Santos Cordero’s pointed hint that she continue sounded gentle, but looking into his dark, set face, Alexa suddenly knew that gentle was the exact opposite of just what he was feeling. He had barely controlled his impatience, reining it in only with the most ferocious power. And even now it was very close to breaking free if the harshly drawn white lines about his nose and eyes, etched around that sexy mouth were anything to go by. Say the wrong thing and he would explode, the top blowing off his mental volcano and the red-hot lava of fury flowing out to engulf them with spectacularly nasty results if she wasn’t very much mistaken.
This was the Santos Cordero she had been led to expect. This was el brigante, whose reputation for arrogance and ruthlessness had reached her even in Yorkshire, where her home was, miles away from the family house in London.
When her father had first announced that he was negotiating a business deal with Santos he had sounded so excited, totally confident that this partnership would make him a fortune and so ease all his financial problems. But it hadn’t been long before everything had seemed to change. It was obvious that the deal was not the success Stanley had dreamed of but instead a source of great stress. Though just lately those worries seemed to have been buried in the unexpected rush to organise Natalie’s wedding.
‘Señorita…’
Once more those softly deadly tones drew her eyes to the face of the man her half-sister was supposed to have been marrying today. And once she had looked into those burning, deep-set eyes, even from this distance, she found it impossible to look away. She couldn’t drag her own gaze from the mesmeric force of his and once more she had that shocking sense of tunnel vision. Of being at the far end of a long, long channel from where the only thing she could see was the tall, powerful form of Santos Cordero, every ounce of his attention totally focused on her.
‘What is it that you have come here to say? Because you have come to say something, I assume?’
Drawing in her breath sharply, Alexa struggled to ignore the sting of that sarcastic tone, which had a bite like the flick of a whip.
‘I have to speak to you,’ she managed, the words coming out as breathlessly as if she had just run the couple of miles from her half-sister’s hotel room to the cathedral. ‘Please…’ she added with renewed urgency when she saw the way that his black brows snapped together in a dangerous frown.
‘Then speak.’
An autocratic flick of one long, bronzed hand emphasised the command with all the arrogance of a long-ago emperor.
‘I for one am impatient to hear what you have to say.’
He was impatient all right. He couldn’t make that any plainer. And she would tell him. But not right here, right now. Not like this with close on six hundred guests now openly gawping in her direction, fascinated by what was going on and anxious to view the next ‘episode’ in this soap-opera drama that had suddenly been staged before them.
With her heart beating so high up in her throat that breathing normally was a complete impossibility, she made herself take the necessary steps forward down the aisle that brought her near to him. And as she went she tested possible openings over and over inside her thoughts, trying each one for size and discarding them as too stupid, too contentious, too clumsy or just plain wrong. And even if she had any hope of an idea it fled from her mind in the moment that she looked up into his dark, shuttered face and saw the way those cold, hunter’s eyes were burning down into her.
She knew that it wasn’t possible but she suddenly felt that he was even bigger, leaner, stronger than he had appeared on the night she had been introduced to him. The formal tailoring of his wedding suit emphasised the straight width of his shoulders, the broad chest, narrow waist and long, long legs. And against the immaculate white of his shirt, the golden tones of his skin stood out in dramatic, powerful contrast.
‘Can we go somewhere more private, please?’
Her voice was thin and uneven on the words but she knew that he had heard her even though he inclined his dark head to one side, frowned faintly, as if he had not quite caught what she had said.
‘Perdon?’
He took a step forward as he spoke and she was close enough now to see the way the powerful chest rose and fell with his breathing, even see the faint shadow on his jaw where already the darkness of stubble was just visible below the surface. She almost believed she could actually feel the heat of his strong body reach out to enclose her, carrying with it the subtle tang of some citrusy cologne, enhanced and deepened by the clean, personal scent of his skin. Her heart was thudding even harder now, but this time she realised on a sense of shock that it was not just the sense of apprehension that gripped her but a sudden rush of a purely female response to the presence of a powerful, sexually alluring male. And that was the last thing she wanted to feel towards this man whose presence in their lives seemed to have created nothing but problems for her family.
‘Can we go somewhere more private, please?’
She forced herself to say it again, more firmly and a touch louder this time, though she really wanted to hiss it at him in the most controlled of whispers, for his ears only.
‘Somewhere we can be alone.’
‘Alone?’
This time those black brows drew together with such sharp force that she almost heard the snap and it was impossible to misunderstand just what was in his mind. Alexa could feel the hot tide of blood race through her skin, heating it with embarrassment.
‘Señorita, I am about to be married.’
‘Not like that! I didn’t mean it like that!’ she hissed at him. ‘And you’re—’
With a sense of horror she choked off the appalling declaration— you’re not getting married. She couldn’t just come out and say it. Not like that. Just as she couldn’t give him the devastating news right here and now, in front of this audience.
Because he had to be devastated, didn’t he? Even if he was big and strong, and ruthless as they came, he had after all asked Natalie to marry him, to be his wife, for better, for worse…
‘You really need to hear what I have to say,’ she managed, praying that the emphasis she was putting on the words hid the sudden huskiness that seemed to have affected her voice.
‘You think I do.’
He was looking down his long, straight nose at her now, that broad forehead creased in a disapproving frown, silvery eyes darkened with frank disdain and total scepticism.
‘You think I should hear what you have to say—but you give me no reason why you should march in here like this, without a word of explanation and demand that I—’
‘I’m trying to explain!’ Alexa snapped in total exasperation.
Couldn’t he see that this was important? That she wouldn’t have ‘marched in here’ like this if it weren’t? Couldn’t he see…?
No, she acknowledged to herself privately. He couldn’t see at all. It was the last thing that would possibly cross his mind.
Of course el brigante would never consider that his bride might not turn up. That she might abandon her
