His Unknown Heir

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘I’ll drive out to find him and give him his phone,’ she assured Maria, when the PA went into a lengthy explanation about an urgent matter that required his immediate attention.

  The Velaquez estate was huge, with miles of vineyards, but she guessed that Ramon would be at his estate manager’s cottage. It was too far to walk in the hot afternoon sunshine, and so she slid behind the wheel of the sports car that was his latest gift to her, lowered the roof, and was soon speeding along the dusty tracks, with the warm breeze blowing through her hair.

  It was a glorious feeling, and she couldn’t help smiling. She hadn’t thanked him properly for her car yet, but tonight she planned to wear a new sexy black negligee and show her appreciation by seducing him.

  There was no sign of Ramon’s Jeep outside the cottage. So he could be anywhere on the estate, she thought with a frown, as she brought her car to a halt and stared along the endless rows of vines. She sat for a few moments, wondering what to do, and was relieved when one of the estate workers ambled up the track.

  ‘The boss not here,’ the man told her in answer to her query. ‘He used to come Fridays, but not now.’

  Do you know where he spends every Friday afternoon?

  Pilar Fernandez’s curious question on the day of Valentina’s twins’ christening stole into Lauren’s mind, and despite the hot sun beating down on her shoulderblades ice trickled down her spine.

  There would be a perfectly reasonable explanation as to Ramon’s whereabouts, she told herself firmly. She smiled at the worker. ‘Do you know where el Duque is?

  The man shrugged. ‘Sometimes I see him drive along this track.’

  ‘And the track leads where?’ Lauren queried patiently.

  ‘To Casa Madalena.’

  All the joy went out of the day, and all the heat drained out of the sun. Lauren shivered and hugged her arms around herself, nausea churning in her stomach. So Ramon spent every Friday afternoon at the home of Pilar Fernandez, and had apparently done so for weeks—despite the fact that he had told her he visited the vineyards on Fridays. Why had he lied? she wondered, and gave a bitter laugh. It could only be because he did not want her to know about his regular visits to Pilar.

  Her mother had told her that her father had pretended for years that he played squash at his sports club every Friday evening, when in fact he had been having an affair with his secretary.

  Oh, God! Pain ripped through her, and she sagged against the car. She had been such a fool. When she had first met him Ramon had been a playboy who had never been faithful to any of his numerous mistresses for more than five minutes. He had married her because he wanted his son, and had bluntly admitted that she was not his ideal wife. But he had said that he wanted their marriage to work, and she had been so blinded by her love for him that she had seized on the nice things he had done for her as a sign that he was beginning to care for her.

  Maybe he had encouraged her to accept a place at university in Bilbao so that she would be out of the way for a couple of days a week? Maybe he intended to invite Pilar to the castle, so that she could get to know Matty before he divorced her and married the aristocratic Spanish beauty who would make him a much more suitable bride?

  Her overwrought imagination battled with her common sense. Ramon would have to be Superman to have the energy for an affair when he made love to her every night. But he had never given any indication that the wild passion they shared was anything more to him than simply good sex. He liked variety, she thought bleakly, remembering his reputation when she had first met him in London.

  She climbed back into the car and stared along the track in the direction of the Fernandez home. She could go back to the castle and pretend that she did not know where Ramon really went on Fridays. Her mother had silently accepted her father’s affairs for most of their marriage, and for the first time Lauren truly appreciated how much Frances must have loved her husband to have tolerated a situation that was both humiliating and heartbreaking.

  The worst thing was that she was actually tempted to do as her mother had done, she realised, wiping away her tears with shaking fingers. She loved Ramon so much that the thought of losing him lacerated her heart. But she could not live a lie. She had to know the truth.

  So, heart pounding, she swung the car towards Casa Madalena.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE sight of Ramon’s Jeep parked in the courtyard of Pilar’s home made Lauren grip the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles whitened, and her legs felt weak as she walked up the front steps of the house.

  ‘Sí, Señor Velaquez is here,’ a uniformed butler confirmed when he came to the front door. ‘He is in the pool house.’

  It was obvious that the pool house was the new-looking glass-roofed building to one side of the main house. Lauren hurried across the courtyard, her heart racing with a mixture of anger and trepidation at the prospect of finding Ramon and Pilar together. No doubt the model would be wearing a skimpy bikini that showed off her stunning figure—or maybe she would be wearing nothing at all?

  Swallowing the bile that had risen in her throat, Lauren pushed open the pool house door—and came to an abrupt halt as three startled faces stared at her.

  Ramon and another man dressed in medical overalls were lifting a much older man, who could only be Cortez Fernandez, into a wheelchair.

  Lauren glanced wildly around the poolside.

  ‘Oh! I thought…Pilar…’ She trailed to a halt as she met Ramon’s narrowed gaze.

  ‘Pilar is abroad on a modelling assignment. What did you think, Lauren?’ he queried in a hard tone—and in that moment she knew that she had made a dreadful mistake.

  ‘I thought…’ She swallowed. ‘I’m so sorry for my intrusion,’ she mumbled to the elderly man, who was now sitting in the wheelchair. He shook his grey head and gave her a faint smile.

  ‘It is I who should apologise, for stealing so much of Ramon’s time,’ he said in Spanish. ‘I should have known that a new bride would want to be with her husband.’

  The nurse wheeled Cortez away, and Lauren bit her lip as she watched Ramon stride towards her. His wet swim-shorts moulded his muscular thighs, and droplets of water clung to the whorls of dark hairs that covered his chest. The sight of his near naked body made Lauren feel weak for a very different reason.

  He hadn’t been cheating on her with Pilar. Relief overwhelmed her. But when he halted in front of her she sensed his anger and met his gaze warily.

  ‘What did you expect to find when you rushed in here, Lauren?’ he asked quietly, his voice suddenly sounding curiously bleak.

  ‘Pilar said… Well, no, implied…’ she corrected herself honestly. ‘That you spent every Friday afternoon with her. I had put it out of my mind until today, when I went to the vineyard to give you your phone and discovered that you had lied about inspecting the estate, and in actual fact you came here every week.’

  Ramon exhaled heavily. ‘I do come every week. Cortez suffered a stroke six months ago, which left him unable to walk. His doctor suggested that he should swim regularly, to help strengthen the muscles in his legs, but the stroke left him feeling so depressed that he seemed to be giving up on life. Pilar asked for my help. I have always been good friends with Cortez, and I persuaded him to swim with me every week. But he is a proud man, who hates his disability, and when he asked me not to discuss his therapy with anyone I felt that I should respect his wish.’

  Shame washed over Lauren and she dropped her gaze.

  Ramon stared at her downbent head and did not know whether he wanted to kiss her or shake her. At this moment the latter seemed more tempting.

  He inhaled sharply. ‘How could you think that I was in any way involved with Pilar?’ he demanded savagely. ‘I have never given you any reason to doubt my commitment to our marriage.’

  He hadn’t, Lauren admitted, guilt gnawing at her insides. It had been her and her wretched insecurity that had driven her to think the worst of him. ‘Pilar deliberately put doubts i
n my mind,’ she muttered. ‘I think she hoped to make trouble between us.’

  ‘She seems to have succeeded,’ Ramon said tersely. He swung away from her and snatched up a towel. ‘I can’t help feeling that you are always going to punish me for your father’s sins.’

  Lauren gave him a startled look. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t trust me. And I’m not sure our marriage can survive without trust. Go back to the castle,’ he ordered her roughly. ‘I am too angry to talk to you right now. I usually play a game of chess with Cortez—and, in case you’re wondering, the only female around will be his housekeeper, who is about ninety-three,’ he finished sardonically.

  Ramon did not return for dinner. A member of the castle staff informed Lauren that he had phoned to say he would be dining with Cortez Fernandez. Clearly he was still angry with her, and she could not blame him, she thought miserably as eleven p.m. came and went and he still had not come home. But his explosive tempers did not usually last for long, and, hopeful that they would soon make up after this latest row, she took a bath and afterwards anointed her skin with fragrant oil, before donning the daring black negligee she had bought to please him.

  She owed him an apology, she acknowledged as she sat alone on the huge four-poster bed and studied the portrait of Matty that Ramon had commissioned for her. It now hung on the wall, so that it was the first thing she saw when she woke every morning. Even if he did not love her the way she loved him, he had proved over and over that he cared about her and respected her—and she had repaid him with doubt and mistrust that threatened to undermine their marriage.

  Racked with guilt, she paced around the bedroom and finally pulled on her robe, intending to wait for him downstairs so that she could greet him when he came home—if he ever did, she thought painfully.

  She was shocked to see a light spilling from beneath the door of his study, and after giving a hesitant knock she entered the room. He was sprawled on the sofa, his jacket and tie discarded in a heap on the floor, a glass of whisky in his hand—not the first glass he had drunk, she guessed, glancing at the half-empty bottle on the coffee table.

  ‘I…I didn’t realise you were back,’ she said shakily, when he turned his head and stared at her through bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Where else would I be, my darling wife?’ He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘Don’t answer that. I’m sure your fertile imagination can come up with a dozen scenarios, featuring me sleeping with one of the many mistresses that you seem to think I have stashed away.’

  ‘I am truly sorry that I doubted you,’ Lauren said in a low tone. ‘I had no reason to mistrust you. It was just… when you weren’t at the vineyards, as I had expected, I thought about all the times my father must have lied to my mother—all his affairs that I knew nothing about when I was a child, but which broke her heart. For a few stupid minutes I thought that you were like him, but I know that you’re not,’ she choked, swallowing the tears that suddenly clogged her throat.

  Ramon drained his glass and stood up, moving away from her to stand by the window that looked over the dark castle grounds and the shadowy mountains beyond.

  ‘I should never have forced you to marry me,’ he said abruptly. ‘I can see now that it was a mistake.’

  Fear greater than anything she had ever experienced caused the blood to drain from Lauren’s face, and she felt hollow inside, as if her heart had been wrenched from her chest. ‘You didn’t force me—’ she began, but Ramon shook his head.

  ‘Dios mio, I threatened to fight for custody of our child. I gave you no choice but to be my wife. And now you feel trapped. You asked me once if you were my prisoner,’ he said harshly. ‘The answer is no, Lauren. I will not keep you here against your will any longer.’

  She wished he would turn round, so that she could see his expression, because the dark, deadly serious tone in his voice was scaring her to death. ‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered.

  He shrugged. ‘I am setting you free. Neither of us can be happy while you continue to be haunted by the way your father treated your mother. You are constantly waiting for me to let you down in some way, and ultimately that lack of trust will destroy our relationship.’

  He paused, and then continued in the same emotionless voice. ‘I will agree to a divorce, and to you taking Mateo back to England. All I ask is that you allow me to buy a house for the two of you, and for your agreement that I can visit him often.’

  She was so shocked by his stark announcement that she could not speak—couldn’t think. The agonising pain, as if her heart was being crushed in a vice, made it difficult to breathe.

  ‘I don’t want a divorce,’ she stammered. ‘I would never take Matty away from here—from the castle, and his family, and you. I know how much you love him.’

  She broke off when Ramon turned to face her, and the stark wretchedness in his eyes made her want to weep. She knew how much it must have cost him to offer her custody of Matty, to allow her to take his son away. He thought she wanted her freedom, but what she really wanted, needed to do was tell him honestly how she felt about him. She had been a coward for far too long, and had allowed her father’s behaviour to colour her judgement of Ramon, but what they shared was too special to lose.

  Courage was hard to find as she stared at the tall, handsome man who was her world. His jaw was tense, his skin drawn tight over his slashing cheekbones. She wished he would smile and hold her, kiss her hair as he did every night as she fell asleep in his arms.

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘I don’t feel trapped. I want to remain married to you because…I love you.’

  The silence was so intense that Lauren could hear the ragged sound of her breathing. There was no reaction on his hard face, and his thick lashes hid the expression in his eyes.

  ‘Some love,’ he said scathingly at last. ‘You say the words, Lauren, but you did not show it today, when you believed that I was having an affair with Pilar.’

  Feeling as though she were dying inside, Lauren stared at the floor, willing her tears not to fall until she was alone and could deal with his rejection in private. She did not see him move, and flinched when he slid his hand beneath her chin and tilted her face to his.

  ‘True love—the kind that lasts for ever—is profound and loving, passionate and tender,’ he said deeply. ‘It is about trust and forgiveness, friendship, and an abiding affection that transcends all life’s problems and disappointments and brings the greatest joy.’ Ramon paused and stared into her grey eyes, feeling his heart contract when he saw the shimmer of her tears. ‘At least that is the love I feel for you, mi corazón.’

  It was too much to take in. He had defined the meaning of love so beautifully that she could not hold back her tears. She must have misunderstood. He could not mean that he felt that wealth of emotion for her, she thought desperately. But the golden gleam in his sherry-brown gaze burned into her soul, and to her amazement love blazed in his eyes.

  ‘You…you love me?’ She was a lawyer, and she always verified her facts.

  ‘With all my heart, mi preciosa.’

  The raw emotion in his voice touched her even more than the words, and she realised that she was not the only one who was shaking. Questions swirled in her head.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’ she whispered, still finding it impossible to believe.

  He gave a rueful smile and stroked her hair back from her face with an unsteady hand. ‘At first I did not know,’ he admitted huskily. ‘All I knew was that I fancied you like hell and wanted you in my bed. To my annoyance, I missed you when you weren’t around. But I think even then, during our affair, I knew you were special,’ he said slowly.

  ‘You know what happened the one and only other time I fell in love. My heart soon mended after Catalina, but I felt ashamed that I had disappointed my father, and I was determined to one day marry a woman from my own social circle of whom he would approve. My experience with Catalina made me wary of trusting my judgement of women, so when
I met you and realised I wanted more than a casual affair with you I reminded myself that I could never allow our relationship to develop.

  ‘I was furious when I discovered that you had kept my son a secret from me, but I was secretly glad that it gave me the opportunity to make you my wife,’ he admitted. ‘I kidded myself that I only wanted to marry you for Mateo’s sake. When you walked towards me in the church, looking like an angel, I knew that you had stolen my heart irrevocably and for ever.

  ‘Don’t cry, mi corazón,’ he said softly, brushing his lips over her damp cheeks and tasting her tears. ‘Don’t you want me to love you?’

  ‘I want it more than anything in the world, and I always have—because I fell in love with you about five minutes after I met you,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I’m crying because I was so unsure of you, and of the happiness that we seemed to have. I wish you had told me how you felt.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have believed me,’ he said gently. ‘You had to learn to trust me first. I tried to show you how much you meant to me.’

  ‘By giving me things,’ Lauren murmured, suddenly understanding that the jewellery and other presents he had showered her with had been his way of trying to teach her that he loved her. ‘Oh, Ramon.’ She stared at his beautiful sculpted face and ached with love for him. ‘You wouldn’t really have agreed to a divorce, would you?’ she asked, a little tremor of uncertainty still in her voice.

  ‘You must be joking.’ He smiled suddenly, and snatched her into his arms as the restraint he had imposed on himself crumbled beneath his urgent need to hold her close. ‘Even as I said it I was frantically backtracking and planning how I could persuade you to stay with me. I never want to let you go, querida,’ he said, suddenly serious again. ‘But I blackmailed you into marrying me. You have to choose whether or not you want to be my wife.’

  Joy unfurled in Lauren’s heart and radiated out, until every cell and nerve-ending in her body overflowed with happiness. ‘I choose you—and I want to stay with you as your wife, friend and lover until I die.’ She untied the belt of her robe and shrugged it from her shoulders, heat sizzling in her blood when Ramon studied the very daring black lace negligee with rampant appreciation in his eyes. ‘But I won’t object if you want to persuade me a little,’ she invited in a sultry tone.