Claiming His Wife

CHAPTER ONE

It was warm and airless in the room, but not un­bearably so. Outside on the bleached rolling miles of the campos, the heat of this July afternoon would be almost intolerable.

Cassie waited. Her body felt damp with perspira­tion beneath the grey and cream linen suit she had worn for the journey from London to the vast Las Colinas Verdes estates in Andalusia.

The suit, understatedly elegant and deliberately so, had survived the flight and the taxi-ride out here well, she thought thankfully. No way had she wanted to present herself looking less than businesslike and in control.

She lifted a hand to check that her rich chestnut hair was tamed, severely anchored into the nape of her neck. And her heartbeats were steady—that was another consolation. There was no reason for them to be otherwise, of course; she was no longer a ner­vous, besotted bride of just twenty-one. She was three years older and a whole lot wiser.

Satisfied that her appearance was as good as it could get—given her average kind of looks—she glanced at her watch and wondered how much longer she would have to wait. The taxi that had brought her from Jerez airport had deposited her here at the farmhouse over half an hour ago. The atmosphere in the heavily furnished, sombre room was beginning to stifle her, the louvres closed to keep out the mer­ciless white heat of the sun.

'I will send someone to tell your husband that you are here,' her mother-in-law had stated. Dona Elvira had spoken politely; she always had, Cassie remem­bered, even when offering up her barbed insults, in­sults unfailingly echoed by her two older sisters, Roman's aunts—Tia Agueda and Tia Carmela.

'Is my son expecting you?' A faint pinching of patrician nostrils had denoted that that lady had known Roman was not, that he had long since lost whatever interest he might once have had in his un­suitable, estranged wife.

No longer as frighteningly squashable as she once had been, Cassie had ignored the question and coolly stated, 'I'll wait. In the meantime, I'd like to see Roy. Perhaps you could send him to me.'

And so she waited. Her disgraced twin brother, Roy, it transpired, was not available. He had been put to work erecting fences out on the estate, under the blistering sun, a part of the punishment that was only just beginning.

'I'm under house arrest at Las Colinas Verdes, while Roman decides what to do with me,' he'd com­plained during his distraught phone call of a couple of days ago. 'I can't face ten years in a Spanish jail, sis—I'd rather top myself!' he'd added, his voice be­ginning to rise with panic. 'You could persuade Roman not to bring charges. He won't listen to me. You know what he's like—he's got a tongue like a whip and a mind like a maze; you never know what he’s thinking! It makes it impossible to get through to him!'

‘I will phone him this evening,' Cassie had reluctantly promised. She'd felt sick with disappointment what her brother had done, the way he was bringing her into the mess he had made. 'I'll call from the flat; the boutique's busy right now.' It was buzzing with bargain-hunters on the first day of their summer sale. Her boss and best friend, Cindy Corfield, had already gestured frantically to her to end this call and come up front to help out. "Though Roman isn't likely to listen to me, either,' she'd warned Roy, her voice tight. 'If I ask him not to bring charges against you, he'll probably do just the opposite to spite me. You shouldn't have been such a damn fool in the first place!'

'I know, and I'm sorry—but for pity's sake, sis, phoning him won't help me! He'd just hang up on you—he's rigid with pride, you know that! Come out here. He won't be able to blank you then. He'll listen to you—well, he'll have to, won't he? Damn it all, Cass, the guy's still in love with you, even if you did walk out on him!'

Which was absurd. Roman Fernandez had never loved her. He'd married her because it had been, for him, a matter of expediency at the time. And for her? She didn't think about that, not ever. Three years ago she'd been naive and terribly vulnerable. Roman had taken the tears from her eyes and replaced them with the stars that hadn't lasted much longer than the ac­tual wedding ceremony.

But she was a mature adult now and refused to dwell on past mistakes. And because she'd looked out for her volatile twin for most of her life she'd agreed to do as he'd begged. Roy probably didn't deserve it, but she knew how frightened and alone he'd be feeling, so she'd give it her best shot and hope it would be good enough.

And so now she waited and refused to let herself fidget. During the forty-eight hours or so since she'd received her brother's cry for help she'd worked out what she would offer in return for Roy's freedom.

Offers only a hard-hearted brute could dismiss. She tried not to remind herself that that was exactly what Roman was, and against all her hopes and ex­pectations her stomach flipped over when he finally walked into the room and closed the heavy panelled door behind him.

He was wearing a straight-brimmed black hat tipped forward over his eyes and the black denim of his shirt and jeans was covered in the dust of the campos. He brought the evocative scent of leather and maleness and white heat into the musty room that she knew from her long, lonely months spent here was never used, except as a repository for un­wanted furniture.

She had never tried to pretend that he wasn't the most shatteringly fantastic-looking man she had ever seen, because that would have been pointless. But hoping she looked in control, like a woman who had taken a long hard look at her life, edited out all the bad bits—in which he featured as the central charachter-—And got on with her life, she dismissed the impact he made.

Reminding herself that looks counted for nothing if they hid a hard, unloving heart, she rose to her feet. Five feet five inches of severely groomed adult woman, supported by three-inch spindly heels, was a match for any man, even if he was six feet some-thing of steel-hard muscle and twelve years her sen­ior.

'They told me you were here,' Roman imparted in die husky, sexily accented voice that, despite every­thing, still had the power to send shivers careering op and down her spine. 'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting.' He removed his hat, and sent it languidly spinning across the room to land on a dour-looking table beneath one of the shuttered windows, reveal­ing slightly overlong soft hair, as dark as the wing of a raven, and smoky charcoal-grey eyes that told her he wasn't sorry at all.

Roman had never considered her feelings when they'd lived together. There was no reason on earth why he should do so now.