A Ring for the Spaniard's Revenge, page 1
“If you do something for me, in return I will buy the castillo, settle all its debts and turn it into a profit-making enterprise. I will even offer you a stake, if you’d like.”
Eva couldn’t quite compute this information for a long moment. She’d been facing the prospect of sizable debts remaining even after the sale. But these would be gone. And he was offering her a business opportunity?
Then she recalled what he’d said and immediately she was suspicious. “What do you want me to do for you?”
Vidal folded his arms. “I want you to agree to a public engagement with me.”
Vidal watched Eva closely. Seeing her like this in a maid’s uniform had thrown him. More than thrown him. He’d underestimated how impoverished she was. And yet, not for a moment had she let that hauteur slip.
Eva looked a little stunned. And then confused. “A public engagement...like an event?”
“No. Like a marriage engagement.”
Eva went white. Something about her reaction made Vidal feel simultaneously insulted and vindicated by the impulsive decision he’d made.
“You want to marry me?” she asked, sounding shocked.
Irish author Abby Green ended a very glamorous career in film and TV—which really consisted of a lot of standing in the rain outside actors’ trailers—to pursue her love of romance. After she’d bombarded Harlequin with manuscripts, they kindly accepted one, and an author was born. She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and loves any excuse for distraction. Visit abby-green.com or email abbygreenauthor@gmail.com.
Books by Abby Green
Harlequin Presents
The Greek’s Unknown Bride
Bound by Her Shocking Secret
Passionately Ever After...
The Kiss She Claimed from the Greek
Hot Summer Nights with a Billionaire
The Flaw in His Red-Hot Revenge
The Marchetti Dynasty
The Maid’s Best Kept Secret
The Innocent Behind the Scandal
Bride Behind the Desert Veil
Jet-Set Billionaires
Their One-Night Rio Reunion
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Abby Green
A Ring for the Spaniard’s Revenge
This is for my beautiful niece, Brída Mernagh Spee. A ray of light and love who arrived into our lives when we needed it most.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM CARRYING HER BOSS’S CHRISTMAS BABY BY NATALIE ANDERSON
CHAPTER ONE
Castillo de Santos, outside Madrid
EVA FLORES SHIVERED, even though the sun was shining and the early autumn temperature was balmy. She should be feeling relieved. Happy, even. But she wasn’t even sure she knew what happy felt like, because it had never been a dominant emotion for her. She knew she’d only ever felt it on distinct occasions.
Before she could ruminate on that unpalatable revelation, she figured that she could work with relieved. Beyond relieved. After a year of trying to sell the castillo she’d grown up in, the only home she’d ever known, a potential buyer had finally materialised.
He was due to come and visit now, as a precursor to signing the contracts, and when she’d expressed concern the solicitor had assured her, ‘He is very interested. He’s the kind of man who wouldn’t be taking time out of his busy schedule if he hadn’t already made up his mind. He just wants to do this as a formality.’
Still, Eva couldn’t help trying to temper her relief with a bit of caution. He hadn’t signed yet, and until he did this crumbling mausoleum was still hers, with all its bleak memories, loneliness and massive debts.
The castillo had felt like a prison for a long time and it effectively still was. Binding her here until she could get rid of it.
She was walking through the rambling gardens, long since neglected and overgrown since the last member of staff had left.
Eva’s gut clenched. She definitely didn’t want to go down that memory lane. Much better to focus on the fact that soon she could begin her life in earnest and try to put her past behind her.
This place had claimed too much of her time. And yet she still felt a compulsion to walk its paths, as if to lay some ghost to rest. The ghost of her mother. A familiar swell of something far more complicated than just plain grief rose up inside Eva. It was grief and anger and a sense of futility. Her mother had dictated Eva’s life in such a controlling way that it was only through her death that Eva had been able to get some perspective and enough space to start figuring out who she was.
She halted now at the rusted wrought-iron gate that led into a small walled garden with a fountain in the centre. Eva stepped inside and the heady scent of blooms in their last throes filled her nostrils.
Weeds ran rampant through the cracks in the stones on the ground and in every nook and cranny of the brick walls. She should feel guilty that it had gone to such waste but all she felt was empty. Numb.
She turned around slowly to see the elaborately decorated gazebo in a corner, almost hidden by foliage. A beautiful and whimsical piece of architecture that some previous ancestor had had installed. It certainly hadn’t been her parents, who had shared no love at all. Her father had eventually walked out and left them when Eva was eight.
That act had thrown her mother into a deep pit of bitterness and despair and had made her toxic. She’d turned to Eva and used her as an object to project all her betrayal and towering rage, seeing in her daughter an opportunity to make sure she was never hurt in the same way. And so far, Eva could attest, she hadn’t been. So maybe her mother’s legacy had worked.
After all, it wasn’t as if she’d had an opportunity to meet anyone in order to be hurt.
Except for—
She shut down her mind. Thinking of him caused a maelstrom of emotions that Eva didn’t want to investigate. It always had, ever since she’d first laid eyes on him when she was a teenager. Tall and more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen in her life. Even then she’d known that he connected with her in a way that scared her and that she didn’t fully understand.
Her mother had seen it, though. She’d found Eva watching him out of the window one day when he’d been working in the garden. Shirtless. Olive skin gleaming. Strong muscles flexing.
Her mother had drawn her close and said, ‘A boy like him is driven purely by brute desires, Eva. You are worth so much more than him. But that doesn’t mean you can’t remind him of that...’
She’d had no idea what her mother was talking about, but it had become apparent over the years. Her mother had wanted her to entice him. To provoke those brute desires so she could rise above them and laugh at him. To remind him of his place and the fact that she was totally unattainable.
The only problem was that he hadn’t been a brute. Far from it. He’d been studious, polite and...sexy. Eva had become progressively more and more aware of him, so that by that last summer, when she’d turned eighteen, she’d felt like a tinder box about to blow up with surging desires and aching needs and emotions far too confusing for her to know how to handle.
So she hadn’t handled them.
The last time she’d seen him had been here in this space...when it had looked as it should.
She could still remember him, so tall and powerful. Short dark hair. Serious expression. Looking at her with a mixture of wariness, pity and anger. It had enflamed her. She’d desperately wanted to provoke a reaction. And she had.
Her skin prickled at the memory. Unconsciously she curled her fingers over her palms. She could still feel the heat of anger and rage and, worse, the shock of what she’d almost done. The way he’d looked at her with disgust. She’d never felt so raw. So...lost.
She cursed herself for letting her imagination run amok into the past. Today was about the future. And she realised she was mooning around the grounds still dressed in worn jeans, an even more worn shirt and scuffed sneakers. With her hair pulled back messily, she didn’t look remotely like the owner of a crumbling castillo. If she could still be called an owner when the bank really owned it all.
It was a sorry state of affairs for the last person in the line descending from her mother’s illustrious family.
She knew she was the last, because she never intended to have children. Not after what she’d experienced. The thought of having a child sent a sense of terror through her at the thought that she might subject them to what she’d been subjected to. Even with the best will in the world.
Enough. She had to get ready.
She turned around to leave the garden but came to an abrupt halt when she saw someone standing in the gateway. Someone very tall and broad. Masculine. The sun was in her eyes, though, and she couldn’t make out his features.
This had to be the potential buyer...but how had he found this garden? The grounds were labyrinthine even to her, and she’d lived here her whole life.
For some reason she felt a shiver of recognition. She put a ha
The man stepped forward and she realised he was even taller than she’d first thought. Well over six foot. And then she saw his face and the blood stopped coursing through her veins.
It couldn’t be.
The man took off his sunglasses, revealing all too familiar deep-set eyes an unusual colour of green and blue. Aquamarine. They’d always reminded Eva of the sea.
When he spoke his voice was deep. ‘Hello, Eva. We meet again.’
Eva reeled. Had she conjured him up out of her imagination? Literally willed him into existence?
He wore a suit that was moulded to his very powerful body. She’d never seen him in a suit. It had always been jeans or shorts and T-shirts. Now she was the one in jeans and a shirt—the kind of clothes she had been forbidden from ever wearing. She’d rarely been out of them in the past year, in a sort of very belated and ineffectual rebellion.
‘Vidal Suarez...’ She breathed the name she hadn’t even wanted to think of a few moments ago. She didn’t realise she’d spoken out loud.
‘You do remember me, then.’
Always. The word popped into Eva’s head and she clamped her mouth shut in case it fell out. Except the person she remembered had been a young man on the cusp of his power. Lean and muscular. Not this...this fully formed man.
‘I... What are you doing here?’
He stepped closer and looked around. She could hardly comprehend that it was him. She felt confused, wondered if the sun was getting to her.
He said musingly, as if it was entirely normal for him to be there, ‘I always liked this space. Shame it’s gone to seed.’ He looked at her. ‘But then you and your mother always did have a careless attitude to the castillo and its upkeep.’
She wasn’t imagining him. His words sliced into her. It had been her mother who had relished the ruination of the castillo. As if the disintegrating state of their home might make her father realise that he had made a huge mistake and come back to make amends, fearful of what people would say. But he hadn’t. And the castillo had continued to slowly decline. In spite of the skeleton staff’s efforts to keep it somewhat respectable.
His words seemed to break her out of her trance. ‘What are you doing here?’ she repeated.
‘Aren’t you expecting me?’
Too many things impacted upon Eva at once for her to be able to assimilate them all. The implication of what he was saying was too huge to take in.
‘I’m waiting for someone from Sol Enterprises.’
‘Sol Enterprises is my company.’
Eva shook her head. ‘But...how...? Why?’
But even as she asked the question a memory came back. This same man, seven years ago, saying, ‘Some are born to this kind of privilege, Eva, and some have to earn it, but I think it’s safe to say that the earning of it is so much more satisfying. For all your privilege, you don’t strike me as particularly grateful or happy.’
The clarity of the memory mocked her.
Vidal was looking at her carefully, and the shock of his appearance made her feel as if the walls of the garden were closing in around her. For one awful moment Eva felt light-headed and thought she might faint. But it passed. She had to move away from here.
She skirted around Vidal Suarez and said, ‘We should go to the house.’
‘Yes, that would be good.’
As Eva walked down the well-worn paths ahead of him she forced herself to take deep breaths. She’d never expected to see Vidal Suarez again. His life now was so far removed from where she was and from where he’d been.
By the time he had come to the castillo with his grounds manager father at the age of twenty he had already been known locally as a prodigiously talented boy who had won a prestigious scholarship to one of Spain’s most exclusive schools, and had then gone on to win yet more scholarships to the world’s best universities.
It was probably the reason Eva’s mother had allowed him to live here with his father—as long as he helped out during his holidays, of course. For free.
And now he was a billionaire—a tech entrepreneur who had blazed a trail across the world before settling in San Francisco, the global hub of tech innovation.
Eva’s mother had taken great pleasure in making Vidal do menial work alongside his father, as if to remind him of his true place. But that last summer Eva had seen him had been the summer his life had changed. He’d made his first million.
Years after the Suarezes had left the castillo, and as their own fortune had declined, her mother—who had been following Vidal’s well-documented stratospheric progress—had said to Eva, ‘You should go to him...ask him for help. He owes us.’
Eva had turned on her mother and said, with barely controlled fury, ‘He owes us nothing, Mother. Nothing.’
We owe him. I owe him. She hadn’t said it, but she’d thought it.
She could almost feel the weight of Vidal Suarez judging the sorry state of the gardens behind her. She felt guilty, even though there was nothing she could have done about it. All her energy had been taken up in keeping herself and the castillo afloat. Not that it had done much good in the end.
Her mother had refused to sell. Had refused to show any sign that she’d struggled since her husband had left her all those years before. Preferring to live in a state of total inertia and denial.
It was only after she’d died that Eva had been able to take control, but that sense of control was suddenly very elusive as questions abounded in her head: Why him? Why now?
She had no idea why Vidal Suarez had come back here now, potentially to buy the castillo. Or maybe she did and she just didn’t want to acknowledge the gut-churning evidence that he hadn’t forgotten or forgiven his treatment at her hands. At her mother’s hands.
They approached the castillo from the front, where a large circular area featured another elaborate fountain that lay sadly dry and empty. A sleek, low-slung sports car—presumably Vidal’s—looked incongruous against the shabby backdrop.
The castillo itself was an imposing building, a mix of classical and Moorish design. The dramatic arching entrance led into an open courtyard, with pillars around the edges.
Another memory blasted back at that moment—as if Eva needed reminding. Her mother had invited Vidal to join them for dinner one evening. Eva had been mortifyingly excited. Sixteen and full of hormones, and giddy with a desire she’d had no idea how to handle.
Vidal had arrived and he’d clearly made an effort. Eva had thought he’d never looked more handsome in chinos and a shirt. Hair smoothed back. Smelling of musk and earthy spices.
And then her mother had proceeded to talk to Eva about Vidal for the entire evening as if he wasn’t there. As if he was a specimen to discuss and not a human being to have a conversation with. As if he was sub-human.
It had been excruciating, and Eva had burned with shame and anger. But even then she hadn’t been brave enough to stand up to her mother. She’d pulled invisible armour around herself, so nothing could touch her and she could hide. Hide her feelings and desires.
Vidal had suffered that insulting dinner with innate pride and a politeness they hadn’t deserved. He hadn’t joined them again.
And now he was here, supposedly interested in buying the castillo. It shouldn’t be surprising at all that he was taking an opportunity to dish out a little humiliation of his own. The only surprise was that he hadn’t put all this behind him. That he wanted anything to do with the castillo and Eva, at all.
Eva led him into the main reception room and winced inwardly at the even sorrier state of affairs inside the castillo. Peeling wallpaper, damp patches, threadbare oriental rugs... Portraits of ancestors covered in dirt. Dust sheets strewn over a lot of the furniture—not that they were helping much.
Eva steeled herself to face him again before she turned around, but it didn’t work very well. Any steel seemed to turn to liquid as she drank him in—this time without the sun in her eyes.
With his powerful build, short dark hair—almost militarily short—and hard-boned face dominated by those wide deep-set eyes, he oozed a raw vitality that effortlessly eclipsed the crumbling castillo behind him.
