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The Alcolar Family: The Twelve-Month Mistress / The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife / Bound by Blackmail
Kate Walker
Back by popular demand! These great value titles feature stories from Mills & Boon fans' favourite authors. The Twelve-Month Mistress Joaquin Alcolar has a rule: never to keep a mistress for more than twelve months! Cassie knows that her time is nearly up, and to save her pride – and her heart – she decides to jump before she’s pushed! But then Joaquin has an accident…The Spaniard’s Inconvenient Wife Ramón Dario desperately wants the Medrano Company. But the deal has an outrageous condition – marriage to the notorious Estrella Medrano! Ramón won’t be forced into anything, but a marriage of convenience – and desire – might be a good deal…Bound by Blackmail Jake Taverner has never wanted a woman as he wants Mercedes Alcolar. So when she rejects him, Jake’s hurt pride demands revenge! He traps Mercedes into a fake engagement and he embarks on a skilful seduction. She’ll share his bed for one passionate month…
The Alcolar Family
Passion is their birthright!
Three sizzling, sensational novels froma bestselling Mills & Boon
Modern™author!
Kate Walker was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots were there. She met her husband at university and she originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats, and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre, and, of course, reading.
You can visit Kate at http://www.kate-walker.com.
If you want to read more about the Alcolars, Alex’s story, Wife for Real is available as a free online read at www.millsandboon.co.uk
Don’t miss Kate Walker’s exciting new novel,Bedded by the Greek Billionaire,available inSeptember from Mills & Boon
Modern™.
The Alcolar Family
by
Kate Walker
THE TWELVE-MONTH MISTRESS
THE SPANIARD’S INCONVENIENT WIFE
BOUND BY BLACKMAIL
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
THE TWELVE-MONTH MISTRESS
by
Kate Walker
CHAPTER ONE
THE calendar hung in the middle of the wall, right where Cassie couldn’t avoid seeing it.
No matter which way she looked, it was always there, clear and obvious. In fact it almost seemed to be getting bigger, more obvious with each second that passed, the photograph of a fiesta scene instantly attracting attention with its brilliant colours, its vibrant life.
And beneath it, the dates in bold black print.
Particularly the date she didn’t want to see.
Or most longed to see. She didn’t know which way she felt right now.
Because the importance of that date wasn’t in her hands. It was in Joaquin’s control. And only his. She could do nothing about it.
Not if she wanted to avoid pushing things in a direction she didn’t want them to go.
But was it worth staying in a situation that was just not making her happy?
‘Oh, stop it!’ she told herself sharply, pushing back a strand of golden blonde hair that had fallen forward over her face, and tucking it behind her ear. ‘Leave it! You’re just going round in circles!’
As she had been doing for the last three weeks, she admitted, arching brows drawing sharply together over concerned blue eyes. Ever since the calendar had been turned to reveal the month of June and right there, in the middle of the third week, the all-important anniversary.
The anniversary that she had no idea whether Joaquin would remember and, if he did, whether he would mark it in the way that he had done with all his other previous relationships.
By leaving.
Or, rather, telling her to leave, seeing as it was his house that they lived in.
No woman had ever lasted more than twelve months with him. After a year, sometimes even to the day, he said good-bye and walked away without a backwards glance, it seemed. And at the end of this week she would have been living with him for a year.
‘Oh, Joaquin, what are you thinking? What are you feeling?’
Would she ever be more than just a mistress to him, or was she destined to go the same way as all his other women—out of his life for good?
The sound of a key being inserted in a lock downstairs pulled her out of her thoughts and into the present moment again. Somehow she had missed the sound of the car pulling up outside and now here he was, Joaquin himself, unexpectedly early, and she would have to get herself into the right mood to greet him.
‘Cassandra!
The sound of her name, pronounced as only Joaquin could speak it, with the lilting emphasis, the faint roll of the R, floated up the stairs to her waiting ears. Ears that were straining to hear whether there was anything different about the way he used it, anything that would give her a clue as to just what sort of mood he was in. Whether he was feeling as he usually did, or if some unwanted distance, a newfound coldness had crept into his tone.
Anything that might give her warning of what was to come. Anything that would give her a couple of much-needed seconds to adjust her own mood, her own response, prepare herself if necessary.
‘Cassie!’
Oh, there was no mistaking that tone, she told herself wryly.
Even on the single word, the darker emphasis, the undercurrent of impatience was pure Joaquin. And, unlike most people who used the shortened version of her name as a form of affection and warmth, Joaquin Alcolar employed it as a sound of reproof, an indication that she had somehow fallen short of his expectations.
Obviously he had expected that she would have rushed to greet him, to kiss him, as he came through the door. On any other day she would have fulfilled those expectations with alacrity. But today her troubled thoughts had made her unusually slow to react.
‘Cassie! Where are you?’
‘Up here!’
She was moving as she spoke. There had been a note in his voice that had her up and out of her chair before she even had time to think. A note that went beyond his usual, ingrained belief that he had only to speak and he would be obeyed.
He was right, of course. As the eldest son of Juan Ramón Alcolar, the Spanish aristocrat who also owned and ran the Alcolar Corporation, Joaquin had been used to respect and obedience to his command, the fulfilment of every whim, from the day of his birth. And now, as owner and managing director of his own highly successful vineyard, he had increased both his status and his personal fortune two-hundredfold, so demanding even more respect than ever before.
That was why some called him El Lobo, lone wolf, because he had gone his own way in the world, looking to no one for help, not even his family. But there were others who changed one letter of the nickname, making it into ElLoco, because they just couldn’t believe that anyone would turn their back on the fortune and the position his father would have given him if he had gone into the family media business instead.
‘I’m coming!’
She wasn’t always so swift to obey him. In the past she had sometimes held out against that note of command in his voice, deliberately defying him just to rile his volatile temper. And she was one of the few, along with his younger sister Mercedes, who could get away with it.
Normally she was more than happy to provoke him if she felt he needed it, determinedly rebelling against that autocratic assumption that he had only to speak to be obeyed. But not today. Not now. Not with that all-important anniversary coming up fast and Joaquin’s mood so uncertain.
‘You’re early! I wasn’t expecting you for an hour or more.’
And she didn’t sound too pleased about it, Joaquin reflected inwardly, knowing that this was one of the reasons that had brought him home so unexpectedly. Cassandra had changed recently. Changed in ways he didn’t understand or like, and he’d hoped that by catching her unawares he might have a chance at finding out just what was going on in her mind.
‘The meeting reached the decision I wanted far sooner than I had anticipated. And I have plenty of work to do on the next project so I decided to take advantage of the fact and come home.’
His concentration had been shot anyway. His mind hadn’t been on the matter in hand and so he’d brought the meeting to an abrupt halt and headed out to his car as soon as he could. He suspected he’d broken a couple of speed limits on his way back too.
‘Why does that surprise you? Do you have a guilty conscience about something?’
‘What? No. Of course not.’
It sounded disturbingly edgy. Her voice rose and fell in an unnatural way, making her sound as if she had something to hide.
‘It’s just that you said you wouldn’t be back until seven.’
‘Because I didn’t expect to be. I also didn’t think that you’d complain.’
‘I’m not complaining.’
She’d been like this for a couple of weeks now, growing sharper and more unpredictable with each day that passed. And nothing made her smile as she had once smiled so readily. Nothing pleased her.
That was, nothing but their time in bed. That at least hadn’t lost its appeal. If anything, his appetite seemed to have grown stronger, more passionate—though there was less of the true lover in Cassandra. A lot less of the seductive, enticing lover, and much more of an urgent demand that shook him with its intensity.
Something had gone out of their relationship and left it all the poorer for its absence.
‘I’m not complaining—it’s just unexpected.’
She had reached the top of the stairs now, looking down at where he stood at the bottom, feet planted firmly on the terracotta tiles of the hall floor, dark head tilted back so that he could look up at her.
Even from this perspective, a position that would have foreshortened and distorted a lesser man, he was imposing and forcefully stunning in a way that rocked her already precarious composure, notching her heartbeat up a pace, making her blood throb in her veins.
Hair as black as a raven’s wing, worn slightly long at the neck, matched exactly the jet darkness of his eyes. His skin was deep olive satin, tanned even more by the burning sun in this part of Jerez. He was unusually tall for a Spaniard, his height revealing his Andalusian ancestry, and the broad chest, narrow waist and long, powerful legs of his strong, lean body were sensuously enhanced by the superb tailoring of his pale grey suit, the white shirt underneath worn with a silvery silk tie.
The tie he had tugged loose at the throat, of course. Joaquin Alcolar might be accustomed to wearing the conventional uniform of the successful businessman when he had to, but as soon as he got home he would abandon the sophisticated veneer. He’d discard the tailored jacket, unfasten the tie and the top couple of buttons of his shirt, and transform himself from the powerful managing director into something much less formal and constrained, appearing so much more rakish, more potently virile.
‘When the meeting finished early I decided that I could get more done at home than I could in the office.’
‘You’ve come home to work, then?’
It shouldn’t hurt. She knew what he was like. But it did sting smartly just the same.
‘I would have thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I am.’
She sounded as if she had forced herself to say it, Joaquin reflected, the uneasy, irritated mood in which he had arrived home growing by the second. And what was she doing hovering up there at the top of the stairs when she should be coming down here, into his arms?
That was what he wanted. But just lately what he wanted and what Cassandra wanted had been totally separate things. The warm spontaneity that had taken him so much by storm had vanished, leaving in its place a cool constraint that jarred unpleasantly.
‘If this is pleased, then I don’t think I’d like to see you disappointed. You look almost as if you have something to hide. What is it, querida? Do you have a lover hidden away upstairs? Someone you don’t want me to see?’
He meant it to be light, joking, but his inner feelings added a darker edge that made it seem more like an attack than he had intended.
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’
She was on the step just above him now, looking down into his eyes, and he saw the faintest flicker of something in their depths that made his hackles rise as her blue gaze clashed with his much darker one.
‘Why would I want a lover?’
‘Why indeed? Don’t I keep you busy enough?’
This was her cue to move into his arms, to press the softness of her cheek against the dark-shadowed skin of his, and to wind her own arms around him as she snuggled close.
To distract him from the uneasy, uncomfortable path his thoughts had been following for far too long now.
‘Cassandra?’
There it was again, that sudden unexplained smokiness in the normally brilliant blue eyes, making him want to grab at her arms, shake them, shake her into saying what was wrong. If anything was wrong. Because he was sure there was something.
‘Of course you do.’
Her smile was a disturbing on-off flash, withdrawn and meaningless, no real warmth in it at all.
‘More than busy.’
And at last she bent and kissed him. But it was only the brush of her lips against his cheek. There and then gone—as elusive as her mood had been so often recently.
And there was that damn smile again. A smile that was not a smile. A smile that said that her thoughts were somewhere else entirely. Not with him at all.
He hated the way that made him feel.
The next minute she had come down the final step, gently pushing past him as she moved into the hall, turning towards the kitchen.
‘I was going to make coffee. Do you want some? Or perhaps something cool. It was terribly hot when I was outside this afternoon.’
‘It’s no cooler now.’
What the hell were they doing talking about the weather? He used inane conversations about the climate to while away time with people he didn’t know or like. People he couldn’t get on with. Business contacts, employees—his father!
Not his mistress—the woman he lived with!
