Cordero's Forced Bride

‘You think I do.’

He was looking down his long, straight nose at her now, that broad forehead creased in a disapproving frown, silvery eyes darkened with frank disdain and total scepticism.

‘You think I should hear what you have to say—but you give me no reason why you should march in here like this, without a word of explanation and demand that I—’

‘I’m trying to explain!’ Alexa snapped in total exasperation.

Couldn’t he see that this was important? That she wouldn’t have ‘marched in here’ like this if it weren’t? Couldn’t he see…?

No, she acknowledged to herself privately. He couldn’t see at all. It was the last thing that would possibly cross his mind.

Of course el brigante would never consider that his bride might not turn up. That she might abandon her wedding, jilting her bridegroom and leaving him waiting at the altar. It would just never enter his handsome, arrogant head. Instead he had supreme confidence that she would be here, just as he had arranged, just as he wanted, and go ahead with the marriage— because he wanted it.

The immovable arrogance of the man was beginning to grate so much that she found she was actually clenching her teeth hard so as not to let rip with a furious and totally unvarnished declaration of the truth.

‘But I think that you’d prefer it if we were alone to talk.’

‘What I would prefer is not to be alone with an unknown woman just moments before my wedding ceremony. Can you imagine what the gutter Press would make of that?’

‘Oh, if you’re interested in preserving your reputation then you needn’t worry! I can assure you that I have no designs on…’

Alexa’s voice faded away as she caught the piercing, cynically sceptical look he slanted at her from those burning, silvery eyes. He really thought she was here as some sort of reputation- ruining exercise? What sort of life did this man lead that he had become so totally cynical, so appallingly suspicious? Did he truly believe that she would use the time they were alone together to blackmail him later—demanding a small fortune not to ‘kiss and tell’?

Well, she had no intention of kissing at all…

That thought sent her unwary gaze flying to Santos’s mouth, lingering just a moment too long on its sensual shape, the cynical half-smile curling the corners, and her heart skipped a beat. Kissing those lips would be an experience, one that set off flares of warning in her mind at just imagining it.

But ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ as her mother was fond of quoting. And everything she had heard about Santos Cordero put that ‘handsome does’ part of the saying very much in doubt.

‘I prefer not to know what designs you might have…’

The icy tones of the Spaniard’s attractively accented voice dragged her thoughts back from the foolish path they were travelling, giving her a hint of perhaps one of the reasons why her half-sister had decided that she couldn’t go through with this wedding.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, you impossible man,’ she exploded. ‘I’m trying to save you from embarrassment here.’

‘Alexandra…’

It was her father who stepped forward, obviously determined to intervene, his face alternating between red and pale, his tone and his use of her full name a brusque reproach.

‘Alexandra—please…’

But he stopped dead at a sudden lift of the Spaniard’s hand, an autocratic signal to stop—stay away. Obviously something in what she had said had caught Santos Cordero’s attention. That ‘you impossible man,’ Alexa strongly suspected. She doubted very much that he was regularly subjected to such a contemptuous description—if ever.

‘If you’re really afraid, then we can leave the door ajar so that someone will hear your screams when I…’

But no, she’d gone too far there. If she had meant to provoke him into a decision and action, then she had succeeded. More than succeeded. She had pushed him over some sort of edge that she hadn’t even known was there and he had lost whatever remaining grip he had had on his tolerance, moving from an irritated, barely reined-in impatience in the blink of an eye. She could see it in the flash of cold fire in his eyes and in the way that his beautiful mouth thinned to a brutal, hard line.

And suddenly her heart was thudding in a very different way from the purely feminine response of just moments before. From being at least on secure ground, if not at all confident of her reception, she now felt as if the earth had shifted beneath her feet, opening up the stone flags to reveal a nasty, sucking, dragging swamp that was closing over her feet, starting to drag her in—drag her down.

Her throat was painfully dry and her thoughts spun as she slicked a nervous tongue over parched lips.

‘Believe me, it really would be better if we spoke in private—in there perhaps…’

She waved an arm in a wild gesture towards a door that she presumed led to the church vestry.

Just what she was going to do if he dug in the heels of his highly polished handmade shoes and refused to go anywhere, she had no idea. But it seemed that she didn’t even need to consider the possibility because from his obdurate refusal to co-operate, Santos now launched, suddenly and fast, into action. Swift as a striking snake, his hand came out and clamped hard fingers around her upper arm, their tips digging into the skin.

‘You want to talk?’

His voice was harsh and thick with anger, his accent sounding strongly deep in his throat.

‘Then we’ll talk.’

And he marched her across to the arched wooden door that she had indicated, wrenching on the handle to push it open with scant ceremony. Bundling her inside, he kicked it closed behind him with equal disregard for both the church fitting and, obviously, the idea he had formerly held that being shut in a room with her might prove compromising.

Clearly that idea was long gone. In fact, to prove the point, he leaned back against the old, dark wood and folded his arms firmly across the width of his chest. If she had thought that his jaw was set, his mouth closed tight before, then it was nothing when compared with the hardness of his face now, the ruthless control of all but the single tight muscle that worked in his jaw.

‘Pues,’ he declared after a single flashing glance at the gold watch he wore on his left wrist. ‘You have three minutes in which to explain just what all this is about—and believe me the explanation had better be good—otherwise…’

He let the threat trail off but all the same it still had enough force and note of danger in his tone to send an apprehensive shiver running down Alexa’s spine.

‘So? What do you have to say that is so important?’

‘I…’

Twice she tried to get the words out and both times her voice failed her. Looking into his hard, set face was a mistake. It froze her throat around the words until she could hardly breathe. But looking away was no help either. How could you tell a man that the future he thought was his had been snatched away from him without looking him in the eye?

But looking him in the eye was quite beyond her.

‘You’ve already wasted thirty seconds,’ Santos gibed. ‘Another couple of minutes and I will walk back out there and—’

‘Natalie isn’t coming!’

The words broke from her as any attempt at restraint or control, or even coherence, was impossible. There wasn’t a right way to say this, she told herself, not a good way and definitely not an easy way, so the only thing she could do was to fling the words out into the open and then hope to make a tactical withdrawal, flinching back out of the way of the fallout from the violent explosion that had to result when she made her announcement.

‘Natalie isn’t coming. She’s changed her mind.’

Astonishingly the explosion she had been anticipating didn’t come. But, if it was possible, the sudden dark and dangerous silence that greeted her outburst was actually worse. It was so long-drawn-out and so deep that she felt it take her nerves with it, stretching them out so painfully until she thought she might actually scream out loud with the tension.

‘Changed her mind?’ Santos finally echoed the words as if he couldn’t believe what he had heard or if he did then he didn’t understand just what it meant. ‘Explain!’ he rapped out, the cold command having the force of a bullet fired from a gun.

Well, he’d asked for it. She’d tried to be fair. She’d tried to be considerate. But it seemed that fair and considerate were concepts that Santos Cordero just didn’t understand or appreciate.

‘Natalie isn’t coming to the wedding. She doesn’t want to marry you after all.’

‘Where…?’ Another question was barked at her, the single syllable seeming to spark with anger in the air as it was flung from his lips. ‘Where the devil is my bride?’

Alexa would have sworn that it was impossible for his black brows to draw together any more sharply or for the burnished eyes to blaze any more furiously without smoke actually starting to fill the room, but somehow Santos managed to rein in his anger even though she could practically hear it crackling hot in his veins in contrast to the icy control of his beautifully accented voice.