Читать книгу His Suitable Bride: Rafael's Suitable Bride / The Spaniard's Marriage Bargain / Cordero's Forced Bride - Эбби Грин, Kate Walker - Страница 11

THE evening and following day were a nightmare of misery and tension. Cristina had handed Rafael back his ring, but he had refused to accept it. Instead, he had looked at her with a long, cool expression and told her to consider the implications of not wearing it. The explanations to his mother, which would be uncomfortable at the very best. What would she say—that they had had a massive row and she had decided to call the whole thing off? His mother, he had assured her, would smile indulgently and probably tell her something wise about pre-wedding nerves. Or else she could go for the truth, tell his mother … that what? She considered herself at the wrong end of a deal which she had now decided she didn’t care for—a deal to marry one of the most eligible men in the world?

‘Wear the ring,’ he had told her. ‘We can discuss this later.’

Coward that she was, Cristina, faced with the scenario which Rafael had succinctly depicted in sparse but extremely graphic detail, had silently slipped the ring back onto her finger, but it had felt like barbed wire against her skin.

She had smiled, and the following day had limped by, each minute feeling like a lifetime, until finally, at four in the evening, they’d been standing by the door with their cases by their feet, ready to face the long journey back to London.

She had managed to successfully avoid ‘the cosy chat’ situation by disappearing outside at all available opportunities, and then reappearing with the excuse that she was seeking inspiration for her landscape project, that she couldn’t get enough of the countryside. Towards the end Maria had been eyeing her with a puzzled expression, and Cristina had realised that she’d been walking the thin line between appearing engagingly committed to her ambitions and a complete lunatic.

She gave Maria a hug of genuine warmth, and suddenly a small but promising idea presented itself to her. Here she was, idiotically in love with a man who felt nothing for her but a temporary attraction, a man who saw her as a suitable partner. On paper, she made sense—right background, right connections, even the added bonus of a history among parents. He would marry her because, like any sensible investment, she would stand the test of time. He hadn’t banked on her response on discovering that she was a useful commodity. In fact, he hadn’t banked on her finding out that little gem, although it wouldn’t have worried him unduly if she had, because it would never have occurred to him that she wouldn’t go along for the ride. Well connected she might be, but she was no model, nor did she have the finesse of someone whose life had been relatively pampered. He had probably imagined that her gratitude would take her right up to the altar and beyond, whatever his reasons for marrying her.

This was an engagement from which she had to wriggle out with as much subtlety as she could muster, because to admit to anyone that she was marrying a man who saw her as a sensible investment … Well, she would sooner have grabbed the nearest spade, dug a hole for herself and jumped in. The humiliation would have been unendurable. Her sisters would have smiled sympathetically and encouraged her to go along with it because, after all, she wasn’t getting any younger. But behind her back they would have shaken their heads in sympathy and thanked their lucky stars that they’d been blessed with husbands who had genuinely been attracted to them.

And her parents would have supported her, of course, but they too would have retired to their bedroom and, with no one around to hear them, lamented the fact that their poor baby would never know the meaning of true love.

Frankly, it was too horrible to think about, and her only solution was to extricate herself with as much dignity as she could.

She beamed at Maria and stood back, her hands resting lightly on Maria’s arms. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that hateful diamond glittering mockingly at her, and she sighed.

‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it’s been coming up here.’ She allowed her eyes to linger on the magnificent landscape. The extensive acreage, lawned and forested, blended seamlessly into the fields and open countryside, giving you the feeling that you were, indeed, mistress of all you surveyed.

‘London has a buzz,’ she said, allowing a note of wistful sadness to creep into her voice—and at the back of her mind wondering whence she had dredged her acting skills, she who had always felt so strongly that playing games was a waste of time. ‘But my heart really belongs in the country.’

‘I can tell,’ Maria said wryly.

‘Oh, you mean you’ve noticed? I wasn’t that obvious, was I?’ She glanced at Rafael standing alongside her and looked away hurriedly at his raised brows. ‘Rafael and I have discussed this so many times … the fact that I can’t bear the thought of living in London for the rest of my days …’

‘You’re only young, my dear.’

‘I know!’ Cristina interjected, determined to capitalise on whatever headway she had gained. ‘But I like to think ahead. The bigger picture and all that.’ She fiddled with the lump of rock on her finger. ‘I really had only planned on living in London for a brief time, until I found my feet over here. It seemed the most promising place to start, and I was right; my flower shop is doing great. In fact, Anthea and I, well, we’ve actually thought about extending it, opening another shop—maybe incorporating a landscape-design service. And naturally we would want to do that somewhere in the country. Anthea’s from the country herself … Well, the New Forest area, in actual fact—not entirely sure where that is … quite rural, I gather …’ She could feel herself losing sight of her original purpose, which had been to build for herself the foundations for her eventual escape from the predicament in which she now found herself.

‘You have ambitions … that’s good. So many young women these days are content to squander the money their parents have worked hard to earn, and then they wonder why they aren’t happy.’ Maria looked at Rafael, and Cristina knew that she was thinking about her son’s ex-wife and the lavish lifestyle which had brought her no happiness. This was not the right road. She didn’t want to be considered some kind of paragon of virtue and, before any favourable comparisons could be made, she broke in firmly.

‘The dilemma of where I would want to live, well, that’s a big one … best left for another time, I guess. I’m just hoping that it’s one that can be sorted … but enough of all that.’ She made a show of looking at her watch and then suggested that perhaps it was time to leave.

‘That,’ Rafael said as the house disappeared from view, ‘Was a moderately convincing performance.’

‘Here is the ring back. I can’t bear having it on my finger.’ She wriggled it off and dropped it neatly on the shiny walnut gear-box. The thing had cost an arm and a leg, but instead of taking it Rafael barely gave it a glance. She thought that he had, perhaps, made a crucial mistake in choosing her. He had assumed that her privileged background would work in his favour. Just one more tick in the box. However, had she been from a less advantaged background, then his casual dismissal of that fantastically expensive ring now juddering as the car picked up speed would have impressed her to death. She hoped not sufficiently for her to have ignored her broken heart, but who knew?

With no one around, she felt that surge of hurt and anger rush through her once more.

‘You’re making a mistake,’ Rafael said conversationally, his eyes focused on the strip of road ahead.

Cristina had determined to maintain a dignified silence for the duration of the journey—after all she had already said what she’d needed to—but there was no way that she was going to let that remark go unanswered. She turned to him and valiantly squashed that little flip her stomach did whenever her eyes were confronted with the sheer beauty of his face. The last thing she needed was to be ambushed by her body.

‘I would have been making the biggest mistake of my life if I had married you,’ she said bitterly.

‘How do you figure that?’

‘I …’ She drew in a trembling breath and blinked rapidly to clear the watery film from her eyes. ‘I thought we had something special—’

‘There are tissues in the glove compartment.’

‘How can you be so … so … cold!’ Cristina yelled, shocked by this newly found capacity for rage. Where had that placid person gone—The one who was always upbeat and never, but never, shouted?

‘I am not being cold,’ Rafael said with exaggerated patience. ‘I am simply trying to take the temperature down a notch or two. Getting worked up doesn’t get anyone anywhere.’

‘Oh, sorry, I forgot. You don’t do hysterics.’

‘No. I don’t.’ Without warning, he swerved the car off the main road and down one of the winding country lanes which they had not yet left behind. It would be a while before they hit the motorway system.

Cristina drew back into her chair, alarmed when he killed the engine, unclasped his seat belt and then swung his body around so that he was facing her.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked unsteadily.

‘I’m having a conversation.’

‘We can talk while you drive.’ She looked away and chewed her lower lip until there was the metallic taste of blood on her tongue.

‘We could,’ Rafael agreed smoothly. ‘But I prefer to see your face when you’re calling me a monster.’

‘I wasn’t calling you a monster.’

‘Weren’t you? You accuse me of doing you the disservice of asking you to be my wife because I think you would make a good wife—where is the insult in that?’

‘I can’t marry anyone for those reasons,’ Cristina said, not looking at him. The view of fields and trees was a lot less threatening.

‘You want me to tell you that I love you,’ Rafael ground out, and for a few seconds Cristina just wanted to cover his beautiful mouth with her hand, to stop that flow of words which she knew was coming. ‘I cannot,’ he said flatly. It was his turn now to feel outrage that she could have seen his generous offer as some kind of slap in the face. ‘I’ve been down that road. I’ve told you that. Been down that road and seen for myself what lies at the end of it. So, no, love doesn’t enter the equation.’

‘But …’ Cristina clung to those wonderful, tender memories of their love-making like a drowning person clasping a life belt, even though she could feel her fingers losing their grip as the waves continued to batter her.

‘Yes, we made love.’

‘Was that all part and parcel of the arrangement?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Here she was again, turned into a shrieking virago. ‘I am not being ridiculous!’

‘I never realised that you possessed a voice that could shatter glass.’

‘Nor did I!’ But she drew in a few deep, steadying breaths. ‘We made love …’

‘And it was good.’ His own voice dropped a notch as he recalled their never-ending sessions between the sheets. Why the hell was she making this so difficult? She had been shocked at what she had interpreted as unromantic behaviour, but she would, he knew, get over that. She would come round to his point of view. He wondered whether to risk touching her, and decided that she would probably slap his hand away because she wasn’t—as he was discovering—quite as meek and mild as he had imagined. ‘Stop for a minute, Cristina, and think about what I’m saying. We’re good together—good in bed … and out of it, come to that.’

‘And so marrying me would make sense.’ She felt jealousy claw at her when she thought of that other woman, the one into whom he had poured all his love, leaving him now without any to give anyone else. She had stolen his dreams and left him with a spreadsheet on which his future could be mapped out like figures in a profit-and-loss column. ‘Rafael, the future isn’t some kind of business deal that can be put together on a piece of paper. I won’t sign my life away to someone because it seems to make sense. I would rather take my chances and wait for someone who might be able to give me the whole big thing.’

For a few unsettling seconds, Rafael wondered whether his smoothly made plans were in danger of being derailed. Having come this far in overthrowing his habits of a lifetime, in finally accepting the inescapable truth that he needed to settle down, he began to flounder at the preposterous notion that she might, really, be serious. Sure she had handed him back the ring, but women, he knew, were notorious for emotional outbursts later to be regretted.

‘There is no such thing as the whole big thing,’ he growled, uneasily aware that this was possibly not the right approach to be adopting in the face of mutiny.

‘Maybe not for you,’ Cristina snapped back, once again amazed at the shrew that seemed to have emerged from deep inside her. ‘Or maybe you had your stab at the whole big thing and it didn’t work out—but that doesn’t mean that I’m prepared to give up my own dream on the back of the fact that yours fell flat!’

‘You were happy enough to be my wife forty-eight hours ago,’ Rafael told her, pointing out what he considered to be an inescapable truth. ‘I’m finding it hard to understand what essentially has changed. I’m the same man I was then. Look at me!’ he commanded. ‘Have I suddenly turned into someone else? Morphed into an ogre? Grown an extra head? No.’

Cristina knew just how persuasive he could be when he put his mind to it. Whatever he wanted, he had once told her with a touch of satisfaction, he got. Simple as that. And sure, when he looked at her like this—covering her with his eyes, willing her to absorb what he was saying and yield to his greater wisdom—she could almost believe that he had a point, that love was just a word that was meaningless. Almost, but not quite.

‘You don’t understand,’ she muttered.

‘Then enlighten me.’

The silence stretched between them until he finally clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Okay—one. Do we have good times when we are together?’

‘I guess.’

‘You guess?’

‘Okay, we do. Rafael, you can’t sum things up like—’

‘No. It’s your turn to do the listening now. Two. Do I or do I not turn you on?’

‘That’s unfair. You know you do.’

‘I know.’ His mouth curled in sensuous satisfaction as his mind lingered on the very seductive image of her writhing under his exploring hands.

‘Three. Would I or would I not make sure that your every material need was met?’

‘You’re asking the obvious.’

‘That’s what life is all about. The obvious. The minute we start layering it with shades of grey, we start getting caught in quicksand. Shall I tell you something very obvious?’

Cristina thought no, because nothing with Rafael was as obvious as he liked to pretend, least of all when he was attempting to appear as pure as the driven snow. She knew that verbally he could run rings around her, and that quicksand he had mentioned … Well, she would find herself well and truly drowning in it.

‘What?’ she heard herself saying.

‘There’s one place we haven’t made love.’

The atmosphere was suddenly charged. From being on the defensive, Cristina could feel the drag of her senses pulling her under. His eyes were slumberous, and sent shivers racing impossibly through her body.

‘You … you can’t divert me with … by …’

‘With … by …?’ he mimicked, amused, back in control. ‘Anyone would think that I had sent you into a tailspin.’

He reached forward and unclicked her seat belt, then he pushed it away, his arm brushing against her breast, making her gasp at the contact.

‘Now tell me that this is a bad idea.’ He leaned in towards her and crushed her open mouth under his, and Cristina’s mind emptied of all thought as a blistering passion was unleashed. Hands that wanted desperately to push him away curled around his neck. She couldn’t get enough of his kisses.

She had spent half the night berating herself for her foolishness in ever having got involved with him. She had given herself lecture upon lecture on the importance of love and the sanctity of marriage. In her head she had laughed derisively at him, and he had quailed at the logic of her arguments, admitting defeat and then begging her to be patient with him, to show him how to love. She had been the dominatrix cracking the whip, the bearer of truth and light, leading the way, fully in charge.

At no point in those imaginings had he scuppered proceedings by daring to touch her. Was that why she was now … Lord, but no! … allowing him to pull her across? To scramble until she was on his lap, where she could feel the pulsating of his stiffened member through the fine fabric of her summer dress?

She couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate style for making love in a constricted space.

‘I don’t want this.’

Rafael held her face in both his hands, looked at her seriously, because forcing himself on a woman when she said no, even if her body said Yes, was not his style.

‘You mean that?’ he breathed huskily.

Cristina could feel herself drowning in his amazing eyes. Even when she blinked to clear her head, she still felt giddy.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know …’

‘How can I change your mind?’ Rafael asked softly, slipping his hand under the hemline of her dress which had ridden halfway up her thighs. He toyed provocatively with the lacy waistband of her underwear, running his finger along her stomach in a repetitive movement that was driving her crazy.

‘I can’t think when you’re doing stuff like that.’ Cristina heard the weak craving in her voice with despair, because there was still some small part of her brain functioning and it was telling her to stop this madness right now.

‘Good,’ Rafael encouraged soothingly. His finger dipped a little lower so that he could now feel the silkiness of her pubic hair, and just the tip of that crease which was teasing him with its promise of honeyed sweetness. ‘Thinking can be a much overrated virtue,’ he murmured. He slid his finger deeper and groaned as she squirmed against it.

‘This is crazy.’ Was it, though? Cristina now wondered. She felt confused, horrified at her inability to resist him—but pushing up behind those emotions was the thought that perhaps this was what she needed for closure. She needed to do this, to make love with him one last time. She couldn’t go through her life haunted by the memory of his touch. She would be greedy and take this now. ‘I mean,’ she curved, pliant, against him. ‘What if someone drives up this lane and sees us?’

Rafael breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure what he would have done had she turned away from him. His body was on fire, as it always seemed to be when she was around, and in this neck of the woods passing motels with cold showers were few and far between.

‘No one drives up these lanes,’ he told her thickly, pushing his fingers deeper into that inviting cleft, and then cupping her with his hand. He could feel her dampness against his skin, an unbelievable turn-on. As was the knowledge that even in the midst of her rant she still couldn’t resist him, still couldn’t deny the demands of her own body.

He suddenly felt on top of the world.

Her dress was front-opening via a series of tiny, fiddly imitation-pearl buttons. Even though he felt on the verge of exploding, wanted to rip them apart, Rafael was going to take his time.

‘In that case, why are they here?’

‘For randy teenagers like us who can’t hold on any longer.’ He shot her one of those crooked grins that made her toes curl. In truth, everywhere around them was deserted. In the distance, she could spot some cows relaxing in the shade of a copse of trees. It was idyllic.

He began undoing the tiny buttons one by one, savouring the sight of her creamy flesh as it was gradually exposed to his hungry eyes.

Her lace bra was a flimsy barrier for her breasts. Through the white lace, her pink nipples peeped at him, making his taste buds go into immediate overdrive.

The Bentley, which was a comfortable ride, was now revealing the additional and unadvertised bonus of being incredibly spacious when it came to situations like this, especially for someone of his powerful build. He would definitely have to bear that in mind when they next took a drive through the countryside. Forget the Ferrari. Bring the Bentley.

Her dress was now opened to the waist, but instead of pulling it down, Rafael reached behind and expertly unclasped her bra, and as it loosened he pushed it up so that her heavy breasts spilled free.

The unease which he had earlier felt, when she had removed the engagement ring and given him her moralistic speech about love and romance, had disappeared.

He sighed and leaned forward so that he could lose himself in her.

Cristina watched his beautiful dark head descend and closed her eyes, arching back so that she could present her breasts to him. He adored them. Of that there was little doubt, and she would enjoy his adoration, even if it was only of her body, the least important part of her as far as she was concerned.

As he suckled on them, she felt that familiar fire course through her body, igniting those wanton urges which he had discovered and made his own.

She clasped her fingers into his hair and once more closed her eyes, sighing with a mixture of regret and pleasure as he continued to feast on her breasts, only finally surfacing when he couldn’t, he confessed, hold back anymore.

‘This is what you do to me,’ he murmured roughly, as always slightly shaken by her ability to completely wipe out all his self-control.

She levered herself up as he jerkily unzipped his trousers. She, too, was on the point of no return. Watching him lavish attention on her was almost as erotic as the actual physical touch. For a man who could be arrogant, frighteningly self-assured and sometimes just plain exasperating in his need to control his surroundings, he was vulnerable in his desire.

The front windows had been rolled down, and a balmy breeze brought with it the distant sound of cows lowing and, from somewhere far away, a tractor turning over the fields.

Cristina, carried away on the wings of powerful, drugging passion, couldn’t imagine ever doing this with anyone else. There were a lot of things she couldn’t imagine doing with anyone else, but she closed her mind to all of that. And as their bodies joined, and she felt him thrust in her, she succumbed to those racing heights of pleasure that had her gasping and moaning and shuddering against him.

After a timeless period, they surfaced and their eyes met, Rafael’s slumberous with satisfaction, Cristina’s, if not with regret, then certainly with sadness.

She edged off him and did her best to straighten herself up in the confines of the car. She pulled down her bra, ignoring his lazy request that she remove it and shove it in the glove compartment.

‘I mean,’ he commented thoughtfully, ‘We still have quite a distance to go. What if we decide that we need to take another break?’

‘We won’t.’ She finished fastening the last of the pearl buttons. When she got back to her apartment, she would have the dress laundered and put away. Somewhere out of sight and out of reach, but still accessible should she ever want to take it out of its wrapping and remember.

She made a point of yawning and rested her head against the window.

Rafael was more than happy to let her sleep. Frankly, at this point in time, he was more than happy to let her do anything. That silly disagreement had been sorted in the most effective way possible. As he manoeuvred the Bentley back onto the main road, he glanced across and saw that she appeared, indeed, to have dozed off. She had forgotten to slip the engagement ring back on, but she would when they were back in London and maybe—who knew?—he might even talk to her about a country house. Not, naturally, as their main property, but something of a bolt hole. He knew that she had fabricated that whole nonsense about wanting to set up premises out of London—a fairy story to try and sow seeds of a possible cause for break-up in his mother’s head—but there was probably something of a grain of truth there. She was not the sort of girl who belonged in the urban jungle.

The car ate up the miles back to London, and it was only when they slowed up to accommodate the weight of Sunday evening traffic getting into the city that Cristina opened her eyes, surprised that she had actually managed to nod off after all.

She must have been more tired than she had imagined, because closing her eyes had been the only ploy she could think of to avoid talking to Rafael. She didn’t regret making love with him one last time, but she knew that the next conversation she would have with him was not going to be a comfortable one. He was in a buoyant frame of mind; one quick glance at his contented profile confirmed that, as did the jazz CD playing softly in the background. When he felt relaxed and happy, he had once confided to her, he liked to listen to music, and jazz music at those times was his preferred favourite.

‘You’re awake,’ Rafael said, surprising her because she hadn’t even been aware that he was looking at her. He looked across at her and his lips curved into a smile of pure sensuality. It was enough to make any woman do that impossibly Victorian thing of swooning.

‘How much longer before I’m home?’ was her response, and Rafael frowned, momentarily taken aback by a certain coolness in her voice. Immediately and generously, however, he put that down to simply waking up in a grumpy mood.