Spanish Marriage Solution

Chapter Two

ALICE’SPALMSWERE now damp and it wasn’t only due to delivering a truth to Sebastián that he didn’t want to hear. It was also him.

Watching him pull himself effortlessly up onto the horse’s back and then ride without either saddle or reins, as if he and the horse were one beast, one mind, was like drinking a slug of whiskey straight down. It stole her breath then made her feel warm all over, and slightly intoxicated, a little drunk on his competence and the athleticism with which he performed every movement.

She’d seen him ride before, at other visits, and it had always been mesmerising. She didn’t know anything about riding, but he seemed a natural to her, and it was clear the horses loved him too. They were always following him around and nuzzling at his pockets for treats, nickering at him and pushing at him with their long muzzles. He was so gentle with them, too. Not at all the cold, proud, arrogant man he was around everyone else, and that had fascinated her. Made her want to know why he was so different around animals. She’d wanted to ask Emily, but talking about him to Emily had felt too dangerous, so she hadn’t. Going to the stables had felt dangerous too, and really, it would have been better for her peace of mind not to. Yet she hadn’t been able to help herself. She was drawn helplessly there, by her fascination with the horses and with him.

She hadn’t known her visits were a problem until he’d told her curtly that the stables were out of bounds to non-employees, and she was disturbing the horses.

It was a good thing, she’d told herself then, ignoring the hurt she’d felt at the time, because she had no right to feel that hurt. Of course, he didn’t want her in the stables, especially if her presence disturbed the animals. She didn’t work for him, so there was no reason for her to be there after all.

Yet still, watching him now, she felt that same combination of fascination and hurt that she’d felt years ago. The same combination of breathless desire and guilt. Nothing had changed.

God, how she hated it.

He sat on the back of the huge black stallion, his muscular body shifting with the horse’s restless movements, automatically adjusting without any seeming effort. His gaze was hard, his smoky gold eyes as cold as she’d ever seen them, so it took her a second to register that he didn’t look shocked in the least.

‘What?’ His voice was deep and dark, his lightly accented English making music of the words. ‘You think I didn’t know? You think I wasn’t aware of Emily’s affair? I had the tests done, Alice. So yes, I know he’s not my son, not by blood. But he is in every other way that counts and so he’s not going anywhere.’

She’d expected to shock him, because she certainly hadn’t been aware of Edward’s affair with Emily. Oh, she’d suspected that Edward might have been having an affair given his many absences overseas on ‘business’ trips and the emotional distance growing between them, but not that his affair had been with her sister. Not until the pair of them had died together in that car accident.

She hadn’t expected that, not only had Sebastián known about the affair, but he’d also known that Diego wasn’t his.

She felt as if the ground had been ripped from under her.

‘How?’ she asked blankly. ‘How did you know?’

He lifted one powerful shoulder. ‘That’s not important. What is important is that my name is on Diego’s birth certificate. I am his father.’

Alice felt the world shift again, like the horse between Sebastián’s powerful thighs, and her gut churned. Jet lag of course, but also a shock she wasn’t expecting to feel to add to the complicated tangle of emotions seeing him had brought back.

She’d thought he wouldn’t argue. The Castellanos were an old-world, aristocratic family where blood was everything, and she’d assumed that Sebastián wouldn’t want anything to do with a child not of his blood. That, after a period of surprise and anger, he’d have no issue with giving up a child that wasn’t his and he wasn’t responsible for.

With a supreme effort of will, Alice forced her shock and all the rest of her emotions away and met his steady, hard gaze. ‘I don’t care,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s my nephew. I have a letter from Emily saying that she wanted me to bring him up and so that’s what I’m going to do.’ He was all she had left of Emily, all she’d ever have of a family of her own too, but she wasn’t going to tell Sebastián that. He didn’t know about her terrible miscarriage, but he did know that Diego was all she had left of her sister.

‘I sympathise,’ Sebastián said, his voice entirely without sympathy. ‘Nevertheless, his place is here with me.’

Alice blinked, her nausea still churning, but she’d be damned if she looked weak and sick in front of him, so she reached for the anger instead. The anger that had been burning in her for months now, an anger she’d forced aside because her sister and her husband were dead and being angry with them wouldn’t bring them back or change things. Except it might help her now.

She drew herself up to her full height, the way she did at work when men were trying to tell her how things worked. When they were trying to explain the world of finance to her, despite the fact that she knew it far better than they ever could.

‘No,’ she said icily. ‘His place is with me. His aunt. By blood.’ She held Sebastián’s proud golden stare. ‘If I have to get lawyers involved, believe me, I have no problem with that.’

The stallion shifted restlessly and Sebastián once again dropped a hand to absently stroke its glossy black coat. And despite herself, despite everything, Alice found her gaze drawn to that large, strong hand. White scars dotted the olive skin of his long fingers, evidence of a man who worked hard in an intensely physical job, no matter the wealth and power of his position.

She’d tried never to fantasise about him. Tried never to imagine that hand on her skin, stroking her as he stroked that horse, because she’d been married and she’d loved her husband. But sometimes, especially in the years after she’d lost the baby, before Edward had pulled away from her so completely, she’d found herself dreaming of Sebastián’s hands on her body, and that hard mouth on hers. She’d always wake up with an aching sense of loss and suffocating guilt.

She still felt that guilt, another thread of pain to add to her grief at losing Emily, even though her sister had been having an affair with her husband. It was just all so complicated and fraught that she had no idea why she would even be looking at Sebastián’s hand when she had so many other things to deal with. And even if the situation had been different, she had no idea what Sebastián felt about her. She never had. Nothing, judging from the expression on his arrogant face. It was clear that he wasn’t going to give an inch.

‘Do that,’ he said. ‘I also have lawyers. And they have been protecting Castellano interests for centuries. Diego is mine, Alice. And I keep what is mine.’

‘Like you kept Emily?’ It was a stupid thing to say, and she knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She’d let her anger get the better of her, and that had never been a good thing. If he was going to be difficult about Diego then she needed to get him on her side, not the opposite.

His handsome features hardened even further. ‘There is nothing for you here, Alice. Go home.’ Then, before she could say anything else, he turned the horse away and set off on another circuit, urging the stallion into an easy canter.

Alice’s heart thumped loudly in her ears, sweat trickling down her back, and, much to her horror, she felt tears prickling the backs of her eyes. She must be more tired than she’d thought if she was letting her emotions get to her like this.

Gritting her teeth, she blinked the tears away.

Tears were Emily’s trick and one her sister had used often to get her way. Acting weak and fragile, looking like a victim to get attention. It had always worked, too, but Alice had learned early on that it was impossible trying to compete with her beautiful, feminine sister, and so she hadn’t.

Instead she’d kept her emotions locked down, hidden away, becoming stoic and staunchly practical. And what had been a cause of pain in childhood became an asset in the corporate world. No one could ever accuse Alice Smith of being overly emotional.

She stood there a moment, getting herself under control.

She’d given herself a week in Spain, thinking that bringing Diego home would be a simple matter, and she still had time. Her lawyer threat hadn’t been an idle one—there were some she could call on—but she knew that if Sebastián chose to be difficult about this, then fighting him was going to be hard. She didn’t have the resources he did, plus she was unfamiliar with the Spanish legal system. Still, she’d be damned if she went home like a good little dog with her tail between her legs.

She’d already lost one child. She wasn’t going to lose another.

He expected her to leave, which meant her only response was to stay. She certainly wasn’t going to go without at least seeing her nephew and surely Sebastián couldn’t deny her that. Perhaps, if she stayed a couple of days, she might even be able to convince him to change his mind about her taking Diego back to New Zealand.

He is not going to change his mind. He’s not going to give that child up and you know it.

Alice took a silent, steadying breath, gazing at Sebastián as he rode another circuit.

Emily hadn’t confided much of her marital issues to Alice—now Alice knew about Edward, she could see why—but she had told her that Sebastián could be arrogant and cold, and that he was exceptionally strong-willed. Difficult, Emily had once said, but since he was also amazing in bed—something Alice really didn’t want to know—she forgave him his difficulties.

Well, Alice had caught a glimpse of that arrogance and coldness just now, also a ruthlessness she hadn’t expected. Though, perhaps she should have. Perhaps she should have called him first instead of thinking this would be better dealt with face to face. If she’d called, she would have known he was going to be difficult and had a backup plan prepared.

Too late for that now. His tone had been hard, as had those aristocratic features, and there was no give in those deceptively hot golden eyes. He wasn’t going to budge.

In which case you’re going to need to be persuasive, aren’t you?

Alice dragged her gaze away from him, turning plans over in her head. She wasn’t leaving Spain without Diego, that was the bottom line. Her parents had passed away three years earlier—her mother to cancer and her father to a heart attack—which made Diego her only flesh and blood. And even apart from that, Emily had been very clear in her letter that she wanted Alice to look after her son. Especially now he’d been orphaned.

Sebastián was no relation and he was a hard, proud man. There was no softness in him, no warmth. He treated his horses better than he did people, and she didn’t want Diego growing up with a father figure like that.

Children needed love and support and she had all of that to give. After all, she was never going to have a child herself, in which case Diego would be hers.

So getting Sebastián to change his mind might not be easy, but she wasn’t going to leave without trying. Her nephew deserved that.

Alice didn’t look back again. She turned from the corral and strode along the path through the gardens that led from the stables to the hacienda.

The house was massive, of whitewashed stone and a red-tiled roof, with many terraces and a central courtyard surrounded by colonnades shaded by lush grape vines and brilliant bougainvillea. Green lawns surrounded the house and gardens featuring banks of lavender, along with orange and olive trees and fountains. Out at the back of the house was the lavish pool area that Emily used to live in during the long hot summers, or so she’d told Alice. Alice hadn’t been here in summer. She and Edward had only visited in winter, when there was snow on the ground and the hacienda’s thick walls would hold in the warmth from the huge fireplace in the central living area.

She loved the estate, though she never let Emily or Edward know how much. She’d even tried to deny it to herself as well, because she didn’t want to love anything of Sebastián’s. Didn’t want any ammunition that would fuel fantasies of how much better suited she was to living here than Emily.

Emily, who was afraid of the horses and complained of the isolation. Who wanted a bright, modern apartment in Paris, not some centuries-old, dark and dusty Spanish estate. Sebastián had duly bought her that Paris apartment and she’d spent a lot of time there, Alice knew. Probably to coincide with Edward’s ‘business trips’.

But she wasn’t going to think of that, not about her sister and her husband. That way lay too much pain and she was barely getting by with grieving their loss, let alone their infidelity as well.

She walked through an archway that led into the central courtyard and then down a colonnaded path that ran down the side of the house before stepping through a door and into the cool of the wide hall.

Her suitcase was still standing beside the big wooden double front doors, as was her handbag. Well, it could stay there. She wasn’t leaving.

She went down the hallway and into the huge living area. It was all low ceilings with exposed timber beams and stone flooring covered with thick rugs. Low couches upholstered in faded blue linen with thick white cushions were clustered around the giant fireplace, and dark wooden shelving lined the whitewashed walls.

It was wonderfully cool in here and she was tempted to sit down on one of the couches for a rest, because she was feeling overheated and dizzy, and still faintly nauseous. Then again, if she sat down, she wasn’t going to get up again, and that wasn’t going to help.

Besides, apart from anything, she wanted to see Diego.

Eventually, she tracked Lucia down in the kitchen. The housekeeper was putting something in the oven and, seeing Alice, she straightened and gave her a smile. ‘Did you find Se?or Sebastián?’

Alice smiled back. ‘I did. But I have a problem, Lucia. I’m here to spend time with my nephew and I was silly. I didn’t give either you or Sebastián any warning I was coming. So he’s not very happy with me, I’m afraid.’

Lucia raised her hands. ‘It’s no problem. We have plenty of room. It is just Se?or Sebastián and the little one now. And as for him not being happy with you...’ She shrugged. ‘He will get over it. You are not a stranger, after all.’

No, but she might as well be.

‘Are you sure?’ Alice didn’t care about putting out Sebastián, but she didn’t want to make things difficult for Lucia. ‘There is a hotel in the village—’

‘No, no,’ Lucia interrupted emphatically. ‘No, Se?ora Alice. You must stay here. I will not hear of you going to the village. No, absolutely not.’

It didn’t matter how many times Alice had told Lucia to call her just Alice, the housekeeper insisted on calling her se?ora. It made her almost smile. Emily had loved Lucia, because Lucia liked taking care of people and Emily had loved being taken care of. Lucia was warm and motherly, and Alice had liked her too.

‘Okay,’ she said, feeling relief spread through her. ‘I’d love that.’

‘Good.’ Lucia put down the tea towel she’d been holding. ‘Now, I will get a room ready, but first you need food and something to drink. You have had a very long trip here, no?’

‘Yes, it was very long.’ Alice swallowed, feeling unaccountably nervous. ‘Might I...see Diego?’

Lucia’s smile became even warmer, the look in her dark eyes softening. ‘He is having a nap now. And you, I think, need food, coffee and a rest.’

There was a fleeting moment’s disappointment that she couldn’t see him immediately, but she didn’t want to wake him up, and it was true she’d really love a rest, so she let herself be taken charge of by Lucia instead.

Half an hour later, when Alice was feeling better after some food and a strong cup of coffee, Lucia showed her to one of the guest rooms. Without asking, she’d put Alice in a different room from the one she and Edward had normally used, which Alice was grateful for since she didn’t need any more reminders.

It was a pretty room, too, with a terrace that overlooked the courtyard. The dark wooden French doors to the terrace stood open, allowing air to circulate, carrying with it the scent of lavender and the sound of the fountain.

A four-poster bed draped in white muslin was pushed up against one wall and covered in a thick white quilt, a pile of pillows resting against the carved headboard.

Alice sat down on it with some relief. She’d taken off her rumpled suit the moment Lucia had left, and had stepped into the en suite bathroom to have a cool shower. She felt better now, but there was still that deep-seated weariness that felt as if it had settled into her bones. Grief, naturally. It had been two months since Emily and Edward had died, but that exhaustion was still there, tugging at her.

She lay down on the soft quilt and put her head on the pillow, the cotton cool under her cheek. Yes, a rest was a good idea. She certainly was going to need all the energy she could get in order to face Sebastián again. Especially when he found out she hadn’t left as he’d ordered her to.

It was only supposed to be a quick nap, but when Alice opened her eyes again, the room was full of the red-gold light of a long, European twilight. She must have slept half the day away and now it would probably be too late to see Diego. Still, she had to admit, she felt a lot better.

A good thing, considering a confrontation with Sebastián was on the cards.

Slipping off the bed, she went to her suitcase to find something to wear that wasn’t a suit, only to see that on the low couch at the end of the bed had been laid a loose, cool-looking dress in faded red linen. It wasn’t hers, which meant Lucia must have put it there for her.

Alice picked it up. The material was soft and silky, and with the loose style it looked as if it would fit. The faded red was a beautiful colour too. Where had Lucia found it? Was it Emily’s? It probably wasn’t, considering it wasn’t Emily’s colour, but then there were a lot of things she’d thought Emily wouldn’t like and apparently had.

After a moment, she slipped the dress on and, indeed, it fitted beautifully, the red linen cool and soft against her skin. It was much less constricting than her suit, and she loved the feeling of the skirts swirling around her legs.

She didn’t normally wear dresses. Emily was the pretty, feminine one. The one their father had doted on and their mother had called her ‘little princess’. Alice had been the oldest and therefore the responsible one. Too independent and headstrong for their father and too tall and athletic to be anyone’s little anything.

No one had called her anything but Alice, not even Edward.

Shaking out her still damp hair, Alice smoothed down the dress, then went to the door and opened it. She stepped into the hallway beyond and went down it to the big, dark wooden staircase that led downstairs.

Still thinking about what she was going to say to Sebastián, she didn’t notice the man standing at the bottom of the stairs until it was too late.

He had his arms crossed over his muscular chest and he was watching her with hard golden eyes. ‘What are you still doing here, Alice?’

At first all Sebastián could think about was how beautiful the red linen dress looked against her olive skin. How beautiful she looked, with her black hair loose and hanging in a glossy midnight tumble over her shoulders.

The dress was designed for comfort, not sex appeal and yet somehow, with her glorious height and Amazonian lines, Alice made it look effortlessly elegant.

He resented that. He resented the fact that she was still here at all.

Lucia had told him that Alice was staying in the way Lucia often did, as if this were her house and he had no say in the matter. And considering how long Lucia had been the housekeeper here, that was partially true. He’d never felt the need to argue with her before, but he did now and he resented that as well.

He didn’t like having to pull the duke card with his staff and he wasn’t about to start now, especially not when the problem was his sister-in-law.

Who apparently hadn’t gone as he’d told her to.

She stopped halfway down the stairs and gave him an imperious look. ‘What do you mean, what am I doing here? I presume Lucia told you?’

‘She said you were staying. Which was not what I told you to do.’

‘No, because I don’t take kindly to being ordered around. Especially not after forty-eight hours of travel.’

Anger threaded through him. He didn’t want her here. She was too much of a reminder of all the things he’d sacrificed for the past five years, all the things he’d lost. His marriage, his wife, his future.

In Emily he’d thought he’d found the perfect bride. A woman who’d loved him, who’d needed him, who’d appealed to the protector in him and who’d wanted children eventually. And then he’d met Alice and realised he’d been mistaken in his choice. But divorcing Emily hadn’t been possible, not for the honour of his family, and so he’d put all thoughts of Alice aside and concentrated on loving his wife instead.

At least, he’d tried. In fact, he’d thought he’d succeeded, until a business associate in Paris had told him he’d seen Emily out and about with her brother-in-law. Not that the signs hadn’t been there before that, he’d just chosen to ignore them.

Regardless, Alice’s presence brought all of that back and he wasn’t having it.

‘In that case,’ he said curtly, ‘you can stay the night. But in the morning, you need to leave.’

She was silent a moment, her guarded dark gaze expressionless. Then she said, ‘No.’ And folded her arms, mirroring his stance.

The thread of anger pulled tighter. ‘What do you mean no?’

‘Exactly what I said. I’m here for Diego, Sebastián, I told you that. And I’m not leaving without him.’

‘And I told you that—’

‘You will let me see him at least,’ she interrupted, and there it was, deep in her eyes, that flicker of fire that had drawn him so strongly the moment they’d met. ‘He’s my nephew, Sebastián. He’s the only family I’ve got.’

You can’t deny her that.

He wanted to. He wanted to very badly. The longer she was here, the more her presence grated, and he didn’t need that, not so soon after Emily’s death. His life had already been upended once and he didn’t need it happening again.

Then again, family was important, as Mateo, his father, had never ceased to tell him, though apparently that applied only to the Castellanos. And Sebastián was not a Castellano, which was another thing that Mateo never ceased to remind him of.

Still, it would be cruel to deny Alice the chance to meet her nephew, not to mention exceedingly petty. Emily had called him cruel once, and he supposed, to her, he had been. It was too late to make any recompense for that now, but he could allow Alice a day at least.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You may have tomorrow. I expect you to leave the morning after.’

But instead of being satisfied with this as she should have been, Alice’s black brows descended. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What does it matter to you how long I stay?’

Good question. Pity he had no answer to give her, or at least not one that wouldn’t betray exactly how much it mattered to him.

You’re letting her get to you far too much.

Perhaps. Nevertheless, he’d decided.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he bit out. ‘I’ve made my decision and that’s final.’

She was silent again, watching him. Then, after a moment, she came down the rest of the stairs, the skirts of her dress swirling around her. She moved with such economical precision, as if once she had a direction to go in, nothing was going to get in her way.

He found it challenging and exciting in the way watching a spirited animal was challenging and exciting. Thinking about how to harness that animal’s spirit, match it with his own, to help it grow and bloom into something magnificent.

You shouldn’t be watching her.

No, he shouldn’t. Yet he couldn’t help himself.

She stopped in front of him, allowing some distance and yet still closer than he would have preferred. Not that he’d ever forget himself and grab her, but he didn’t appreciate the temptation. The scent of sweet lavender surrounded him, probably from the soap made from the lavender flowers in the estate gardens that had been put in all the guest rooms. Emily hadn’t liked it, preferring the more exotic and expensive scents she’d had made especially for her in Paris. He liked it though, and on Alice there was a sweetness beneath the lavender that made everything male in him sit up and take notice.

It had been a long time since he’d taken a woman to bed. He and Emily had grown apart in the months leading up to the accident and since then, grief and guilt had stolen away anything resembling desire.

But he could feel it now, rising in him as her scent wove around him and he watched the fire flicker in her dark eyes. He knew how badly he wanted to make that fire burn higher, hotter. It was a unique temptation, yet he couldn’t give into it. He couldn’t.

‘You didn’t say anything to me at Emily’s funeral,’ she said. ‘Why was that?’

He knew he should step back, put some more distance between them, but he didn’t. ‘What did you want me to say?’

There was a flicker in her gaze, the glimpse of a temper she’d never displayed in his presence before, or at least not so openly. ‘A hello might have been nice.’

But he hadn’t said that. He hadn’t said anything to her. Which had been rude, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to even approach her. She’d been wearing blue, Emily’s favourite colour, in defiant opposition to the black all around her, and loss had been written all over her face. He should have said something, but he’d been so full of anger at Emily for betraying him, and at himself for his failure to make her happy, that he hadn’t been able to trust himself to speak to anyone, let alone Alice.

Plus, he’d thought he’d never see her again after that and so what was the point?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, knowing he sounded not sorry in the least, but unable to adjust his tone. ‘I wasn’t fit company that day.’

‘Neither was I.’

He didn’t like the challenging look in her eyes, not one bit. ‘Is there a point to this?’ he asked, because suddenly he was conscious that standing here too close to her wasn’t a good idea. ‘Dinner is ready in the courtyard and Lucia doesn’t like people being late.’

Her dark eyes glittered. ‘Fine. Let’s have dinner. And you can tell me all about why you think Diego is better off here than he is with me.’