His Unknown Heir (12 page)

‘I have done what is best for our son,’ he countered inexorably. ‘Mateo needs both of us.’

Before Lauren had time to react, he spun her round and unzipped her dress.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She tried to bat his hands away but he ignored her and tugged the dress over her hips so that it slithered to the floor.

‘You look even better in that underwear than I visualised when I chose it,’ he drawled, the sudden heat in his gaze scorching her skin as he turned her back to face him and rested his eyes deliberately on her breasts.

To Lauren’s shame her nipples instantly hardened and strained against the sheer lace bra cups, and she closed her eyes to shut out his mocking smile. ‘The wedding will be
very
soon,
querida
,’ he murmured. ‘The best place for you to recuperate from your illness is in my bed.’

He only had to look at her and she was on fire for him, she thought despairingly. Her breasts felt heavy, and a tremor ran through her when he placed his hands on either side of her waist. She lifted her head blindly, thinking that he was going to kiss her, but her eyes flew open in shock when he drew back the covers and pushed her gently into bed.

‘I’m glad you share my impatience,’ he said in an amused voice, ‘but you are not nearly strong enough yet for what I have in mind.’

‘I hate you,’ Lauren muttered grittily, burning up with mortification. She jerked her head to one side when he leaned over her, but he gripped her chin and forced her to look at him as he swooped and captured her mouth in a punishing kiss intent on proving his mastery.

She should resist him. Her brain knew it, but unfortunately her body did not agree. Molten heat coursed through her veins, and her limbs shook with need as he lowered his body onto hers. His tongue probed the tight line of her lips until with a moan she parted them so that he could delve into her moist warmth. She did not
want
to want him, and bitterly resented his power over her, but like it or not she was racked with hot, urgent desire, and with a low moan she cupped his face and kissed him with a fierce passion that she could not deny.

‘I love the way you hate,
querida
,’ Ramon drawled when he finally broke the kiss and they both dragged oxygen into their lungs. He got up from the bed and watched dispassionately as she dragged the sheet over her half-naked body. ‘Blackmail is an ugly word. I may have coerced you into marrying me, for our son’s sake, but however much I desire you I would never force you to share my bed. Fortunately I won’t have to—will I, Lauren?’

She gave him a furious glare. ‘Don’t sulk,’ he chided. ‘Passion is as good a basis for marriage as any other—particularly when combined with our mutual desire to do the best for Mateo. What else is there to wish for?’

Love!
Lauren wanted to cry. She wanted him to love her as she had loved him practically since the day she met him. But at this particular moment she felt so angry with him for demonstrating his power over her that she longed to throw a heavy object at his head.

‘Get out,’ she snapped, goaded beyond bearing by his arrogant smile.

‘That’s no way to talk to the man you are soon going to promise to honour with your body.’

Ramon wondered if Lauren had any idea how tempted he was to strip out of his clothes and bury his burgeoning arousal between her satin-soft thighs. Only the purple smudges beneath her eyes and the faint tremor of her mouth prevented him from joining her on the bed and making love to her until she accepted that marrying him was not just the right thing to do for their child, but for them too.

He drew the bedcovers over her as he saw that she was struggling to keep her eyes open. He had told himself that he hated her for hiding his son from him, but he had been lying, he thought bleakly. He did not understand why she had done what she had, and he was still furious with her, but she was the mother of his child and Mateo would always be a special link between them. Deep in his heart, and for reasons he chose not to define, he was
glad
he had a reason to make Lauren his wife—and he couldn’t give a damn that she was not the aristocratic bride his family had expected him to choose.

‘Trust me,
querida
,’ he said with sudden urgency. ‘I believe we can make our marriage work.’

Something in his voice brought tears to Lauren’s eyes, and she turned her head slightly on the pillow so that he would not see them. ‘I don’t find it easy to trust,’ she admitted thickly, losing the battle with the waves of sleep that were pulling her under.

Had something happened in her past which had caused her to value her independence so highly and made it hard for her to trust? Ramon brooded as he stood by the bed and looked down at her. There was so much he did not know about her, for during their affair he had deliberately not involved himself in her personal life. Maintaining that distance between them had made him feel he was in control of their relationship, but now she was to be his wife he could allow himself to lower his barriers. Perhaps, in time, he would be able to persuade her to lower hers.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HEY
married two weeks later, in the private chapel in the grounds of the castle. The wedding was a low-key affair, with only close family and friends from the groom’s side in attendance and no one at all from the bride’s.

Ramon had asked Lauren if she wished to invite anyone from England, but she had decided against it, thinking to herself that it was going to be hard enough to fool his family that she was a joyous bride without having to maintain the charade for her friends. She
could
tell a few close colleagues from PGH the truth, she’d acknowledged. But stubborn pride made her want to hide the fact that her fairytale wedding to a handsome Spanish duke was in reality a marriage of convenience for the sake of their son.

‘I don’t want Mum and Alan to interrupt their cruise,’ she had explained to Ramon when he had called her into his study to discuss the wedding arrangements.

‘Who is Alan?’ he’d queried.

‘My stepfather. Mum married him two years ago, and this trip is a belated honeymoon.’

‘What about your real father?’ Ramon had hesitated when Lauren visibly tensed. ‘Is he dead?’

Not that she was aware of, she’d thought bleakly. But she had not heard a word from her father since the day he had left, and she had no knowledge of his whereabouts. ‘My parents are divorced, and I know Dad will be unable to come to Spain,’ she’d told him, and had changed the subject before he could question her further.

And so, on a bright spring day, as the sun shone from a cloudless sky, Lauren arrived at the chapel alone and was escorted through the arched doorway by the chauffeur, Arturo.

Despite the warmth of the day she was icy cold, with tension cramping in the pit of her stomach as she began what seemed like an endless walk down the aisle under the curious gazes of the guests, her eyes fixed on the handsome, unsmiling man waiting at the altar. For a few seconds her nerve deserted her, and she was tempted to turn and flee. But then she caught sight of Matty, sitting on Cathy Morris’s lap at the front of the church, and she took a deep breath. She would rather die than be parted from her son, and if she wanted to avoid a custody battle with Ramon she must marry him. It was as simple as that.

The skirt of her ivory silk wedding gown rustled as she walked. She had planned to wear the lilac suit she had worn to her mother’s wedding two summers ago, but Ramon had insisted that the Velaquez bride must look the part, and had arranged for a top couturier to visit the castle and design her dress. The result was a deceptively simple sheath which emphasised her slender waist and the soft swell of her breasts, its neckline decorated with crystals that sparkled like teardrops in the sunlight which streamed through the chapel windows.

It was a dream dress, she had thought when she had stared at her reflection in the mirror back at the castle, while a maid had fussed around her, smoothing invisible creases from her skirt. But that was where the dream ended, and perhaps it was better this way. She wasn’t going into this marriage with the weight of expectation that most brides carried, and so, she reasoned, she could not be disappointed.

She was too old to believe in fairytales anyway, she reminded herself as she halted beside Ramon and forced herself to meet his gaze. Something flared in his sherry-brown eyes as he stared down at her, but it was gone before she could define it as his thick lashes swept down and masked his expression.

Moments later the priest’s voice rang out in the silent chapel.

‘You’re not going to faint, are you?’ Ramon asked beneath his breath as they emerged from the cool church into bright sunshine and posed on the steps for photographs. ‘You look very pale. Perhaps today is too much for you when you have only recently recovered your strength after the virus?’ he said, frowning with concern.

She resembled a fragile wraith, he thought grimly, gripped by guilt because he knew he should have allowed her longer to recover from her illness. His impatience to make Lauren his wife was because he wanted to secure Mateo’s future, he had told himself, but he knew that was not the whole truth. He wanted her with an urgency he had never felt for any other woman, and when she had walked down the aisle towards him in her bridal gown, her honey-blonde hair caught up in a loose knot so that stray tendrils framed her face, her clear grey eyes fixed steadily on him, his breath had hitched in his throat.

The pulse beating frantically at the base of her throat had been the only indication that she was nervous, and that betraying sign of her vulnerability had tugged on his emotions. He had blackmailed her into marriage by threatening to fight for custody of their son, and he’d half expected her to refuse to go through with the wedding at the last moment. But she had come to the chapel, to him, and when she had lifted her soft grey eyes to him and given him a tentative smile he had felt a curious ache around his heart.

‘I’m fine,’ Lauren assured him. Not for anything would she admit that the surge of emotions which had stormed through her when the priest had proclaimed them man and wife had made her feel light-headed. She glanced down at the bouquet of red roses she was holding and breathed in their exquisite fragrance.

‘Thank you for the flowers,’ she murmured shyly. ‘They were a lovely surprise.’ The butler had presented her with the bouquet as she had been about to leave the castle for the short journey to the chapel, informing her that they were from
el Duque
.

Ramon had sent her three dozen red roses the day after she had met him, with a note inviting her to dinner, she remembered. Her heart gave a little flip as she wondered if giving her roses on her wedding day held special significance for him.

‘It would have looked strange if my bride had not carried flowers,’ he said coolly.

Her smile did not falter. Theirs was a marriage of practicality, not a fairytale, she reminded herself, and steeled her heart to ignore the haunting regret that things could not have been different.

The church service was followed by lunch at the castle. The kitchen staff had surpassed themselves, and the meal was spectacular, its finale being a beautifully iced five-tier wedding cake, which Ramon and his new bride cut together.

Lauren guessed that there was a certain amount of gossip among the guests concerning the fact that the Duque de Velaquez was marrying the mother of his son almost a year after the child had been born, and also that his new wife was not a member of the Spanish nobility. But no one mentioned such matters—at least, not to her face—and Ramon’s relatives seemed happy to welcome her into the family.

Only one guest did not seem to share the delight of everyone else that the Duque had married. Throughout the lunch Lauren had been conscious of dark eyes subjecting her to a lengthy scrutiny, and on the few occasions when she had looked across the room her gaze had collided with the icy stare of a haughtily beautiful Spanish woman.

‘Pilar is stunning, isn’t she?’ Ramon’s sister Juanita murmured as she joined Lauren by the open French doors and followed her gaze out to the terrace, where Ramon was in deep conversation with the willowy, elegant woman whose mass of silky black curls fell halfway down her back.

‘You’ve probably heard of her, or seen pictures of her at any rate,’ Juanita continued. ‘Pilar Fernandez is one of the world’s top models. Only someone with her fantastic figure can wear a skirt that short,’ she commented, with a rueful glance at Pilar’s pure white suit, which contrasted so eye-catchingly with her exotic colouring.

‘I suppose she’ll concentrate on her modelling career now that—’ Juanita halted abruptly, and looked so uncomfortable that Lauren’s curiosity was aroused.

‘Now that what?’

‘Now that Ramon has married you,’ Juanita muttered, clearly regretting that the subject of Pilar Fernandez had come up. ‘It was kind of expected that they… Well, anyway,’ she hurried on when she saw Lauren’s face fall, ‘Pilar is adored by top designers around the world, so I don’t suppose she’ll visit the castle as much as she used to.’

Ramon’s sister’s words were not reassuring, Lauren thought dismally. When Ramon had taken her to lunch in London he had dismissed his relationship with Pilar as nothing more than friendship, but clearly it had been more than that if there had been an expectation that he would choose
her
to be his wife.

It would have made sense for him to marry her, she brooded. Pilar was an aristocratic Spanish woman, from Ramon’s elite social circle, elegant, sophisticated, and ideally suited to be a
duquesa
. Added to that, she was exquisitely beautiful. Doubts swamped Lauren with the force of a tsunami, drowning her common sense in a flood of insecurity. She could not compete with Pilar on any level, she thought dully as she tore her eyes from Ramon and his gorgeous ‘friend’ and looked down at the white gold wedding band that he had placed on her finger, next to the ostentatious ruby engagement ring that had been worn by previous generations of Velaquez brides.

Jealousy burned in her stomach when she saw the Spanish woman place her hand on Ramon’s shoulder and lean close to him to whisper something in his ear. Suddenly she was fourteen, wearing her new dress and handing around mince pies at her parents’ annual Christmas party. Her mum was rushing around, in her element as the busy hostess, but there was tension behind her smile when she came up to Lauren and asked if she had seen her father.

‘I’ll look for him,’ she had promised, unconcerned. Her mother always flapped. But she had lugged the plate of mince pies all around the house, looking for Donny, and had found him at last—in the conservatory, with a blonde woman with a big bust who was the secretary of the golf club. Jean had been leaning close to her father, whispering something in his ear. And her dad had been smiling—just as Ramon was smiling at Pilar now.

‘Hello, pet. What have you got there—mince pies?’ Donny had walked towards her, laughing, blocking the view of Jean frantically pulling up the strap of her dress.

The awkward moment had passed, because Lauren hadn’t understood why it was awkward, but a long time later, after her father had left his wife and daughter for an exotic dancer, she had recalled the incident and her mother had revealed that Jean had been one of Donny’s many mistresses.

Lost in her memories, she stepped onto the terrace and wandered in the opposite direction from Ramon and his companion. She gave a start when someone spoke to her, and her heart sank when she looked up and met Pilar’s haughty stare.

‘Mateo is a charming child. Ramon is clearly very proud of him,’ the Spanish woman commented in a distinctly cool tone.

‘We both are,’ Lauren replied politely, feeling uncomfortable beneath Pilar’s intent scrutiny.

‘Ramon married you to claim his son, of course.’

It was a statement rather than a question, and Lauren did not know what to say—it was the truth, after all, she thought dully.

Pilar’s black eyes were as cold and hard as polished jet. ‘How do you think you will cope with being a
duquesa
? I imagine that your life in England did not prepare you for joining the ranks of the Spanish nobility.’

Which, of course, was a pointed reminder that while Pilar had blue blood running through her aristocratic veins Lauren was a very ordinary English lawyer.

‘I’m sure I’ll manage,’ she told the stunning model tightly.

Pilar shrugged her thin shoulders dismissively. ‘Perhaps you will not be a
duquesa
for very long now that Ramon has his son,’ she suggested softly, and walked away, leaving Lauren staring after her, shivering suddenly as a cloud covered the sun with a grey shadow.

The castle’s huge master bedroom was dominated by a four-poster bed hung with velvet drapes. It was an enormous bed for one person—but perhaps Ramon did not sleep alone in it very often? Lauren thought bleakly. Perhaps Pilar Fernandez had shared the bed with him during the eighteen months that they had been apart?

Stop it, she told herself angrily. She was making something out of nothing, just because Pilar had made that spiteful comment about Ramon not wanting her for his wife for very long.

Ramon was still downstairs, bidding farewell to the last guests, but in a few minutes he would join her. After her run-in with Pilar she had forced herself to rejoin the wedding celebrations, and had chatted and smiled until her jaw ached. But she had been conscious of his speculative glances, and when, in answer to his query, she had assured him that she was enjoying the day, his expression had been sardonic.

With a heavy sigh she walked through the connecting door into an adjoining room that he had explained was traditionally the Duquesa’s bedroom. She did not know if Ramon and Pilar had once been lovers, and she did not want to know, she told herself fiercely. But she could not dismiss the sight of him standing close to the Spanish beauty. Their body language had spoken of an easy familiarity, and somehow the image of Ramon and Pilar had become muddled with the image of her father and Jean from the golf club, and she wondered if she was as blind now as she had been naïve at fourteen.

Her eyes felt scratchy, and when she caught sight of herself in the mirror she was suddenly desperate to get out of her wedding finery. The dress and the roses had all been part of an illusion, created by Ramon to fool everyone into believing that the Duque de Velaquez and his new bride were blissfully happy. But she knew the truth, and with trembling hands she tore off the dream dress and the fragile lacy bra she had worn beneath it. Searching through a drawer she dug out an oversized cotton tee shirt that had been among her things sent over from England.

She was standing in front of the dressing table, brushing her hair, when Ramon walked in.

‘Not quite what I had envisaged,’ he drawled, as his eyes skimmed the baggy tee shirt that had faded to an unbecoming shade of sludge in the wash. ‘Your choice of nightwear leaves much to be desired,
querida
. Although even
that
shapeless garment does not dampen my desire for you,’ he added self-derisively, when she spun round to face him and he noted the faint outline of her nipples beneath her thin shirt.