“We make no claims.” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Welcome to Europe Copyright
“We make no claims.”
“Claims are two-edged swords, senorita. You may wish to renounce yours—and that is your right. But I have no intention of renouncing mine. And that is my right. And my duty.”
Cathy understood the threat, felt it like a pain in her bones, tasted it on her tongue like the taste of fear. How could she have ever thought that Javier’s eyes were warm? They were cold, cold as the deadliest Toledo steel.
DIANA HAMILTON is a true romantic at heart and fell in love with her husband at first sight. They still live in the fairy-tale English Tudor house where they raised their three children. Now the idyll is shared with eight rescued cats and a puppy. But despite an often chaotic life-style, ever since she learned to read and write, Diana has had her nose in a book—either reading or writing one—and plans to go on doing just that for a very long time to come.
In Name Only
Diana Hamilton
CHAPTER ONE
HE WAS tall for a Spaniard and he had grey eyes. A warm, smoky grey, intensified by lashes as thick and as black as his straight, soft hair. But the warmth, the softness, was quite definitely counterbalanced by the grave features, the heavy straight brows, by the unsmiling sensual line of his mouth.
She didn’t know him, but she knew of him, Cathy thought on a flutter of panic as she fingered the square of white pasteboard he had handed her. Javier Campuzano.
And she knew why he had come, or thought she did, and she wanted to shut the door in his handsome, unsmiling face and pretend he was simply a bad dream. Or nightmare. Cathy shivered and the instinctive, convulsive tremor had more to do with his presence than with the unpleasant draught of cold air that sliced up from the drearily dank stairwell.
Behind her, in the tiny sitting-room of her modest north London flat, Johnny gave a cross between a crow and a squeal, carrying the undertones of impatience he always produced at the approach of a mealtime. She saw the Spaniard’s eyes flicker, breaking the unfriendly, steady regard, and she stiffened her spine protectively, reminding herself that although she was in for an unenviable few minutes it would soon be over and the unsavoury Campuzano episode could be safely put behind them.
Unsavoury apart from the end-result, of course—her darling, precious Johnny...
‘Señorita Soames?’ He repeated his question, his slightly accented, intriguingly sexy voice gathering the strength of steel, an impatience perhaps, engendered by the promise of a full-throated bellow from the hungry baby in the background. ‘If you will permit...?’
A strong brown hand made a controlled but decisive gesture towards the interior of the flat, and Cathy pushed her paint-stained fingers through the blonde silk of her hair, thrusting it away from her face, and answered resignedly, ‘Of course. Do come in, Señor Campuzano.’ He wouldn’t stay long, only as long as it took to tell her that no way would his impressive family lay themselves open to blackmail, emotional or otherwise. And she, in loco parentis, would take it, then show him the door.
She had expected the black-coated Jerezano, now head of one of Spain’s most respected and wealthiest sherry families, to show a certain amount of unconcealed distaste for the poky room, cluttered with baby and oil-painting impedimenta, where not even her best efforts with wallpaper and soft furnishings could disguise what it was: an undesirably cramped conversion in a run-down area of the city.
But his eyes were on the baby, a slow, unreadable look which, unaccountably, made Cathy shudder all over again. At five months old, Johnny was a sturdy child, already with a definite character and opinions of his own. He saw few people—strangers had not yet entered his tiny world—and now he stopped jouncing his baby-bouncer over the cheap and cheerful carpet and, his starfish hands clutching the string of colourful beads fastened in front of him, he stared at the tall, dark interloper from deep grey, serious eyes. And if Javier Campuzano couldn’t detect the obvious family likeness in the slightly olive-toned skin, those huge dark eyes, the mop of silky black hair, then he had to be blind.
But she didn’t want him to see the likeness, did she? she reminded herself tersely. Just let him say his piece and leave, never to come near any of them again. And then Johnny smiled, showing two tiny, newly emerged front teeth, and it was like the sun coming out on a rainy day. And, amazingly, Campuzano smiled too—a smile of such sincerity that her breath was whisked away, leaving a vaccum, until the protective urge filled the gap and she scooped the baby from the bouncer, holding him on her slender hip, her violet eyes stormy with an ill-defined antagonism as she stared defiantly at the child’s undoubted uncle, her soft mouth compressed.
‘You’ve come on behalf of your brother Francisco,’ she stated quickly, feeling a wayward pulse beat strongly, warningly, at the base of her throat as his smile vanished into glacial facial rigidity. But better to get this out of the way at once, get it all over and done with. ‘I—we——’ she corrected herself automatically ‘—lay no claim whatsoever on your family. Not now, nor in the future.’ Not for the first time she wished Cordy had never sent that second letter. The complete silence following the first had been telling enough.
Francisco Campuzano, younger brother of the head of the distinguished family whose business empire stretched way beyond the world of vineyards, bodegas and wine shippers, had obviously ignored the fact that he had sired a son. The total silence that had followed that first letter, when Cordy had written to say she was pregnant, had clearly demonstrated that he preferred to forget that he had spent the night with a sexy English blonde who was on a modelling assignment in Seville.
So the head of the family’s presence here now, at this late stage, could only indicate that he meant to put the damper on any ambitions the mother of the child might have regarding the Campuzanos’ wealth and standing. And that was fine by her, she thought, smiling down at Johnny, who had decided to explore her mouth, pushing his tiny fingers against her even white teeth.
‘Mam-Mam-Mam...’
Cathy’s
