Page 1 of Spanish Marriage Solution

CHAPTER ONE

ALICE SMITH COULD pinpoint the exact second her life was ruined.

It was the moment she met her brother-in-law.

Five years later and nothing had changed.

Sebastián Castellano, Tenth Duke of Aveira, was still as mesmerisingly beautiful as he had been when Emily had first brought him back to Auckland to show her new husband off to the family. And even now, after all those years and with Emily only two months dead, Alice still felt the same gut punch that she’d always felt every time she was in his presence.

The last time she’d seen him had been at Emily’s funeral, in Auckland, and he’d flown all the way from Spain to attend. He hadn’t spoken to Alice. He hadn’t spoken at all. He’d sat in the back of the church and by the time everyone had filed past the casket and placed on top of it the sprigs of fern frond that Alice had organised, he’d gone.

He’d barely been in the country a day.

Alice’s husband Edward’s funeral had been the day after, but Alice hadn’t been expecting Sebastián to attend that. Why would he? The whole reason Emily and Edward were dead was because they’d both been in the same car that had plunged off the side of a mountain in Switzerland.

Turned out that Emily hadn’t been having some ‘me time’ in Greece as she’d told everyone. She’d been in Switzerland, having an affair with Edward.

Not that the affair was relevant now. The only thing that mattered, or at least the only thing that mattered to Alice, was Diego, Emily’s four-month-old son.

Who was not, as it turned out, Sebastián’s.

No, he was Edward’s. Edward and her sister’s, and he was why she was here in Seville, after a nightmare forty-eight-hour journey from Auckland, involving three plane changes and an excruciatingly expensive taxi to the Castellano family’s estate, a hacienda, nestled at the base of some rather impressive mountains.

She felt slightly sick with jet lag and the hot, dusty air didn’t help, but she took a fortifying breath and shaded her eyes from the intense heat of the midday Spanish sun. She was sweating in the dark suit she’d foolishly decided to wear for the trip and the nerves that had got worse and worse the closer she came to the Castellano estate were now wreaking havoc in her gut.

Sebastián was a difficult man and confronting him wasn’t going to be easy, especially about this. But it had to be done. Her nephew was more important to her than anything and she was here to bring him home, back to New Zealand where he belonged.

Ahead of her was the large wooden corral she remembered from previous trips to the Castellano hacienda. The Castellanos had been breeding Andalusian horses for centuries and were currently the lead supplier of Andalusians in the world. Their bloodlines were highly sought after, used for dressage, showjumping and other competitions, and Sebastián was a world-renowned talent as a breeder and trainer.

Alice had always loved visiting the stables whenever she’d come to Spain, which had been every Christmas after Emily had married Sebastián. He’d covered travel expenses for the Smiths and her and Emily’s parents while they’d been alive, which had been very generous of him. However, the only part of those visits that Alice had enjoyed was seeing the horses. She’d been a horse girl once when she’d been small, and a part of her still thrilled at the sight the magnificent animals. Emily, on the other hand, had been afraid of them.

Emily certainly wouldn’t have liked the magnificent, glossy black stallion currently trotting around the perimeter of the corral on a lead rope. The rope was held by a figure standing in the middle of the dusty corral circle, watching as the horse paced around him.

He was exceptionally tall, dwarfing even Alice, who was five nine in her bare feet, his shoulders wide and muscular. He had the long, lean shape of an athlete, the plain black T-shirt and dusty jeans he wore only emphasising his magnificent physique.

His raven-black hair was as glossy as the horse’s coat and even though his face was slightly turned away from her, she didn’t need to see it to remember him. That face haunted her dreams. The precisely carved features of an aristocrat: high cheekbones, straight nose, and a firm hard mouth. Eyes of dark, smoky gold.

She hadn’t told him she was coming. She hadn’t wanted him to know why she was here, not until they were face to face. This wasn’t the kind of conversation you could have over the phone, and especially not with him. Emily’s letter was in her handbag, creased and stained with tears, but Alice needed to show it to him. It was proof of what her sister had wanted in case she ended up having a fight on her hands. She hoped not. She hoped that Sebastián, scion of an ancient dukedom whose history and business dealt in ancient bloodlines, wouldn’t want to bring up the child of an affair his wife had had with another man.

He was proud, so Emily had often said, and proud of his family line, so Alice couldn’t imagine him welcoming Diego. Perhaps he’d even be glad she was here to take the child off his hands.

When she’d arrived, Lucia, the housekeeper who managed the huge white stucco hacienda that was the Castellano estate, had greeted her like a long-lost daughter and had told her that ‘Señor Sebastián’ was in the stables looking over a new purchase. Lucia had tried to get Alice to sit down and have something cooling to drink, but Alice had insisted on seeing Sebastián immediately. She wanted to get this over and done with as soon as possible, so Lucia had got Tomas, the stable manager, to bring her to Sebastián.

Which was why she was now standing here in the baking sun, watching said ‘new purchase’, the beautiful horse, come to a stop directly in front of Sebastián. He pulled something out of his pocket, an apple, and held it out in his palm. The stallion dropped his head, soft mouth closing around the fruit, eating it directly from Sebastián’s hand.

It was oddly mesmerising to watching Sebastián reach out and stroke the horse’s soft nose. He had a magic touch with the animals, Emily had once told her, pulling a face as she did so. In fact, he’d seemed to like the horses more than he did her, which was a regular complaint from Emily. Alice hadn’t taken any notice, which in retrospect had been a mistake. She’d thought it was Emily being dramatic and annoyed at not having attention twenty-four-seven, but apparently it hadn’t been.

The stable manager opened the corral gate and went in, going over to where Sebastián stood. There was a brief conversation in rapid Spanish before Sebastián’s head turned sharply in Alice’s direction.

And as it always did whenever he looked at her, all the air escaped her lungs, and her heart began to race.

It happened every single time.

She hated it.

She’d first met him five years earlier, after his and Emily’s whirlwind wedding. They’d come out to New Zealand to meet the in-laws, and it had happened then too, as they’d stood awkwardly on her parents’ deck overlooking Waitemata Harbour. The moment his golden eyes had met hers, she’d felt an almost visceral impact. The gut punch of fierce physical attraction, and more than that, for her at least. She hadn’t been able to put into words the nature of the emotion that had coursed through her, only that somehow a fire in her had responded to a fire in him, recognising a kindred spirit.

She had no idea why. She didn’t know him, had never met him before that day. It was just something about him that had reached inside her and closed its fingers around her heart. But she’d been married to Edward and he’d just married Emily and so there had been nothing to be done about it.

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