Chantelle Shaw - Postcards From Madrid - Married by Arrangement / Valdez's Bartered Bride / The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride

At twenty years old, Sophie had never had a serious boyfriend. She was a virgin because she was totally terrified of sliding down the same slippery slope that had wrecked the lives of most of her father’s girlfriends. Unlike them, she hadn’t had to worry about becoming a mother at too young an age. But she had observed that placing faith and energy in countless casual relationships could result in low self-esteem, even a disrupted education and poor employment prospects, thus trapping one in poverty. She had told herself that she was too clever to succumb to the dangerous allure of casual sex, but the real truth was that she had never been remotely tempted to succumb to the coarse advances she had met with.

Never before had she lain awake until dawn counting the hours until she would see a guy again. Never before had she agonised over whether or not a man liked her or whether in fact he was simply being polite. Never before had she fantasised like mad over what it would be like if that same man were to kiss her. In fact her imagination was so extravagantly exercised by Antonio that when she saw him face to face again embarrassment afflicted her with blushes, stammers and painful shyness for the first time in her life. She had floated through Belinda’s wedding festivities on a cloud of such intense happiness that the wake-up call of cruel reality had been all the harder to bear twenty-four hours later…

Antonio stayed behind at the solicitor’s to clarify certain matters for his own benefit. Even the vague facts that he was able to establish stamped the kind of reflective frown to his lean, dark features that put his employees on their mettle.

Evidently, Belinda had been penniless at the time of her death and working as a barmaid. Yet when she had married Pablo, the beautiful blonde had been a receptionist in a London modelling agency, her comfort and security ensured by the healthy amount of cash and property she had inherited from her parents. Antonio had little need to wonder who or what had been responsible for bringing about Belinda’s reduced circumstances and angry regret gripped him. That his late sister-in-law had been living with another man did go some way to satisfying his need to know why Belinda had apparently been determined not to ask her late husband’s family for help.

It took a lot to shock Antonio but he was stunned when, having asked for Sophie’s address, he learned where exactly she was living. He could not initially credit that she resided in a trailer park. Was his criminally dishonest brother responsible for her impoverishment as well? The limousine paused outside the entrance while his chauffeur double-checked his destination with his employer. Alighting outside the run-down office, Antonio decided that Sophie was a problem best cured by the liberal application of money.

Sophie was cleaning the floor in one of the smarter mobile homes on the site when a brisk knock sounded on the door. Scrambling up, she pushed it open and froze when she clashed with dark-as-midnight eyes set below level black brows. She knew she should not but she stared, drinking in the dark, sexy symmetry of his bold, masculine features. Her heart started to beat very, very fast. ‘You said seven o’clock,’ she reminded him. ‘What are you doing here this early?’

‘Is this not a good time for you?’ Antonio enquired, his keen gaze raking from the torrent of her curls gilded to gold by the sunlight to the vivid intensity of her animated face and then back to centre on the soft, ripe curve of her mouth. Taken individually her features were ordinary and flawed, he reflected grimly. But that did not explain why she continually gave him the impression of being ravishingly pretty.

‘No, it’s not… I mean, I’m working and Lydia’s asleep and it’s just not convenient,’ Sophie broke into an enervated surge of protest.

‘I appreciate that but I have nothing else to do in this locality while I wait. I’m also understandably eager to meet my niece,’ Antonio responded without apology. There was a brooding coolness in his decisive scrutiny as he suppressed the absurd spark of desire she always generated. He could only think she had the deceptive allure of the unfamiliar for him. ‘May I come in?’

Feeling ridiculously flustered, Sophie edged back into the trailer’s small lounge area and surreptitiously moistened her dry mouth. He strolled up the steps and took up what felt like every square inch of space.

‘You’ll have to wait until Lydia wakes up from her nap.’

Impatience tautened Antonio’s striking bone structure. ‘Meeting her uncle should be rather more fun than sleeping. I haven’t got much time to spend in the UK. I’d be grateful if you tried not to make matters more complicated than they need be.’

By the end of that little speech Sophie was breathing a little heavily. She had put Lydia down for a nap so that the baby would be less tired when Antonio made his visit. His early arrival had thrown that schedule into chaos. Her small, slight body stiff with annoyance and concern, she bent her curly head and pinned her lips tight on the tart comments eager to flow from her ready tongue. Antonio Rocha, Marqués of Salazar, was loaded. The solicitor had treated him like royalty and had treated her like trash to be tolerated. The warning was clear: she could not afford to make Antonio a bitter enemy. If push came to shove, he would always win the upper hand by virtue of his wealth and status. Therefore, even if it choked her, she had to be polite for Lydia’s sake and swallow Antonio’s every demand with as much grace as she could manage.

‘Lydia will be a little cranky if we waken her before she’s ready,’ Sophie said hesitantly.

‘I want to see my niece now,’ Antonio decreed, having decided that Sophie responded best to firm authority.

After a pause for consideration, Sophie nodded, for she wanted to be fair. There had been a lot of little boys and girls at Belinda’s wedding and her sister had once told her that the Spanish were particularly fond of children. Antonio was obviously accustomed to babies and confident of being able to handle his niece. She pushed open the door of the narrow bunkroom where she had stowed Lydia to sleep undisturbed in her little travel cot.

Antonio gazed down at the small hump under the blanket, which was topped by a fluff of light brown curls. His niece looked worryingly tiny. Both Pablo and Belinda had been tall. On the other hand Sophie barely reached the top of Antonio’s chest, so it was perfectly possible that the baby was naturally undersized and still quite fit. He reminded himself that when he took Lydia back to Spain she would be checked over. The family doctor, who was an old friend, had suggested that giving the baby a full medical examination would be a wise precaution: one or two babies in the most recent generation had been born with heart murmurs.

Mastering his own reluctance, Antonio decided to show an appropriate level of interest in the child by lifting her out of the cot for a closer inspection. He brushed back the blanket and scooped the baby up.

Almost instantly, the baby went as stiff as a tiny steel girder and looked up at him with enormous stricken brown eyes. Her mouth opened wide enough to treat him to an unwelcome view of her miniature tonsils and a yell that would have roused a graveyard exploded from her. Her face turning scarlet, the baby shrieked blue murder as if she were being attacked. Antonio stared down at his niece in paralysed horror.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ he demanded.

‘Have you ever been snatched out of bed by a stranger and dangled in mid-air like a toy?’ Sophie asked fiercely, resisting the urge to haul Lydia from his inept and unfeeling hands.

Hearing Sophie’s voice, Lydia twisted her little head round. The baby squirmed like mad and stretched out her hands towards her aunt in a movement that was as frantic as it was revealing.