His Suitable Bride(143)

‘I’m afraid I do not share your belief in the importance of family. It is a concept that I consider to be highly overrated.’

‘Another one! First love and now the family. You really are a cold-hearted bastard, aren’t you?’

Just for a moment something flickered deep in his eyes. Then another blink of those heavy, hooded lids and it was gone. But it had been flashing, savage, dangerous. A look that warned her she had stepped too far over some invisible line that she wasn’t aware of him having drawn on the ground between them.

Belatedly, she realised that she hadn’t seen anyone who might have been his family on his side of the church. Had she blundered badly, stepping heavily on his toes, or was there something about his family that she had just not known? Something that gave a reason why they would not turn up at Santos’s wedding. Her father had told her little about this man he had gone into business with, other than that he was a self-made billionaire, wealthy beyond anyone’s imagining. And he had made that wealth by taking no prisoners.

‘I am indeed a bastard,’ he drawled silkily. ‘As I am sure you are only too aware.’

‘No—I …’

Oh, dear heaven, she’d made a mess of things there. Did he really believe, as his tone implied, that she might have encouraged Natalie to back out because he was illegitimate?

‘And as to a family, then that was what I believed I was getting with your sister—a future family.’

Alexa hadn’t been aware of having moved, but somehow her back was right up against the wall, both physically and mentally. Hastily she tried to recover lost ground.

‘Look—Nat only did what I told her to.’

If his eyes had been cold before, they were pure ice now.

‘You told her to run out on the marriage? What gave you the right to interfere?’

‘She didn’t love you!’

‘Ah, yes, love—that word that seems so incredibly important to you.’

‘It’s more than a word,’ Alexa protested. ‘It’s vital to life. Look, Natalie and I may only share a father, but she’s still my baby sister. I was just five when she was born and she was not quite a day old when my dad put her into my arms.’

She’d fallen in love with Natalie right then and there and had vowed that if ever her sister needed anything she would be there. That she would protect her, keep her safe from harm. She’d kept to that vow for nearly twenty-one years.

‘I couldn’t let you make her unhappy!’

Thoughts of family gave her conscience a much needed nudge.

‘I really should go and find my father—find out how Petra is doing. Do you know where they are?’

‘You won’t find them. They left half an hour ago.’

‘They left? Then things have cleared outside? The paparazzi have gone …?’

The hopeful question faded as Santos shook his head emphatically.

‘I sent them home in a car. Security will have got them through the crowd outside, but no, the Press pack has not gone.’

‘If they’ve not gone, then why expose my father and Petra to their demands? You sent them out to face that mob …’

‘I didn’t want them here.’

Santos’s total indifference was truly shocking.

‘The Press won’t be interested in your parents any more. They know now that the wedding never took place and so they guess that the real story is in here, not with them.’

Suddenly, to her complete shock and disbelief, he turned on that devastating smile, the one that left her weak at the knees, and made her heart thud unevenly.

‘It’s you they’ll want to know about now.’

‘Me? Why would they want to know anything about me?’

‘They know that you went into the church instead of Natalie. They also saw you come out again with me. They’ll want to know why the marriage never took place. And just what part you played in all of it.’





CHAPTER FOUR


‘ME?’

He couldn’t really mean that—could he?

She had thought she knew exactly why Santos had determined on holding the reception in spite of the fact that there had been no marriage to celebrate. Ruthless pride had kept him holding his head high, refusing to admit that anything had gone wrong at all. The man who didn’t give a damn that he was nicknamed the brigand was also determined that no one should think he gave a damn about what had happened today.

He had told her straight out that his planned marriage to Natalie had been nothing but a marriage of convenience but he would still show the world how little he cared for his bride’s defection by carrying on with the party without her. But surely it must be every bit as much of an endurance test for him as it was for her, with everyone’s eyes on them, every move he made being observed and commented on.