CHAPTER ONE
‘BUT why didn’t Belinda tell us last year that she had given birth to Pablo’s child?’ Antonio Rocha, Marqués de Salazar, demanded of his grandmother, lingering astonishment etched in the hard set of his sculpted cheekbones, his lean, darkly handsome face grim.
‘We barely got to know Belinda while your brother was alive.’ Doña Ernesta’s fine-boned features reflected her regret over that state of affairs. ‘How could we expect her to turn to us for help after he had abandoned her?’
‘I tried several times to set up a meeting with Belinda. She always made excuses,’ Antonio reminded the older woman. ‘Finally, she insisted that she didn’t need our help and she made it clear that she no longer regarded us as being related to her.’
‘Her pride may have spoken for her. I imagine Pablo left her with little else. Now that we know that he must have deserted her when she was pregnant, my heart is even heavier,’ Doña Ernesta confessed. ‘Yet when he married her, I truly believed that he might finally settle down.’
Being an incurable cynic, Antonio had had no such hopes. After all, his younger brother had broken the heart of his own family long before he had graduated to wreaking havoc beyond that select circle. Although born with every advantage into the most élite stratum of Spanish high society, Pablo had started getting in trouble at an early age.
His parents had found it impossible to control him. By the time Pablo had reached his early twenties, he had dissipated a substantial inheritance and defrauded several relatives and friends of large amounts of money. Throughout those troubled years, countless people had made repeated efforts to understand, correct and solve Pablo’s problems. All such attempts had been unsuccessful, not least, Antonio believed, because his brother had got a huge kick out of breaking the law and swindling the foolish.
It was three years since Pablo had come home to mend fences and announce his intention of marrying his beautiful English girlfriend. Overjoyed by his return, Doña Ernesta had insisted on throwing the wedding for the happy couple while at the same time making them a very generous gift of money. The marriage, however, had failed and Pablo had returned to Spain twelve months ago. Soon afterwards, the younger man had lost his life in a drunken car crash.
‘It astonishes me that Pablo could have kept such a secret from us,’ Doña Ernesta lamented. ‘It is even more sad that Belinda could not trust us enough to share her child with us.’
‘I’ve made arrangements to fly over to London tomorrow morning,’ Antonio told her, frowning when the elderly woman seated by the elegant marble fireplace continued to look deeply troubled. ‘Try not to dwell on your sorrow. As a family, we did all that we could and we will now do our very best for Pablo’s daughter.’
It was only that afternoon that Antonio had received an urgent call from the family lawyer, who had in turn been contacted by Belinda’s solicitor in England. Antonio had been sincerely shaken by the news that his brother’s widow had not only given birth to a child six months earlier, but had died from pneumonia just a fortnight ago. He had been relieved that, independent though Belinda had evidently intended to be, she had still had the foresight and sense to nominate him in her will as the guardian of her daughter, Lydia. At the family lawyer’s instigation, however, Antonio had also agreed that, even though he had no reason to doubt that the little girl was his brother’s child, DNA testing, distasteful though it was, would be a sensible precaution.
The lawyer had then informed him that Belinda’s sister, Sophie, was currently looking after the child. Dismayed by that information, Antonio had appreciated that his own intervention was immediately required. Sophie was far too young for such a responsibility and he thought it unlikely that her lifestyle would be conducive to the care of a baby.
Antonio had met Sophie when she had acted as a bridesmaid at her sister’s wedding. The pronounced differences between the two sisters had disconcerted his conservative family. While Belinda had had the confident gloss and clear diction of the British middle class, Sophie had appeared to hail from a rather less privileged background. Indeed Antonio’s English had been much more grammatically correct than hers had been. As he recalled those unexplained discrepancies his incisive gaze veiled. An involuntary memory of Sophie with her tumbling fall of blonde curls and glinting green eyes assailed Antonio. Not a beauty in the classic elegant style of her sister, certainly. Even so, Antonio had found his attention continually returning to the youngest, smallest bridesmaid that day and he had been equally quick to notice that there wasn’t a man in the room impervious to her appeal.
But her apparent appeal had been very short-lived, Antonio reminded himself grimly, his expressive mouth curling with disdain. Sophie had been sparkling, sexy and intensely feminine. But as he had discovered she had also been a slut. Watching her trail back into her hotel at dawn with her youthful lover and with her clothing dishevelled from a night of passion on the beach had been a salutary lesson. Clearly, she had been no more particular in her habits than the many tourists who came to Spain to indulge in rampant casual sex and an excess of alcohol.
‘A little girl. My first great-grandchild,’ Doña Ernesta remarked with a tentative smile softening her rather severe features, her well-modulated speaking voice breaking into what was a rare moment of abstraction for her grandson. ‘Lydia. It is a pretty name. A baby will transform the castillo.’
Antonio resisted a dismayingly strong urge to wince while inwardly acknowledging that he had been in no great hurry to embrace fatherhood. He was barely thirty years old. He had yet to experience the faintest glimmer of a desire to produce the next generation and had never had the slightest interest in babies. In fact he generally gave the rug rats a fairly wide berth at family events. Doubtless the perceived charm of a howling baby lay in the fond eye of its parent and magically enabled the parent to overlook the fact that babies were horrifically noisy and messy.
‘I imagine so,’ Antonio murmured wryly, resolving to have the nursery suite in the little-used east wing renovated at speed. He would also ensure that a full complement of staff was hired to service the child’s every need.
He was not ashamed to admit that he liked his life just as it was. He had had to work incredibly hard for a very long time to repair the damage done to the Rocha
family fortunes by Pablo’s ceaseless depredations. While his brother had been running wild and free on his ill-gotten gains, Antonio had been working eighteen-hour days. Self-indulgence, personal interests and relaxation had all been luxuries out of Antonio’s reach. Having since amassed sufficient wealth to be judged a billionaire, Antonio now relished his own highly sophisticated existence, his fantastic social life and his freedom to do exactly as he liked.
But he was equally well aware that change was in the air: Pablo’s daughter was now his personal responsibility. It was his duty to take charge of the orphaned infant and bring her back to Spain. It was right and fitting that this should be the case, Antonio conceded. The baby was of his blood and part of his family and he would raise her as though she were his own daughter.
‘You’ll have to get married, of course,’ his grandmother murmured in a voice as soft and light as this-tledown.
Startled by that disconcerting assurance, Antonio swung back to survey the old lady, who was carefully addressing her attention to her needlework. Grudging amusement glinted in his clear dark golden eyes, for he was well aware that his grandmother was eager for him to take a wife. ‘With all due respect, Abuela…I don’t think that a sacrifice of that magnitude will be necessary.’
‘A baby needs a mother. I’m too old to take on the role and the staff cannot be expected to fill the gap. You travel a great deal,’ Doña Ernesta reminded him. ‘Only a wife could ensure the continuing level of care and affection which a young child will require.’
As Antonio listened the amusement slowly evaporated from his gaze. ‘I don’t need a wife.’
Glancing up without apparent concern, Doña Ernesta treated her grandson to an understanding smile. ‘Then, I can only offer you my admiration. Obviously you’ve already thought this matter over—’
‘I have and in depth,’ Antonio slotted in rather drily, for he was unimpressed by his wily grandmother’s pretence of innocence.
‘And you’re prepared to sacrifice all your free time for your niece’s benefit. After all, with only you to depend on, she will need so much more of your attention.’
That angle had not occurred to Antonio. His brilliant eyes grew bleak. He was most reluctant to contemplate that level of commitment. He could not imagine assuming the role of a hands-on parent in constant demand. The very idea of such a thing was ridiculous. He was the Marqués de Salazar, head of an ancient and noble family line, as well as being a powerful and influential businessman on whom many thousands of employees depended. His time was too valuable. His importance to the success of his business projects was limitless. What did he know about children? Babies?
At the same time the very idea of embracing the imprisonment of marriage banged the equivalent of a sepulchral cell door shut in Antonio’s imagination and made him pale.
In the act of changing Lydia’s T-shirt, Sophie succumbed to temptation and blew a raspberry on her niece’s tummy. Convulsing with chuckles, Lydia held up her arms to be lifted, her little face below her soft brown curls lit by a sunny smile.
‘I don’t know which one of you is the bigger kid!’ Norah Moore quipped while her stocky, well-built son, Matt, set the old highchair out beside the pine kitchen table.
Tiny in stature and slender as a ribbon, Sophie thrust her own curls back off her brow in a rueful gesture and resisted the urge to admit that grief, stress and a heavy workload were combining to make her feel more like a hundred years old. Staying financially afloat was a constant struggle and since Lydia’s birth had required her to do two jobs. Her main income came from working as a cleaner for the Moores. Mother and son owned the trailer park where she had lived for almost four years. At present she cleaned the caravans that were rented out as holiday lets. But quite a few were lived in all the year round by people like herself who could not afford more expensive accommodation. She made extra cash from embroidering clothes for an exclusive mail order firm. Her earnings might be poor in comparison to the hours she put in but she was grateful for any work that she could combine with caring for Lydia.
‘But I know which one of you is the prettiest,’ Matt declared with a meaningful look in Sophie’s direction.
As Sophie strapped Lydia into the high chair she contrived to evade his admiring gaze and wondered why Mother Nature was always encouraging the wrong men to chase her. She liked Matt. She had tried, she really had tried to find him attractive because he was hardworking, honest and decent. He was everything her irresponsible father had not been and a solid gold choice for a sensible woman. As always she wished that she were less fanciful and more prudent.
‘Right now, I should think Sophie’s more concerned about what this solicitor might have to say to her,’ Norah, a thin woman with short grey hair, told her son brusquely. ‘I can’t understand why Belinda even bothered to make a will when she had nothing to leave.’
‘She had Lydia,’ Sophie pointed out to the older woman. ‘Belinda had the will drawn up after Pablo died. I think it must’ve been her way of making a new start and showing her independence.’
‘Yes, your sister was very keen on her independence,’ Norah Moore said with a sniff. ‘And not so fond of being tied down to a kiddie once Lydia was born.’
‘It was hard for her.’ Sophie lifted a slight shoulder in a noncommittal shrug because it hurt that she could not actively defend Belinda’s rash behaviour during the last months of her life. At least, not to a woman who had repeatedly helped her out with the task of caring for Belinda’s daughter. But then that was what she most liked about the Moores, she reminded herself. They spoke as they found and there was nothing false about them.
‘It was even harder for you,’ Norah told her squarely. ‘I felt very sorry for Belinda when she first came here. She’d had a tough time. But when she took up with that new boyfriend of hers and landed you with Lydia, I lost patience with her silliness.’
‘I loved being landed with Lydia,’ Sophie declared staunchly.
‘Sometimes what you love may not be what’s good for you,’ the older woman retorted crisply.
But at a time when Sophie’s heart still ached from the cruelly sudden death of her sister, her baby niece was her only real comfort. Although Sophie and Belinda had had different fathers and had not met until Belinda had sought Sophie out. Sophie had grown very fond of her older sister. Belinda had, after all, shown Sophie the first family affection that the younger woman had ever known.
Yet the stark difference between their respective backgrounds might more easily have ensured that the two sisters remained lifelong strangers. While Belinda had grown up in a lovely country house with her own pony and every childhood extra her parents could afford, Sophie had been born illegitimate and raised in a council flat by a father who was always broke. Sophie was the result of their mother, Isabel’s extramarital affair. After her infatuation had subsided, Isabel had won her estranged husband back by leaving Sophie behind with her lover. Sophie’s feckless father had brought her up with the help of a succession of girlfriends. She had learned when she was very young that her wants and wishes were rarely of interest to the self-seeking adults who surrounded her.
At first meeting, Sophie had been in awe of her beautiful, sophisticated sister. Five years older, Belinda had been educated at a fancy boarding-school and she had talked with a cut glass accent that put Sophie in mind of the royal family. Her warm and affectionate nature had however soon won Sophie’s trust and love. Perhaps more slowly and rather more painfully, Sophie had come to appreciate that Belinda was not very clever and was extremely vulnerable to falling for handsome men who talked big and impressed her. But wild horses would have not have dredged that unhappy truth from Sophie, who was loyal to a fault.
Leaving her niece in Norah Moore’s capable care, Sophie climbed into Matt’s pick-up. He gave her a lift into Sheerness and, stopping right outside the solicitor’s office, he offered to wait for her.
As always in a hurry to escape Matt’s hopeful air of expectation, Sophie had
already jumped out onto the pavement. ‘There’s no need,’ she said breezily. ‘I’ll catch the bus.’
Matt behaved as if she hadn’t spoken and told her where he would be parked.
A young car driver waiting at the lights buzzed down his window to call, ‘Hiya, sexy!’
Sophie flung him a pained glance from eyes as deep and rich and green as old-fashioned bottle glass. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’
He looked startled by the comeback. Sophie pondered the decided embarrassment of still looking like a sixteen-year-old when she was almost twenty-three years old. She blamed her youthful appearance on her lack of height and skinny build. She kept her hair long because, although she would not have admitted it to a living soul, she was always terrified that her slender curves might lead to her being mistaken for a boy.
As she entered the legal firm’s smart office she tugged uneasily at the hem of her denim skirt, which rejoiced in floral cotton frills. The skirt was well out of fashion and she had worn it only because she thought it looked more formal than the jeans that filled her limited wardrobe. All her clothes came from charity shops and none were of the designer cast-off variety. Without complaint, she hovered while the receptionist chatted to a colleague and answered a call before finally deigning to take note of her arrival.
In the waiting room, Sophie took up a restive position by the window. She watched a limousine force its passage along the street outside and cause traffic chaos. The long silver vehicle came to a halt and a uniformed chauffeur emerged. Impervious to the car horns that protested the obstruction that the limo was creating, he opened a rear door for his passenger to alight.
As the passenger sprang out and straightened to an imposing height the breath caught in Sophie’s throat. Her green eyes widened with disbelief. It couldn’t be, it simply couldn’t be Pablo’s autocratic big brother, Antonio Rocha! She shrank back to the side of the window but continued to stare. It was Antonio all right. He had the impact of a tidal wave on her self-command.