The solicitor began to read the will with the slight haste of someone eager to get an unpleasant task out of the way. The document was short and simple and all too soon Sophie understood why Antonio’s presence had been deemed necessary. However, she could not accept what she had heard and questioned it. ‘My sister nominated Antonio as a guardian as well?’
‘Yes,’ the solicitor confirmed.
‘But I’m more than capable of taking care of Lydia,’ Sophie proclaimed brightly. ‘So there’s no need for anyone else to get involved!’
‘It’s not quite that simple,’ Antonio Rocha slotted in smooth as a rapier blade, but a faint frown line now divided his ebony brows. He was surprised that the will had made no mention of the disposition of Belinda’s property and was about to query that omission.
Sophie spared the tall Spaniard her first fleeting glance since entering the room. Her troubled green eyes telegraphed a storm warning. ‘It can be as simple as you’re willing to make it. I don’t know what came over Belinda when she chose to include you—’
‘Common sense?’ Antonio batted back drily.
‘I suppose Belinda must’ve been scared that both her and me might be involved in an accident,’ Sophie opined heatedly, fingers of pink highlighting her tautening facial bones as she fought to maintain her composure. ‘We’re talking worst-case scenario here, but luckily things aren’t as bad as that. I’m young and fit and well able to take care of Lydia all on my own.’
‘I would take issue with that statement,’ Antonio murmured.
Her teeth gritted. ‘You can take issue with whatever you like but it’s not going to change anything!’ she shot back at him.
‘Your sister nominated you and the marqués as joint guardians of her daughter,’ the solicitor expanded. ‘That means that you have equal rights over the child—’
‘Equal rights?’ Sophie gasped in rampant disbelief.
‘Equal rights,’ Antonio repeated with a silken emphasis he could not resist.
‘No other arrangement is possible without application to the courts,’ the solicitor decreed.
‘But that’s utterly outrageous!’ Sophie launched at Antonio.
‘With all due respect, I would suggest that my family is entitled to assist in the task of raising my brother’s child to adulthood.’
‘Why?’ Sophie slung back wrathfully as she leapt to her feet. ‘So that your precious family can make as big a mess of bringing up Lydia as they did with her father?’
Angry disconcertion had tensed Antonio’s lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Both our siblings are now dead. Let us respect that reality.’
‘Don’t you dare ask me to respect Pablo’s memory!’ Sophie flared back at him in disgust. ‘Your brother wrecked my sister’s life!’
‘May I speak to Miss Cunningham alone for a few minutes?’ Antonio enquired of the solicitor.
The older man, whose discomfiture during that increasingly heated exchange of views had been extreme, got up with relief at the request and left the room.
‘Sit down,’ Antonio instructed coolly, determined not to rise to the bait of her provocative accusations. ‘Appreciate that I will not argue with you. Recriminations are pointless and wrong in this situation. The child’s interests must come first—’
Sophie was so furious that only a scream could have expressed her feelings. Denied that outlet, she coiled her hands into tight little fists of restraint by her side. ‘Don’t you dare tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. Let me tell you—’
Antonio rose upright with unhurried grace. ‘You will tell me nothing that I do not ask for, as I will not listen. You will lower your voice and moderate your language.’
‘Where do you get off talking to me like that? Like I’m some stupid kid?’ Sophie launched at him. ‘You walk in here, you start laying down the law and acting like you know best—’
‘I most probably do know best,’ Antonio incised and not in a tone of apology. ‘I recognise that you have suffered a recent bereavement and that grief may well have challenged your temper—’
‘That’s not why I hate your guts and that is not why I am shouting at you!’ Sophie informed him fiercely, green eyes bright with fury. ‘Your rotten brother robbed my sister of everything she possessed and left her penniless and in debt. He was a hateful liar and a cheat. He took her money and threw it away at the gambling tables and at the racetrack. When there was nothing left he told her he’d never loved her anyway and he walked!’
Antonio was perturbed but not that surprised by those revelations. He felt it would be tactless to point out that, even before Belinda had wed his brother, he had made an unsuccessful attempt to warn Sophie’s sibling of her future husband’s essential unreliability when it came to money. ‘If that is the truth I am sorry for it. Had I been made aware of those facts, I would have granted Belinda all the help that it was within my power to give.’
Sophie snatched in a jagged breath. ‘Is that all you have got to say?’
Antonio had a low tolerance threshold for such personal attacks. In his blood ran the hot pure-bred pride of the Spanish nobility and a long line of ancestors to whom honour had been a chivalrous, engrained concept of prime importance. He had lived his own life within those tenets and his principles were of the highest. He had a profound dislike of being upbraided for his brother’s sins, for which he had too often paid a high personal price. His strong jaw line squared. He had no intention of getting dragged into an exchange that was only likely to exacerbate hostilities.
‘It is an unhappy fact that I cannot change the past,’ Antonio pointed out flatly. ‘The only subject I’m willing to discuss at this moment is your niece’s well-being.’
Eyes glinting a ferocious green, Sophie surveyed him in raging frustration. Nothing fazed him. Nothing knocked even a chip off that cold, smooth, marble façade of his. He was neither shamed nor affronted by his younger brother’s appalling mistreatment of her poor sister. Indeed there he stood, all six feet three inches of him, wonderfully insulated by his great wealth and aristocratic detachment from the harder realities of those less fortunate in life. He lived in a castle with servants. He had a private jet and a fleet of limos. His fancy suit had probably cost as much as she earned in a year. He would never know what it was to struggle just to pay the rent at the end of the month. He had even less compassion to spare for Belinda’s sufferings.
‘I’m not going to discuss Lydia with you!’ Sophie snapped in the feverish heat of her resentment. ‘You’re as much of a bastard as your sneaky brother was!’
Dark colour accentuated the superb slant of Antonio’s fabulous cheekbones. His brilliant eyes suddenly flared gold as the heart of a fire. ‘On what do you base your abuse? Ignorant prejudice?’
‘I’ve got personal experience of what kind of a guy you are!’ Sophie declared in a tempestuous surge of hurt and anger. ‘Not my type anyway!’
‘Sorry, I’m just not into tattoos,’ Antonio murmured in a sibilant tone designed to wound.
‘Tattoos?’ Sophie parroted in response to that particular taunt, feeling the image of the butterfly she had acquired at eighteen burn through the flesh of her shoulder like a brand. A fresh spurt of angry mortification took hold of her. ‘You total snob and snake! How dare you sneer at me like that? You act like you’re so superior and so polite, but you strung me a line and let me down and misjudged me that night!’
Antonio’s intent