His Suitable Bride: Rafael's Suitable Bride / The Spaniard's Marriage Bargain / Cordero's Forced Bride. Kate Walker
at his watch and then gulped back the remainder of his coffee.
‘I really have to go.’ He wondered whether she had any idea of his mother’s far-fetched ideas and decided that she didn’t.
‘I know it’s a huge imposition, but could you possibly give me a lift back to London—to whatever Underground station is closest to where you live? It’s just that I really need to get back, and … I could always get the garage to come out in the morning and fix the car … and then have someone drive it down to London.’
‘Or you could just stay and see to it in the morning yourself. I mean, surely your boss would let you have the day off for an emergency.’
‘I don’t have a boss,’ Cristina said with a touch of pride. ‘I work for myself.’
‘All the better. You can give yourself a day off.’ That sorted, Rafael dumped his cup in the sink and began heading for the door. But the image of her disappointed face behind him made him curse softly under his breath and turn back to her. ‘I’m leaving in an hour,’ he said abruptly, watching the disappointment fade away like a dark cloud on a sunny day. ‘If you’re not ready, I’ll go without you, because snow’s forecast and I can’t afford to be trapped here.’
‘You could always ask your boss for the day off.’ Cristina grinned. ‘Unless you are the boss, in which case you can always give yourself the day off.’
But she felt considerably cheered. It was peculiar, but there was something invigorating about him. She packed her bags quickly and efficiently. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, but her figure could do with skipping a meal, she decided. And Maria, despite her protests, assured her that she would telephone the garage herself and make sure that the car was delivered to London. She knew Roger, the chap who owned the garage, and he owed her a favour after she had given him a very lucrative tip indeed on the horses.
Rafael was less overjoyed with the arrangements. ‘Saddled with’ were the two words that sprang into his head. He could hardly blame his mother for the state of the Mini and its lack of co-operation in getting started, but as they manoeuvred down the country lanes one hour later he couldn’t help but feel that he had somehow been trapped into sharing his space with a perfect stranger.
And an extremely talkative one who seemed intent on ignoring the fact that he had a handless headset in the car for a reason. She patiently waited for business conversations to end, staring through the window at ominous skies which had gone from yellow-grey to charcoal, and then felt perfectly free to ask him about his work.
‘But don’t you ever relax?’ she asked, appalled after he had reluctantly given her a rundown of his typical day. They were leaving behind the first dismal flurries of snow and Rafael reluctantly abandoned his plans to call his PA, Patricia, for an update on the Roberts deal.
‘You sound like my mother,’ he told her curtly, then, because he could sense rather than see her baffled silence at the harshness of his response, he relented. After all, he only had a couple more hours in her company. Why be offhand when she was so determinedly upbeat? ‘I presume, if you’re your own boss, then you know that running a company is a twenty-four-seven commitment. What exactly do you do, anyway?’
Cristina, who had been a little hurt at his lack of curiosity about her life and what she did, smiled, more than prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was obviously very, very important. She had known, of course, that he came from a moneyed background, but she had had no idea that he was entirely and solely responsible for running the show. Little wonder he was so focused on work with little time to spare making polite chit-chat with her.
‘Oh, nothing very important,’ Cristina said, suddenly a little abashed at her pedestrian occupation.
‘Now I’m curious.’ He half smiled, and that half smile made her draw in her breath sharply, made a frisson of awareness ripple down her spine and send shivers racing all through her body. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time.
‘Well … do you remember I told you how much I love gardens? And nature?’
Rafael had a dim recollection but he nodded anyway.
‘I own a flower shop in London. I mean, it’s nothing much. We each of us children came into some money on our twenty-first birthdays and I chose to spend mine on that.’
‘In England? Why?’ A flower shop? He had had extensive dealings with flower shops, almost exclusively in connection with his girlfriends, to whom flowers were usually sent at the beginning and at the end of relationships. But his PA dealt with all that and he had always assumed that she simply rang one of those huge concerns that delivered worldwide. But there must be one-man-band shows. Cute. She had the appearance of someone who might run a flower shop.
Cristina shrugged and pinkened. ‘I fancied being out of Italy. I mean, I have perfect sisters who lead perfect lives. It was nice getting away from the comparisons. But please don’t mention that to your mother, just in case it gets back to my parents!’
‘I won’t,’ Rafael promised solemnly. Did she imagine that he gossiped with his mother about such things? Nevertheless, her admission was touching, as was her enthusiasm about what she did. The woman was a walking encyclopaedia on trees and plants, and he was perfectly content to listen as she chatted about her shop, her plans to branch out into the landscaping business at some point, starting with small London gardens, but then moving on to bigger things. She was dying for the Chelsea Flower show, which she had been to a couple of times, and which had never failed to amaze and astound her. Her dream was to show her own flowers there someday.
‘I thought your dream was to do some landscaping,’ Rafael said, his cynical palate tickled by her optimistic ambitions.
‘I have lots of dreams.’ Cristina, aware that she had been babbling, fell silent for a few seconds. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I find it doesn’t pay to think too far into the future, which, if I’m not mistaken, is the realm of dreams, so I guess the answer has to be no.’ To his surprise, they had reached London quicker than he had expected. She lived in Kensington, not a million miles away from his Chelsea penthouse—and in a rather nice part of Kensington which, he assumed, would have been paid for by those discreetly wealthy parents of hers.
For the first time he considered the advantages of a woman to whom his money would be a matter of indifference. His girlfriends were almost always impressed by the size of his bank balance. The ones who did have inherited money were almost worse, in a way, because they were motivated by social standing—playing a game of ‘keeping up’ or ‘going one better’ which had invariably involved him being displayed to their other friends as the catch of the day.
This girl seemed to be motivated by neither. Nor, he thought, did she seem interested in playing games with him. There had been none of the usual blatant flirting.
‘Seems a bit drastic, moving over here just to escape comparisons with your sisters.’
‘Oh, I’ve been to England hundreds of times. I went to a boarding school in Somerset, you see. Actually, I’m living in my parents’ flat, as it happens. And I didn’t come just to escape comparisons. Well … actually, I pretty much did. I mean, have you any idea what it feels like to have two gorgeous sisters? No, I guess you don’t. Roberta and Frankie are perfect. Perfect in a good way, if you get my meaning.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Some people are perfect in a nauseating way, the sort who look glorious and never manage to put a foot wrong—but then they know it and want the world to know it too. But Frankie and Roberta are just lovely and talented and funny and kind.’
‘Sound like model citizens,’ Rafael said with heavy sarcasm. In his experience such creatures didn’t actually exist. He was pretty sure that, like a number of things, they were an urban myth.
‘They are, really.’ Cristina sighed. ‘Model daughters, at any rate. They’re both much older than me. I was a bit of a mistake, I think, although my parents would never admit it, and I have