Cordero's Forced Bride

Cordero's Forced Bride
Kate Walker

Taken in payment, then to his bed… Alexa Montague is mortified! She’s had to call off her sister’s wedding, and now the ruthless, arrogant groom, Santos Cordero, is demanding this shy ugly duckling take her sister’s place! The Montagues have stolen his money and his convenient bride – so Santos will enjoy having Alexa instead.For Santos does not – cannot – love. But his body burns for Alexa like no other woman before. He’ll keep her captive in his bed until she’s begging to be his…

‘How can you claim anything soridiculous—so preposterous—asto say that you—you’ve…?’

‘That I’ll take you as my wife? Why not? I never wanted your sister as I want you.’

‘But you—’ Alexa began, but then the realisation of just what he had said sank in to her numbed brain. ‘Is that the truth?’

‘Why should I lie to you, belleza?’

Santos’s tone was suddenly soft. His gaze still held hers as he spoke, his eyes so deep and clear that she felt they were like a still, smooth pool in which she risked drowning, going in over her head completely.

Alexa wished that she could look away, but she found it impossible to drag her gaze away from that mesmerising stare of his, the look that seemed to search right to the depth of her soul and know exactly what was hidden there.

‘But—’ Her head was spinning, the room seeming to blur around her. ‘But how can you know that? You haven’t even kissed me…’

‘That is something that is soon remedied.’

Kate Walker was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots are there. She met her husband at university, and originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats, and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre, and, of course, reading.

You can visit Kate at www.kate-walker.com

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CORDERO’S FORCED BRIDE

BY

KATE WALKER

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

CORDERO’S FORCED BRIDE

For Helen

CHAPTER ONE

IF SHE WAS going to do this, then she had better get on with it, Alexa told herself firmly. In fact, she had better get on with it right now, she added fiercely, knowing there was no other way forward.

Because the truth was that she did have to do this. Somebody had to, that was for sure. No one else was going to do it. And definitely not Natalie.

Natalie would never have coped with this. She’d have given in, gone down under pressure, and she’d have ended up saying the exact opposite of what she’d come to say—what she needed to say.

If Natalie had had to face Santos Cordero then she would have agreed to go through with this wedding she didn’t want, just as she’d been agreeing to do right from the start. She’d go through with it and as a result she’d miss out on her chance of a real relationship, real love. No, Natalie was better being on her way to the airport and a new life.

Leaving her older half-sister to tidy up after her. It was now Alexa’s job to clean up, apologise, explain.

That thought was enough to have Alexa’s feet slowing as she moved away from where the car had just delivered her to the main door of the huge, elegant cathedral of Santa María de la Sede in the centre of Seville. Glancing upwards briefly, towards where the bell tower known as La Giralda was etched against the clear blue sky, she drew a deep, calming breath and squared her shoulders. At her back the crowd of paparazzi gathered to record the event called for her attention, and the flashing of cameras sounded like a fusillade of bullets, one she struggled to ignore as she climbed the couple of worn stone steps into the porch, her fingers reaching out for the heavy wrought-iron handle of the big, carved wooden door.

‘You’re not getting trapped that way, Nat. Not any more.’

She spoke the words out loud, shaking her head as she did so in an attempt to give them more emphasis, to make them mean more and have more effect. But even as she heard them she knew that they lacked the conviction she’d been aiming for. They weren’t going to be able to give her the strength she needed to walk into the cathedral, announce what had happened and deal with the chaos that followed. And that was what she had to do. Because there was no one else.

‘Come on, Alexa. You know you have to do this!’

Sighing with resignation, she accepted the truth as she forced herself forward again, curling her fingers around the big iron handle and gripping hard.

There was no one else who could sort this out. If she didn’t do something then the whole dreadful, ugly mess would stay just as it was—in fact it would probably get so much worse. The explosion was going to be nuclear as it was. All she could hope to do was to try to contain some of the fallout so that the repercussions were at least manageable.

Nervousness made her palms damp so that her fingers slipped on the metal handle, foiling her first attempt to open the door.

‘Oh, damn it!’

With nothing else available, she had no choice but to wipe her hands down the long skirt of her dress in an attempt to dry them off. The gesture did nothing for the appearance of the expensive pink satin, but then right now that was the least of her concerns. The ceremony that the dress had been planned for wasn’t going to go ahead today after all, so it didn’t matter at all what it looked like.

Besides, the dress wasn’t really her style at all. It was the sort of glamorous look that her stepmother had chosen for the society wedding she had always hoped for for her daughter, and Alexa knew that the colour wasn’t the most flattering for her dark brown hair and hazel eyes. But that had been all right when she had believed that the wedding was what Natalie wanted. It was Natalie’s day and nothing was going to spoil her half-sister’s wedding, even if it was to a man that Alexa felt was not right for her.

A wedding that was now no longer going to take place, Alexa reminded herself ruefully, reaching for the door handle again. She was going to need all her courage to go into the church and tell everyone that.

Her stepmother would probably have hysterics. Her father— and Natalie’s—would become even stiffer, even more withdrawn, his mouth clamping tighter than ever before. And the groom…

And the groom…

The thought made a sensation like the frantic flutter of butterfly wings start to beat high up in Alexa’s throat as the great door swung slowly open, to land with a hollow, sepulchral thud against the worn stone wall, the noise making everyone inside the church turn and stare in expectation.

She had no idea what the groom would say or do. No idea at all just how Santos Cordero would react to the news that his bride-to-be had jilted him at the altar, running away from her marriage and heading for the airport and another man. But just the thought made her shiver as her blood ran cold through her veins.

She had only met the man her half-sister was marrying once, at the family dinner in Santos’s beautiful Moorish-style home just a few miles from Seville on the night of her arrival in Spain, two days before. But she’d heard so much about him. And she’d seen the effects that his influence had had on her father ever since the two men had embarked on a business deal together. It seemed now that every time she saw Stanley Montague he looked older, thinner, greyer. More shrunken somehow and clearly desperately stressed. Her dad was just not used to dealing with the financial sharks, and Santos Cordero was one of the biggest sharks of all.

Not for nothing was he known as el Brigante—the Brigand. A nickname that she had heard he lived up to in more ways than one.

‘Just wait till you see him! He’s such a hunk! And rich as sin,’ Natalie had said, sounding so very enthusiastic.

Too enthusiastic, Alexa now realised, hearing in memory what she hadn’t recognised then as the forced note in her sister’s voice, betraying the careful effort Natalie had been making to sound like an excited young bride desperately in love with her husband-to-be.

But Natalie had been right about one thing at least—Santos was every bit as stunning as everyone had told her he would be. There was no denying that he was one of the most devastatingly handsome men she had ever met in her life. Tall, raven- haired, with a leanly powerful frame and powerfully carved features, he was a man for whom the description ‘darkly dangerous’ had to have been coined.