Cordero's Forced Bride

Hunk he might be, Alexa had told herself later when she had been introduced to Santos. But when she had come up close, close enough to shake his hand, close enough to look into his face, she had known intuitively that the ‘dangerous’ part of that description was not just fantasy or her imagination running riot.

His grip on her hand had been cool and firm, his careful smile polite and practised, but she had found herself looking into the coldest, iciest eyes she had ever seen. A unexpectedly pale grey gaze that seared over her with the cruel force of a focused laser. Her skin had prickled all over and she had felt alternately hot and then shiveringly cold as if she were in the grip of some horrible fever. Murmuring some inane politeness, she had made her escape as soon as possible and from then onwards had tried to avoid Santos for the rest of the evening. But all the time she had felt the burn of his palm against hers, and her body still tingled under the impact of that scorching gaze.

‘Alexandra?’

It was her father’s voice, blurred and almost covered by the murmurs of surprise from the congregation, coming to her from where he had been waiting just inside the church—waiting not for her but for his younger daughter to arrive. Natalie had made the excuse that she didn’t want to overtire him, had insisted that her father went on ahead, rather than following tradition and travelling to the church in the same car as the bride.

‘Alexandra…’

‘What has happened?’

Another voice sliced into the buzz of interest that had filled the church with the realisation that the new arrival through the door had been not the bride they were expecting but the chief bridesmaid. A pale-faced, uncomfortable-looking bridesmaid at that, Alexa reflected miserably as the cold, incisive tones of the groom’s question carried clearly down what seemed like miles and miles of aisle and made every other conversation and comment die away, like the tide ebbing back from the sand.

‘What has happened?’ he demanded again and unwillingly Alexa’s eyes went to where he stood at the altar, tall and darkly, dangerously imposing.

If he had looked stunning in the sombre black and white of the evening dress of the night of the party, so now, in the formal morning coat, waistcoat and elegant cravat, he had an impact that made her head spin. And from the moment that her eyes clashed with his, green-brown locking with glittering grey, it was as if there were only the two of them in the world. The rest of the congregation, her surroundings, the flickering candles and the gorgeous flowers all merged into just one great blur, at the centre of which was a dark, strongly carved face, a tight, set mouth and burning, molten eyes.

‘Tell me!’ Santos Cordero said, and it was an autocratic command, flung at her with all the force of a perfectly aimed arrow, right from the far end of the church.

The impact of it flung her head back, bringing her chin up as her eyes flashed a defiance of his dictatorial tone and she watched his eyes narrow in swift assessment, his beautiful mouth tightening sharply.

‘Per favor,’ he added with such a bite and an obviously carefully controlled effort that it was like a slap in her face. Stinging hard.

It wasn’t a ‘please’ at all, she thought furiously. It was just another way of phrasing a command, and in a tone that made her want to toss something rude at him and turn on her heel and march out. Either that or fling the shocking truth in his face and watch that arrogant glare fade from his face, the ‘lord of all I survey’ stance falter just a little so that his straight shoulders weren’t held so high, the elegantly booted feet not planted quite so firmly on the stone-flagged floor of the church.

But even as the angry thoughts crossed her mind, a sense of decorum and a touch of unwilling compassion pushed them out again fast.

Arrogant brute though he might be, Santos Cordero was still a bridegroom on his wedding day. He had come here today believing he was going to be married to her half-sister, Natalie.

The same Natalie who had fled from her hotel and was probably at the airport now with the man she had admitted she really loved.

Leaving it to her sister to explain just what was happening.

The thought dried her mouth, tightening her throat, and just for a moment she actually allowed herself the luxury of considering turning and running too, getting away from here as fast and as far as she could. This wasn’t her problem; her responsibility. Let someone else explain to this arrogant Spaniard that his bride-to-be had had second thoughts. Let someone else…

There was no one else.

At the far end of the church, Alexa could see that her stepmother, resplendent in emerald-green and a hat with swirling peacock feathers, was twitching uncomfortably in her seat, her narrow face pale and taut as if she already suspected that something had gone very badly wrong. And her father…

No, she didn’t dare to look into her father’s face, knowing that he would guess she had brought the worst of news. And being her father he would probably erupt in a rage. Which could be the worst possible response right now.

‘Señorita…’

Santos Cordero’s pointed hint that she continue sounded gentle, but looking into his dark, set face, Alexa suddenly knew that gentle was the exact opposite of just what he was feeling. He had barely controlled his impatience, reining it in only with the most ferocious power. And even now it was very close to breaking free if the harshly drawn white lines about his nose and eyes, etched around that sexy mouth were anything to go by. Say the wrong thing and he would explode, the top blowing off his mental volcano and the red-hot lava of fury flowing out to engulf them with spectacularly nasty results if she wasn’t very much mistaken.

This was the Santos Cordero she had been led to expect. This was el brigante, whose reputation for arrogance and ruthlessness had reached her even in Yorkshire, where her home was, miles away from the family house in London.

When her father had first announced that he was negotiating a business deal with Santos he had sounded so excited, totally confident that this partnership would make him a fortune and so ease all his financial problems. But it hadn’t been long before everything had seemed to change. It was obvious that the deal was not the success Stanley had dreamed of but instead a source of great stress. Though just lately those worries seemed to have been buried in the unexpected rush to organise Natalie’s wedding.

‘Señorita…’

Once more those softly deadly tones drew her eyes to the face of the man her half-sister was supposed to have been marrying today. And once she had looked into those burning, deep-set eyes, even from this distance, she found it impossible to look away. She couldn’t drag her own gaze from the mesmeric force of his and once more she had that shocking sense of tunnel vision. Of being at the far end of a long, long channel from where the only thing she could see was the tall, powerful form of Santos Cordero, every ounce of his attention totally focused on her.

‘What is it that you have come here to say? Because you have come to say something, I assume?’

Drawing in her breath sharply, Alexa struggled to ignore the sting of that sarcastic tone, which had a bite like the flick of a whip.

‘I have to speak to you,’ she managed, the words coming out as breathlessly as if she had just run the couple of miles from her half-sister’s hotel room to the cathedral. ‘Please…’ she added with renewed urgency when she saw the way that his black brows snapped together in a dangerous frown.

‘Then speak.’

An autocratic flick of one long, bronzed hand emphasised the command with all the arrogance of a long-ago emperor.

‘I for one am impatient to hear what you have to say.’

He was impatient all right. He couldn’t make that any plainer. And she would tell him. But not right here, right now. Not like this with close on six hundred guests now openly gawping in her direction, fascinated by what was going on and anxious to view the next ‘episode’ in this soap-opera drama that had suddenly been staged before them.

With her heart beating so high up in her throat that breathing normally was a complete impossibility, she made herself take the necessary steps forward down the aisle that brought her near to him. And as she went she tested possible openings over and over inside her thoughts, trying each one for size and discarding them as too stupid, too contentious, too clumsy or just plain wrong. And even if she had any hope of an idea it fled from her mind in the moment that she looked up into his dark, shuttered face and saw the way those cold, hunter’s eyes were burning down into her.

She knew that it wasn’t possible but she suddenly felt that he was even bigger, leaner, stronger than he had appeared on the night she had been introduced to him. The formal tailoring of his wedding suit emphasised the straight width of his shoulders, the broad chest, narrow waist and long, long legs. And against the immaculate white of his shirt, the golden tones of his skin stood out in dramatic, powerful contrast.

‘Can we go somewhere more private, please?’

Her voice was thin and uneven on the words but she knew that he had heard her even though he inclined his dark head to one side, frowned faintly, as if he had not quite caught what she had said.

‘Perdon?’

He took a step forward as he spoke and she was close enough now to see the way the powerful chest rose and fell with his breathing, even see the faint shadow on his jaw where already the darkness of stubble was just visible below the surface. She almost believed she could actually feel the heat of his strong body reach out to enclose her, carrying with it the subtle tang of some citrusy cologne, enhanced and deepened by the clean, personal scent of his skin. Her heart was thudding even harder now, but this time she realised on a sense of shock that it was not just the sense of apprehension that gripped her but a sudden rush of a purely female response to the presence of a powerful, sexually alluring male. And that was the last thing she wanted to feel towards this man whose presence in their lives seemed to have created nothing but problems for her family.

‘Can we go somewhere more private, please?’

She forced herself to say it again, more firmly and a touch louder this time, though she really wanted to hiss it at him in the most controlled of whispers, for his ears only.

‘Somewhere we can be alone.’

‘Alone?’

This time those black brows drew together with such sharp force that she almost heard the snap and it was impossible to misunderstand just what was in his mind. Alexa could feel the hot tide of blood race through her skin, heating it with embarrassment.

‘Señorita, I am about to be married.’

‘Not like that! I didn’t mean it like that!’ she hissed at him. ‘And you’re—’

With a sense of horror she choked off the appalling declaration— you’re not getting married. She couldn’t just come out and say it. Not like that. Just as she couldn’t give him the devastating news right here and now, in front of this audience.

Because he had to be devastated, didn’t he? Even if he was big and strong, and ruthless as they came, he had after all asked Natalie to marry him, to be his wife, for better, for worse…

‘You really need to hear what I have to say,’ she managed, praying that the emphasis she was putting on the words hid the sudden huskiness that seemed to have affected her voice.