Читать книгу Kept By The Spanish Billionaire - Кэтти Уильямс, Cathy Williams - Страница 5

THINGS had been laid on.

Amy woke early the following morning, drifted downstairs and discovered, to her surprise considering James’s casual personality, that their days had been mapped out and planned with military efficiency.

Several others were likewise up and in the dining room, which had been laid out for breakfast buffet style.

On one wall was a large notice board indicating the activities in store for them that day, should they wish to avail themselves of it.

From behind her, Claire, her closest friend at the house, tapped her on the shoulder and giggled something about how the other half lived and that they should tuck into breakfast because not having to prepare it themselves was a luxury that wouldn’t rear its head again in a hurry.

‘Darn right!’ Amy laughed back, easily slipping into the fun-loving girl her friends all knew and appreciated. It wasn’t long before she had joined some of the others, happily allowing herself to be swept up in the excitement of planning which events they were going to try out later on.

Of course, there was always the option of staying put, which some of them intended to do, but there would also be an opportunity to go kayaking and canoeing. For the lazier of them, fishing was an option, as well as a chance to explore some of the beaches, which would involve picnics and swimming.

Amy wondered which, if any, James would be going to. He was nowhere to be seen, but when he did appear she intended to get herself noticed in a way she had yet to do.

Thus far, she had always been the very good caterer at work, always decked out in her boring white outfit and caterer’s hat. It was the least sexy outfit possible to don. Not that Amy considered herself to be the centrefold of a magazine, but she had a friendly personality and many people had told her that she was quite cute.

Well, cute could work. She had tied her hair back into two braids that reached just past her shoulders, a touch-and-go hairstyle as far as attracting the opposite sex went but very practical in hot weather. Her blue and white top was jaunty and her jeans were, she thought, just the right side of trendy. Very skinny-fitting and just right with the flat, beaded silver shoes that she could kick off if need be or walk a hundred miles if she had to.

‘Which tour do you think he’s going to be on?’ she whispered to Claire, as soon as they had sat down in front of plates that were groaning with a ridiculous amount of food. ‘I’ve dressed the part.’ She thought, briefly and unexpectedly, of the arrogant gardener she had bumped into the previous night. She imagined he would give her one of those ice-cold looks were he to see her in her get-up. For a second she was tempted to let Claire into the little secret, but she held her tongue, remembering the way he had told her to keep his presence on the ground to herself.

‘What part?’ Claire grinned. She was as plump and dark as Amy was fair and slender, but they had hit it off the minute they had met two years previously and were still the best of friends.

‘The part that’s not covered up in a white uniform with neat white plimsolls and a hairnet. A hairnet! Do you think he’ll notice me?’

‘He always notices you,’ Claire said, prompted into automatic support.

‘Yes, well. He chats and laughs but he does that with everyone!’ She skewered a piece of fresh pineapple on her fork, inspected it and popped it into her mouth. ‘I wonder which exciting little tour he’ll be on.’

Claire watched her friend drift off into some pleasant daydream land and bit back the instinct to protect her from hurt by telling her how she really felt—that James liked her well enough but that was as far as it went. She was pretty sure that he really would never actually have a relationship with someone who worked for him anyway, because wouldn’t that be against some company law? But even if he could have, he joked with her the way a guy joked with a woman he thought of as a mate. She should know. That had been her fate for long enough!

‘Just enjoy yourself, Ames, and forget about James. He’ll be at the barbecue tonight anyway!’

And as it turned out the tight-fitting jeans and the jaunty top had been in vain. James had gone off fishing for the day, bonding with some of the junior lads in the marketing department. The outfit, furthermore, had been a serious impediment when it came to kayaking and by the time four o’clock rolled round and they were all trooping wearily back to the house Amy was more than a little disconsolate.

What was she doing? She was twenty-four years old and was committing the unforgivable sin of throwing herself at someone with the desperation of an ageing spinster under threat of being left on the shelf! It was ridiculous. She was ridiculous!

She almost believed it, almost figured that she had got her emotions under control, when she spotted him later that night, standing outside in the garden, drink in one hand, laughing with a little group of people around him, and then her heart fluttered a bit and she drew in her breath and headed in his direction.

The barbecue was kicking off in jolly style. Wine was being served and a selection of exquisite canapés, just substantial enough to take the edge off the alcohol before food, was brought out.

James spotted her weaving her way in his direction and for a second or two he hesitated, then there he was, breaking away from the group and coming towards her.

Actually, Amy could scarcely believe her eyes. In fact, she turned around to see if there was anyone behind her towards whom he could be heading.

When she looked back round he was right there, in front of her, his blond hair rumpled, his whole look adorably preppie. He gave her a crooked smile and she smiled back happily.

‘I didn’t recognise you.’ He held her hand, stepped back and made her do an impromptu twirl, then he gave a long, low wolf-whistle.

‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’ Amy said, cheeks pink. She couldn’t quite make her voice sound husky, but she gave him the best flirty look at her disposal, all fluttering eyelashes and coy smile.

‘A very good thing!’ He laughed. ‘The skirt suits you. In fact, your legs suit you. Very nice legs.’

‘Hmm. All two of them!’ She felt rather pleased now that she had made the effort to wear the red and black floaty skirt she had brought over, even though the barbecue was being held in the garden so dressing up wasn’t de rigueur. The strappy red top made her feel wonderfully feminine.

‘Tell me what you did today,’ he said, eyes on her as he polished off his drink and signalled to a waiter for a refill without actually turning around.

Amy told him, skipping out certain unfortunate details, such as nearly tipping over their kayak in an attempt to swap places with Justin and getting her jeans soaked to the thighs because she should have worn shorts like everyone else, not to mention the little fact that her glorious bead shoes were now drying on her window ledge and would probably never be the same again. He seemed amused enough at her rendition of the day’s events.

The one thing she omitted to tell him was about her encounter with his gardener. Why spoil the moment? From feeling a little downbeat, she had bounced right back to her cheerful self, basking in the once-in-a-lifetime experience of being the centre of James’s attention.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Claire grinning like a hyena, and Amy made sure to angle her body away from her friend. She might be crazy about James, but she would die a thousand deaths if he ever discovered that, and Claire with her antics was hardly being the soul of subtle discretion.

But already she could sense that James was ready to move on, to circulate, and she looked wistfully at his departing back as he reached for another glass of wine and headed off, always solicitous when it came to involving each and every one of his guests.

For a few seconds, it dawned on her that those few moments of snatched time during which he had complimented her, actually looked at her, really amounted to not very much, but she quickly brushed aside that pessimistic train of thought.

‘I think,’ she told Claire later, when food had been eaten and the assembled crowd had moved on to the sort of abandoned dancing that only alcohol could induce, ‘that I’m making headway.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Ames…’ James seemed to have disappeared from the scene, although it was hard to tell because it was dark and there were so many people all over the place.

‘He asked me what I thought of the food.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Told him it wasn’t a patch on mine.’

‘You never!’

‘Yup.’

‘Bad move. Maybe he’ll sack his caterers here and rope you in to do the cooking.’

They giggled, enjoying the novelty of being far from familiar shores in a setting they would never again experience.

Amy drained her glass of wine and decided that she would try and locate the errant James.

It had gone eleven and the party, subdued considered the amount of alcohol on offer, was still going strong. No one, in fact, had gone to bed yet as far as she could see, and Amy wasn’t going to be the first. The American crowd, who were either staying at a local hotel or else returning to their own homes, would be the first to go. She imagined that, with the crowd diminished, she might yet find another opportunity to chat to James, to let him see her in a different light. Hopefully not a sozzled light. However much Amy enjoyed having a good time, she knew when to stop drinking. Despite, and she thought once again of the gardener and his high-handed, self-righteous, priggish judgements, what certain people might think.

But still…It was fun mingling and fun being asked to dance, and if her glass continued to be topped up despite her feeble attempts at shaking her head whenever one of the waiters poled along, then why shouldn’t she get into the spirit of things?

Besides, as the evening wore on the wine was doing a very good job of keeping her maudlin thoughts at bay. Having a crush on the boss was the oldest, saddest story in the book. If her brothers ever found out, she didn’t know which of the three of them would die laughing first, and she didn’t think her sisters would be too full of tea and sympathy either. She was a pretty outgoing sort and had had her fair share of boyfriends yet here she was, in the most impossibly stunning location in the world, surrounded by lots of lively people roughly her own age, and what was she doing? Ferreting around to see if she could spot a man who didn’t give her the time of day.

When she thought like that, her spirits dipped once more. Yet again, her outfit was going to be wasted. She had visions of thousands of outfits being bought and wasted in her attempts to steal James’s attention.

On that thought, she set down her wineglass and drifted away from the party and the house. Away from the crowds, the glaring realisation that she wasn’t having the good time she should have been hit her and Amy began to feel a little more upbeat. In a minute she knew that her instinct to make the best out of any situation would surface and she would be fine. She would sit a while and let Nature and her naturally buoyant personality take their course.

She quietly hived off towards the expertly landscaped wooded area, moving steadily away from the noise of the party.

It was late but not particularly cool and the fresh air was doing wonders for her fuzzy head. Indeed, her spirits were on the up when she was aware of movement in a little clearing in the trees. Goodness only knew how they had managed to do it, but the copse was cleverly interspersed with small benches that had been fashioned roughly out of gnarled tree trunks, so that at first glance they looked like part of the natural scenery. Amy went into immediate stealthy mode and didn’t even bother to try and fight her curiosity.

She peered, eventually making out who the two people on the bench were. It was dark, but not completely. Moonlight cast a dull, ephemeral light and as the couple moved apart for a few seconds she saw them clearly. The woman she didn’t recognise. Long, poker-straight hair, very fair skin and a body that was in a state of semi undress.

The man…well, the man…

She felt a tide of nausea rise up her throat and she took a couple of steps backwards, standing perfectly still when a twig snapped under her foot, but the couple were too engrossed in one another to hear the snapping of any twig. In fact, they would probably have been deaf to an approaching intercity train. When he pulled the woman so that she could straddle him, Amy fled.

Her heart was pounding. She tried hard to be quiet, but after five minutes the need to get as far away from the sight of James wrapped around a woman was so great that she stopped giving a damn how much noise she made.

She hit some part of the gardens but she wasn’t sure which part because she could no longer see the house, nor could she hear the strains of the music.

She was sharing a bedroom with Claire, who had turned in a while before. Who was going to miss her?

Amy willed herself to stop running and to get her breathing under control. Okay, here were the facts. The man she was mad about was involved with someone else. She was also lost. The first she would have to put on hold until she could cry about it later. The second she would have to sort out right away or else risk spending the night somewhere in the acres of estate with only her thoughts for company.

With typical pluckiness, Amy drew in a deep breath and did what every good Girl Guide book would suggest at a time like this. She looked for a tall tree. Not too hard. Actually, they all looked pretty tall. Enormous, in fact, to someone pretty short, but, drawing in a deep breath, she kicked off her useless strappy sandals, and yet again wished she were decked out in something more suitable—talk about getting her dress code all wrong—and began to climb.

She got high enough to panic but not nearly high enough to see where the house was, at which point she threw caution to the winds and began yelling her head off.

When she next got up the courage to look down, it was to see the unmistakable shape of the gardener staring up at her. Of course, it would be the gardener.

‘I’m stuck!’

‘Why are you up a tree?’ Rafael felt his lips twitch. That blonde tangle of hair announced its owner with a glaring lack of subtlety.

‘Never mind that! You need to get me down!’

‘Sorry, but I don’t hear you using that special little word.’

‘Now’s not the time for games!’

‘Always time to be polite.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ Amy yelled down, ‘considering your rudeness the last time we met!’ She felt her grip on the tree branch get precariously unsteady and ordered him to go and fetch a ladder instantly! Please!

‘There’s no ladder at the cottage. Hang on and I’ll get you down!’

Amy closed her eyes. She was aware of him climbing up the tree, skilfully manoeuvring the trunk and the branches. She had never felt more of an idiot in her life. Her skirt was everywhere. Floaty was fine at a party but not so fine when it came to shinning up a tree and having to be ignominiously fetched down like a stray cat.

And Lord only knew what it was doing as he coaxed and aided her down, holding onto her when necessary until he could lever her gently to the ground, then he jumped down and landed softly next to her.

‘Thank you.’ Amy dusted down her skirt and avoided looking at him.

‘So. Care to tell me what you were doing up a tree at…’ he looked at his watch ‘…twelve thirty in the morning?’

‘What were you doing awake?’

‘I was up plotting my next attack on the bugs destroying the rose bushes. What do you think? I heard someone screaming like a banshee and thought that I’d better investigate.’

Rafael glanced sideways at the dishevelled figure next to him. He felt utterly bemused by her random behaviour. Like most men, he had certain preferences when it came to women, and was accustomed to certain codes of behaviour. Not even by the wildest stretch of imagination did climbing trees at midnight fit the bill. He tried to picture any one of his erudite, contained and eminently respectable girlfriends up a tree and failed.

‘You haven’t answered my question and, considering you’ve put me through a lot of unnecessary hassle, I think I’m owed an explanation. What the hell did you think you were doing?’

Amy gave him her best look of defiance and folded her arms, but he wasn’t buying it and eventually she shrugged and looked away. ‘Oh, the usual.’

‘Which would be…?’

‘Girl meets boy, girl likes boy, girl…’ she glanced down at her now dirty, creased skirt ‘…dons new outfit to impress boy only to find that boy has scuttled off to the woods so that he can be with another girl.’

‘And in frustration you decided to climb a tree…’

Amy remembered just how obnoxious the man was. She glared at him and told him, sounding to even her own ears like a broken record, to point her in the right direction. At this rate, the infernal man would start thinking that she was stalking him.

‘The house is a stiff walk away, at least if you take the direct route, and I certainly won’t be sending you back through the deep, dark woods. God knows where you might end up.’

He turned on his heel and started walking away and, with a mixture of frustration and resentment, Amy half ran behind him, struggling to keep up with his long strides.

‘I think I can manage!’

Was it possible to read someone’s expression from the inclination of their fast-disappearing back? She thought so!

‘Please wait!’ she yelled. ‘These sandals weren’t designed for sprinting!’

Rafael stopped and turned around, waiting for her to catch up with him. The woman was truly off her rocker. How many sane human beings climbed trees at midnight in an attempt to deal with a broken heart? In fact, how many sane adults climbed trees? He hadn’t climbed a tree since he was a kid!

‘You should have thought of that before you decided to hike your way across the estate,’ Rafael pointed out in the sort of calm voice that someone might use when dealing with the village idiot.

‘I wasn’t “hiking” my way across the estate,’ Amy said icily, ‘I was…’

‘I’m all ears.’ He carried on walking, thankfully at a less ridiculous pace, and she reluctantly fell into step with him.

‘Taking a bit of time out to get a breath of fresh air.’

‘You seem to do quite a bit of that, don’t you? Breathing in the fresh air and covering great distances in the process?’

‘Yes, I like walking!’

They had reached his house. Actually just a few more minutes of running would have seen her safely to his front door instead of up a tree, not that that option was particularly appealing either, but at least her expensive skirt would still have been intact. Now it was fit only to join the beaded silver shoes in that great wardrobe in the sky.

‘You’ll have to get out of those things. You’re filthy.’

‘I want to go back to the house. I have to go back there. My clothes are all there.’

‘I’m not taking you. You’ve put me out already.’

‘I know it’s quite a walk, but you can drive me there, can’t you? I mean, you must have a car tucked away somewhere.’ Amy suddenly felt close to breaking-point. She wrapped her arms tightly around her body and kept herself very still so that she didn’t burst into tears.

‘I’ll run you a bath.’

‘Please take me back to the house. Please.’

‘You’re in no fit state,’ Rafael told her without preamble. ‘Never mind the state of your clothes, you look as though you’re about to collapse. You need to get yourself together. Now sit down. I’ll run you a bath and, while it’s running, I’ll make you something hot to drink.’

The woman was a nuisance but Rafael felt a twinge of concern if only because the same tiring feistiness that got on his nerves was so obviously missing in action.

Before she could launch into another round of pleading to be taken back to the house, he was heading up the stairs so that he could run her a bath. Then he fetched a clean towel from the cupboard and one of his shirts, which she would have to wear whether she liked it or not. He would stick her clothes in the wash and they would be clean in time for her in the morning. After that, he would send her on her way so that she could, presumably, continue to ruin her life by falling in love with inappropriate men.

He returned to find her slumped on the ground in the sitting room.

‘I didn’t want to get your nice clean furniture dirty,’ she said, meeting his questioning eyes. ‘I’m disgusting.’ She stood up. ‘I give you yet another pair of ruined shoes. Two in one day. A record even for me,’ she told him gloomily, dangling her sorry sandals in one hand.

‘What happened to pair one?’ Rafael found himself asking.

‘Waterlogged in a kayaking incident this morning.’

‘Right. What else? The bathroom is upstairs. Leave your clothes outside the door and I’ll stick them in the wash. They’ll be ready by morning.’

‘I can’t spend the night here.’ She hovered, tapping one bare foot behind her.

‘Have a bath. We’ll discuss it when you come out. I’ve left one of my shirts for you to put on.’

Well, there was nothing to discuss. Amy emerged twenty minutes later, feeling refreshed and wearing only her underwear and his white shirt, which reached a respectable mid-thigh level. It might seem odd to whoever happened to still be up that she was returning to the house in a man’s shirt and not much else, but with any luck the place would be dead. Probably aside from James, who would still be gambolling somewhere in the woods with his lady friend. She felt another attack of self-pity threaten and willed it away.

Rafael, looking disgustingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, was waiting for her in the sitting room with a cup of hot chocolate on the table, which he pointed at as soon as he saw her.

His shirt drowned her and she was slight enough to begin with. She had scrubbed off all the warpaint and her skin was satin-smooth with a faint golden tan that must have accumulated over the summer. Her eyebrows, in contrast to the vanilla-coloured, unruly hair, were dark. He wondered whether it was this unlikely contrast that lent her face such animation, even when she wasn’t speaking. Such as now.

‘Feel better?’

‘Not much. Thanks for asking.’ Amy curled her legs under her and reached forward for the mug, enjoying the creaminess of the drink. She hadn’t had hot chocolate for ages. It reminded her of her childhood.

Rafael frowned, a little disconcerted by the bluntness of the reply to a perfectly polite question.

‘Your clothes are in the wash,’ he informed her, skirting around his reluctant curiosity. ‘So, I suppose I could drive you back but the car is parked a walk away.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why is your car parked a walk away? Don’t your employers think that you might want to go out now and again? You might be a very diligent gardener, but don’t they think that you might want a bit of time out now occasionally?’

‘Easier to park it behind the copse on the lane out of the grounds. The alternative would be to drive over the lawns or, of course, through the trees. The grounds were designed with aesthetics in mind and, believe it or not, a strip of tarmac winding across the manicured gardens wasn’t considered particularly fetching.’

‘Do you ever stop being sarcastic?’ She sniffed, aware that her composure was very fragile and the gardener was not the sort to make a sympathetic listener.

Amy looked at him. He was leaning forwards, elbows on knees, his hands dangling lightly between his legs. For someone who had been unexpectedly dragged out of a deep sleep, he seemed very well dressed, in a pair of khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, with some worn tan loafers.

‘You weren’t sleeping, were you?’ she asked, to distract herself from thinking about her reasons for being in his house. ‘I didn’t drag you out of bed with my yelling, did I? You don’t look like someone who’s been interrupted in the middle of a deep sleep.’

‘I was…working, as a matter of fact…’

‘You were working?’ She grinned, forgetting the trauma of her evening for a few minutes. She noticed the sprinkling of dark hair visible just where his collar was open and hurriedly averted her eyes. She wasn’t sure why exactly she was aware of the man, but she was. She put it down to his barefaced arrogance, which would get under anyone’s skin. ‘Working on what?’ she asked, still grinning. ‘No, don’t tell me…that plot of yours to get rid of the bugs in the rose bushes! Why did you tell me that I’d woken you up? Did you want to make me feel even more guilty than I already felt?’

‘There are two bedrooms but one’s not made up. I’ll take that one and you can have my bed.’

‘No way. I’m not sleeping in your bed!’

‘Why not?’ Rafael asked wearily. ‘Come on. Drink that up and go upstairs.’

Amy flushed. He had used that tone of voice with her before. In fact, he seemed to have made a habit of using it since she had made his unfortunate acquaintance. It was the tone of voice of an adult addressing a child. Was that, she wondered, what he thought of her? A kid who got into scrapes?

More to the point, was that, she wondered miserably, what James had thought of her? No more than a kid he could have a joke with?

She quietly placed the mug on the table and stood up, not looking at him, waiting for him to lead her up the stairs, acutely aware that she talked too much, asked too many questions, laughed too loudly. This man might be arrogant and standoffish, but she was in his territory and if he wanted her to shut up, then she would shut up.

Had James wanted her to shut up now and again as well? She had thought he was interested in her but had he been or had he really only been responding to her chattiness, rolling his eyes to the ceiling the minute her back had been turned?

‘Okay. Spit it out.’

Amy, staring down as she followed him to the bedroom, almost collided into his huge, immovable frame where he had stopped outside the bedroom door.

‘Spit what out?’

‘Whatever’s eating you up. We might as well forget about getting any sleep tonight.’

Rafael leaned against the doorframe and stared down at her. And this, he thought, was precisely why he didn’t go for the emotional types. They poured their hearts out, they sobbed, they lacked restraint.

Amy’s blue eyes tangled with his deep, deep, almost black ones and she felt momentarily giddy.

‘I need to sit down,’ she said shakily.

Rafael stood aside and made a sweeping gesture in the direction of his bed, which, to Amy, looked unbelievably tempting. To hell with prudish, maidenly qualms. She was suddenly exhausted.

His bed smelt of him, a clean, masculine smell that made her want to close her eyes and inhale deeply because it was a weirdly comforting smell. And why pretend? She had grown up bunking down and sharing beds. Her mother had sworn that it did the immune system a world of good. She slipped under the luxurious, silky soft quilt and yawned.

‘I just can’t believe it,’ Amy said, just as Rafael was about to leave the room and head back downstairs so that he could resume the conference call to Australia that had been so rudely interrupted. He turned around and narrowed his eyes on the small figure now propped up against the pillows. She looked ridiculously fragile, he thought, which seemed incongruous considering the size of her mouth.

‘Can’t believe what?’ Rafael was not a man who was accustomed to the emotional complexities of women. He had always listened to James’s tales of woe with a certain amount of amusement and privately congratulated himself on his wisdom in going for women who didn’t play games or have moods or weren’t, in short, a mess. He didn’t sleep around and his breakups had never been messy. At thirty-four, which didn’t exactly qualify him as The Old Man of the Sea, he nevertheless considered himself pretty much together emotionally. A man who knew what he wanted in life, and that included women.

‘Can’t believe how I could ever have been so stupid. I mean…’ Amy’s voice wobbled as she considered the depth of her stupidity ‘…just because he looked at me once or twice and chatted now and again…how could I have got it into my head? I mean…has that ever happened to you? Has it? You just completely misread someone else’s signals and then fabricate a whole fairy tale in your head that’s just way, way off target?’ ‘No.’

‘What…never?’ Amy asked, temporarily disconcerted.

‘Never.’

‘Oh. So I guess you wouldn’t really know what it’s like to be…to be…’ ‘No. I wouldn’t.’ He was fairly sure he was about to find out, unless, of course, he put a stop to this nonsense, shut the bedroom door firmly and only resurfaced when she was about to leave in the morning. ‘But I can tell you that he’s not worth it.’

Amy tried to focus on James, his charming, boyish face, his blond hair that always managed to look ever so slightly tousled, though out of the corner of her eye she couldn’t help but notice Rafael’s brooding presence by the door. He was probably sick to death of her, she couldn’t help thinking, but for some reason she didn’t want to be on her own. She felt too vulnerable.

‘You can’t say that. You don’t know him.’

‘I know that no one is worth shedding tears over.’

‘Oh!’ Reluctantly she abandoned the temptation to wallow and frowned at Rafael curiously. ‘I guess you’ve never been in love…’

Rafael was fast regretting his impulse to listen to the woman because he had momentarily felt sorry for her.

‘I’m not entirely sure I believe in the concept,’ he told her abruptly. ‘Romantics hang onto the idea for dear life because they think it makes sense of life, but for me…no. I think I’ll avoid it like the plague if the net result is what I’m looking at right now.’

Amy got up the energy to glare but it didn’t last long. ‘At least we Romantics have fun!’

‘If fun is lying on a stranger’s bed at one-thirty in the morning blubbing…’ Rafael said dryly and Amy was forced to concede defeat.

‘Okay. You win. I’m a fool. Maybe next time lucky.’ She gave him a watery grin and it was such a brave pretence of a smile that Rafael found himself reluctantly smiling back. ‘Maybe,’ she mused, ‘next time I won’t fall for the boss…’