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It was a low growl and he didn’t look at her, didn’t slow his steps towards the door, yanking it open as soon as he reached it.
‘So don’t take it out on me! You can’t drag me about like this—’
She’d taken her attention off her own feet for a moment and as a result she caught her toe against one of the uneven flagstones, stumbling awkwardly in the unaccustomed high-heeled shoes. For a second she thought she would fall but then that cruel grip around her arm tightened even more, holding her upright by sheer force.
‘Don’t yank me about!’
‘I was trying to help.’
The cold flash of his brilliant eyes warned her not to argue but her own temper was bubbling up sharply and she was having to struggle to contain it. How had this happened? How had she come from being just, as she had said, the messenger of bad news, to being the victim of Santos Cordero’s dark disapproval, hauled out into the church by him to face the congregation assembled for his society wedding, without even being aware of just what was involved?
Because something was involved, that much was obvious.
‘Then don’t help.’ She laced her tone with sarcasm to make it clear that helping was the last thing she thought he was doing. ‘I can manage quite well enough on my own.’
‘You might be able to manage,’ he flung back from between gritted teeth, keeping his voice low so that no one, not even her stepmother in the front row, or her father, still waiting by the altar steps, could catch what he was saying. ‘But I would prefer it if you didn’t fall flat on your face and then blame it on me. And I want to make sure that you don’t take off like your sister and disappear out the door.’
‘What would it matter if I did?’
For a second Alexa was tempted to aim a hard, pointed kick at Santos’s ankle but another of those flashing sidelong glances seemed to catch her intent and a grim smile crossed his mouth as he brought them both to a halt right in front of the altar.
‘Alexa,’ her father began once more but silenced himself hastily when Santos turned a burning glare on him.
‘Ladies and gentlemen…’
He barely had to raise his voice to be heard, the church had fallen so silent as soon as they had appeared. Every eye in the place was fixed on them, some faces frowning in confusion and puzzlement, others, like those of her father and stepmother, looking pale and taut with tension. Just what was going on here? What were the undercurrents she was just not picking up on? The things she didn’t understand?
But Santos didn’t seem to be aware of them as he continued to speak as calmly and as confidently as if he were making his after-dinner speech—the one that now would never have to be made.
‘There has been a slight change of plan…’
Slight?
That brought Alexa’s head round to his in a reaction of stunned shock. How could he describe Natalie’s jilting of him, her flight to the airport, as a ‘slight change of plan’?
But Santos ignored her total consternation, her wide, shocked eyes and continued with total control.
‘The wedding is not going to take place.’
‘Not…’
The word was choked from her father as he took an unsteady step backwards. And in the front pew. Alexa saw how her stepmother went even whiter, one expensively manicured hand flying to her mouth as if to hold back the cry of shock and disbelief that almost escaped her.
‘What…?’
It was Stanley Montague, trying again to make his tongue work, to ask the question that was so obviously whirling round and round in his head. Alexa had rarely seen her father looking so shocked and upset. In fact, his reaction seemed out of all proportion to the situation. OK, so it was bad, there was going to be a terrible embarrassment to face, and the aborted wedding would be the talk of their friends—and probably the gossip columns for some weeks to come.
But surely that was better than Natalie making a huge mistake and marrying a man she didn’t love? Better to call the wedding off now than to face a costly divorce—costly in more ways than financial—maybe just months from now? But her father was looking as if the end of the world had come and…
Alexa had no chance to think things through further because at that moment Santos’s firm grip on her arm propelled her forward so that she was standing just in front of him, facing the gaping congregation.
‘Natalie is not coming,’ he said coolly. ‘She has run out on me—that is what her sister came here to tell me. And now she’s going to explain it all to you.’
A forceful little push made her take another step forward in the same moment that it pointedly told her that now was the time for her to speak—to tell everyone the truth.
But what was the truth? Suddenly Alexa was not quite sure. She only knew that it had been obvious that Natalie didn’t want to go through with the wedding. But why had she ever agreed to it in the first place? That question made the earth seem to shift beneath her feet. But she didn’t have time to consider the possible implications of that before her father found his voice.
‘Alexandra? What is happening?’
‘Tell him,’ Santos prompted harshly when she still hesitated. ‘Tell them.’
‘I’m afraid San—Señor Cordero is right…’
The way that her words echoed round the silent church had an eerie, hollow sound but at least her voice had more strength than she had anticipated and she sounded as if she knew what she was talking about. How far that was from the truth only she knew.
‘Natalie has changed her mind. She doesn’t feel it would be right to marry him. Not when she realises that she truly loves someone else.’
And that at least she could say with conviction. In her mind she still had a clear image of the moment that she had looked into her sister’s hotel room and seen Natalie sitting on the bed, staring at the beautiful wedding dress that hung in the wardrobe, her face pale and drawn, her eyes flooded with tears.
‘I thought I could do this, Lexa,’ her sister had said. ‘I really wanted to—but it just isn’t going to work now. If John hadn’t come into my life I would have gone ahead…but he did…and meeting him has changed everything.’
‘She’s truly sorry to have messed everyone about…but she knew it was better to break it off now than to go into a marriage that she knew wasn’t really right for her—’
‘And she did not have the courage to come and tell me herself?’
It was Santos who spoke, his low, darkly dangerous tone drawing her eyes to his face. The black fury that blazed in those eyes, the bitter, insulted pride that tightened his jaw, turned his mouth to a thin, hard line, sent a shiver down her spine as his hard, unyielding gaze locked with hers. Privately she acknowledged that she couldn’t blame Natalie for not wanting to face him. When he looked like this she couldn’t imagine why her sister would ever have wanted to marry him in the first place.
‘No,’ she managed uncomfortably. Natalie hadn’t even dared to face her mother and father with the truth. ‘I’m sorry.’
If the slight inclination of his proud head was meant to be an acknowledgement of her apology then it failed to have any impact. There was no lightening of the coldness of his eyes, no easing of the tightness of every muscle in his powerful frame. And to think that she had once worried that the news of Natalie’s flight might hurt him!
This man looked as if nothing could touch him. As if nothing could penetrate that armoured hide and reach through to find his heart. Right now he didn’t even look as if he had a heart to touch.
‘So where is Natalie now?’
Another question from her father drew Alexa’s attention back to where Stanley was standing, hands clenched tightly together, a frown creasing his forehead.
‘On her way to the airport—no…’
A quick glance at her watch confirmed her suspicion.
‘She must be through to Departures by now. She was getting a plane…’
‘Oh, no! Natalie!’
It was Petra Montague, Stanley’s second wife, reacting in exactly the way that Alexa had anticipated that her stepmother would. Her narrow hands had come up before her face, fluttering weakly against her sculpted cheeks. Above the long, dark red nails her wide blue eyes appeared to glisten with tears that she was fighting not to shed.
‘What has she done? What will we do?’
‘Hush, my dear.’ Stanley’s response sounded almost like a reproach rather than an attempt at consolation as he stepped forward to take his wife’s hands in his and hold them tightly, looking deep into her glistening eyes.
‘Petra—don’t…’
Alexa took a couple of steps forward, then stopped, knowing that her stepmother would not want her attempts at comfort. In fact, she would probably repulse them as dramatically as she was now clinging to her husband’s hands and gazing up forlornly into his eyes.
‘Surely it’s better this way than for her to realise later that she’s made a terrible mistake,’ she repeated.
Oh, she was good, Santos told himself, watching the way Alexa had moved forward then hesitated, noting the quiet, soothing note of her voice. Listening to her, watching her, he could almost believe that she was genuine. That she believed every last word of the story that had dropped so convincingly from her pretty mouth.
But of course that couldn’t be true. She had to be in this right up to her elegant neck. She must have known that her sister was going to run out on him; why else would she time her arrival at the church so perfectly that it was impossible for anyone to go after Natalie and bring her back?
They were all in it together—the whole family. And he had been foolish enough to let them persuade him to let his guard down and, for the first time in his life, make a bad decision.
As a wedding present for your bride… He could still hear Petra Montague’s beseeching voice inside his head. Youwouldn’t want to see your father-in-law thrown out into thestreet…
Dios! What had he been thinking? Never before had he paid out anything on a contract before the whole deal was signed and sealed, but this time he’d let his guard slip just a centimetre and the damn Montague family had taken full advantage of it.
‘You must want Natalie to be happy.’
‘She would have been happy with Santos!’ Petra wailed. ‘We would all have been happy with things that way!’
‘But she wasn’t happy,’ Alexa protested. ‘She just didn’t dare say it, once the wedding had been arranged and everything planned.’
From where he stood slightly to the side, all that Santos could see was this Alexa’s face and body in profile, and, having looked at her once, he suddenly found it impossible to look away.
‘Plain’ was the way her stepmother had described her. ‘Dull and old-fashioned’. But even at the pre-wedding party he had not seen her in that way. She didn’t have Natalie’s dramatic colouring, her stunning beauty. In the older girl, everything was toned down, her sister’s blonde hair subdued to a dark brown, and no blue, blue eyes but an unusual hazel of the sort that could be green or brown depending on the light and her mood. And her clothes had been so much simpler than her sister’s, more demure than Natalie’s ultra-fashionable style, perhaps, but not ‘dull’ or old-fashioned.
Now, even under the appallingly unflattering and over-elaborate hairstyle, her profile had a purity that caught the eye and held it. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent and the length of the lush, curling eyelashes that rested on her cheeks as she looked down seemed almost as if they might waft a breeze across the church with each movement of her eyes.
Her figure was tall and slender, slight in comparison to her sister’s voluptuous curves, but she held herself with a natural elegance. She might not be as stunning a beauty as her sister but there was something about her that drew his attention to her.
Something that hooked him and held him watching, caught by her stillness, her composure. Something that intrigued him and wouldn’t let him go.
On the day they had met she had been so cool, so distant, the ice maiden personified, that he had disliked her on sight. She had turned those hazel eyes on him in the sort of look that he had seen too often as he was growing up. The expression that reminded him he had clawed his way out of the gutter and that he still carried the taint of the slums along with him. It was a look that he had vowed he would never let anyone subject him to ever again and, seeing it, he had told himself that if he had had to choose then he would have preferred Natalie to this cold, stiff, unwelcoming woman.
Now he was no longer so certain.
‘But one thing’s for sure,’ she was saying now, the calm, soft tones of her voice carrying clearly even above her stepmother’s near-hysterics, her father’s attempts at soothing. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t going to be a wedding here today. I just couldn’t let Natalie go through with it.’
Couldn’t… The word swung round and round in Santos’s head, sending warning echoes out like the ripples in a pond when a pebble was thrown into it. I just couldn’t let Natalie gothrough with it.
Couldn’t, be damned. She had been part of this all along. She’d known that Natalie was going to break her promise, had helped her run out on the wedding.
Helped her humiliate him in this public way.
‘I’m sorry that you’ve all had a wasted journey, but I’m sure you’ll understand. And now I suppose the only thing we can do is to go home and get on with our lives.’
She was moving forward as she spoke, making it plain that she was about to do just that, about to walk down the aisle, out of the church…
‘So if you’d all like to leave…’
‘No!’
That was not going to happen. She wasn’t going to just walk away from this, walk out on the mess she and her family had created, and leave it all behind without a backward look. The furious feeling that he had been duped and robbed was like a blaze in his mind, obliterating rational thought, driving him into action. His hand shot out and fastened around her arm again, pulling her to a halt with such force that she actually spun round again, coming face to face with him. Natalie might be beyond his reach, but her sister was not.
The Montague family owed—and he didn’t care who started paying. Only that someone did. And this other daughter seemed a good place to start.
But first he had to make sure that she didn’t get away from him now, running out on him fast like her deceitful, lying little sister.
‘No,’ he repeated even more forcefully. ‘You are not going anywhere—you are coming with me.’
‘Why?’
Once again Alexa was strongly tempted by the idea of a swift kick on the ankle bone of the haughty, autocratic male who held her captive as he glared down into her face, just inches away from his. Only the thought of the audience still seated in the pews behind them kept her from actually physically attacking him, though she glared up into his arrogantly handsome face, praying that her defiance and determination showed in her own eyes as they locked with his.
‘Why on earth would I want to go anywhere with you?’
‘Because I am asking you to,’ Santos said with a swift, totally unexpected smile.
The transformation in his face was so sudden, so astonishing that it made her blink in total disbelief. From being coldly tyrannical and domineering, he had suddenly switched to deliberate and persuasive charm.
And it was working, she admitted unwillingly to herself as she felt the unexpected change in her pulse rate, the new unevenness of her heartbeat in response to the softening of his expression, that stunning smile. She didn’t want to feel that she was weak enough to respond to the practised charm of an experienced male seducer, but the truth was that she couldn’t stop herself. When that smile curved the sensual lips and the light illuminated his burnished eyes, then she suddenly found some of the prickly defensiveness with which she had confronted him melting away and being replaced by an intensely feminine and totally instinctive response.
‘Look…’
The way he raised his voice, the swift gesture of his hand towards the congregation was a move to include everyone in what he was saying. But the direction of his eyes, the burn of their focus was meant for her and for her alone. And the sheer force of it knocked her off balance before she had a chance to collect herself, win back her much needed control.
‘The wedding may have to be cancelled—this part of things spoiled—but does the whole of the day have to be ruined? I have a reception prepared back at my home. My staff and the caterers have been working for days to get things ready. It would be a crime to let everything go to waste.’
For a moment longer he held her gaze and the searing intensity of his eyes made her head spin with the message it seemed to be giving before he suddenly glanced up again, looking out at their audience and switching on another of those impossible, seductive smiles.
‘As Señorita Montague says, so many of you have had a long journey here. What sort of a host would I be if I let you leave again without any refreshment, anything to eat? I invite you all back to the house. There might no longer be any need for a wedding reception but I hope you will enjoy my hospitality just the same.’
Alexa could scarcely believe what she was hearing. She knew that just a few minutes before, there, in the little room just off the altar, he had asked her why he should care that his bride had jilted him at the altar. But could he really just turn and walk away from what was supposed to have been his wedding—and invite all his guests along to share in the abandoned reception?
The cold-eyed man she had first met might be able to. But would the man with the lethally charming smile she had just seen? And which one of them was the real Santos Cordero?
‘You—you won’t want us there…’ she managed. ‘The Montague family would be the last people you’d want to come along. The spectres at the feast, as it were…’
Her voice trailed off again as once more she was treated to that brilliant, enticing smile, but one that she felt was touched with an iciness that was infinitely disturbing.
‘On the contrary, you are more than welcome.’
Was she fooling herself or had there been a deliberate emphasis on that you? Surely he couldn’t mean just her?
‘I am sure that you will want to help me get through this time that I should have been spending with my new bride.’
Now that had very definitely been laced with something darker, more ominous, the hint of a threat that made her skin crawl in uncomfortable response.
