Latin Lovers

       Passionate Spaniards

       The Spaniard’s Marriage Demand

      Maggie Cox

       Kept by the Spanish Billionaire

      Cathy Williams

       The Spanish Doctor’s Convenient Bride

      Meredith Webber

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       The Spaniard’s Marriage Demand

      Maggie Cox

      About the Author

      The day MAGGIE COX saw the film version of Wuthering Heights, with a beautiful Merle Oberon and a very handsome Laurence Olivier, was the day she became hooked on romance. From that day onwards she spent a lot of time dreaming up her own romances, secretly hoping that one day she might become published and get paid for doing what she loves most! Now that her dream is being realised, she wakes up every morning and counts her blessings. She is married to a gorgeous man, is the mother of two wonderful sons and her two other great passions in life—besides her family and reading/writing—are music and films.

      PROLOGUE

      THE sun on the back of Isabella’s head was like a laser beam of burning heat. Forced out of the stupor of her shocked thoughts by the discomfort, she got up from the couch and pulled down the fashionable bamboo blinds at the window behind her to introduce some much-needed shadow into the room. Summer had hit the UK with a vengeance and the pavement outside was hot enough to double up as a griddle. But even as she padded barefoot across the cool laminate flooring to return to the couch all Isabella could really focus on was the astounding revelation that she was pregnant. The results of the pregnancy test she’d just done, plus the tiredness and nausea she’d been suffering from for over a week now, were incontrovertible. Of all the unbelievably reckless, heart-stopping situations she could have returned from her trip abroad to face, this was one cataclysmic scenario she hadn’t foreseen.

      Trying to calm the throb of panic and wave of sickness that added to her already escalating anxiety, she leapt up again from her seat and fled to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, a cup of soothing chamomile tea at her elbow and a cool washcloth applied to the back of her heated neck, Isabella reviewed her situation with an acceptance and determination that stunned even her. Her passionate interlude with a handsome and famous son of Spain had resulted in her finding herself pregnant with his child. As she stoically assured herself she had all the necessary resources to cope alone and cope well she forced herself to resist the deep river of fear that was underlying her determined optimism, threatening to wreck everything. An ache for him—an earnest, bone-deep, silent plea that had surfaced before when she’d had to say goodbye to the man who had ‘interrupted’ her trip with the most profound impact—suddenly reinstated itself deep in Isabella’s core and she knew even then …it would probably be her companion for the rest of her life.

      CHAPTER ONE

       May 2004—The Port of Vigo, Northern Spain.

      ‘No! I don’t care what you say to me or even if you never speak to me again, Emilia, but I’m not going to break off my own research for my book and hare off to God only knows where in pursuit of some surly, egocentric film director who may or may not be where you say he’ll be and most certainly wouldn’t give me an impromptu interview even if I professed to be dying!’

      Sucking in a deep, irritated breath following her passionate tirade to her sister over the phone, Isabella tapped her fingernails impatiently on the hotel reception desk where she’d taken the call and sensed a trickle of sweat meander slowly down her back. It felt like warm glue. It might be raining yet again but the dead heat was relentless. Right now she’d sell her soul for a cool shower and a cold drink followed by a lie down in her very plain but peaceful little room to gather her thoughts and perhaps catch a nap before doing some work. She’d been walking all day interviewing pilgrims on the famous route to Santiago de Compostela. Her back ached and her feet hurt but she was buoyed up by the companionship and enthusiasm of the pilgrims and after a rest was eager to get some writing done for her book. What Isabella most certainly didn’t want was to fly off on some wild-goose chase in search of a man who apparently protected his privacy with the same level of heightened awareness and suspicion that security at international airports applied to their passenger checks these days. All because her beseeching, impulsive and ruthlessly ambitious sister saw an opportunity for an exclusive for her magazine.

      ‘Please, Isabella …you can’t not do this for me! You’re right in the Port of Vigo in the same damn town as Leandro Reyes on the one and only day he’s there on a speaking engagement and I’m pleading with you to do me this one huge favour! What do I have to do to convince you? Look …I’ll pay you any amount of money you want …just name your price.’

      ‘For goodness’ sake, Emilia! I don’t want money! All I want is to be left alone to get on with my trip in peace!’

      Her sister’s desperation was getting ridiculous, but then Emilia was hardly used to being denied anything. She was definitely the blue-eyed girl in their family. Three years younger than Isabella, she was the result of their mother’s marriage to Hal Deluce—an amiable American she had met on a cruise round the Bahamas that she’d taken a year after Isabella’s own father had died. Consequently Emilia had been credited a ‘wonderful omen of better things to come’ and since the day of her birth could do no wrong. On the other hand, a lot of unfair expectation had been laid on Isabella’s shoulders simply because she was the eldest …expectations that she’d ultimately always known she would fail. An expensive wedding financed and arranged by her parents being a case in point. Isabella hadn’t been able to go through with that particular scenario because she’d discovered at the eleventh hour that the relationship she’d had with her fiancé had been a complete and utter sham.

      In contrast, the words ‘failure’ and ‘Emilia’ would never be used in the same sentence as far as her parents were concerned. Along with her thriving career as a journalist on one of the top-selling woman’s magazines, she had married a handsome young stockbroker from a family who were practically landed gentry and had recently cemented her unchallenged position as ‘she who can do no wrong’ by moving into a rather grand house in Chelsea, where she rubbed shoulders with some of the glitterati she wrote about in her magazine. In their mother’s view, their youngest had definitely ‘arrived’, whilst Isabella was still travelling.

      Philosophical about it because she had to be, Isabella still couldn’t deny that sometimes it hurt to be the one that hadn’t quite ‘made it’. And, because of her high standing in the family, sometimes Emilia’s demands on the generosity and good nature of those who cared about her could almost border on the totally unreasonable. Like now—when she knew that Isabella was in Northern Spain specifically to research her book and meet the challenge of a five-hundred-mile pilgrimage covering from fifteen to twenty miles a day on foot over Northern Spain’s dusty mesas. She wasn’t on holiday or pursuing something ‘frivolous’ …she was working as well as walking.

      That was not to say that Isabella didn’t totally love what she was doing. Right now researching the Santiago de Compostela and why people sought to undertake the five-week-long trail, and actually walking it herself—she was in seventh heaven. That was why she didn’t want to get distracted by something like this totally unexpected telephone request from Emilia.

      ‘Don’t you understand, Em? I’m working! I’ve taken a three-month career break from the library to do this and I don’t want to waste even a second. I’ve been hiking all day, it’s hot, I’m tired, I’ve got blisters on my feet the size of sumo wrestlers and I need