His Suitable Bride: Rafael's Suitable Bride / The Spaniard's Marriage Bargain / Cordero's Forced Bride. Kate Walker
sorry, I forgot. You don’t do hysterics.’
‘No. I don’t.’ Without warning, he swerved the car off the main road and down one of the winding country lanes which they had not yet left behind. It would be a while before they hit the motorway system.
Cristina drew back into her chair, alarmed when he killed the engine, unclasped his seat belt and then swung his body around so that he was facing her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked unsteadily.
‘I’m having a conversation.’
‘We can talk while you drive.’ She looked away and chewed her lower lip until there was the metallic taste of blood on her tongue.
‘We could,’ Rafael agreed smoothly. ‘But I prefer to see your face when you’re calling me a monster.’
‘I wasn’t calling you a monster.’
‘Weren’t you? You accuse me of doing you the disservice of asking you to be my wife because I think you would make a good wife—where is the insult in that?’
‘I can’t marry anyone for those reasons,’ Cristina said, not looking at him. The view of fields and trees was a lot less threatening.
‘You want me to tell you that I love you,’ Rafael ground out, and for a few seconds Cristina just wanted to cover his beautiful mouth with her hand, to stop that flow of words which she knew was coming. ‘I cannot,’ he said flatly. It was his turn now to feel outrage that she could have seen his generous offer as some kind of slap in the face. ‘I’ve been down that road. I’ve told you that. Been down that road and seen for myself what lies at the end of it. So, no, love doesn’t enter the equation.’
‘But …’ Cristina clung to those wonderful, tender memories of their love-making like a drowning person clasping a life belt, even though she could feel her fingers losing their grip as the waves continued to batter her.
‘Yes, we made love.’
‘Was that all part and parcel of the arrangement?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Here she was again, turned into a shrieking virago. ‘I am not being ridiculous!’
‘I never realised that you possessed a voice that could shatter glass.’
‘Nor did I!’ But she drew in a few deep, steadying breaths. ‘We made love …’
‘And it was good.’ His own voice dropped a notch as he recalled their never-ending sessions between the sheets. Why the hell was she making this so difficult? She had been shocked at what she had interpreted as unromantic behaviour, but she would, he knew, get over that. She would come round to his point of view. He wondered whether to risk touching her, and decided that she would probably slap his hand away because she wasn’t—as he was discovering—quite as meek and mild as he had imagined. ‘Stop for a minute, Cristina, and think about what I’m saying. We’re good together—good in bed … and out of it, come to that.’
‘And so marrying me would make sense.’ She felt jealousy claw at her when she thought of that other woman, the one into whom he had poured all his love, leaving him now without any to give anyone else. She had stolen his dreams and left him with a spreadsheet on which his future could be mapped out like figures in a profit-and-loss column. ‘Rafael, the future isn’t some kind of business deal that can be put together on a piece of paper. I won’t sign my life away to someone because it seems to make sense. I would rather take my chances and wait for someone who might be able to give me the whole big thing.’
For a few unsettling seconds, Rafael wondered whether his smoothly made plans were in danger of being derailed. Having come this far in overthrowing his habits of a lifetime, in finally accepting the inescapable truth that he needed to settle down, he began to flounder at the preposterous notion that she might, really, be serious. Sure she had handed him back the ring, but women, he knew, were notorious for emotional outbursts later to be regretted.
‘There is no such thing as the whole big thing,’ he growled, uneasily aware that this was possibly not the right approach to be adopting in the face of mutiny.
‘Maybe not for you,’ Cristina snapped back, once again amazed at the shrew that seemed to have emerged from deep inside her. ‘Or maybe you had your stab at the whole big thing and it didn’t work out—but that doesn’t mean that I’m prepared to give up my own dream on the back of the fact that yours fell flat!’
‘You were happy enough to be my wife forty-eight hours ago,’ Rafael told her, pointing out what he considered to be an inescapable truth. ‘I’m finding it hard to understand what essentially has changed. I’m the same man I was then. Look at me!’ he commanded. ‘Have I suddenly turned into someone else? Morphed into an ogre? Grown an extra head? No.’
Cristina knew just how persuasive he could be when he put his mind to it. Whatever he wanted, he had once told her with a touch of satisfaction, he got. Simple as that. And sure, when he looked at her like this—covering her with his eyes, willing her to absorb what he was saying and yield to his greater wisdom—she could almost believe that he had a point, that love was just a word that was meaningless. Almost, but not quite.
‘You don’t understand,’ she muttered.
‘Then enlighten me.’
The silence stretched between them until he finally clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Okay—one. Do we have good times when we are together?’
‘I guess.’
‘You guess?’
‘Okay, we do. Rafael, you can’t sum things up like—’
‘No. It’s your turn to do the listening now. Two. Do I or do I not turn you on?’
‘That’s unfair. You know you do.’
‘I know.’ His mouth curled in sensuous satisfaction as his mind lingered on the very seductive image of her writhing under his exploring hands.
‘Three. Would I or would I not make sure that your every material need was met?’
‘You’re asking the obvious.’
‘That’s what life is all about. The obvious. The minute we start layering it with shades of grey, we start getting caught in quicksand. Shall I tell you something very obvious?’
Cristina thought no, because nothing with Rafael was as obvious as he liked to pretend, least of all when he was attempting to appear as pure as the driven snow. She knew that verbally he could run rings around her, and that quicksand he had mentioned … Well, she would find herself well and truly drowning in it.
‘What?’ she heard herself saying.
‘There’s one place we haven’t made love.’
The atmosphere was suddenly charged. From being on the defensive, Cristina could feel the drag of her senses pulling her under. His eyes were slumberous, and sent shivers racing impossibly through her body.
‘You … you can’t divert me with … by …’
‘With … by …?’ he mimicked, amused, back in control. ‘Anyone would think that I had sent you into a tailspin.’
He reached forward and unclicked her seat belt, then he pushed it away, his arm brushing against her breast, making her gasp at the contact.
‘Now tell me that this is a bad idea.’ He leaned in towards her and crushed her open mouth under his, and Cristina’s mind emptied of all thought as a blistering passion was unleashed. Hands that wanted desperately to push him away curled around his neck. She couldn’t get enough of his kisses.
She had spent half the night berating herself for her foolishness in ever having got involved with him. She had given herself lecture upon lecture