Married By Arrangement

‘That’s why I’ve reached a decision,’ Belinda told Sophie tearfully two weeks before she died. ‘You probably can’t have a baby of your own and I know how much you love Lydia. You’ve been a terrific mother to her, much better than I could ever be. If you want Lydia, you can keep her for ever and that way I can at least see her occasionally.’

That day Sophie deemed it wisest to say nothing, for she was convinced that Belinda’s affair with Doug was already fading and that her sister would soon bitterly regret her willingness to sacrifice even her child on his behalf. Sophie had grown up in a household where her father’s lady friends had almost always had children of their own. She knew that there were plenty of men who refused to take responsibility for anyone other than their own sweet selves. Her father had been one of that ilk, a work-shy charmer of colossal selfishness, but he had never been without a woman in his life. All too often those same women had put his needs ahead of their child’s in a pointless effort to hold on to him.

‘My goodness…fancy Belinda not even telling you!’ Norah Moore exclaimed in astonishment when she heard about Antonio Rocha’s appearance at the solicitor’s office. ‘That sister of yours was a dark horse, all right.’

Engaged in cuddling Lydia close and rejoicing in the sweet, soft warmth of her niece’s weight in her arms, Sophie sighed, ‘Belinda probably put Antonio’s name down and never thought about it again. She didn’t keep secrets from me.’

‘Didn’t she?’ the older woman snorted, unimpressed. ‘I reckon Belinda only ever told you what she thought you wanted to hear!’

Sophie stiffened. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you teasing me?’

Reddening, Norah looked discomfited. ‘Of course I am,’ she said awkwardly.

It was not the first time that the older woman had hinted that Sophie might not have known her sibling as well as she thought she did. Sophie was irritated but placed no credence in that suggestion. She was well aware that Norah and Belinda had merely tolerated each other. Norah had been too rough and ready for Belinda’s refined standards and had been hurt and offended by the younger woman’s coolness.

With Lydia in her pram, Sophie left the Moores’ neat little bungalow and walked back to the static caravan where she lived. Belinda had totally loathed living there and had been delighted to move into her boyfriend’s smart apartment in town. But Sophie looked on the caravan as her home and loved the fact that the big front window looked out on a field where sheep sometimes grazed. Indeed, high on her agenda was the dream that some day she might be in a position to stop renting and buy a more up-to-date model.

Changing back into her jeans and gathering up her cleaning materials, Sophie was in a hurry to make up the time she had lost from her day’s work. Try as she might, she found it impossible to lock her memories of Belinda’s wedding and her first meeting with Antonio out of her thoughts…

Sophie had been thrilled when she was asked to be a bridesmaid. Some of her enthusiasm had waned, however, once she’d realised that Belinda wanted her to conceal her humble beginnings and avoid any close contact with Pablo’s blue-blooded family. Only her sister’s frantic pleas for her to share that special day with her had persuaded Sophie to overlook those embarrassing strictures.

Belinda had paid all her expenses and it had been cheapest for Sophie to travel to Spain on a five-day package holiday at a nearby resort. Sophie’s father, his then girlfriend and her son had decided to take advantage of the low prices and share the same apartment. The day of their arrival, and the night before the wedding, Sophie had accompanied Belinda to a social evening at the imposingly large home of one of Pablo’s relatives.

Sophie had felt like a prune in the fancy pink suit that Belinda had insisted on buying for her. Worried that she might mortify her sister by saying or doing the wrong thing in such exalted company, Sophie had taken refuge in the billiards room. It was there that she had met Antonio for the first time. Glancing up from the solo game she had been engaged in, she had seen him watching her from the doorway. Drop-dead gorgeous in an open-necked black shirt and chinos, he had simply taken her breath away.

‘How long have you been standing there?’ she asked.

Antonio laughed huskily. ‘Long enough to appreciate your skill,’ he replied in perfect, accented English. ‘But you’re not playing billiards, you’re playing snooker. Who taught you?’

‘My dad.’

‘Either you’re a born player or you must have practised a great deal.’

Sophie resisted the urge to admit that when she was a kid her father had often kept her out of school so that he could take her into bars at lunchtime and place bets on her ability to beat all comers at snooker. Her father had only stopped that lucrative pastime when the authorities had given him a stern warning about her poor school-attendance record.

‘I guess…’ she muttered, biting her lower lip while all the while studying him from below her lashes and feeling horribly shy. She had an innate distrust of handsome men and he was dazzling. She was also noticing the subtle signs of expensive designer elegance in his apparel and going into automatic retreat. ‘I shouldn’t be in here.’

‘Why not? Are you not a friend of the bride’s?’

Remembering Belinda’s warning, she nodded grudging agreement.

‘And your name?’ Antonio prompted, strolling silently closer.

‘Sophie…’

He extended a lean brown hand. ‘I am Antonio.’

Awkwardly she brushed his fingertips and backed towards the door. ‘I’d better get back to the other room before I’m missed. I don’t want to insult them—’

‘Them…?’ He quirked an amused dark brow. ‘All those terrifying Spanish people next door?’

‘It might seem funny to you, but I don’t speak the lingo and the ones that speak English can’t seem to understand my English and keep on asking me to repeat things… It’s a nightmare!’ she heard herself confiding, desperately grateful just to find someone who could follow what she was saying.

‘I shall go and tell them off immediately. How dare they frighten you into hiding in the billiard room?’ Antonio teased.

Sophie lifted her chin. ‘I don’t hide from people.’

‘Let’s play…’ He presented her with the cue she had abandoned. ‘I’ll teach you the game.’

‘I’ll beat you hollow,’ she warned him.

His stunning dark eyes gleamed with pleasure at that unashamed challenge to his masculinity. ‘I don’t think so.’

In fact she played the worst she had ever played. She was so intensely aware of him that she was quite unable to resist the need to keep on looking across at him. She was terrified of the strength of his attraction for her. Young though she was, she was painfully aware of the havoc that tended to result from such wayward physical enthusiasms. It was almost a relief when Belinda interrupted them, aghast to find her little sister in Antonio’s company. Making an excuse, Belinda was quick to separate them.

‘Didn’t you realise who he is?’ she scolded Sophie. ‘You shouldn’t even be talking to him. That’s Pablo’s big brother…the one with the title and the castle… the Marqués of Salazar.’

For a real live Spanish marquis, Antonio had, on first brief acquaintance at least, seemed refreshingly hip and normal. Sophie was savagely disappointed to discover how far he was out of her reach and annoyed that Antonio had not spelled out exactly who he was. Impervious to Belinda’s clumsy attempts to keep them apart, Antonio intervened to sweep Sophie off to meet some of the younger people present. When the evening came to a close, it was Antonio who had to drive Sophie back to the holiday resort: in all the excitement of being the centre of attention as the bride, Belinda had forgotten about her sister’s transport needs.

‘I can’t understand why you are not staying with your sister at my grandmother’s home,’ Antonio admitted, assisting her into a long, low-slung fire-engine-red sports car that would have looked at home in a Bond movie.

‘I didn’t want to intrude—’

‘I’m not happy that you should be staying in an apartment alone. I do not wish to imply criticism of your sister, but you should be relaxing and enjoying my family’s hospitality. I’ll wait while you pack,’ Antonio imparted with the quiet but absolute authority of a male accustomed to instant obedience to his every expressed wish.

‘But I’m not alone…er, I’m with friends,’ Sophie protested awkwardly, recognising the impossibility of naming her father when Belinda had begged her not to tell a living soul that they were actually only half-sisters because their late mother had had an extramarital affair. Her sibling had been ashamed of that history, had already refused to share it with Pablo and had been determined that his aristocratic relatives should not find out about it either.

‘Friends?’ Antonio queried, his bewilderment visibly growing.

‘Yes, I decided to make a holiday out of my trip over here…nothing wrong with that, is there?’

‘No, there is not,’ Antonio drawled in a measured tone. ‘But you only arrived in Spain this morning and are perhaps not the best judge of good accommodation. My cousin owns a local business and he tells me that the tourist complex where you are staying has a bad name. The police are often called there to deal with fights and drunks.’

She resisted a flippant urge to tell him that her father would be very much at home there. ‘I’m not a delicate flower…I’ll manage.’

‘But you should not have to manage,’ Antonio murmured gently.

The idea that she might look to a man to protect her from the evils of the world was a really novel concept to Sophie. She lay awake that night on her uncomfortable sofa bed in the apartment’s tiny reception area. While she strove to block out the noise of the argument between her father and his girlfriend in the room next door she discovered that she could not stop thinking about Antonio.

At every point where she had consciously expected Antonio to reveal his male feet of clay, she had been confounded. He had listened to every little thing she’d said as if he was interested. He had not once shouted at her or sworn at her or eyed up other girls. He did not drink and drive. Nor had he at any stage attempted to ply her with alcohol or make a pass at her. Indeed Antonio Rocha had in some mysterious and romantic way contrived to make Sophie feel special and cosseted and worthy of attention and care for the first time ever.

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.