His Suitable Bride: Rafael's Suitable Bride / The Spaniard's Marriage Bargain / Cordero's Forced Bride

‘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 to say that I did have a rather wonderful life as the baby of the family. Dad took me to loads of football matches. I think that’s why I’ve always loved football so much. In fact, that’s another one of my dreams. I want to do some football coaching. I used to play a lot when I was younger. I was pretty good, in fact, but then I gave it up, and I would really love to get back into it now. Not on the playing level, but on the coaching level. I might put an ad in the papers. What do you think?’

What Rafael thought was that he had never met such a garrulous woman in his life before. He was beginning to feel a little dazed.

‘Football,’ he said slowly.

‘Yes. You know the sport? It’s the one that involves lots of hunky men running around a field kicking a ball …?’

‘I know what football is!’

‘I was just kidding.’ She was beginning to think that here was a man for whom the world was a very serious business.

‘You’re not exactly a people person, are you?’ she mused aloud, and Rafael was stunned enough at that observation to look at her, speechless for the first time in his life.

‘Meaning?’ he snapped.

‘Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,’ Cristina apologised. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘Why would I be offended by anything you have to say?’

‘That’s not very nice.’

‘It’s the truth,’ Rafael answered with brutal honesty. He turned down Gloucester Road, slowing to accommodate the pedestrians who seemed to think that crossing roads without watching for oncoming cars was perfectly acceptable Sunday behaviour. Her remark niggled at him and, as he turned right into her road, he slotted his car neatly into a space, switched off the engine and turned to her.

‘But I’m curious to find out what you mean by that.’

Cristina reddened and looked at him. ‘Oh, just that you don’t seem to have much time for fun. I mean …’ She frowned slightly. ‘Last night, at your mother’s party, you didn’t seem to be having a good time.’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Now you’re mad at me, aren’t you?’

‘Why should I be mad at you?’

‘Because even though you say you want me to be honest with you, you don’t. Maybe because you’re not accustomed to other people telling you exactly what they think.’

‘I work in the most cut-throat business in the world. Of course I’m accustomed to people telling me what they think!’ Rafael snapped, not really sure how he had ended up having this discussion with her.

‘Well, maybe not women, in that case.’

‘Maybe I prefer my women to be a little more compliant.’

‘Does that mean they’ve got to agree with everything you say?’

‘It helps.’

Cristina thought that it sounded very boring, and since he obviously wasn’t a very boring man she wondered how he could tolerate a boring love life—but, before she could expand, he was opening his car door.

‘No. Spare me the workings of your mind. I don’t think I can take any more refreshingly honest home truths.’

Mortified, Cristina clumsily followed him out of the car and launched into a series of uninvited and unwelcome apologies while Rafael swung her suitcase out of the pocket-sized boot and walked along the pavement to her apartment block.

‘Enough!’ He held up one autocratic hand and looked at her with frowning impatience. ‘There’s no need for you to trip over yourself apologising. What’s your apartment number? And before you tell me that you can walk yourself and your bag up, I’m escorting you to your door. I may not be a people person, but I do have some rudimentary good manners.’

‘Oh, I know you have!’ Cristina assured him hurriedly. ‘I’m at the top.’ She fumbled in her bag for the key, and as she pulled it out he took it from her and pushed open the front door into a flagstone hallway shared by the residents.

It was the sort of place not many young people could ever have dreamed of affording, with the high ceilings and majestic elegance of a converted Georgian building. In fact, it was the sort of place well out of the price range of most people—except, he considered, Cristina was not most people. Underneath the slightly dippy, ready-to-smile, chatty girl lay the soft cushion of family money.

She was walking ahead to the lift, which was small, so small that their bodies were virtually touching when they stepped inside with the overnight bag separating them.

‘How long have you been here?’ Rafael asked eventually. Somehow prolonged silence in her presence seemed slightly unnatural. He wondered if his brain had somehow gone into overdrive during the long trip back down to London. Could relentless chatter do that to a person?

‘You don’t have to make polite small talk with me,’ Cristina told him, staring straight ahead at the uninspiring view of an elevator button rather than into the mirrored sides of the shaft—which were a little too harsh for her liking when it came to showing up her unprepossessing figure next to his superbly built one.

Even after hours behind the wheel of a car he still managed to look carelessly, breathtakingly, dangerously sexy. She quickly tore her treacherous eyes away from the quick sidelong glance she had given him.

He thought she babbled. Admittedly, she was quite a chatty person. She liked to think of herself as friendly, the sort of person who found it easy to put other people at ease. It was now occurring to her that Rafael might just be the sort of man who didn’t particularly want to be put at ease by someone talking constantly at him. He hadn’t exactly piled on lots of interested questions, had he? In fact, she had caught him looking longingly at his phone a couple of times, probably, she now thought, because he’d had work to conduct, but politeness had condemned him to silently listen to her whitter on about anything and everything.

‘Where did that suddenly come from?’ Rafael asked, just as the doors pinged open.

Cristina didn’t answer immediately. She hung back while he opened her door and then breezed past him into her apartment, which was arranged on two floors, the entrance being on the bedroom floor, with a short flight of stairs winding up to the small kitchen and sitting area. It was a tiny apartment, but beautifully proportioned, and interior designers had turned it into a sharply modern unit, kitted out with the best that money could buy. Cristina, who had little interest in the value of things, was unaware of the cost of some of the furnishings surrounding her, many of which had been specially imported from her mother’s favourite shops in Italy.

For a few seconds she was tempted to be cool, but being cool did not come naturally to her, and she turned to him and looked up, straight into those amazing blue eyes.

‘I just get the feeling that I’ve been talking too much,’ she confessed with her usual directness. ‘And if I’ve been too … too honest with you … then I’m sorry.’

‘What makes you think that I don’t like your honesty?’ Rafael swept aside her apology and started up the stairs. It really was very small, but very, very tastefully done.

‘Where are you going?’ Cristina called out after him.

‘Nice place.’ His voice drifted down the stairs and she scurried after him to find him looking around the kitchen, opening her fridge and scrutinising the contents, which were an unhealthy option of pre-cooked meals, cheeses and various items of confectionery which always worked as a pick-me-up when her spirits were a little low.

‘You shouldn’t be poking around in my fridge,’ she announced, slamming the door shut and standing back to look at him. ‘I know I don’t have the most healthy diet in the world just at the moment …’

Rafael looked down at her. She still hadn’t removed her jumper, which was straining across her breasts. Standing there, with her arms folded defensively, she resembled an irate little puppy caught in the act of chewing on a piece of furniture.

‘You don’t have to defend yourself or your eating habits to me,’ he informed her mildly.

‘I’m not defending myself,’ Cristina lied, blushing madly. ‘I’m just … I …’

‘Having two saintly, perfect sisters really did your head in, didn’t it?’ Rafael really tried not to delve too deeply into the female psyche, but in this instance it seemed impossible to avoid.

‘I have no idea what you’re on about. I just realise that I could probably do with losing a couple of pounds, and I know what you might be thinking when you nose around my fridge.’ She tried to maintain a healthy, dignified silence after this pronouncement, but immediately spoilt it by adding, ‘You’re thinking that I should be eating lots of salads and drinking lots of mineral water and yes, for your information, I do eat salads.’ Occasionally. ‘Quite often. There.’

‘Happy now that you’ve cleared the air on that count?’ Surprisingly, he was amused rather than irritated by her rambling over-explanation. ‘A lot of men prefer women who aren’t … skinny anyway.’

‘Really?’ She dredged up some uncharacteristic sarcasm from somewhere. ‘Not according to every magazine in every newsagent’s up and down the country.’ She sighed. ‘I was skinny as a child and then I don’t know what happened.’ She was tempted to open the fridge and dip into some of the cheesecake which she had bought the Friday before for a bit of consolation, but she didn’t. That would have really put paid to her futile attempts to convince him that she watched what she ate. And she was dimly aware that she didn’t want him thinking the worst of her.

‘Anyway,’ he said bracingly, ‘You’re not overweight. You’re curvy.’

Her face broke into a smile of delight and she laughed that infectious laugh of hers. ‘Funny, that’s exactly what I keep telling myself!’

Rafael looked briefly at her and had a moment of utter madness—a moment when he wanted to touch her, feel her body under the unflattering clothes and find out for himself how curvy she really was, how heavy and succulent those abundant breasts of hers truly were.

He turned away abruptly. ‘Fascinating though this is, I’m going to have to leave you. I have work to do.’

‘It’s Sunday.’

‘Try telling that to the rest of the world.’ He headed to the stairs while Cristina followed him, unsure whether she would see him again and already telling herself that that was fine. Thoughtful though he had been in sorting her out the evening before, and sexy though he was in a way that sent her entire body into overdrive, there was too much latent aggression inside him, and he was a workaholic. Cristina could respect that fierce work ethic, but she had never found it a particularly attractive trait in a man. The few boyfriends she had had in the past had been kind, unassuming free spirits who, like her, had preferred the great outdoors to the deadly indoors.

That said, she couldn’t help but feel a sharp wrench as he opened her front door and turned towards her.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said. ‘Of course, I shall send your mother a thank-you note, but if you speak to her please tell her that it was so kind of her to invite me and that I had a marvellous time. I think she’s coming down some time next month when my mother comes over to visit.’

She paused for him perhaps to mention bumping into her again, but, deflatingly, he said nothing. He just tilted his head politely to one side, hearing her out, and she wondered whether her rambling gene had kicked in again. ‘And don’t work so hard.’ She smiled. ‘Ever so often you should go to the park and have a walk. It’s lovely, even in winter.’ She very nearly tacked on a lengthy account of what she did when she went to the park—the interesting people she saw, the feeling of peace she got when she sat on a bench and watched the ducks bustling and going about their daily business—but held herself back in the nick of time.

‘Thanks for the advice,’ Rafael said gravely. ‘I’ll give it some thought when my working day ends at nine.’

‘Now you’re laughing at me.’

‘Perish the thought.’

He wasn’t sure how she had managed it, or maybe it had done him good just escaping London for a night, but he was perfectly relaxed by the time he made it to his own place in Chelsea.

Unlike Cristina, he occupied by London standards an enormous penthouse suite that spanned the top two floors of a redbrick mansion not a million miles away from where she lived. Like hers, his was impeccably decorated, and with a minimalism that left little room for individual touches. Just the way Rafael liked it. No family photos adorned the surfaces, no mementoes of holidays taken, no random books lying dogeared on tables waiting to be picked up and explored. Instead, the living area was dominated by two sprawling, cream leather sofas, between which was a thick, cream rug with a barely visible abstract pattern and which had cost the earth.

The paintings on the walls were likewise abstract, splashes of colour which were demanding rather than soothing. Likewise, they too had cost the earth.

He dumped his case on the ground, poured himself a glass of water and immediately went to check his answer machine. Nine messages, eight of which he would deal with later. The ninth …

Rafael played it back with a frown of annoyance.

Delilah. A damned stupid name he had thought at the time, but he had been prepared to overlook that because she was exquisitely beautiful. Very tall, very leggy and with a serenely angelic face that cleverly hid the personality of a shrew.

Theirs had been one of the few relationships which he had allowed to drift, largely because he had been out of the country so much at the time that a face-to-face confrontation had never been engineered, and Rafael had not sought one out. Delilah was prone to hysterics, and if there was one thing that he couldn’t stand it was a hysterical woman.

Now, after nearly four months, she was back on the scene. His mother’s words slammed back at him—different mistresses every week … running away from a past he never wanted to revisit … living life in a vacuum …

He leaned back on the sofa, closed his eyes and thought that maybe, just maybe, it really was time to think about settling down.

CHAPTER THREE

THAT thought had cleared his mind by the time he awoke on the Monday morning to the insistent beeping of his mobile phone at the ungodly hour of …

Five o’clock!

And a text message from Delilah. The text message, with all those abbreviations which Rafael found so annoying, informed him that she had been away—an extended holiday in the Caribbean—but that now she was back and would love to meet so that they could catch up.

Once a relationship had been terminated, Rafael was the sort of man who moved on. Not for him any scenarios which involved meeting up with an ex-girlfriend so that they could talk over the bad old days about a bottle or two of wine. He had moved on from Delilah, although he had to admit that it had not been a clean break.

Without giving himself time to switch into work mode, he dialled in her number, then waited all of two rings before it was picked up. Not a good sign. Women who waited by phones were women who became very dependent very fast, and a very dependent woman was a liability.

It was not a comfortable conversation and he knew that it should have been conducted face to face. He had optimistically figured that deliberate absence from the scene and a lack of communication would be sufficient indication of a breakup, but he had been lazy.

Hence he could hardly blame her for the tears, the accusations, the insults—which he was unsurprised to hear consisted of a wide range of adjectives—and, worse than all that, the plaintive, rhetorical question of what she had done wrong.

It was nearly six before he was finally off the phone, having endured his full frontal attack, and close to eight by the time he had showered, changed, sent some emails and was heading out of his front door.

It was barely light outside with a cold, blustery wind that felt damp even though there was no sign of rain. Rafael, still in a foul mood after his conversation with Delilah, would have missed the flower shop had it not been open for a delivery just as he happened to be walking past.

He had never noticed it before, but then that was hardly surprising. Flower shops did not feature highly on his list of desired destinations, nor did he often walk to work. It was a vigorous twenty-five minute walk and he could rarely spare the time.

In the bleak mid-winter grey, the scent filled his nostrils and on the spur of the moment he paused then entered the shop.

It was small, but overflowing with flowers, most of which were unusually vibrant, many exotic. One side of the wall was completely given over to orchids, and Rafael was startled at the array. He would have a couple of them delivered to Delilah’s house with an appropriate note, but before he could place his order the very young girl who was busying herself with the delivery informed him that the shop wasn’t actually open as yet. Not until ten.

‘I’ll make it worth your while,’ Rafael said, glancing at his watch, knowing that he would have to get his skates on if he was to make it to his first meeting. He pulled out his wallet and extracted a wad of notes, then he pointed to the two most exquisite of the orchid plants.

‘I want those delivered to this address …’ He scribbled Delilah’s address on the back of one of his business cards. The young shop assistant was beginning to look flustered, but not for a minute did he think that he wouldn’t be able to get what he wanted, because at the end of the day, whether the shop was open or not, money talked.

‘I take it there won’t be a problem?’ He looked up at the girl who glanced over her shoulder and smiled faintly.

‘Not at all, sir. What should the message on the card read?’

Rafael frowned and shrugged. ‘You’re better off without me. All the best. R.’ The girl was blushing violently as she transcribed the words onto a piece of paper, and Rafael raised his eyebrows in amusement. ‘Would you say that that is appropriate for a relationship that has outstayed its welcome?’

‘No! It’s horrible!’

Rafael swung round at the voice to find himself staring into a pair of distinctly disapproving eyes, and for a few seconds he was lost for words. Fate had decreed that, of all the small flower-shops he might have walked into from the street on a grainy February morning, he had chosen the one belonging to Cristina.

‘Your shop?’

‘Anthea, I’ll handle it from here.’ Cristina, framed in the doorway of her little office at the back of the shop, folded her arms and looked at Rafael, who looked like no businessman she had ever seen before. The uniform was the same—sharp grey suit, just visible underneath the trenchcoat which was swinging open, black leather shoes—but somehow he’d transcended ‘average man on way to work’ into a category of his own.

She turned just as a man approached from the office to stand next to her, and she gave him a bright smile.

‘So I can call you later in the week?’ she asked.

‘Any time after six.’

Rafael watched this brief exchange through narrowed eyes. The man was stocky but muscular, with the build of someone who spent time outdoors. His hair was straight and very fair, and he was wearing an earring which, to Rafael, immediately spelt ‘disreputable’. He scowled and looked around him, waiting for her to finish her conversation.

‘Who was that?’ he asked as soon as the man had left the shop.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘What do you think I’m doing? And you haven’t answered my question.’

‘Anthea …’ Cristina was aware of her assistant looking at Rafael, goggle-eyed. ‘Why don’t you go and start working on the costings for the delivery?

‘I know what you’re doing here,’ Cristina hissed, remembering why she had snapped at him in the first place. ‘You’re buying flowers, but I’m just amazed that you came here! How did you know the name of my shop? I don’t remember telling you.’

‘You didn’t.’ He wondered how her wealthy, no doubt protective, parents would react if they knew that their daughter was in London consorting with all manner of lowlife. ‘I happened to be walking to work and I needed to send some flowers to—’

‘Someone who had outstayed her welcome?’ Cristina, having been raised on a healthy diet of romance fiction and fairytale-ending movies, bristled on behalf of the unknown recipient of the most expensive flowers in her shop.

Rafael flushed darkly. ‘Had I known that you owned this place, I would have gone elsewhere,’ he grated. ‘As it stands, you should be grateful that I’ve just provided some very healthy business for you. I can’t imagine that random flower shops do that well in the centre of London.’

‘We happen to do very well, as a matter of fact! We specialise in fairly uncommon flowers.’ It was not in her nature to be snide, but the devil inside her made her add, ‘Maybe guilty businessmen find it works when it comes to buying flowers for their girlfriends. Including the discarded ones.’

‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Cristina.’

‘How could you end a relationship on a note and a bunch of flowers?’

Rafael, unused to being criticised, frowned with displeasure. ‘Do you usually leap out of your office and attack people who happen to relay messages you don’t like? Isn’t that slightly beyond the bounds of good customer service?’

‘I couldn’t help but overhear,’ Cristina muttered. ‘I recognised your voice. You have a very distinctive voice.’ She wondered what the mystery woman looked like.

‘Can that girl of yours look after the shop for a few minutes?’ It would take one phone call to cancel his first meeting and Rafael, who had never cancelled work for any woman, decided that this would just have to be a first. He might have had the girl foisted upon him but, notwithstanding, he had some sense of duty towards her. That included setting her straight on the unscrupulous nature of men in London.

‘Why?’

‘There’s a coffee shop a few minutes away. I passed it on the way here.’

‘Aren’t you on your way to work?’

‘Have you forgotten that I own the company?’ No one would guess that, though, Rafael thought with a sense of irony, because he never took time off. In fact, his PA would have to be persuaded not to send round an ambulance crew when he told her that he would be in later than expected.

‘I’m going to give you a sermon about how women should be treated,’ Cristina felt compelled to tell him, even though the thought of having coffee with him had filled her with a suffocating sense of excitement. ‘Do you still want to take me out for a cup of coffee?’

‘Give me five minutes to call my secretary …’ As expected, Patricia seemed to hyperventilate when informed that he would have to miss his meeting. Was he really that predictable? he wondered. A man who so consistently put work ahead of everything else that the slightest deviation from the norm was enough to bring about heart failure in his employees?