Rafael's Suitable Bride (8 page)

Rafael, smiling lazily back at her, knew that he was winning, and a very pleasant game it was turning out to be too. Not for a moment did he think that he was being unfair, that he was using his tremendous and powerful appeal to sneak under her skin and break down her defences. Indeed, he thought that he was doing her a favour in not sitting her down and discussing with her, rationally and thoughtfully, the pros and cons of marriage as a business transaction. If that wasn't respect for her values, then what was?

He raised his glass to her in an indolent toast and kept his fabulous eyes pinned to her face as they sipped their wine.

‘Do you know?' Cristina confided as she finally closed her knife and fork on what had been a superb meal. ‘I feel as though I've known you for ages. Isn't it weird?'

‘Weird,' Rafael agreed. She was as transparent, he mused, as a pane of glass. There was no teasing ‘getting to know you, getting to know me' game, no suggestive remarks designed to get his appetite whetted, no come-hither looks to pique his curiosity.

‘Except,' she frowned, ‘Idon't really, do I?' She linked her fingers together and stared at him, thrilling at the sheer beauty of his face, his sensational sexual allure. He was flirting with her, teasing her, and although she didn't know why, because he could have snapped his fingers and had any woman he wanted on the face of the planet, she was happy to just accept the situation as it presented itself to her. She wasn't someone who spent a lot of time analysing things. What good did that ever do? Growing up, she had had friends who'd analysed relationships into an early grave, and she had learnt that trying to read too much into things was usually a cause of unnecessary stress. Aside from that, her sunny personality was not given to brooding on possibilities.

Something about this man—and she knew it went way beyond the fact that he was stunningly, shockingly beautiful—went straight through her sexual reserve and struck at the very core of her.

‘How well do we ever know someone else?' Rafael was amused by the ease she felt in his company. He wasn't a fool. Even when women had been chasing him, even when they had been lying in bed with him, he had known that they had tiptoed around him, as though apprehensive that the man who made love to them could suddenly turn into a monster.

‘That's a silly answer,' Cristina said bluntly, and Rafael burst into laughter, highly amused at her response.

‘A silly answer…Nooo…'

‘No what?'

‘Nope. I've searched through my memory bank and I can't recall anybody ever telling me that something I've said is silly.'

‘You're making fun of me.'

‘Perish the thought!' He ordered them both coffee and then sat back, relaxed, to hear where she would go from here. Surprisingly, they had managed to consume between them the better part of two bottles of very fine white wine indeed. Italian, naturally.

‘It's just that you pretty much know everything about me. I've told you about my family, my sisters, my schooling, my flower shop. But you haven't told me anything about yourself. I know you work hard and do something clever in business, but what else?'

Rafael thought of the never-ending hours of work he put in running companies that stretched across the world, and was amused to have it all reduced to doing ‘something clever in business'.

‘Went to school, did economics, physics and psychology at university, left with a first-class degree…'

‘You did psychology? Frankie wanted to do psychology at university, but dad told her that it was a soft option so she did history instead. As it turned out, she never actually used her degree cos she got married and had children. I guess you find it useful in business, though—you can interview people and know exactly what they're really thinking.'

‘Psychology, Cristina,' Rafael said dryly, ‘As opposed to mind-reading.' He fell silent for a few seconds and then made a decision. ‘And, yes, I guess it is useful in business. Knowing how people tend to think gives you a headstart on figuring out their moves, which can come in handy when you're sitting round a table trying to hammer something out. Aside from that, it's been less effective than you might think.'

‘What do you mean?' She was hardly aware that she had finished her coffee and was watching him intently, sensing that he was on the brink of a revelation of some kind. Was she holding her breath? She forced herself to breathe evenly because this was really no big deal. He was probably on the brink of disclosing something really trivial, like he hated cooking or didn't know how to use his washing machine, or had cried when his pet rabbit had died when he was a kid.

‘I was married once…' Rafael gave her a crooked smile. He had decided to embark on this topic because his marriage was no secret, and sooner or later she would find out about Helen from his mother. He wanted to set the record straight from the start. However, now that the words had left his mouth, he discovered that confiding was a talent he lacked, never having put it to any use.

‘You don't have to go into any details,' Cristina said hurriedly, partly because she could sense his difficulty in talking about it and partly because, in this little fantasy world she was busily spinning for herself, hearing about a woman who could turn out to have been the love of his life was not what she wanted. ‘I mean,' she continued quickly, ‘I know men aren't very good at expressing their feelings…' She had read that somewhere and in her limited experience it was certainly true. ‘Well, obviously some men are,' she ploughed on for the sake of accuracy.

Rafael experienced one of those moments of slight disorientation that conversing with her seemed to generate.

‘Some men can be very sensitive.' She frowned earnestly. ‘Of course.'

‘Of course,' he agreed blandly, once more back in control. ‘Men who cry in front of sad movies and think that knitting shouldn't be a sexist thing.'

This time it was Cristina's turn to laugh, which drew a smile from Rafael.

‘I got married to a woman called Helen when I was…Well, put it this way, young enough to be fooled into thinking that it was love.'

‘And it wasn't?' Cristina asked hopefully.

‘It was a catastrophe.' This was the real version of events and one he had told no one, not even his mother. This was the version of events which he had had no intention of telling her, but somehow his brain had failed to transmit that message to his mouth—and here he was, recounting a story that was older than time, but that still filled him with sour bile whenever he thought about it. Which was seldom.

He would keep it brief, he decided. ‘We met at university,' he said in a clipped, impersonal voice. ‘At one of those clubs where too much beer gets drunk and everyone rolls back to halls of residence way too late, stopping for a curry on the way back.'

Cristina tried to imagine a wild and reckless Rafael, drunk and eating a curry, and found that she couldn't.

‘Helen was there. Unlike everyone else, she was stone-cold sober, just standing a little apart from her group, looking around her.' Rafael remembered that look. It had been cool and detached, as if she'd been examining the crowd and had possibly found it wanting, and it was that look that had drawn his attention. The look and her amazing beauty: hair platinum-blonde, body tall and languid, eyes of a most incredible green. He had wanted her the minute he had laid eyes on her and, even at the age of twenty, had known that he would have her.

He heard himself explaining that moment to his rapt audience, the moment he had felt something way beyond anything he had ever felt before. Had continued feeling it, like
a man in a trance, even when little snippets of information had emerged that should have had the alarm-bells ringing.

‘She was older than me, as it turned out,' he said dispassionately. ‘A little something she kept to herself, and the fact is I probably would never have been the wiser if I hadn't come across her passport buried in one of her drawers. Nine years older, to be precise. Nor was she a university student. She actually worked at a department store in the city.' He shook his head, and although he couldn't detect the bitterness in his own voice Cristina had no trouble in hearing it, and her tender heart reached out to him.

‘We married as soon as I was out of university, by which time she naturally was well aware of the extent of my personal fortune. My ex-wife,' he said heavily, ‘Was instrumental in showing me the truth behind the saying that all that glitters is not gold. It wasn't long before I realised that she was long on good looks, but pretty short on fidelity.'

‘How awful for you,' Cristina said softly, which reminded Rafael that he was in the process of pouring his heart out, a self-indulgent exercise for which he had no taste. But she made a good listener, and it felt oddly liberating to talk to her.

‘To cut a long story short…' He signalled for the bill and briefly scanned it before handing over his credit card. ‘It wasn't long before she began casting her net elsewhere, while continuing to enjoy the sort of lavish lifestyle she must have been quietly searching out all her life. She was involved in a fatal car crash in America, and only I am aware of the fact that she wasn't the driver of the car. I believe he was the ski instructor she had met the year before.'

‘That's just awful,' Cristina said softly and, far from being irritated by a clichéd response, Rafael was touched by the depth of feeling in her voice.

‘That's just…life. So, now you have been treated to a slice of my past, it's time for us to head home. You have work tomorrow and I have a do later tonight which, I might add, I am already late for.' He stood up, surprised at the speed with which the evening had progressed.

‘Won't they be a little put out? It's after nine!'

‘It's not the sort of affair that requires strict adherence to time,' Rafael said, thinking without vanity that he would be welcomed whatever time he decided to appear because they had more need of him than he had of them. ‘But…' Yet another uncharacteristic decision. ‘You are right. The thought of walking around an art gallery and trying to look interested in splashes of random colour on a canvas might be a bit of a struggle at this hour.' He quickly made a couple of calls, and by the time he had clicked off his mobile his appearance at the gallery had been cancelled.

It was beginning to rain outside, an icy rain that spiked their faces like thin needles. Against this penetrating cold Cristina's coat was defenceless and she was glad to step into a taxi and sit back, eyes closed as she rehashed in her mind her extraordinary afternoon and evening. The football coaching had started off with such lack of promise, and had ended in her sharing a meal with a man to whom she was—and she didn't mind admitting it—strangely and intoxicatingly attracted. A man who was attracted to her!

He had confided in her. Had that been a turning point for him?

‘You're not going to fall asleep on me, are you?' Rafael asked as he heard her try to stifle a yawn.

‘Sorry.' She shifted in her seat and looked at him drowsily. ‘Must be all that wine after running around coaching. I feel exhausted.'

Rafael started to say something and then noticed that her
eyelids were drooping. It dawned on him that she was nodding off in his company. Was this what they meant by sending someone to sleep?

By the time the taxi was outside her apartment, she was leaning against him, breathing evenly, sweetly asleep. Her hair smelled fresh and clean. He gently nudged her, and Cristina woke with a little start and straightened up, apologising profusely for falling asleep.

Her eyes were still drowsy. She looked like a little rumpled puppy.

‘I'll see you in, and before you tell me that I don't need to I know I don't. But I will anyway.'

‘Am I that predictable?' she asked, waking up more fully as she stepped out into the rain.

‘No,' he drawled slowly. ‘Predictable isn't a word that could be used to describe you.'

It was only when they were in the lift that Cristina, fully alert now, became aware of the atmosphere between them. Something had changed, although she couldn't precisely say what. They both knew something about each other that was unique to them. She knew about a slice of his past which he had shared with no one else, and he knew that she was a virgin, and this intimacy seemed to have altered something. Altered it in a thrilling and very charged way. She kept her eyes studiously averted in the lift, but every nerve in her body was aware of him standing next to her, his hair damp from the rain, his hands thrust into the pockets of his trench coat.

The lift doors purred open and, like a bolt from the blue, Cristina realised what had been lying at the back of her mind ever since she had set eyes on Rafael, ever since he had come to her rescue at his mother's party.

For reasons quite beyond her, he had awakened something
in her, a sexual side that had been in hiding, waiting for the right moment. Even though he wasn't the right man, he still did things to her, made her feel alive, sent all her senses on red-hot alert.

And she couldn't help but think that he felt something for her as well. Everything pointed in that direction because, really and truly, why would he pretend an attraction that wasn't there? What would be the point?

Never in her wildest imagination had she ever thought that he might really find her sexy, but it seemed that he did—and the realisation was as powerful as a drug, firing her blood, making her giddy with excitement.

Her hands were trembling as she inserted the key into her door and let them both in to her apartment.

This time she didn't, as she might normally have, turn to him with a polite, friendly smile, thank him for the lovely meal and wait for him to leave as she stood sentinel by her front door. This time, she just half turned and asked him whether he might care for a cup of coffee.