The Spaniard's Marriage Bargain. Эбби Грин

Fairclough at his office.

      She felt a fleeting moment of ironic humour. She’d counted on being able to gather all her information, had banked on the fact that Isandro would most likely be in Spain. They would contact him by letter to let him know of her wishes, her intentions to get to know her son… But instead here they were. The chance to explain in depth her reasons for leaving that day by the luxury of a letter was gone. Faced with Isandro’s virulent anger, she knew he was in no mood to listen—possibly for some time. And now he believed that he’d caught her in the midst of an afternoon tryst. The worst possible start to any kind of meeting.

      And then there was her son. Her baby. Zac. He was so beautiful. Rowan put a hand to the curtain, gripping it tight as she felt weakness flood her, her legs turning to jelly.

      Meeting Isandro again was something she’d been somewhat prepared for. But how did you prepare to meet the child you thought you’d never see ever again? Every step of that walk away from him was etched into her memory like a searing brand. She’d woken from nightmares reliving that walk almost every night for the past two years. Her bruised and battered heart beat unsteadily against her chest. That indescribable pain and the lingering joy of seeing him all swirled together, making her feel like crying and laughing at the same time.

      Rowan heard the door open behind her. Her hand tightened on the curtain before she released it from her grip. She took a deep breath and turned around. Isandro. His face was so harsh and austere that Rowan sucked in a breath. He hated her. She could feel it tangibly as he came and stood in front of her, head back, looking down at her with heavy-lidded disgust. His blue eyes were like shards of ice.

      ‘I have some business to attend to here in the hotel. You are by all means free to go if you wish.’

      Her mind and heart seized in a painful spasm at his volte face. The thought of being so close to her son and being sent away now was wrenching and unbearable.

      ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I came back to London to get in touch with you. Believe what you want, but I had no idea you owned this hotel. I’m not leaving now until you agree for me to see Zac.’

      His mouth tightened with unmistakable displeasure. He obviously hadn’t expected that. But there was also something she couldn’t put her finger on. A hint of resignation? Did he realise that he couldn’t just dismiss her?

      ‘Very well. In that case you will remain in this room tonight, and tomorrow morning we may discuss things.’

      Rowan looked at him sceptically. She’d expected more of a fight. Why wasn’t he flinging her out on the steps? He was playing with her, a master tactician.

      ‘No need to look so suspicious, Rowan. You are, after all, my wife—are you not? Naturally I am overjoyed to see you again.’

      With a mocking look on his face he backed away before turning and leaving the room. When an outer door shut too, Rowan knew that she was finally quite alone. Hesitantly she opened the door into the outer part of the suite and looked around. Her suitcase had also been transported upstairs. Breathing a little easier for the first time in hours, Rowan went to a couch and sat down. Half distracted, she felt something underneath her and plucked it out. It was a furry toy animal.

      Zac. With a shaking hand she brought it close to her face and breathed deep. The well of emotion was rising to consume her again and she couldn’t keep it back. Clutching the small teddy, Rowan curled up on the couch and gave in to the storm.

      Much later that night Isandro found himself at the door of the suite just down the hall from his own private rooms. What was he doing here? He opened the door and stepped in. The light was dim, the curtains still open, and it was only as he walked towards the bedroom that he saw the shape on the sofa.

      His heart fell. Why couldn’t she have just disappeared?

      He knew damn well why.

      She was back to get everything her greedy little hands could carry. No doubt including his son. Look at her. He almost laughed out loud when he saw Zac’s toy clenched in one hand, close to her face. She’d come back from whatever rock she’d been hiding under, like an actress poised in the wings of the stage, ready to make her entrance.

      Yet, much to his dismay, faced with her benign sleeping form, Isandro was helpless against a rush of memories. The first time he’d seen her across a packed function room where he’d come to meet Alistair Carmichael. Rowan’s father had been a man in dire straits, about to become publicly bankrupt unless Isandro agreed to a mutually beneficial deal. Carmichael had known that Isandro wanted in, and Isandro had known Carmichael needed saving from public humiliation and ruination. In the middle of it all had been Rowan. Part of the deal.

      He’d seen her across that crowded room and, like an old cliché, their eyes had met. He’d felt a little poleaxed by their intense shade of dark violet-blue, their seriousness, when so many women looked at him with another expression entirely.

      She’d been unbelievably gauche-looking—too gauche, in fact, and he now knew for a fact that it had all been an act. Then he’d spotted her father by her side and he’d put two and two together. This was the daughter the old man wanted to marry off. Carmichael had baited him with the fact that if she married she’d come into her mother’s sizeable inheritance.

      He had let Carmichael believe that he might want a bride who came with a dowry, suspecting that the banker had designs on much of his daughter’s inheritance himself. Isandro had had no need for the dowry, of course. But what he had needed, much more importantly, was another level of acceptance. Social acceptance. Without a bona fide English society wife, his taking control of Carmichael’s chair at the bank would be for ever frowned upon. He’d be as socially ostracised as a beggar on the streets. However, if it was a merger of two great families—one Spanish, with links to the formidable banking industry there, the other English—then that was a different story. Acceptance would be immediate, and would consolidate his control over banking in Europe.

      Which was exactly what had happened.

      His mouth tightened in rejection of the way his thoughts seemed to be defying him, leading him back to a place he never wanted to visit again. What he hadn’t counted on was the place that his meekly unassuming new wife would take in his life. And what it had done to him when he had discovered the true depth of her avaricious and shallow nature. What it had done to him to come back into that hospital room to find her gone. Leaving nothing but a note and her wedding rings. It had made him the biggest fool—because all along, right up until that moment, he’d believed her to be different.

      He stepped noiselessly back out of the room and vowed with everything in his body that she would pay for her actions a million times over.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE next morning Rowan sat tensely in a chair and watched the door of the suite. She’d woken early, to find herself stiff and uncomfortable on the couch, still holding Zac’s toy. With the arrival of the morning things were clearer in her head. She could not let Isandro intimidate her. She had to make him see that she had rights. She cursed her own lack of foresight. Today was Saturday, and she didn’t have her solicitor’s home or mobile number. She should have rung him yesterday, after Isandro had left…but she’d been feeling so shocked. She knew that it was a mistake that could cost her dearly.

      The truth was, she’d only contacted her solicitor in anticipation of the worst-case scenario—that Isandro, on being contacted, would prove intractable and unforgiving. She was still too much of a coward to admit to herself that she had harboured the wish that somehow, despite everything, once he knew, they could be a happy family. A hundred jeering voices mocked her naïve fantasy.

      But they had been happy. They had had something. But, she had to concede painfully, that had been before, in the earlier months of their time together. Isandro had been the first man to draw Rowan out of herself, the first man she’d slept with…the first man she’d fallen for. He’d made her feel beautiful, desirable. And, to her shame, she found she was remembering that, and not her discovery of what he’d really