Wed For The Spaniard's Redemption. Chantelle Shaw

       CHAPTER ONE

      Spanish Stud’s Sex Romp withCabinet Minister’s Wife!

      RAFAEL MENDOZA-CASILLAS SCOWLED as he sifted through the pile of newspapers on his desk. All the tabloids bore similar headlines, and even the broadsheets had deemed that it was in the public interest to report his affair with Michelle Urquhart.

      The story wasn’t only in the UK. All across Europe people were eating their breakfast while studying a front-page photograph of the heir to Spain’s biggest retail company entering a top London hotel late at night accompanied by the voluptuous Mrs Urquhart. A second photo showed him and Michelle leaving the hotel by a back door the next morning.

       One can only speculate on how Europe’s most prolific playboy and the Minister’s wife spent the intervening hours!

      That was one journalist, writing in a particularly tacky tabloid.

      ‘It is one scandal too many, Rafael.’

      Hector Casillas’s strident voice shook with anger and Rafael held his phone away from his ear.

      ‘On the very day that the company’s top-selling Rozita fashion line launches a new bridal collection your affair with a married woman is headline news. You have made the Casillas Group a laughing stock.’

      ‘I was not aware that Michelle is married,’ Rafael said laconically when his grandfather paused to draw a breath.

      Not that her marital status interested him particularly. He was not responsible for other people’s morals—especially as his own morality was questionable. But if he’d known that Michelle’s husband was a public figure he would not have slept with her. Even though she had made it clear that she was available within minutes of him meeting her in a nightclub. Rafael never had a problem finding women to occupy his bed and, frankly, Michelle had not been worth this fallout.

      He leaned back in his chair and watched the rain lash the windows of his office at the Casillas Group’s UK headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf. The Casillas Group was one of the world’s largest clothing retailers, and as well as Rozita the company owned several other top fashion brands.

      Rafael visualised his grandfather sitting behind his desk in the study of the opulent Casillas family mansion in Valencia. There had been many occasions in the past when he had been summoned to that study so that Hector could lecture him on his failings and remind him—as if Rafael needed to be reminded—that he was part gitano. The English word for gitano was gypsy, and in other areas of Europe the term was Roma. But the meaning was the same—Rafael was an outsider.

      ‘Yet again you have brought shame on the family and, even worse, on the company,’ Hector said coldly. ‘Your mother warned me that you had inherited many of your father’s faults. When I rescued you from the slums and brought you into the family I intended that you would succeed me as head of the Casillas Group. You are my grandson, after all. But sadly there is too much of your father’s blood in you, and tacking Casillas on to your name does not change who you are.’

      Rafael’s jaw clenched and he told himself he should have expected this dig. His grandfather never missed an opportunity to remind him that he did not have the blue blood of Spanish nobility running through his veins. His father had been a low-life drug dealer, and his mother’s relationship with him, a rebellion against the Casillas family’s centuries-old aristocratic heritage, had ended when she’d fled from Ivan Mendoza, leaving behind Rafael and his baby sister in a notorious slum on the outskirts of Madrid.

      ‘The situation cannot continue. I have decided that you must marry—and quickly.’

      For a moment Rafael assumed that he had misheard Hector. ‘Abuelo...’ he said in a placating tone.

      ‘The board want me to name Francisco as my successor.’

      A lead weight dropped into the pit of Rafael’s stomach. ‘You would put a boy in charge? The Casillas Group is a global company with a multi-billion-dollar annual turnover. Frankie would be out of his depth.’

      ‘Your half-brother is twenty and in a year he will finish studying at university. More importantly he keeps his pants on.’

      Bile burned a bitter path down Rafael’s throat. ‘Has my mother put you up to this? She has never made it a secret that she thinks her second son is a true Casillas and should be the heir to the company.’

      ‘No one has put me up to anything. I make my own decisions,’ Hector snapped. ‘But I share the concerns of the board members and the shareholders that your notoriety and frequent appearances in the gutter press do not reflect well on the company. Our CEO should be a man of high principles and an advocate of family values. I am prepared to give you one more chance, Rafael. Bring your wife to my eightieth birthday celebrations at the beginning of May and I will retire from my position as Chairman and CEO and appoint you as my successor.’

      ‘I have no desire to marry,’ Rafael gritted, barely able to control his anger.

      ‘In that case I will appoint your half-brother as my heir on my eightieth birthday.’

      ‘Dios! Your birthday is six weeks from now. It will be impossible for me to find a bride and marry her in such a short time.’

      ‘Nothing is impossible,’ Hector said smoothly. ‘Over the last eighteen months you have been introduced to several high-born Spanish women and any one of them would be a suitable wife for you. If you want to be my heir badly enough you will present your bride to me and we will have a double celebration to mark my landmark birthday and your marriage.’

      Hector ended the call and Rafael swore as he threw his phone down on the desk. The old man was crazy. It was tempting to think his grandfather had lost his marbles, but Rafael knew that Hector Casillas was a shrewd businessman. The CEO-ship had been passed down to the next generation’s firstborn male since Rafael’s great-great-great-grandfather had established the company, one hundred and fifty years ago.

      Hector Casillas’s only offspring had been a daughter so Rafael, the oldest grandson, was next in line. But he knew that many on the board of directors and many of his relatives were not in favour of an outsider—which was how they regarded him—being handed the reins of power.

      Hector’s words taunted him. ‘If you want to be my heir badly enough...’ Rafael bared his teeth in a mirthless smile. Becoming CEO of the company was the only thing he wanted. Being named as his grandfather’s successor had been his dream, his obsession, since he was a skinny twelve-year-old kid who had been taken from poverty into the unimaginably wealthy lifestyle of his aristocratic family.

      He was determined to prove that he was worthy of the role to his detractors, of whom there were many—including his mother and her second husband. Alberto Casillas was his mother Delfina’s second cousin, which meant that their son Francisco was a Casillas to his core. Like that of many aristocratic families, the Casillas gene pool was very exclusive, and the majority of Rafael’s relatives wanted it to stay that way.

      But the retail industry was going through big changes, with increasing focus on internet sales, and Rafael understood better than most of the board members that the Casillas Group must use innovation and new technology so that it could continue to be a market leader. His grandfather had been a great CEO but now new blood was needed.

      But not a gitano’s blood, taunted a voice inside him. Once he had begged for food like a stray dog on the filthy streets of a slum. And, like a dog, he had learned to run fast to avoid his father’s fists.

      Rafael shut off the dark memories of his childhood and turned his thoughts to the potential brides his grandfather had mentioned. He’d guessed there must be an ulterior motive when his mother had invited the daughters of various elite Spanish families to dinner parties and insisted that