The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife

“Marriage is for—for—” She swallowed down the word as if she suddenly feared expressing it. “Marriage is different.”

“Not that different.”

Slowly he lifted her, drawing her out of her seat and pulling her up the length of his body. The rich blue silk of her dress whispered against him and her perfume reached out to enclose him. Had she worn this to give herself some much-needed courage to face yet another suitor?

“You know what that one night was like…” His voice was low and husky, rough-edged and raw. “Imagine a lifetime of such nights—each one better than the last.”

He saw her throat move as she swallowed hard, the way a pink tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lips.

“Marriage is more than just nights.”

“But these won’t be just nights. They will be amazing, spectacular nights. Nights you will never forget. Nights you will spend your days longing for, your sleep dreaming of.”

Harlequin Presents
^®

The Alcolar Family

Proud, modern-day Spanish aristocrats—passion is their birthright!

Harlequin Presents
^®
is proud to present international bestselling author Kate Walker’s new ALCOLAR FAMILY miniseries.

Meet the Alcolar Family:

Joaquin:
The firstborn and only legitimate Alcolar son. Can he forget his no-commitment rule and make his twelve-month mistress his wife?

Alex:
He may be half-English, but he’s all Alcolar.

A long-ago lover has claimed he’s her husband—now he’ll claim his wife!

Alex’s story,
Wife for Real,
is a free online read at www.eHarlequin.com

Ramón:
The beloved illegitimate son, he gets more than he bargained for in his carefully planned marriage of convenience!

Mercedes:
Can the only Alcolar daughter find the man who is her match?

Find out in
Bound by Blackmail
#2504

Kate Walker is the author of more than 40 romance novels for Harlequin Presents
^®
. To find out about Kate, and her forthcoming books, visit her Web site at www.kate-walker.com

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

E
STRELLA
stood with her fingers on the handle of the door, fighting for calm. She needed to prepare herself for the confrontation that was ahead of her. For the meeting with the man who was waiting for her on the far side of that door.

She’d thought all this was over; that her father had given up on the idea of marrying her off to the nearest available candidate. But just now he had marched into her room, barely troubling to slam his hand against the wood in a pretence of a knock, and told her that the man with whom he had had such an important business meeting that afternoon wanted to see her, right now. And she had known, with a desperate, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that she had been wrong, and it was starting again.

If she could have run away, she would have done. If she could have gone somewhere and hidden, concealing herself until this man lost patience and left in a rage, then she would have taken that path. But experience had shown her that face-to-face confrontation was the only way to handle this.

So she dragged in another jagged breath, smoothed a slightly unsteady hand over the black sleekness of her hair, straightened her narrow shoulders, forced herself to turn the handle, and went in.

He was standing by the big window at the far end of the room. Big and strong, and darkly silhouetted against the light, his face turned away from her, looking out at the garden below.

‘You are Señor Dario? Señor Ramón Juan Francisco Dario?’

The tension in her body touched her voice as well, making it cold and tight and totally unwelcoming, bringing his head round with a jerk.

‘I am. And you are Estrella Medrano?’ His response was as stiff and unwelcoming as her voice had been.

‘My father said that you wanted to see me.’

She didn’t trouble to answer the question, and his brows drew sharply together in disapproval or anger at the abruptness of her opening, the coldness of her tone.

But what had he expected? That she would spend time on polite courtesies? Knowing why he was here, she certainly didn’t intend to chat with him.

‘I wanted to talk to you, yes.’

‘But I understood that you came here to see my father?’

‘Yes—I wanted to buy the TV company.’

‘And did you succeed?’

‘We’re—still negotiating.’

Of course, Estrella reflected cynically. Of course they were still negotiating. The deal would not be signed until this man fulfilled her father’s demands. If she had had any lingering doubts, they vanished now. ‘Still negotiating’ meant only one thing. He was another one. Another in the long line of would-be husbands that her father thought he had bought for her.

‘Too expensive for you?’ she enquired carefully, stroking uncomfortably damp palms down the side of the narrow black skirt she wore with a tailored white blouse.

‘No, not at all. I would pay almost any price.’

He was coming towards her as he spoke and that lithe, loose-limbed lope seemed full of a potent energy, an energy that had to be held back, reined in, so as to be controlled enough to stay indoors. Just watching him move she felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise in instinctive response, but whether of fear or hostility she had no way of
knowing. She only knew that, large as it was, this elegant sitting room suddenly seemed too small, too confining for the elemental force of his power.

‘So you want the company very much?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

He must do if he was prepared to go along with her father’s plan like this. If he was prepared to sell himself—and buy her—in order to acquire what he wanted. Her father must have seen that in him and decided he had got just the right man this time.

If she had any sense, then now was the moment when she should tell him that she knew exactly what was going on and that there was no point in taking things any further. That, no matter what her father had led him to believe, there was no way she wanted to hear his proposal. Certainly no way she was ever going to accept it.

But she didn’t. And, to tell the truth, she had no idea exactly why she didn’t.

He was not at all what she had expected, this Ramón Dario. For one thing, she had thought that he would be like his father. Reuben Dario had been a big, dark bull of a man, heavy and thickset, with ebony hair and equally black eyes. And no one, not even his mother, could have called him handsome.

But this man was stunning. And in so many ways he was almost the opposite of his father, reversing rather than matching Dario senior’s looks and colouring.

He was much taller, for one thing, and although his hair was dark it was shot through with flashes of copper that made it gleam in the afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows so that the overall effect was one of burnished bronze rather than polished ebony. His eyes, in contrast, were cool, the clear, watchful grey of a storm-washed sky after a torrential downpour, and they were set in a harshly
carved face that seemed all planes and angles, the smooth skin tanned rather than swarthy like his father’s.

But then of course she was forgetting that Ramón Dario was only half Spanish. His mother, who had died years ago, when this man was just a baby, had been an Englishwoman.

The extra inches of height went with a much less solid build so that if he had been put next to Reuben—or indeed her own father—he would have looked almost slender. But it was obvious that his less bulky frame was taut with whipcord-strong muscle, the broad shoulders under the perfectly tailored jacket strong and straight, the long legs planted firmly on the rich red carpeting.

‘So why would you want to see me?’ she managed. As if she didn’t know.

‘I wanted to talk to you.’

‘And what you want—you get?’

He didn’t like her attitude; that much was obvious. The frown that had marked his face wasn’t easing; if anything it was growing darker, more dangerous. But she was beyond caring.

She wanted this over and done with so that she could get away again. Back to her room. Back to the isolation she had grown so accustomed to. Back to her father’s black glares and lectures and furious disapproval, the disapproval she’d lived with so long that it was as if she had never, ever seen any other expression on his face. Back to local society’s censure and the whispering behind their hands, the way that conversations suddenly died when she walked into a room.

‘That’s the one…’ people said. ‘That’s the Medrano girl; the one who enticed Carlos Perea away from his wife. Leaving her with two small children to care for all on her own. And him old enough to be the little hussy’s father…’

‘Won’t you sit down?’

He indicated a chair with a wave of his hand.

‘Will I need to?’

There was no reason at all why her heart should pulse high up in her throat at the thought of even moving closer to him. Why her senses should be so painfully alert to this man’s physical presence. Even the faint tang of his cologne, reaching her on the air as he moved, made her nerves tug, her nostrils flare as if to inhale more of the spicy scent. Heat flooded her veins, making her shift uneasily where she stood.

She had never been this close to any of the others. Never been this close to any man if it came to that. Not since Carlos.

‘I’d rather stand.’

‘I thought you would prefer to be comfortable.’

‘To tell you the truth, I’d prefer to be anywhere but here.’

‘I can assure you I won’t keep you long.’

His tone was stiff and cold, the words bitten off sharply. The thought that he actually felt he could show disapproval of her sparked the temper she had been struggling to keep under control.

‘And I can assure you that I have no interest in anything you want to say to me.’

She’d really got to him now. It was obvious from the way that his breath hissed between his teeth, the icy glare that flashed in her direction.

‘Might I suggest you wait till I’ve actually said something?’

He had been eyeing her up from the moment she had walked into the room, but now that steely grey gaze raked over every inch of her from her head to her toes, the cold-eyed look making her feel as if she were a prize piece of breeding stock that didn’t quite come up to expectations.

None of the others had ever made her feel quite as bad as this. Her fingers twitched with the need to wipe that look
from his face, and her tongue itched to tell him exactly what she thought. But the self-control she had grown so used to imposing on herself held her back.

‘Then say it,’ was all she could manage.

‘All right, I will.’

One strong hand raked through the gleaming dark hair, ruffling it wildly for a moment before it fell back into place with the ease and discipline of what was obviously a highly skilled and probably very expensive cut. Suddenly, in spite of herself, Estrella found herself regretting the speed with which that control and order were restored. Because just for a moment, in those few fleeting seconds, she had seen almost another Ramón Dario. A man very far removed from the guarded, distant person he had been almost ever since she had come into the room.

He would look like that in bed, she found herself thinking, a deep honeyed beat of sensuality starting low down in her body. With his hair ruffled and those heavy-lidded grey eyes still softened with sleep, only half open, gleaming, smiling up into the face of the woman…

She was shocked to find that the image made her heart pick up a beat, then jump into double-quick time. She had never felt like this in her life before. Never. Not even with Carlos.

Carlos who had been the start of all this. Whose malign influence could still reach out and touch her life, even after all this time. Even from the grave.

But Carlos had never been able to make her feel like this.

What was she thinking of? She couldn’t help it. Something in this man tugged at everything that was female in her.

‘There is a problem—
we
have a problem.’

Ramón Dario’s voice brought her crashing back to the
bitterness of reality, wiping away the wanton fantasies at a single blow.

‘What do you mean, we? Why do you link the two of us together in that way?’

‘Because your father linked us together.’

So now they were coming to it. Suddenly, when every other time before she had just wanted this moment over and done with, out of the way as quickly as possible, to her total shock she found that she felt exactly the opposite. She wished she could reach out now—put a hand to his mouth and stop him. Stop him from making the proposal that her father and some promise of riches had enticed from him.

Because if he did propose, then she would have to give him an answer.

And the answer would have to be no.

It was always no. Ever since her father had decided to ‘redeem’ her from the shadow of her past, by procuring, there really was no other word for it, a respectable and hopefully financially secure marriage, she had had to endure this situation over and over. If Ramón Dario thought he could acquire her as part of a business deal, as an extra that came along with his precious television company, then he was going to get the same answer as the rest.

No.

But even as the thought crossed her mind and determination firmed her spine, she knew a tiny, unwanted quiver of regret. For the first time ever, since her father had started this appalling campaign to get her married, she was actually wondering…

‘Your father suggested a price I could happily accept,’ Ramón continued, clearly taking her silence for encouragement. ‘And I want the company! But there are conditions. These conditions affect you. Your father wants me to marry you. He won’t sell me the company unless I do.’

It was only what she had been expecting, but all the same Estrella knew a terrible sense of loss at the realisation that now there was no going back. There was no hope that maybe, just this once, this man might have been the one who couldn’t be bought.

That tiny, stupid little hope had crept in from nowhere. It had been born because this Ramón Dario wasn’t taking things in the way she’d been anticipating. In fact, he wasn’t dealing with the situation as anyone else had ever done. And as a result she had had no idea how to handle him.

But now it seemed that he was just like all the others after all. Ruthless, greedy, determined to get what he wanted, no matter who or what stood in his way. And totally careless of her feelings in the matter.

‘Estrella,’ Ramón said when despair and disappointment held her silent. ‘Did you hear what I said? Your father wants me to marry you.’

‘I know,’ she said softly; so softly that at first he didn’t quite hear her. But then a moment later the words registered.

‘You know!’ Ramón echoed, unable to believe what he had heard.

How could she be so calm about it? So indifferent to what her father had been after? Or was it—his guts twisted sharply on a wave of disgust—was it that she had been involved from the start? That she had been a party to the whole thing; perhaps had even selected him and told her father that he was her choice? The thought made him feel like a piece of meat on a shop counter. It curdled in his stomach, and angry revulsion thickened his voice when he turned on her again.

‘Am I hearing right? Did you say you know?’

‘Yes.’

It was lower even than before, but this time he was wait
ing for it, watching the movement of her lips intently, so that he saw as much as heard the word leave her mouth.

‘What—how did you know? How did you know?’ he repeated more emphatically when she didn’t answer. ‘I think I have the right to an explanation, seeing as you’ve been playing with my life.’

That got to her. Her chin came up defiantly, ebony eyes flashing.

‘Okay—you can have your explanation, but I warn you, you won’t like it. Do you think you’re the first? Do you think you’re the only man my father has tried to buy for me?’

‘I’m not?’

She shook her head violently so that the black hair flew wildly around her suddenly colourless face.

‘You’re not even the second—or the third.’

Was she determined to crush his ego completely—to list every single man who had been chosen before him? Every man she would have preferred.