Cordero's Forced Bride by Kate Walker

Author:Kate Walker [Walker, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction, Romance, General, Reference, Weddings, Forced Marriage
ISBN: 9780373127993
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2009-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

CINDERELLA WAS WELL and truly back from the ball.

Alexa’s smile was wry as she unlocked her front door and let herself back into her cottage after a long day at work. The contrast between the luxury and style of Santos’s beautiful house outside Seville and this tiny home, with its slightly shabby décor and worn appearance, couldn’t have been much greater. But at least this was a home and not a showplace as the Seville house had been. A showplace with no heart, and no real warmth of any sort.

Much like its owner.

She certainly wouldn’t trade one for the other any day. Not even when her own little cottage felt as chilled and unwelcoming as it did now. The central-heating timer must be on the blink again.

The weather too was as different as it could be from the mild temperatures she had left behind in Spain. Here in Yorkshire, the wind was a biting, bitter chill, and the forecast was for it to get even colder over the weekend. There were even suggestions of a storm. Certainly the sky had looked heavy enough as she had driven back up the steep winding road that led from the library to her home. She just prayed that the heating would work once she checked on it and switched it on manually.

The house was just beginning to lose the chilly edge from the temperature and she had started to prepare an evening meal when there was an unexpected ring at the doorbell.

Who could that be? She wasn’t expecting anyone and the cottage was far enough from the village to deter casual callers, with no one living near enough to be described as a neighbour. Wiping her flour-covered fingers on a handy tea towel, she hurried down the corridor to answer the summons.

With no glass pane in the door to give her any clue, no way of seeing just what sort of a figure might be at the door, she had no warning. And so the sight that met her eyes when she pulled it open had her losing all her breath in one shocked gasp and taking a couple of stunned, shaky steps backwards.

Santos Cordero stood there, big and dark and large as life. Or perhaps even larger than life, because that was how he seemed with his powerful frame filling the small doorway, his broad shoulders almost blocking out the view of her slightly unkempt garden, his black hair blown wildly over his forehead by the whirling winds that howled amongst the trees. His eyes were almost as cold and bleak as the darkening sky and it seemed that the weather prediction of hailstorms had been an accurate one, with white pellets spinning in the air, and some of them had settled on his head, glistening among the black strands like melting diamonds.

‘Santos!’

‘Buenas tardes, señorita.’

If the faint flicker of something across his sensual mouth was supposed to have been an attempt at a smile then it failed completely, switching on and then off again with a speed that made her wonder if it had ever been there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.