The Spaniard's Woman

The Spaniard's Woman
Diana Hamilton

Sebastian Garcia is shaken by the overwhelming attraction he feels for Rosie Lambert. Maybe it's because she seems innocent and trustworthy, so unlike the many fortune hunters who've pursued him before?Soon Sebastian makes Rosie his woman. So how can Rosie tell him the real reason for her sudden appearance in his life, when it could destroy his faith in her? And she may be pregnant with his child….

“You were a virgin.

“Rosie, I should regret what happened, apologize, but in all honesty I can’t. You were so…” He paused, as if his aptitude for the English language had suddenly deserted him. His fingers slid from her jawbone and tracked gently down the side of her throat. “Sensational.”

The intensity of his level silver gaze, the stark masculine beauty of his features, the touch of his hand against her skin made her feel helplessly dizzy. She wanted to hold him, to wrap her arms around him and tell him how swollen her heart felt, swollen with so much love she could hardly contain it. But his next statement made her go cold all over.

“As this was your first time, I don’t expect you’re protected.”

Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t given the matter any thought at all.

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The Spaniard’s Woman

Diana Hamilton

CONTENTS

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 ONE

SEBASTIAN GARCIA’S mood was blacker than a coalminer’s finger-nails as he faced the rambling sixteenth-century façade of Troone Manor. His smoke-grey eyes narrowed then glittered with angry determination. He’d claw his heart out of his breast with his own hands before he’d allow Terrina Dysart to get her gold-digger’s talons on his godfather’s extensive property!

For the first time in his twenty-nine years a visit to the charming old house that had been like a second home to him for most of his life was lacking in anything remotely approaching pleasure.

The cold March wind pushed icy fingers through the sleek blackness of his hair, reminding him that his family home in Southern Spain and the village of Hope Baggot in the uplands of west Shropshire might as well be poles apart.

Firming his already hard jaw, he reached a leather suitcase from the back seat of the silver Mercedes and strode over the circular sweep of gravel to the main door where Madge Partridge was waiting to greet him. His tersely snapped, ‘Is everything in hand?’ wiped the welcoming smile from the housekeeper’s lined face, and she took a flinching step backwards.

Silently cursing himself for losing his cool, he dredged up a smile. A lift of one ebony brow was enough to have his business staff jumping if the occasion demanded it. But dear old Madge was his godfather’s housekeeper and she was only following Marcus’s orders—as he himself was reluctantly doing. And making good and sure Marcus Troone got to see what Terrina really was, was his problem, not Madge’s.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised through the smile he was doing his best to keep in place. ‘I didn’t mean to bite your head off.’ He lifted wide, leather-coated shoulders in an expressive shrug. ‘I’ve been driving through the night; put it down to that and forgive me?’

‘Of course.’ Briefly, Madge put a workworn hand to the side of his face, her gaunt features relaxing as she grumbled at him, ‘You wouldn’t take the easy way out and fly over in comfort, get a driver from the London office to meet you at the airport and chauffeur you here, not you!’

Her brown eyes glinted with affectionate amusement as he walked past her into the huge, raftered hall where a log fire was burning brightly in the stone fireplace. ‘The first time you ever stayed here without your parents—you’d have been six years old—you decided that coming down to breakfast via your bedroom window and the wisteria would be more of a challenge than using the stairs. So nothing’s changed, has it?’

The memory of the truly awe-inspiring scolding he’d received from Tia Lucia on that long-ago occasion made his heart dip with sadness. Marcus Troone and Sebastian’s father, Rafael, had been business partners and Marcus had married Rafael’s younger sister, Lucia. They had regarded themselves as one family. Sebastian had spent long weeks every summer at Troone Manor, and life had seemed happy and uncomplicated.

But shadows had invaded the scene, invaded and deepened. To their sadness, his aunt and Marcus—who was also his godfather—had remained childless, and he had been approaching his eighth birthday when the unthinkable had happened and his lively, loving Tia Lucia had been stricken with multiple sclerosis. The next time he’d visited she’d been confined to a wheelchair, almost as helpless as a baby.

Two years ago Lucia had died and now Marcus, lonely and childless, was on the point of marrying a gold-digging witch!

‘Not knowing exactly when to expect you, I held lunch back. It will be about an hour, so would you like coffee before you freshen up?’