His Suitable Bride: Rafael's Suitable Bride / The Spaniard's Marriage Bargain / Cordero's Forced Bride. Kate Walker
and laptop computer, and Maria was up simply because she found it impossible to sleep beyond six in the morning. Waking early was the habit of a lifetime, and a very handy one when she wanted to corner her son before the rest of her overnight guests started drifting downstairs and commanding her attention.
‘You are not getting any younger, Raffy.’ She picked at the croissant on her plate and tried to work out a suitable strategy for coaxing him into her way of thinking, a mammoth task by anyone’s standards. ‘Do you want to grow old changing mistresses every other week?’
‘I don’t change mistresses every other week!’ Rafael informed her. He looked meaningfully at his computer and was dutifully ignored. ‘I like my life just the way it is. Moreover, I’m sure she’s a very nice girl, but she’s not my type.’
‘No, I have met your type! All looks and no substance.’
‘Mother, that’s the way I like them.’ He grinned, but met no smiling response. ‘I don’t want a relationship. I haven’t got time for a relationship. Have you any idea how little free time I have in my life?’
‘As little as you want to have, Rafael.’ She leaned towards him and he could feel a sermon approaching. Mentally he kicked himself for getting downstairs at the crack of dawn when he should have known from past experience that his mother would be there, bustling around and primed for conversation. But he hadn’t thought. In fact, he had forgotten her ridiculous remark the minute his conference call had started, just as he had forgotten his brief contact with the girl in question about whom he could only vaguely recall someone short, plump and unnaturally cheerful.
‘You can’t run away forever, Raffy,’ Maria told him in a gentle voice, and his brows snapped together in disapproval of where the conversation was heading. Unfortunately for him, his mother was immune to any such vibes. She just kept ploughing onwards.
‘I really don’t want to talk about this, Mama.’
‘And I think you need to. So you married young and were heartbroken when she died—but, Rafael, it’s been over ten years! Helen would not have wanted you to live your life in a vacuum!’ Privately, Maria thought that probably was exactly what his ex-wife would have wanted, but she kept the thought to herself, just as she had always kept her opinions of her son’s ex-wife to herself. More so now because it was disrespectful to speak ill of the dead.
‘For the final time, Mother, I am not living my life in a vacuum! I happen to enjoy my life the way it is!’ And I don’t need you to try and find me a suitable wife, he thought, although he would not have dared utter such a statement because he knew how much it would have hurt her. He was, after all, her only child, and as such a certain amount of interference in his personal life was only to be expected. But that girl of all people? Surely his mother knew him well enough to know that physically the girl just wasn’t his type!
She should also have known that any talk of Helen was taboo. That was a part of his life which he had consigned to the past, never to be resuscitated.
Maria shrugged and stood up. ‘I should go and change,’ she said neutrally. ‘People will start heading down in a minute. I wouldn’t like to shock them by having to see me in my dressing gown. I am sorry if you think that I’m being an interfering old woman, Rafael, but I worry about you.’
Rafael smiled fondly. ‘I don’t think you interfering, Mother …’
‘The child is a little naive. I know her parents. Is it any wonder that I feel a certain moral obligation that she is okay?’
‘She seems fine to me,’ Rafael said heartily. ‘No complaints about London life. Probably having a whale of a time.’
‘Probably.’ Maria busied herself with her back to her son, making sure that all the breakfast requirements were ready. Of course Eric and Angela, who had been with her for ever, would have made sure that everything was prepared for her guests—twelve of whom had remained for the night—but she still liked to make sure for herself that all was as it should be. She could hear the guilt in Rafael’s voice, but her maternal sense of duty ignored it. She wanted her son to be sorted out, which meant not standing on the sidelines while an array of highly unsuitable women flitted in and out of his life until he eventually keeled over from work-related stress or heart failure.
‘Maybe, however, you could make sure that her car is all right for her drive back down to London?’ She turned to him for confirmation. ‘I told her that you would last night, and she has left her car keys on the table by the front door.’
‘Sure.’ That small favour seemed more than acceptable when the upside was his mother dropping a conversation that was really beginning to frustrate him.
He would have to do his emails a little later, which was annoying, but unavoidable.
He left the house before further distractions occurred and headed out to where the Mini had been abandoned overnight. Already the sky was beginning to turn the peculiar yellow-grey colour that precedes a snowfall. He realised that if he didn’t leave soon he might find himself marooned in his mother’s house, subjected to significant conversations about the quality of his life choices.
He was unprepared for the unthinkable, which was a Mini whose engine had decided to hibernate.
An hour after he had left for the seemingly routine task of starting it up, letting it run for a few minutes and then assuring his mother that the car was fine and dandy, he was returning with a ferocious scowl and a premonition of hassle.
He pushed open the front door in a tide of bitterly cold air to find Cristina standing there, warmly clad in jeans and a jumper. The source of all his trouble.
‘The thing’s dead,’ he informed her, slamming the door behind him and stamping his feet on the mat. He divested himself of the beaten leather jacket and glared at her.
Cristina bit her lip, guiltily aware that she should have been the one seeing to her car, even though Maria had assured her that Rafael wouldn’t mind in the least checking on it first thing in the morning. She’d given the impression that it would be no bother at all. From the dark expression on his face, it certainly had been a bother.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she apologised profusely.’ I should have gone and tried myself. In fact, I was about to …’
‘Do you think you might have been able to get it going where I failed?’
‘No, but …’ She fidgeted and then gave him a watery smile. ‘Thank you so much for trying anyway. Is it very cold out there? I can make you a cup of hot chocolate, if you like. I’m good at making hot chocolate.’
‘No hot chocolate. Black coffee.’ He headed towards the kitchen which, thankfully, had not yet been invaded by the leftover guests. As an afterthought, and without turning around to look at her, he offered her a cup.
‘I’ve already had a cup of tea. Thank you.’ Cristina paused. Even windswept and scowling he was still rawly, powerfully sexy, just as sexy as he had appeared the night before when he had come to her rescue. She brightened up at the memory of that, the way he had helped her out when there had been no need. ‘Do you think I might be able to get in touch with a garage to come and have a look at it?’ she asked his averted back.
‘It’s Sunday and it’s going to snow.’ Rafael turned around to look at her. ‘I think the answer to that is no.’
Cristina paled. ‘What am I going to do, in that case? I can’t just stay here indefinitely. I’ve got my job. I can’t believe my car’s decided to just pack up on me!’
‘I doubt it was a deliberate act of sabotage,’ Rafael commented dryly, feeling slightly better after the coffee, but still aware that there was a shed-load of work waiting to be done and that he would have to leave sooner rather than later. The motorway would be fine, even if it began to snow, but getting down the lanes that led from his mother’s house could be challenging in bad weather, especially in a sportscar which was not fashioned for anything but optimum road conditions.
Cristina