Married By Arrangement

Yet the stark difference between their respective backgrounds might more easily have ensured that the two sisters remained lifelong strangers. While Belinda had grown up in a lovely country house with her own pony and every childhood extra her parents could afford, Sophie had been born illegitimate and raised in a council flat by a father who was always broke. Sophie was the result of their mother, Isabel’s extramarital affair. After her infatuation had subsided, Isabel had won her estranged husband back by leaving Sophie behind with her lover. Sophie’s feckless father had brought her up with the help of a succession of girlfriends. She had learned when she was very young that her wants and wishes were rarely of interest to the self-seeking adults who surrounded her.

At first meeting, Sophie had been in awe of her beautiful, sophisticated sister. Five years older, Belinda had been educated at a fancy boarding-school and she had talked with a cut glass accent that put Sophie in mind of the royal family. Her warm and affectionate nature had however soon won Sophie’s trust and love. Perhaps more slowly and rather more painfully, Sophie had come to appreciate that Belinda was not very clever and was extremely vulnerable to falling for handsome men who talked big and impressed her. But wild horses would have not have dredged that unhappy truth from Sophie, who was loyal to a fault.

Leaving her niece in Norah Moore’s capable care, Sophie climbed into Matt’s pick-up. He gave her a lift into Sheerness and, stopping right outside the solicitor’s office, he offered to wait for her.

As always in a hurry to escape Matt’s hopeful air of expectation, Sophie had already jumped out onto the pavement. ‘There’s no need,’ she said breezily. ‘I’ll catch the bus.’

Matt behaved as if she hadn’t spoken and told her where he would be parked.

A young car driver waiting at the lights buzzed down his window to call, ‘Hiya, sexy!’

Sophie flung him a pained glance from eyes as deep and rich and green as old-fashioned bottle glass. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

He looked startled by the comeback. Sophie pondered the decided embarrassment of still looking like a sixteen-year-old when she was almost twenty-three years old. She blamed her youthful appearance on her lack of height and skinny build. She kept her hair long because, although she would not have admitted it to a living soul, she was always terrified that her slender curves might lead to her being mistaken for a boy.

As she entered the legal firm’s smart office she tugged uneasily at the hem of her denim skirt, which rejoiced in floral cotton frills. The skirt was well out of fashion and she had worn it only because she thought it looked more formal than the jeans that filled her limited wardrobe. All her clothes came from charity shops and none were of the designer cast-off variety. Without complaint, she hovered while the receptionist chatted to a colleague and answered a call before finally deigning to take note of her arrival.

In the waiting room, Sophie took up a restive position by the window. She watched a limousine force its passage along the street outside and cause traffic chaos. The long silver vehicle came to a halt and a uniformed chauffeur emerged. Impervious to the car horns that protested the obstruction that the limo was creating, he opened a rear door for his passenger to alight.

As the passenger sprang out and straightened to an imposing height the breath caught in Sophie’s throat. Her green eyes widened with disbelief. It couldn’t be, it simply couldn’t be Pablo’s autocratic big brother, Antonio Rocha! She shrank back to the side of the window but continued to stare. It was Antonio all right. He had the impact of a tidal wave on her self-command.

There he was: the male who had made mincemeat of her every prejudice, overpowered her defences and reduced her to a level of eyelash-fluttering, giggly compliance. She suppressed a quiver of shame at that recollection. For nearly three years since that awful day, Sophie had told herself that Antonio could not possibly have been half as devastatingly attractive as she had believed him to be. And now here he was in the flesh to destroy even that comforting lie with his smooth aristocratic façade that set her teeth on edge and his altogether more disturbing quality of raw sexuality.

His gleaming black hair was cut fashionably short. His lean, classic features were stamped with a bold masculinity that attracted female admiration wherever he went. He was a work of art, Sophie acknowledged grudgingly. Not only did he look like some mythical Greek god, he was also built like one with broad shoulders, a narrow waist and long, powerful legs. Dressed in a trendy dark designer suit, he looked achingly handsome. Only when he strode into the same legal practice did she break free of her paralysis and sincerely doubt the evidence of her own eyes.

Why would Antonio Rocha be over in England? What was he doing on the Isle of Sheppey where the titled rich were scarcer than hens’ teeth? Surely he could only be in Sheerness on this particular day to keep the same appointment that she had been asked to attend? No other reason could rationally explain such a coincidence.

Sophie hurried over to the door that led back into the reception area where an alarming amount of activity had broken out. The once laconic receptionist was standing to attention with a megawatt smile of appreciation and a well-dressed older man was greeting Antonio with a horrendous amount of bowing and scraping. ‘Your Excellency,’ he murmured obsequiously.

As though some sixth sense warned him of her presence, Antonio turned his proud dark head. Eyes as rich as gold ingots in sunlight encountered hers. Her tummy flipped and her mouth ran dry and her heartbeat escalated as though she were trying to run up a hill. It was like being hit by a truck at breakneck speed and she reacted with panic.

‘Just what the heck are you doing here?’ Sophie asked belligerently.

Taken aback though Antonio was by her unexpected appearance, he betrayed no visible sign of the fact. In the space of a moment, he had absorbed every facet of the slender woman poised by the door. She had the fine bones and grace of a dancer and the transient air of a butterfly ready to take wing at the first sign of trouble. Her toffee-blonde hair fell in a riotous mass of curls round her delicately pointed face, framing wide green eyes bright and sharp as lancets, a freckled nose turned up at the tip and a full sweet cupid’s bow mouth. His keen gaze semi-cloaked by the lush density of his lashes, he tore his attention from the provocative appeal of that very feminine mouth and struggled to suppress a primitive and infuriatingly inappropriate flare of pure lust.

Sophie folded her arms to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. ‘I asked you a question, Antonio—who asked you to come here?’ she demanded.

‘His Excellency is attending this meeting at my request, Miss Cunningham,’ the solicitor interposed in a shocked tone of reproof.

Antonio moved a step closer and extended both his lean brown hands. His stunning dark deep-set eyes met hers in a head-on collision. Before she even knew what she was doing she was uncrossing her defensive arms and freeing her fingers to make contact with him, for a yearning she could not deny had leapt up inside her.

‘I know how close you were to your sister. Allow me to offer you my deepest condolences on her death,’ Antonio breathed with quiet gravity.

Hot colour rose like a flood tide to wash Sophie’s pale complexion. Her small hands trembled in the warm hold of his. Ferocious emotions gripped her and threatened to tear her apart. She could not doubt his sincerity and his compassion pushed her to the brink of tears. With his immaculate sense of occasion, social sophistication and superb manners, he had put her in the wrong by answering her less-than-polite greeting with courtesy. For that alone, Sophie could have screamed at him and wept in rage. She refused to be impressed. She also refused to think about how much he had hurt her almost three years earlier. Instead she concentrated on a more relevant line of attack. Where had Antonio Rocha and his rich, snobby family been when Belinda had been desperate for help and support?

She jerked her hands free in stark rejection. ‘I don’t want your precious condolences!’ she told him baldly.

‘Nonetheless they are yours,’ Antonio purred smoothly, marvelling at the level of her aggression and the novelty value of her rebuff. Women were never aggressive towards Antonio or ungrateful for his consideration. Sophie was the single exception to that rule.

‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,’ Sophie said stubbornly.

‘I was invited,’ Antonio reminded her gently.

‘Your Excellency…please come this way,’ the solicitor urged him in a pained tone of apology.

Although Sophie had grown increasingly pale with discomfiture and nerves, her chin came up. ‘I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me what’s going on! What gives you the right to hear what my sister said in her will?’

‘Let’s discuss that and other issues in a more private setting,’ Antonio suggested quietly.

Once again Sophie’s face flamed pink with chagrin. Squirming embarrassment afflicted her when she unwillingly recalled the consequences of her visit to Spain nearly three years earlier. His rejection had hurt like hell and devastated her pride. She had been too pathetically naïve to recognise that the blue-blooded Marqués de Salazar was simply amusing himself with a bit of a flirtation. It was an effort for her to repress that wounding memory and concentrate on the present.

Her slender spine stiff, she sank down in a seat in the spacious office. Determined to emulate Antonio’s cool, she resolved to resist the temptation to give way to any further outbursts and she compressed her lips. At the same time she was frantically striving to work out why Antonio Rocha should have been asked to come all the way from Spain. After all, Pablo’s haughty brother had not bothered to get in touch before, nor had he shown the smallest interest in the existence of his infant niece. An enervating frisson of anxiety travelled through Sophie.

The solicitor began to read the will with the slight haste of someone eager to get an unpleasant task out of the way. The document was short and simple and all too soon Sophie understood why Antonio’s presence had been deemed necessary. However, she could not accept what she had heard and questioned it. ‘My sister nominated Antonio as a guardian as well?’

‘Yes,’ the solicitor confirmed.

‘But I’m more than capable of taking care of Lydia,’ Sophie proclaimed brightly. ‘So there’s no need for anyone else to get involved!’

‘It’s not quite that simple,’ Antonio Rocha slotted in smooth as a rapier blade, but a faint frown line now divided his ebony brows. He was surprised that the will had made no mention of the disposition of Belinda’s property and was about to query that omission.

Sophie spared the tall Spaniard her first fleeting glance since entering the room. Her troubled green eyes telegraphed a storm warning. ‘It can be as simple as you’re willing to make it. I don’t know what came over Belinda when she chose to include you—’

‘Common sense?’ Antonio batted back drily.

‘I suppose Belinda must’ve been scared that both her and me might be involved in an accident,’ Sophie opined heatedly, fingers of pink highlighting her tautening facial bones as she fought to maintain her composure. ‘We’re talking worst-case scenario here, but luckily things aren’t as bad as that. I’m young and fit and well able to take care of Lydia all on my own.’

‘I would take issue with that statement,’ Antonio murmured.

Her teeth gritted. ‘You can take issue with whatever you like but it’s not going to change anything!’ she shot back at him.

‘Your sister nominated you and the marqués as joint guardians of her daughter,’ the solicitor expanded. ‘That means that you have equal rights over the child—’

‘Equal rights?’ Sophie gasped in rampant disbelief.

‘Equal rights,’ Antonio repeated with a silken emphasis he could not resist.

‘No other arrangement is possible without application to the courts,’ the solicitor decreed.

‘But that’s utterly outrageous!’ Sophie launched at Antonio.

‘With all due respect, I would suggest that my family is entitled to assist in the task of raising my brother’s child to adulthood.’

‘Why?’ Sophie slung back wrathfully as she leapt to her feet. ‘So that your precious family can make as big a mess of bringing up Lydia as they did with her father?’

Angry disconcertion had tensed Antonio’s lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Both our siblings are now dead. Let us respect that reality.’

‘Don’t you dare ask me to respect Pablo’s memory!’ Sophie flared back at him in disgust. ‘Your brother wrecked my sister’s life!’