The Valquez Bride. Melanie Milburne

      Why on earth had she dressed in such an appalling manner? What was she trying to prove? The girl was an heiress to a spectacular estate worth millions. She could afford to wear the best of high street fashion. Why was she dressing like a bag lady?

      His eyes went to the bone-handled walking stick she was leaning on in what he could only describe as a proudly defiant manner.

      He felt something jerk in his chest like a foot did when it missed a step.

      So that was why.

      ‘Miss Marlstone?’

      ‘Señor Valquez, how nice to see you again.’

      Alejandro didn’t like the feeling of being at a disadvantage. Of her knowing more about him than he knew about her. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer was a credo he lived by. And yet there was something about her that appealed to the protector in him. ‘We’ve...er...met before?’

      She gave him a stiff movement of her lips that passed for a smile but he noticed it didn’t involve her arctic-cool grey-blue eyes. ‘Yes.’ Her chin rose ever so slightly. ‘Don’t you remember?’

      Alejandro quickly checked his mental hard drive. He dated a lot of women. Slept with even more. But nowhere in his memory could he find a girl with eyes so deeply set they looked darker than they actually were. She had prominent eyebrows and lashes thick and dark without the boost of mascara. Cheeks sharply defined and haughtily high and a nose that looked as if it spent a lot of time up there with them. A mouth that was full and young and innocent-looking and yet with an angle of cynicism to it that matched his own.

      ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to remind me.’ He stretched his own lips into a half-mast smile. ‘I meet a lot of people in my line of business.’

      Her eyes were unnervingly steady as they held his. It was as if she were seeing past his urbane man-in-control-of-his-universe façade to the shy boy of ten who’d had to step up to the plate after his father’s accident and his mother’s desertion. Her face was free of make-up. No mask of cosmetics to hide behind and yet he couldn’t help feeling she was a little too composed.

      ‘We met at British Polo Day some years ago.’

      ‘We did?’

      ‘It was the same event where you met your ex-fiancée.’

      Alejandro clenched his jaw behind his polite smile. She had gone for the jugular. Bitch. Like father, like daughter. Playing games with him. Toying with him. Mocking him.

      Reminding him.

      He hated being reminded of his foolishness back then. At twenty-four he had stupidly believed love existed. Back then he had believed he could have a happy and fulfilling life with someone who loved him as much as he loved them. That how much money he had or didn’t have wouldn’t count. He had been swept away by the notion of building a new family like the one his mother had destroyed when she’d left his shattered father six months after the accident.

      He had been wrong.

      ‘I’m sorry I have no recollection of our meeting.’ He ran his gaze over her as he tried to judge her age. She looked to be in her early to mid-twenties but, without make-up and wearing those dreadful tomboy ragbag clothes, she looked far younger. ‘Were we formally introduced?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Alejandro still couldn’t place her. But then he met a lot of people during polo events. His brother played on the field while he worked the business end of things. Sponsors and corporate kings often pushed their daughters under his nose but he was always careful to keep business and pleasure separate. She had obviously taken it as a slight that he hadn’t singled her out in the past. But then why would he? She was as far away from his usual type as could be. ‘You must have been quite young at the time.’

      ‘Sixteen.’

      So that made her twenty-six now. A plain Jane single woman sliding down the slippery slope to the big three-oh, so Daddy had agreed to set her up with a mail order groom.

      Alejandro’s gut curdled with bitterness. Why had she chosen him? Why not some other guy who could stomach the thought of matrimony? Or was this some sort of payback for snubbing her in the past?

      ‘Is there somewhere we could talk?’ He threw a glance at the hovering butler, who looked as if he’d just stepped off a film shoot on a period drama. ‘In private?’

      ‘This way.’

      Alejandro frowned as he followed her. She had a pronounced limp that made the action of walking look not only awkward but also painful, in spite of the use of the stick. One leg dragged slightly as if the muscles weren’t strong enough to take her full weight. Not that she was heavy or anything. She looked as if a gust of wind would send her into the next county. Was it a recent injury? He tried to recall if he had read anything about her in the press but he came up with zero. Perhaps she wasn’t the press magnet type.

      He felt a flicker of interest spark and fire in his brain. Not in-your-face beautiful and broken too. Interesting. Was this why she was being packaged in the marriage deal? Did she or her father—or both—think she couldn’t get a husband any other way? She might not be billboard stunning but he could see the classical lines to her face, the porcelain skin that looked as soft and smooth and creamy as a magnolia petal, the unusual colour of her eyes that made him think of a winter lake. She had a quiet beauty that sneaked up on you without you noticing. It was the sort of beauty that would suddenly appear and snatch your breath.

      She turned and faced him once they were in the library. Her expression was masked, like a puppet face that hadn’t been animated. ‘Would you care for a drink?’

      ‘What happened to your leg?’

      She pinched her lips together, pride flashing across her features as fast as the flick of a whiplash. ‘I have whisky or brandy or cognac. Wine too. Red. White. Champagne.’

      ‘I asked you a question.’

      Her eyes clashed with his, the chips of blue in hers striking in amongst the sea of grey. ‘A rude one.’

      Alejandro gave a careless shrug. He didn’t care if he was rude. He wasn’t here to make friends. He was here to get out of the stranglehold of her father’s machinations. He wanted that land. He would do anything for that land.

      But not this.

      Not the M word.

      He nailed her with a hardened look. ‘I’m not here to drink wine and talk about the weather. I’m here to put a stop to this nonsense.’

      Her expression remained composed. Determined. Implacable. ‘I’m not marrying you.’

      ‘Damn right you’re not.’

      ‘I have no intention of marrying anyone.’

      ‘Couldn’t agree more.’

      ‘Which brings us to the rather vexing terms of my father’s will.’

      Vexing? Was she stuck in a time warp or something? She talked as if she had stepped out of the pages of a Brontë sister’s novel.

      Alejandro watched as she poured herself a glass of soda water. The silence was so intense he could hear the bubbles spitting and fizzing against the sides of the glass.

      She had delicate hands, slim and long-fingered and milky-white like the rest of her skin. Her nails were short but not manicured that way. They were bitten down to the quick, one of them looking red and painful near the cuticle.

      With her awful clothes and the absence of make-up and any other adornment such as jewellery, he suspected it had been a deliberate choice to make herself as unattractive as possible. Intriguing thought. Why would she do that? She stood to gain the most out of this deal. Or lose the most. Her inheritance rested on her agreement to the terms. A distant relative would get everything if she didn’t comply with her father’s wishes. What young woman would turn her back on an inheritance