The Valquez Bride

She forced herself to hold his gaze without flinching. Could he see how much it pained her to be thought so undesirable? So unattractive her father had to go to such ridiculous—insulting—lengths to secure a husband for her? It was so demeaning to be handed over like a parcel no one wanted. It confirmed every fear she had harboured about herself since her mother had left when she was seven. She wasn’t good enough, pretty enough. Lovable enough. ‘I’m nothing like your last choice of bride.’

He was still looking at her with a frowning expression. ‘So?’

‘So they’ll wonder what you see in me.’

Something passed over his features, a tiny flicker of an emotion she couldn’t quite identify. ‘It’s not your limp that was the first thing I noticed about you. It’s that chip on your shoulder.’

Teddy sent him a hardened look. ‘Why wouldn’t I have a chip on my shoulder? Men like you and your brother make it easy to be cynical. You only date women who look perfect. You don’t even notice women like me.’

He stood looking at her for a long moment. She wished she hadn’t spoken. She wished she hadn’t exposed her insecurities. She wished she didn’t feel so inadequate. If she had poise and sophistication she would marry him without a qualm. Most women would snatch at the chance to be linked to him for six minutes, let alone six months. He was the ultimate prize—rich and handsome and charming.

But he was someone else’s prize. Not hers. Girls like her didn’t get the prize. They didn’t get the guy. They didn’t get the fairy tale. They didn’t even get the poisoned apple or the big bad wolf. They were left alone.

‘There will be legal paperwork to see to before we are married,’ he said as if the tense moment had not occurred. ‘A celebrant will perform the ceremony in private. I don’t want any press around. We will announce our marriage as a fait accompli.’

‘What if I want a big white wedding with all the trimmings?’ She only asked it to get under his skin and it worked.

The tic in his jaw was visible for a beat or two. ‘Do you?’

Yes. Teddy thought of her mother’s dress and veil wrapped in layers of blue tissue paper in the camphor chest in the attic. How many times had she climbed those stairs when no one was around and opened that chest to touch the French lace and the voluminous veil? Breathing in the faint trace of her mother’s perfume that somehow, after all these years, still lingered on the fabric, like dreams that weren’t yet ready to be discarded.

Teddy closed the lid on her dreams, the metaphorical slam of it feeling like a bang against her heart. ‘No, but I’m just say—’

‘Many couples save themselves the time and effort and expense of a wedding by eloping. The goal is to get married. Not to entertain a crowd of people you’ve never met or barely know and will likely never see again.’

She couldn’t quite let it go. ‘That’s not what you thought ten years ago.’

His eyes held hers in a heated lock that made the back of her neck prickle. ‘My people will speak to your people.’ He gave her a brisk nod. ‘Buenas tardes.’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_6e679054-b60d-596d-a790-cd3df4b260c8)

A COUPLE OF DAYS later Alejandro frowned as he clicked on a news link on his phone. There was a photograph of Teddy and a separate one of him with the caption: For Love or Money? Argentinian Playboy Desperate for Cash? The short piece was damning in every way imaginable. It speculated on their relationship, hinting at a soon-to-be-conducted private wedding. It questioned his motives for the alliance. It made him look like every type of cad intent on marrying an heiress for her fortune. There was no mention of Teddy’s motives. The journalist failed to mention that Alejandro had ten times the wealth of Teddy’s father. His business brand would be damaged. It was one thing being seen as a party-loving playboy but quite another to be labelled a cash-strapped cad. Shareholders would pull their funds out of the company. It would destabilise everything to have investors shifting their interests right now.

How had this leaked? Had Teddy spoken to the press? Had she deliberately set out to make him look as ruthless and self-serving as she could?

He’d thought he was getting to know her. He’d thought he was coming to understand her prickliness and coolness of manner as a defence mechanism rather than who she really was on the inside. He’d thought she was different, that she was an old-fashioned girl caught up in the machinations of her unprincipled father. He’d even liked her, damn it.

He ground his teeth. She wanted a white wedding and was going about getting one come hell or high water. She was forcing him. Manipulating him.

Two could play at that game.

* * *

‘Don’t look out of the window,’ Audrey said to Teddy. ‘There are press everywhere. There’s even one in the hedge down by the gate. I saw the glint of his camera in the sunlight.’

‘What are they doing here?’

Audrey pointed to the newspaper lying on the breakfast table. ‘My guess is your cousin’s been making mischief. He had his hopes on getting everything if you defaulted on the will. You’ve upset the applecart by agreeing to the terms. He didn’t think you’d do it.’

Teddy chewed the right side of her mouth as she read the article. It wasn’t very flattering towards Alejandro. But it was even worse for her. It made her sound like a hideous witch the poor man had been forced to marry to keep him from the poorhouse.

Her phone beeped from inside her pocket and she took it out to see Alejandro’s number come up on the screen. ‘Hello?’

‘I’m five minutes away,’ Alejandro said. ‘Pack a bag. We’re going to London.’

‘Why?’

‘To buy a wedding dress. What else?’

‘But I thought—?’

The phone snapped off.

* * *

Teddy was waiting for Alejandro in the morning room. She was standing with her back to the windows when he came in. Dressed in dark blue cotton trousers and a loose sweater and with her face free of make-up and her hair in a tight ponytail, she looked as if she was barely out of her teens. Her expression was cool and unaffected but her hand gripping her stick was white-knuckled. ‘I’m not going to London with you.’

Alejandro wasn’t used to people ignoring his orders. When he said ‘jump’ people jumped. ‘I told you not to speak to the press.’