Driving through the vast Cuckmere estate on his way up to the mansion, Cortez had felt bitter remembering how his mother had worked herself literally into an early grave. Thirty-five years ago, Marisol Ramos had been pregnant and alone, abandoned by her lover and shunned by her family in Spain. She had managed to establish a small vineyard in Andalucía and from almost as soon as Cortez could walk he had helped his mother tend the vines and harvest the grapes. The bodega had produced a fine sherry, but it couldn’t compete with the big sherry producers in the sherry triangle in south-west Spain. Life had been hard, and when his mother had died at the age of forty-two Cortez had been convinced that she’d simply felt too exhausted to carry on living.
When he had finally met Ralph Saunderson the only emotion he’d felt was anger that his father had consigned his mother to a life of poverty and hardship. At the time of his visit to Cuckmere Hall the English press had been full of stories about Ralph’s adopted son and daughter’s jet set lifestyle, in particular Elin’s wild partying. But the pictures of her in the newspapers and her photo on Ralph’s desk that had caught Cortez’s attention had not prepared him for the impact she had on him when he saw her dancing at her birthday party.
He jerked his mind from the past as Elin’s eyelashes fluttered open. For a few seconds she stared at him with her dark blue eyes that had reminded him of sapphires when he’d danced with her a year ago. He recalled how she had pressed her body up close to his. As close as she was now, except that then she had been soft and pliant in his arms and she’d parted her lush mouth in an invitation he had been unable to resist.
That should have been a warning, he thought grimly. He never had a problem resisting women. He was always in control and when he took a mistress it was always on his terms, with rules and boundaries established first. Falling into bed with Elin had broken every rule he’d imposed on himself since he’d fallen in love with Alandra in his early twenties and she had shattered his illusions about love and his own judgement.
‘What are you doing? Put me down.’
Cortez heard panic in Elin’s voice and he felt a stab of irritation when he lowered her onto the sofa and she immediately recoiled from him as if he were infected with a contagious disease. She hadn’t behaved like that a year ago, he brooded. She’d been all over him then. He walked across to the desk, where the butler had left a tray of drinks, and tried to dismiss the memory of Elin sprawled on a bed with her red dress rucked up around her waist and her pale thighs spread wide open.
‘Here,’ he said curtly, returning to hand her a glass of brandy.
She shook her head. ‘I never touch spirits and in fact I rarely drink alcohol at all.’
How could she look so damned innocent when he had irrefutable proof that she was far from it? He remembered how she had flirted with him at her birthday party and he had been blown away by her sexual allure.
Cortez’s anger with himself increased when he found he could not tear his eyes away from Elin. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. The black dress she was wearing was a classic style reminiscent of a previous era when women had looked effortlessly elegant. Her pale blonde hair was swept up into a chignon that emphasised the incredible bone structure of her face, with those high cheekbones and perfectly arched brows above the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. He felt a sudden tightness in his chest and to his fury he was powerless to control the almost painful throb of his sexual arousal.
‘If you were not drunk when you had to be carried out of a nightclub the other night, then perhaps the recent lurid tabloid headlines alleging that you have a drug habit are true,’ he drawled.
Colour stained her porcelain cheeks. ‘The press print a lot of lies about me, but the truth is that I fainted in the nightclub because I’ve been unwell recently. I felt wobbly just now because it was a huge shock to learn that my father had excluded me and my brother from his will, and named you—his illegitimate son that no one knew existed—as his heir.’ Elin’s voice was icy but her eyes flashed with fury as she got up from the sofa and faced him.
‘Did you go to the house in Kensington and gatecrash my party so you could gloat? Ralph must have told you a year ago that he intended to make you his heir. Wasn’t it enough to know you would inherit Cuckmere Hall, the house in London and the chairmanship of Saunderson’s Bank, and you decided you would take me too?’
Cortez gave a hard smile, because here at last was proof that she might look like an angel, with her golden beauty and that ridiculous air of innocence that made his gut twist, but she was just another blonde who had satisfied his libido for a few hours, and she was no different to all the other blondes who regarded sex as a bartering tool. No doubt if he had stuck around after they’d slept together, Elin would have issued demands the way all women did.
‘As a matter of fact I did not know about the will,’ he told her. ‘After I met my father for the first time at Cuckmere Hall I had planned to spend the night at a hotel in London, but Ralph suggested I could stay at his house in Kensington and gave me a key. He said that you and your brother were both abroad and the house would be empty. When I walked into your party I had every intention of leaving, but you begged me to dance with you.’
Cortez was fascinated by the tide of scarlet that swept along her high cheekbones. ‘I did not take anything that was not offered freely,’ he said harshly. ‘You invited me into your bedroom and made it clear that you wanted sex.’ He shrugged. ‘Knowing of your reputation, I don’t flatter myself that I was your first or last one-night stand.’
The colour receded from her face. ‘You really are a bastard, aren’t you? That night I was under the influence of a drug which impaired my judgement and caused me to behave in a way I would never normally have done. As for my reputation—’ she gave a short laugh ‘—you know nothing about me.’
There was a strained note of what he could almost believe was hurt in her voice that made Cortez feel uncomfortable. He had no reason to feel guilty, he assured himself. Elin had just admitted that she’d taken drugs at her party and implied that she’d had sex with him because she had been high. But he’d been unaware she’d taken any kind of substance or that her behaviour was out of character. Everything he’d read about her in the press suggested she’d had many previous sex partners.
Memories of that night were crystal-clear in his mind, despite the distance of a year. He remembered that when he had pulled her beneath him and thrust himself into her with a desperation he’d never felt before, she had tensed and caught her breath. Dios, she had been so tight and so goddamned hot that he’d almost come instantly. But then she’d wrapped her legs around his hips and matched his pace when he began to move. Passion had blazed between them and he’d dismissed the unlikely notion that she was sexually inexperienced.
Maybe it was an act she put on with other men, Cortez thought darkly. He had proof that he could not have been her first lover.
‘I know you have a child.’ He wondered why he felt a simmering rage at the thought of her slender body wrapped around another man. He had been shocked when he’d heard during the reading of Ralph’s will that Elin had a son. It was odd the media had not reported that she had a child.
‘Ralph stated in his will that he wished for you to marry and provide your son with a father. Are you in contact with your child’s father, and do you intend to marry him in order to claim your inheritance?’
He did not know why he had asked her when he really wasn’t interested in her private life. But he stared at her because he couldn’t help himself and waited tensely for her answer. He realised he was bracing himself for her to reply, but when she did he was unprepared for the shockwave that ripped through him.
‘You are my son’s father,’ she said in her soft voice that had haunted him for the past year.
For a split second he wondered if it was possible, but... ‘No.’ He dismissed the idea.