Modern Romance Books September Books 5-8. Annie West
‘Why do you care so much?’ she asked, curiosity forcing a way past her resentment.
Rafael flushed. ‘He’s my godfather. Of course I care.’
‘There’s no of course about it,’ Sofia returned drily. ‘And somehow I can’t see you as the sort of person who shows affection for someone because other people expect it.’ But she could sense that when it came to David all was not as clear cut as for other people. When it came to his godfather, Rafael was vulnerable, and that realisation softened something inside her, endearing him to her in ways she couldn’t define.
Rafael relaxed, his lean, intensely aggressive features softening into something approaching a smile.
‘What are you trying to say?’ Dark eyes glanced over to her as he sat sprawled against the door, his long legs eating up the space between them in the back of the car, as though too big to be comfortable in any restraining space.
‘That you don’t care what anyone thinks. You’ve told me so yourself.’ She hesitated. It would be easy if she could see him as a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out, but she couldn’t, and the second she tried to she was ambushed by all sorts of conflicting feelings because he was simply so complex. ‘So why are you so...close to David? How is it that he’s your godfather?’
‘You ask a lot of questions.’
‘I’m your wife,’ Sofia was quick to respond. ‘And, if you can tell me what to do and how I should behave, then the least I should be able to do, by way of returning the favour, is to try and find out a bit about my husband.’ She looked at him with arched eyebrows and he grinned, then laughed appreciatively.
‘Whatever our marriage is,’ he drawled, ‘boring it won’t be.’
‘Because I have a mind of my own and I’m not afraid to speak it?’ She sniffed, disarmed by that smile.
‘Amongst other things.’
‘Well?’
She twisted the rose-gold ring on her finger. It felt so odd.
She was married to this big, powerful guy...a guy who commanded attention wherever he went. Eyes followed him whenever he entered a room—people wondered whether they should recognise him because he stood out... Even as a lowly gardener he had commanded her attention. Here, in his stamping ground, he was the king of the jungle.
‘Well, if you insist on the back story, David was my grandfather’s closest friend. They went to university together. Neither had much to speak of but David was the first to secure a bank loan and he used some of it to lend a hand to my grandfather, who then went on to do great things in import and export. David opened up a small hotel on the outskirts of the university town they both went to. Fill a gap, was David’s reasoning. Something small but classy for relatives visiting kids at the university. He’d studied economics and figured that that was the most lucrative way to put his degree to good use.
‘Roll on ten years and that one small hotel had expanded into a healthy dozen or so, at which point he began diversifying, going into different areas...exploring boutique hotels in far-flung places not yet on the tourist radar, dabbling in computer technology before computer technology had taken off. All from one small idea.’
Rafael shook his head and Sofia detected admiration in his dark eyes. ‘He’s always been the finest example of how to work your way to the top on your own merit. You could say that this is the stuff that mentors are made of.’ He shot her a crooked smile but she saw past that. Rafael wasn’t being ironic. He was being utterly truthful. In all aspects, David was larger than life to him, had been there for him in more ways than one.
That, she thought, lay at the heart of Rafael’s devotion. Love, admiration, respect. Three powerful emotions. Cold as he was when it came to the business of love and marriage, he wasn’t an ice-man, though she wasn’t sure he would have agreed with her. He was far too fond of thinking of himself as infallible. He didn’t see that great love, even if it wasn’t of the romantic kind, made him as human as the next man.
Sofia frowned. ‘He was in Argentina...’
‘Taking over two hotels, turning them into something more visionary.’
Sofia thought that he must have been an extremely charismatic and dynamic guy, hence why her mother had fallen head over heels in love.
‘So...your father was close to him as well?’
‘My parents would have chosen David because they were probably in a hurry and needed someone to step into the role, if only to please my traditional grandparents. I suspect David worked as a godfather figure because he was based in the UK and available for babysitting duties while they busied themselves exploring anything and everything the universe had to offer. They were young, they were rich and they weren’t going to let a kid hold them back.’
Detecting a thread of bitterness beneath that flatly spoken statement, Sofia looked at him, her curiosity at fever pitch now. She felt as though, through a miniscule crack, she was seeing a sliver of this man that hinted at depths hitherto keep hidden, and that glimpse was sufficient to awaken a thirst to find out more.
She shouldn’t care, because they meant nothing to one another, but she found that she did.
The realisation filled her with a certain amount of unease, because curiosity was definitely not part of the package, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘So they travelled a lot,’ she murmured, in a voice that melded encouragement with mild interest. She smiled. ‘A bit like me, but I suppose the circumstances were slightly different. I expect they were probably travelling in style. Horse and carriage, where we were side-of-road and thumbs out.’
The grin returned. ‘You make me laugh, you know that? You’re also the master of understatement, Sofia.’
The lazy teasing in his voice brought colour to her cheeks and she smiled back at him. ‘Travelling in style would be a lot less arduous than taking pot luck wherever you happened to land.’
‘Oh, my parents travelled in style, all right.’
‘Did you enjoy the experience as much as I did?’ The sarcasm in her voice made him laugh.
‘I wasn’t dragged along in their wake, thankfully. They were about as responsible as a pair of kids without a care in the world, but they had the common sense to put me in a boarding school as soon as they feasibly could, and before that I was looked after, largely, by my grandparents.’
‘How old were you when you were sent to boarding school?’ she queried, unable to conceal her surprise.
‘Seven.’ Rafael’s dark eyes collided with her wide, green ones and he laughed with genuine amusement. ‘Are you about to tell me that you feel sorry for me? Don’t waste your breath. I was very happy there. I spent holidays with my grandparents and then, later on, with David after my grandparents emigrated to South Africa.’
‘And your parents?’
Rafael’s mouth thinned.
Was he even aware of the signals he gave off? Sofia wondered. Was he even aware of the message he was sending underneath the casual, indifferent front? She didn’t want to be sucked into his personality, the way she had been before she’d known who he really was, but she could feel her heart twisting when she thought about his circumstances as a child. In their different ways, they had both had to fight against the challenges they had been born into.
‘My parents were killed when I was thirteen. Light-aeroplane crash. My father had bought it and they were having fun up in the clouds when it went into a tailspin from which it couldn’t recover.’
‘I... I don’t know what to say. That’s awful. I’m so very sorry for you, Rafael.’
‘We’re here.’
Sofia glanced away from his stern, brooding face to see that they were, indeed, outside the sort of