His Inherited Bride. Jacqueline Baird

blame him. He had called her out of the blue five months ago and proposed she reconcile with her father; three more calls had followed and she had ignored his every suggestion.

      Mainly because, by an appalling coincidence, it had been at the same time as her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Jules had received the first call from Randolfo Carducci the week before her mother’s operation had been scheduled. A call telling her that her father had had a slight heart attack, nothing serious, he was not in hospital, but Randolfo thought Jules should maybe visit, or at least call her father. In his opinion it was time father and daughter buried their grievances and made up.

      She had been so surprised at hearing a voice from the past that she had said she would try, and the call had ended amicably.

      The next call had been on the eve of her mother’s operation. Carducci had told her that her father had had another much more serious attack, and was hospitalised, and he had arranged a flight for her from Heathrow to Santiago at ten the following morning. The ticket was waiting for her at the airport.

      Jules had abruptly turned his offer down, as she had wanted to be at her mother’s side when she had her operation. The conversation had ended far from amicably. The third call had been over a week later, to inform her her father was dead, and the date of the funeral had been brutally blunt. Still Jules had declined to attend, more worried about her mother’s recovery…

      Jules knew how it must look to Carducci, a daughter not speaking to nor visiting her father and not turning up to his funeral! But perhaps when she explained the circumstances he would be reasonable.

      Still the thought of seeing him again filled her with unease. Randolfo had been staying at the ranch when she had arrived as a teenager visiting her father for the first time. An Italian with business interests in South America, apparently he had visited the ranch the previous year at the request of his stepmother Ester. Ester was the sister of Jules’ father and technically she supposed Rand was her cousin but no blood relation.

      At twenty-seven he had already been a highly successful businessman, and engaged to a Chilean girl—the stunningly beautiful Maria. He had met Maria in Santiago when she had been singing in a nightclub and trying to make a name for herself in the music business. Coincidentally it had turned out that her mother had lived and worked as the cook on the Eiga ranch, next door to the Diez ranch that Randolfo visited.

      To the young Jules he had seemed a different generation altogether, too uptight to be a friend—an acquaintance at best, and a disapproving adult at worst. Personally she had been unable to imagine what the young, trendy Maria had seen in him. But later she had found out…

      Jules grimaced. Knowing what she knew, meeting the pompous Randolfo Carducci again was not going to be easy. Still, she would brave a lion’s den for her mother, and with that thought in mind she gave up standing in the hall, ‘like patience on a monument’, and briskly opened the door in front of her.

      A quick glance around and she realised she was still alone. The room was elegant, a mixture of soft creams and beige contrasted with deep-cushioned sofas in taupe leather, and the artwork on the walls looked genuine. The whole ambience was one of understated elegance and serious money, but the room was empty.

      She walked over and sank down on one of the sofas, a sense of anticlimax making her shoulders slump dispiritedly. Geared up to do battle at twelve, she found it very deflating to be still waiting at quarter past. What now? she wondered. And looked around again.

      At that moment a door opened and Jules automatically glanced across to the man who walked into the room. Randolfo Carducci…

      Her eyes widened in shock, and for a moment she was stunned by the sheer masculine power of his presence. He was over six feet tall, with black hair slightly silvered at the temples and cut expertly to his arrogant head; his sculptured features were not classically handsome. Striking was a better description, with high cheekbones, a typical Roman nose that proclaimed his Italian ancestry, and a determined jaw. He was certainly the most impressive specimen of manhood she had encountered in quite a while. But then she was no expert, Jules ruefully acknowledged. She had had very little to do with men since her broken engagement. And this one was almost certainly married anyway.

      The light grey suit he was wearing was tailored perfectly over broad, powerful shoulders and a white shirt open at the neck contrasted sharply with his olive-toned skin. The jacket was open and a grey leather belt supported softly pleated trousers that hugged lean hips, powerful thighs and long legs. He was awesomely male and Jules suddenly wondered how she had never noticed the fact as a teenager. As she tilted her head back her green eyes clashed with hard black, and thick arched brows came together in a frown. Nothing had changed there then, Jules thought dryly.

      Jules had always felt uncomfortable around the man in the past. At thirteen years older he had seemed so commandingly superior. When he had frowned disapprovingly at her, especially when she had been with Enrique, she had felt somehow threatened.

      But with hindsight she realised she had been equally disapproving of him. She had resented the easy relationship he had shared with her father, a father she had only just been beginning to know. Also his friendship with Enrique Eiga, who at the time Jules had thought was the love of her life.

      Squashing the unwanted memories, she rose to her feet, and her heart gave a sudden jolt as his lips, perfectly moulded and sensuous, parted in a brief social smile. Jules shivered without knowing why… She was wrong; he had changed. He appeared even more arrogantly aloof than ever.

      Stay cool, calm and in control, it is business, nothing else, Jules told herself. She had the confidence to handle any situation, and politely she held out her hand.

      ‘Mr Carducci, nice to see you again.’

      ‘Rand, please; after all we are almost family,’ he said smoothly, his dark eyes widening speculatively on the woman before him. A lustrous mass of red hair was swept back in a braid and revealed the exquisite oval of her face. Large, thick-lashed dark green eyes looked up at him, but avoided direct contact with his. Add a small straight nose and a luscious pink mouth that begged to be kissed and the woman was dynamite! His gaze dropped lower to a hint of cleavage exposed by the vee neckline of her jacket. His body tensed. The picture of a red-headed beanpole-type teenager he had carried in his head for years blasted into oblivion by the physicality of the woman before him. Julia Diez had developed into one very sexy lady.

      He watched as she looked at him, noted the flare of recognition in her brilliant eyes, and the flicker of something very like fear. She had good right to be afraid, he thought cynically, the heartless little tart. He had not seen the woman in eight years, her shape had changed, but he would have recognised those eyes anywhere.

      ‘Sorry for the delay, Julia, my secretary should have been here. I hope you have not been waiting long.’ And he grasped her still-outstretched hand.

      Jules swallowed hard. His handshake was firm and warm and did very odd things to her pulse rate. ‘No, not long,’ she managed to respond steadily. ‘And please call me Jules, everyone else does,’ she said, but when she tried to pull her hand free of his he simply tightened his grip.

      ‘Please, sit down.’ Leading her back to the sofa, he waited until she sat down before freeing her hand, adding, ‘It’s been a long time since we met. It must have been your engagement party when you were what? Seventeen, eighteen.’

      ‘Seventeen,’ she confirmed shortly; the last thing she needed was to be reminded of her engagement party, especially not by this man. Jules hadn’t seen him since, but, lifting her head, she stared at him, and for a fleeting moment she sensed something dangerous in the unfathomable black eyes and his wide-legged stance. Rand was a man to be wary of, her every instinct cried, and, remembering his fourth and final call some days after her father’s funeral, she shivered slightly.

      Rand Carducci had informed her with mocking cynicism evident in his tone, that he was the sole executor of her father’s estate, and her father had added a codicil to his will the week before he died, the gist of it being if she agreed to return to Chile within six months of his demise she would receive something of value.

      Jules