not try to disguise his bitterness. His mother had been an angel and his greatest regret was that she had died before he’d become rich and successful and he hadn’t had the chance to make her life more comfortable.

‘It was a great shock to discover that my adoptive father had a secret son,’ Elin said quietly. ‘How did your mother meet Ralph?’

‘She worked as a maid here at Cuckmere Hall. My mother never spoke of my father or revealed his identity and I had no idea that I was Ralph’s son until I received a request for a DNA test. When I met Ralph he explained that he’d had an affair with my mother at the same time as he became engaged to Lorna Amhurst. He said his marriage was an arrangement to merge two banking families.’

Cortez frowned. ‘Ralph insisted that he gave my mother money when she told him she was pregnant. He assumed she returned to her family in Spain. But her family threw her out for having an illegitimate child and she brought me up on her own, with no money other than the small income she earned from growing grapes used for making sherry.

‘I don’t know why Ralph made me his heir, but I think it is unlikely that he wanted to make amends for abandoning me before I was born,’ he said cynically. ‘A more obvious reason is that, having ignored me—his biological son—for most of my life, Ralph was faced with leaving his personal fortune and Saunderson’s Bank to the mercy of his two adopted children who, despite the privileges of wealth and excellent education, have become spoiled brats in adulthood.’

Elin jerked her head back as if he had slapped her. Dios, how did this woman manage to make him feel as if he were a monster? Cortez thought frustratedly.

‘You know nothing about me or my brother,’ she said in a clipped voice that made him want to ruffle her cool composure and reveal the fire that he knew simmered beneath her air of refinement. ‘Jarek is a thousand times a better man than you could ever be.’

Finally he glimpsed a flicker of emotion on her face that up until now had been a serene mask. It was interesting that her brother was her weak spot, he mused. Everyone had an Achilles heel and he had made it his particular line of expertise to detect weaknesses in an opponent which he could ruthlessly use to his advantage. Although he was unlikely to ever need to use boardroom tactics with Elin. She did not have anything he wanted—apart from the face of an angel and a body that would tempt the most devout saint to sin, he thought with grim humour.





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