The Stand-In Bride

‘I’ve got nothing to wear,’ Catalina sulked.

‘Then go and buy something and charge it to me,’ he said with the air of a man patting a child on the head.

Catalina flounced off. Maggie rose to follow her, but Sebastian detained her and nodded to Alfonso, who slipped away.

Maggie glared. ‘I just hope that one day I see that girl toss your credit card back in your face.’

‘Do you think you will?’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘Now I’m going up for an early night.’

‘You can have a nap, but you’re on duty this evening. Someone has to keep Alfonso company.’

Maggie returned to her room in a temper. After their exhilarating afternoon she’d felt charitable towards Sebastian, but that had vanished in the face of his casual demonstration of power. Her mood wasn’t improved by the realisation that she had only her black cocktail dress, and if she wore it tonight Sebastian might think she was sending him a message.

Determined not to let him take another trick, she stormed down to the hotel’s boutique, found nothing there that she would have been seen dead in, and stormed back up to her room. In the end she presented herself for dinner, wearing the black dress, in a sulphurous mood and mentally daring Sebastian to react by so much as the raising of an eyebrow. But he gave no sign of having seen it before, or even noticing her particularly.

Which should have made her feel better.

But it didn’t.

The four of them met up in the late evening, in the hotel’s restaurant and dance area. It was on the second floor, with windows overlooking the main street where coloured lamps glowed against the snow. By day there was also a glorious view up the mountains, but now the summits were cloaked in darkness.

The men, too, had dressed for the occasion, in dinner jackets and frilled shirts. Sebastian’s swarthy skin was startling against the brilliant white of his shirt, and his dark eyes seemed almost to swallow light.

When he had ordered, he said, ‘Isabella will be flying home next week.’

‘I’m so glad she’s well again,’ Catalina said warmly.

‘Not quite. She’s recovering very slowly, and she’ll have to go into a hospital in Granada for a while. But I hope to have her with us for Christmas. You look surprised.’ This was to Maggie.

‘It’s just that I’ve spoken to her a few times on the phone, the last time yesterday, and she didn’t mention returning to Spain.’

‘She didn’t know. It took me a while to arrange, and I only told her this morning. She’s thrilled.’

This was Sebastian at his best, Maggie realised-shouldering, without complaint, the duties for which he’d been born. She had a sudden fierce wish that she could have known him as a carefree boy.

The band struck up. Sebastian took the floor with his fiancee and Maggie accepted Alfonso’s polite invitation. But he didn’t dance well and fairly soon they returned to the table and settled down to talk.

She liked the young man a lot. Perhaps he would never set the world on fire, but she sensed that there was a lot more to him than met the eye. He gave her all his attention-probably, she thought, to avoid having to look at Catalina in Sebastian’s arms. This was something she understood. She didn’t want to look at them, either.

Sebastian and Catalina came off the floor to find the other two deep in a political discussion.

‘Andalucia is potentially the wealthiest part of Spain,’ Maggie was saying eagerly. ‘You’ve got the tourist areas, and some of the most fertile ground in the country. Yet this is the poorest region, and that’s a scandal-’

Alfonso nodded and rattled off a list of opportunities wasted. She countered with some examples of her own, gleaned from her years in Granada. So deeply absorbed were they that they didn’t notice they were no longer alone until Sebastian coughed, and they looked up to find him and Catalina sitting at the table.

‘Maggie!’ Catalina squealed in horror. ‘How can you talk about such boring things?’

‘I don’t find them boring, and neither should you. This is your country and what happens in it should interest you.’

Catalina shuddered. ‘You sound like a schoolmistress.’

‘Exactly,’ Sebastian said. ‘And when there is wine and music, to sound like a schoolmistress is an unforgivable crime. Come.’ He seized her hand and rose. ‘I shall dance it out of you.’

To her dismay, a waltz was beginning: the worst possible dance for a woman who wanted to keep a man at a distance. His light clasp on her hand called up the evening of their first meeting. She didn’t want to remember that night when she’d been caught off guard, reacting with her body and her instincts instead of her head, like a rational woman.

Well, she was on guard tonight. She would ignore the feel of his hand in the small of her back, and the way his hot breath drifted against her bare shoulder.

One dance and she was through.

Full of resolution, she took the battle into the enemy’s camp. ‘You thought that was shocking, didn’t you?’ she challenged him. ‘A woman, talking politics! Why doesn’t she keep quiet and know her place?’

‘Is that what I was thinking?’ he asked mildly.

‘You know it was.’

He shook his head, smiling. ‘You make a brave battle, Margarita, but your technique is flawed. Never try to put words into your opponent’s mouth. It merely puts you in his power, which is where he wants you.’

‘I don’t admit that I am in your power.’

‘But you do know that that’s where I want you, don’t you?’

She recovered herself. ‘You’ll die wanting.’

He laughed at that. ‘Bravo!’

‘Anyway, I didn’t put words in your mouth. I know what you think because you’ve said so. “I share my thoughts with men, not women,”’ she quoted.

‘Touche! I’d forgotten that. And now of course I’m supposed to add to my crimes by saying that a woman shouldn’t discuss serious matters, that her body counts more than her mind, and that her place is in my bed, using a woman’s intimate skills to please me and letting me please her.’

She tried to fight down the heat that rose in her at this frankness, but Sebastian was a devil who knew how to excite her with words alone. Worse still was the stunning ease with which he’d turned the trick against her. This was exactly what she’d resolved not to let happen. And the wretched man knew it.

‘That was roughly the script you’d written for me, wasn’t it?’ Sebastian continued. ‘Well, I’m sorry, I can’t oblige.’

‘Wh-what?’

‘I was impressed by the way you spoke to Alfonso. Clearly, you know your subject. There’s a lot wrong in this region, and it’ll take a great deal of work to put it right. That’s my job. For me, that’s what it’s all about. I’ve met very few people who understood. You must have learned a lot during your marriage. Was your husband in politics?’

‘No, but my father-in-law was a natural moaner,’ Maggie said with feeling. ‘He would hold the floor for hours, complaining about the national government, the regional government-this was wrong, that was wrong-and nobody else could ever get a word in edgeways.’

The waltz was ending. Immediately the band struck up a tango, which Sebastian swept her into without a pause. Like everything else, he did this well, but so did she. It was like the skiing all over again, a subtle battle for mastery, with the honours even. They were both breathless and smiling when the music ended.

‘You dance well,’ he said. ‘But I always knew you would.’

A wise woman wouldn’t answer that. His eyes were dangerous. So was the heat that came from his body, so powerfully that she could feel it.

‘I think we should sit down,’ she murmured.

‘Not until we’ve had another waltz.’

But to waltz in his arms, held close against him, wasn’t for her. She wanted it too much. She must walk away from him, ignoring the tempting look in his eyes. She must be strong. She must.

‘Margarita,’ he said softly.

‘Stop this. Stop it.’

‘You stop it. Be strong for both of us.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ But she didn’t know what she was saying any more.