Page 16 of Spanish Marriage Solution

‘Of course.’

‘And Diego...’

‘Will be my heir. I’ll bring him up as my own son and, no, it won’t make any difference if I have children of my own blood.’

‘So you’ll treat him the way your father treated you?’

‘No,’ he snapped before he could stop himself. ‘I would never do that.’

Something shifted in her gaze, though he wasn’t sure what it was. Interest perhaps, or curiosity. ‘Why? How did your father treat you?’

But he wasn’t going to have that conversation, not with her. ‘It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Diego will not be disadvantaged because he is not biologically related to me. He will be my son in every other way.’

She didn’t say anything immediately, the expression in her gaze unreadable.

‘You have my word,’ he added, because if she was searching for the truth then he’d give it to her. She needed to know that, while he might have failed Emily, he wouldn’t fail Diego.

It had never been a good idea to look into her dark eyes for too long and he knew he shouldn’t look now. He didn’t want her to see the need burning in him for her. He had to keep it locked away. It would be a disaster if she knew, because then...

Then you might throw caution to the winds? Say ‘to hell with it’ and take her? Ignore your control and give your heart what it wants instead?

He could. His wife was gone and there was nothing stopping him now. Nothing but the years of denial and guilt and relentless self-control. Nothing but his father’s constant, painful example of how love and desire could eat you alive from the inside out and turn you into someone vindictive and cruel and petty.

He wouldn’t follow that example. He’d spent years trying to do the right thing, the honourable thing, because he was a Castellano duke and Castellano dukes were always honourable. He couldn’t allow those years to be wasted on something so ephemeral and meaningless as sex. And that was all it would be. Just sex and nothing more. Dios, if he wanted a woman, he’d find someone else. Someone far less complicated than Alice.

So he kept tight control of himself and it was she who looked away, glancing out of the window, colour staining the olive skin of her cheekbones.

Curious that he’d made her blush, not that he should have noticed.

‘You’re not who I thought you were,’ she said after a moment.

He studied the curve of her cheek and the fan of delicate dark lashes almost resting on it. They were very long, those lashes, and silky looking. ‘And who did you think I was?’

‘Someone who’d let Diego go easily. I thought that you wouldn’t want him because he’s not yours.’

He shouldn’t keep looking at her, and yet he couldn’t stop. The sun through the window was glossing her dark hair. She had it in a low ponytail at the back of her neck and he couldn’t help noting that the T-shirt she wore was faded. Old clothes. She really hadn’t expected to be going anywhere today, had she?

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You thought wrong.’

Her eyes had widened, and they were even darker, her pupils dilating. Abruptly the tension between them pulled tight, the air in the helicopter filling with a crackling heat.

The colour in her cheeks deepened and a startled expression flickered through her velvet dark eyes, as if she’d read every thought in his head, and that was bad, very bad. He’d wondered, after that Christmas Eve moment in the living room, whether she’d guessed at how he felt about her. Yet that moment had never repeated itself and she’d never said anything, so he’d told himself she hadn’t guessed, and it was better that way.

Perhaps she hadn’t. She did now, though.

He should have said nothing, should have let the moment pass unremarked. But he didn’t.

‘No,’ he said fiercely instead. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Alice.’

Her eyes widened even further, the red blush staining her cheeks now creeping down her neck, and that was when he realised things were going to be even more complicated than they were already.

Because Alice felt the same way he did.

CHAPTER FIVE

ALICE’S HEART WAS beating so loud she was surprised it wasn’t audible through the entire helicopter cabin, even despite the headset she wore.

He’d told her so fiercely not to look at him that she’d obeyed without even thinking about it, turning to look out of the window instead. Except she paid no attention to the Spanish countryside unrolling beneath them.

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