Читать книгу Under the Spaniard's Lock and Key - Ким Лоренс, Kim Lawrence - Страница 7

RAFAEL worked his way across the room crowded with members of two of the most ancient and powerful families in Spain, brought together to celebrate the baptism of the twin boys who were the result of the marriage that had joined the two dynasties.

His cousin Alfonso, a frown on his face, approached.

Rafael arched a dark brow. ‘A problem?’

‘I’ve just been speaking with the manager, Rafe.’

Rafael nodded encouragingly.

His cousin shook his head and said quietly. ‘I can’t let you pay for this, Rafael.’

‘You don’t think I’m good for it?’

His cousin laughed. The extent of Rafael’s fortune was something that was debated in financial pages and gossip columns alike, but even the most conservative estimates involved a number of noughts that Alfonso, who was not a poor man himself, struggled to get his head around.

Like all the Castenadas family members present, Alfonso was old money, though like many of the old families, including his wife’s, the Castenadas family were not the power they once had been.

Except Rafael, the family maverick whose massive fortune was not down to inherited wealth.

When Rafael’s father died in a sailing accident he did leave his son an ancestral pile and several thousands of acres, but the land that hadn’t been sold off had been mortgaged to the hilt and the ancestral pile had been sadly neglected.

The estancia had needed a massive investment of, not just cash, but enthusiasm and expertise to bring it into the twenty-first century.

Rafael had both.

In the last year Rafael-Luis Castenadas had added a newspaper and a hotel chain to his already wide-ranging holdings. It was a long way from the disgrace Alfonso’s uncle had always predicted his son would bring to the family name.

‘If he was still with us Uncle Felipe would have been proud of all you’ve achieved.’

Rafael raised a dark slanted brow to a satirical angle. ‘You think so?’

Alfonso looked surprised by the question. ‘Of course!’

Rafael shrugged, recalling his father describing his career choice as a ‘passing phase.’

‘All things are, I suppose possible.’ All things except his ability to please his father, Rafael mused, unable to recall the exact moment he had realised this, but able to recall the sense of release he had got when he’d finally stopped trying.

Following this revelation there had been a short interval when out of sheer perversity he had adopted a lifestyle guaranteed to embarrass his father.

He had rapidly outgrown the rebellion, but he was still paying the price for this youthful self-indulgence, those early colourful bad-boy antics had attracted the attention of the press at the time, and Rafael had never totally shaken that youthful reputation or the interest of the media.

‘But surely…’ Alfonso protested.

Rafael’s lips curved into a sardonic smile.

‘My father was an elitist snob—being a Castenadas was his religion.’ How anyone could think an accident of birth made him somehow better than his fellow man had always seemed bizarre to Rafael.

The lack of emotion in the dry delivery, as much as the sentiment, made his cousin stare.

Reading the shock and disapproval Alfonso struggled to hide reminded Rafael that, though he had always got on well with his cousin, who was the epitome of a decent guy, when it came to family pride they were not reading from the same page.

‘You will allow me to give my godsons this gift.’

Responding to the charm in Rafael’s smile—very few did not—Alfonso grinned back. ‘Gift? What were the cases of vintage wine?’

Rafael’s arm moved in a dismissive gesture. ‘Wine is a good investment and I managed to locate some rare vintages.’

‘I’ll say, and I’m grateful on the boys’ behalf but that’s not the point, Rafael.’

‘The point is I wish to do this for my godsons. They are, after all, my heirs.’

Alfonso laughed. ‘I won’t raise their hopes. You’re thirty-two, Rafael—I think you might manage an heir or two of your own,’ he observed drily.

‘I have no interest in marriage.’ Why perpetuate a flawed formula?

He was surrounded by failed marriages, unhappy marriages and expensive divorces. If marriage were a horse it would have been put down years ago on compassionate grounds, but it was a product of wishful thinking and people, it seemed, needed dreams.

Rafael was content with reality.

He rarely had a relationship that lasted more than a couple of months, which was as a rule about the time when he started hearing ‘we’ a lot. It was also generally around this time he began to find the qualities that had first attracted him to a woman irritating.

He was not waiting to find his soulmate.

‘I will leave the domestic bliss to you and Angelina. I do not buy a restaurant if I want a meal and I do not intend to take a wife in order to have sex.’

Alfonso winced and said, ‘Nice analogy.’

‘I do not have a reputation for niceness,’ Rafael reminded him. He did, however, have a reputation for being utterly ruthless and single-minded when he pursued a goal. It was debated whether it was this ruthlessness, his sharp analytical mind or a combination of the two that accounted for his success.

Rafael, not given to introspection, had never attempted to analyse the formula; he did what he did because he liked the challenge—when he stopped enjoying it he would walk away.

An hour later all was still going smoothly—so far, at least. In the days when he’d had to attend every last family event, Rafael had seen far too many that had gone sour to rule out the possibility totally.

It might at least liven the proceedings, he mused, and almost immediately felt ashamed of the selfish sentiment. This day meant a great deal to the proud parents so for their sake he hoped the day stayed boring.

With luck he would not be obliged to see his family until next Christmas.

He put down the drink he had been nursing since he arrived, glanced at his watch and wondered when he could leave without causing offence.

‘Have I thanked you for all this?’

He turned at the sound of the voice behind him, the hard light of cynicism that made several of his relatives uncomfortable absent from his eyes as he smiled at Angelina.

It was hard not to smile, not just because his cousin’s wife was a beautiful woman—it was more than that. Angelina was the most genuine person he had ever met, she had a warmth that made people around her feel good.

A tall woman, and one blessed with symmetrical features set in a perfectly oval face, a slim, elegant figure and an aura of serenity, his cousin’s wife was probably many men’s idea of a perfect woman.

Rafael had wondered more than once why he wasn’t attracted to her in a sexual way, but he never had been.

‘Alfonso has already thanked me.’

She watched the uncomfortable look cross his face and gave him a hug. ‘Why do you hate people to know you can be nice?’ she wondered.

‘I am not nice. I always have an ulterior motive—ask anyone.’

‘Yes, you’re totally selfish. I can see how much you’re enjoying yourself.’ She angled a quizzical look at his dark face. ‘Wondering when to make your escape?’

There was an answering smile in Rafael’s eyes as he asked, ‘Should I mention you have baby vomit on your shoulder?’

Angelina carried on smiling, displaying a perfect set of white teeth as the dimple in her chin deepened. ‘No, Rafael, you should not.’

The first time he had seen Angelina and Alfonso together it had been obvious even to a cynic like him that they were crazy about each other, and as far as he could see the honeymoon was still on.

Ten years down the line, who knew?

‘Motherhood suits you.’ He saw the flicker cross her face and knew he had inadvertently dredged up a memory.

‘Thank you, Rafael. The twins, it’s hard not to think about…It was all so different this time.’

Rafael had no trouble interpreting the disjointed sentence. He watched her swallow and wished he had kept his mouth shut.

He saw her lips quiver and hoped she was not going to start crying. He put a lid on his empathy, a sympathetic word or gesture now would no doubt open the floodgates and he had a major dislike of female tears. ‘Why think about it?’ he said brusquely.

Rafael’s philosophy was if you made a mistake you lived with it. Beating yourself up over it was to his way of thinking a pointless exercise, and an indulgence.

‘You’re right.’

‘If only more people realised that.’

Generally appreciative of his ironic sense of humour, Angelina did not smile.

Her shadowed eyes were trained on the far end of the vaulted hall where her husband, a son balanced expertly on each arm, paused to allow admiring relations to kiss the cherubic cheeks.

‘He is such a good father.’

‘And you are a good mother, Angelina.’

She shook her head. ‘It makes me think…did I do…?’ She lifted her troubled brown eyes to Rafael. ‘Was it the right thing?’

Rafael had no doubt. ‘You did the right thing.’

Rafael had strong feelings about advice: he never requested it and he never gave it.

It was a sound position, it was just a pity that he had forgotten and made an exception for Angelina.

‘But I hate lying…’

‘Confessing might have made you feel better, but what would it have achieved other than—?’

‘Make Alfonso call off the wedding. He would never risk a scandal.’

‘Maybe,’ Rafael lied. In his mind there was no maybe.

He actually had no doubt at all what the outcome would have been had Angelina found Alfonso and not himself at home the day she had arrived at his cousin’s city apartment to confess all.

Would Alfonso have felt sympathy for Angelina, forced to give birth at sixteen to her married lover’s child? Yes.

Would he have married her after she had confessed? No.

‘You did the right thing, Angelina. Why should you suffer now for a mistake you made when you were little more than a child? You were the victim then—is it fair you be the victim now? Everyone makes mistakes…’

‘Alfonso doesn’t,’ she said wistfully.

Rafael might have said that Alfonso wasn’t perfect, but he knew it would be a waste of breath. To his wife he was.

‘It doesn’t seem right I’m this happy. I wonder if she’s happy, my little girl. I wonder sometimes…’

‘Better not to,’ Rafael advised tersely. ‘Why think about what you can’t have?’ He had wasted many nights wanting his mother back, but he was no longer ten and he knew better.