The Ring the Spaniard Gave Her
Autore
Lynne Graham
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CHAPTER ONE
RUY VALIENTE, THE reclusive billionaire owner of Valiente Capital, one of the world’s largest and most successful hedge funds, didn’t immediately answer his mobile when it pulsed in his pocket.
Why? He was in a great mood, happily contemplating a few weeks off finance and the opportunity to indulge in his secret passion. Those breaks were both rare and precious in his life because he had been brought up to be enormously disciplined and do his duty. He was also in transit to his rural English home, which he planned to make his very private bolt-hole. When he finally grudgingly drew out the phone, bearing in mind that a call to his personal number—known to few—could be an emergency, he was reassured when he saw his half-sister, Cecile’s name flash up.
In his rigorously conservative, judgemental circle of relations, Cecile was just about the only one he could stomach, and it was to her that he owed the discovery of his new home, he reminded himself as he answered.
‘I need your help,’ Cecile told him without any preamble. ‘And I know it’s a dreadful imposition and that when you’re moving into a house only a couple of miles away from Charles and me you will now suspect that we’re going to be a nuisance—’
Ruy smiled. ‘That thought would never occur to me.’
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Ten minutes from my new house.’
‘Oh, good. Charles and I are stuck in a jam on the motorway. We were on our way home early to see the girls perform in their spring concert,’ she told him. ‘But we’re not going to make it in time.’
‘That’s unfortunate.’ Ruy was sympathetic because his sister and her husband were medics, whom he knew often struggled to combine work and family commitments. ‘How can I help?’
‘Lola and Lucia will be devastated when we don’t turn up. They’ve been rehearsing their performance for weeks,’ Cecile told him tautly. ‘I know it’s a very big ask, Ruy, because it’s not your sort of thing, but if you could show up in our stead it would mean a lot to the girls. In fact, your appearance would be much more exciting than ours. Tio Ruy is hugely popular with them. The concert is in the village hall and it’s already started. Luckily, the girls are in the very last act. Can you make it?’
Ruy swallowed every one of the objections brimming on his lips and murmured, ‘Of course I can,’ because it was the very first time his half-sister had asked him for anything.
All the rest of his relatives maintained a constant barrage of requests for money, jobs, help with legal and family problems—indeed every bump in the road of their lives from disease to divorce inspired their urgent pleas for assistance. Of course, his late father, Armando, had encouraged that dependency on the head of the Valiente family because it had fed his love of power and a subservient audience, but Ruy found that same steady stream of demands exasperating and was gradually doing what he could to discourage his relations from the habit.
‘You...will?’ Cecile could hide neither the relief nor the surprise in her response. ‘You won’t need to take the girls home or anything. Their nanny is with them. All you have to do is show your face and give them a hug afterwards and obviously lie when Lola asks how she did because she’s like a baby elephant on stage...bless her! It shouldn’t take more than an hour of your time.’
‘It’s fine, Cecile.’
‘But this is your first visit to your new home and I’m totally invading your privacy,’ she protested guiltily.
‘I’m not that inflexible,’ he assured her soothingly, although he knew that he was lying out of courtesy. He had learned the hard way over his thirty years that if he didn’t ruthlessly carve out the time for his art from his incredibly demanding schedule in the world of investment, he didn’t get any time to do what he most enjoyed. ‘It will be good to see the girls.’
‘If you would only agree to visit us more often...sorry, in a moany mood here,’ Cecile mumbled apologetically, knowing that she was crossing his boundaries.
Ruy was very much a loner who cherished his privacy, a privilege he saw little of in the real world where he was invariably surrounded by staff. Employees waited on him hand and foot and hung on his every word and, all credit to him, he was aware that his lifestyle was far from normal. He was also rather more painfully aware that his twin brother, Rodrigo, his junior only by a matter of minutes, was consumed by envy, resentment and bitterness that he had not been the firstborn son, on whom all Armando Valiente’s brightest hopes and expectations rested. It was a terrible ironic truth that Ruy would have very much preferred the far less demanding role of younger son and brother. And it struck him as even worse that his brother had asked him to his wedding to take place in a fortnight and that he was dreading the event, unable to unquestioningly accept that the invitation could be an olive branch.
The community hall beside the church was an old shabby building in need of a facelift, Ruy registered. He would consider making an anonymous donation. Philanthropic gestures came naturally to a man who had never in his life had to consider the cost of anything. It would also be the first time that Ruy actually set foot in the village near the property he had bought. There wasn’t much to the place: a garage, a little supermarket and, opposite the church, a pub with a big flashy sign that said it had pretensions to be something more. On his one previous visit, he had driven through the village without stopping because it didn’t interest him. He had no plans to get to know anyone in the neighbourhood, a decision that would protect the anonymity he treasured.
There were no empty seats available in the packed hall, which suited Ruy fine. He stationed himself by the back wall, his height of six feet four granting him an excellent view of the small stage, which was currently in darkness. Strange plinky-plonky music notes filtered out, the kind of New Age stuff that made Ruy, who liked rock ballads, wince. A low light came on above the silhouette of a woman kneeling with her head bent. Unexpected interest fired in him as the music swelled and the woman began to unfold. Like a flower in one of those sped up nature documentaries, he thought abstractedly.
As her arms lifted in a fluid shimmy, she leant back, seemingly as flexible as rubber, her long hair fluttering, her small full breasts jutting up, her body bending back in a natural curve. Ruy was riveted to the spot, only dimly aware of the children, crouched like little mushrooms awaiting their moment in the darkness, to either side of her. It was modern dance, again something he had no interest in, but the innocent sensuality of her every move captured him as both a man and an artist. She slowly rose upright, hands moving like silent poetry, her grace phenomenal and that fast he knew he had to find out who she was, knew he had to paint her.
‘She’s a firecracker,’ a male voice commented next to him. ‘A beauty.’
‘Who is she?’ Ruy didn’t know whether or not she was a beauty because her entire performance had taken place in shadow; as if she were part of the backdrop and not the centre of the show, which would definitely be wishful thinking on her part if that had been the intention, he reflected with wry amusement, considering that she was the most eye-catching sight he had enjoyed in a very long time.
‘Suzy Madderton, publican’s daughter, well and truly off the market if you’re interested.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Ruy asserted, unusual colour slashing his high cheekbones because he was shamed by the throb at his groin in a place where children were present, even though in the darkness nobody could have seen or noticed his condition.
‘Heard she’s getting hitched soon and to a golden oldie, not a young chap like yourself...know what I mean,’ the older man imparted. ‘Local businessman, owns half the village...a crying shame her ending up with him!’
Ruy said nothing, too cynical after the life he had led to think it even remotely strange that a young and apparently beautiful woman would marry an older man for his money. His only concern was whether or not he could get her to model for him, and if money were a magnet that would be his ‘in’.
He wouldn’t touch a gold-digger with a bargepole, not that he had any personal interest in the dancer. A natural male response to a sensual performance was no proof of attraction, he assured himself. After all, sex was no big deal to Ruy and hadn’t been in a long time. Casual sex was easily available to him and he hadn’t been on a date in longer than he could recall. Love was anathema to him because he had witnessed and experienced how warped and damaged love could become. Someone like his former sister-in-law, Liliana, could get badly burned by that seemingly desirable emotion of love that so many foolish beings chased. Old unforgotten guilt burned in Ruy’s gut as he watched his nieces dance across the stage as very cute little mushrooms. Lucia was sylph-like in comparison to poor little Lola, who stomped like a water buffalo. Slowly, almost painfully, Ruy smiled, reflecting that if it didn’t entail getting married, he would have enjoyed having a child of his own...
‘Reckon you raised a dad temperature or two out there!’ Flora, the concert organiser, teased Suzy as she hurriedly pulled on her clothes at the back of the stage. ‘The men can’t take their eyes off you.’
‘Nonsense, they’re just keen to spot their kids,’ Suzy declared, a little nauseous at the prospect of being the target of lust in public. Wasn’t it bad enough that she had had to recently cope with it in private?
She squashed that self-pitying thought as soon as it popped up in the back of her brain. Hadn’t she chosen her own path? Hadn’t she decided to put her dad first? Her dad, the man who had loved her enough for two parents after her mother died in a car crash when she was a toddler. Roger Madderton was a great father, just not quite farsighted enough to see when a trap was being sprung in front of him. And Percy Brenton had caught both father and daughter in a hellish financial trap and there was no escaping the consequences of that miscalculation. Either she let her father go bankrupt through no fault of his own, and watched him lose his home and business, or she married Percy. And as she was marrying Percy in less than forty-eight hours, she had best settle down and accept the inevitable, she told herself irritably. By the weekend, she would be in Barbados on her honeymoon with Percy, and she cringed at the prospect.
The concert was over. People were already starting to leave as Suzy descended the stage steps. In her haste her rich auburn hair bounced against her spine in a flyaway mop of curls. Lola and Lucia came running across the floor to greet her, full of excitement after their performance. They were the cutest little girls, one seven, one four, and they were in the dance class that Suzy taught every week. Even though she was keen to escape the hall before Percy could put in an appearance, she couldn’t resist the little hands grabbing hold of hers and pulling her forward. Laughing, green eyes sparkling with mirth at their enthusiasm, Suzy found herself looking, not at the parents she expected or even the nanny, but at a tall, dark total stranger.
A tall, dark, quite magnificent stranger, she adjusted, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth, because he was breathtakingly handsome. Olive-tinted skin stretched taut over a superb bone structure that formed the perfect backdrop to spare, flaring cheekbones, a sculpted jawline shadowed with a blue-black hint of stubble, a classic nose and wide, sensual lips. Add in his height and lean, powerful build and he came as close to a fantasy male as Suzy had ever seen in reality.
Beautiful wasn’t an expressive enough word to describe Suzy Madderton, Ruy conceded, taken aback by her sheer visual impact. She glowed like a spectacular sunset with her vibrant copper-red spirals of hair, porcelain-pale skin, a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her small nose and green eyes brighter than polished emeralds. Spirit and energy bubbled out of her. All his defensive antennae came into play, snapping up his reserve like a safety barrier because Ruy instantly loathed the strength of his response to her. Even worse, he was deeply uneasy around any woman he sensed to be volatile in the emotional field.
‘Tio Ruy!’ Lola proclaimed importantly. ‘Our Tio Ruy!’
‘Their mother’s brother, their uncle,’ Ruy interpreted smoothly.
Suzy was ensnared by eyes as dark as Hades and full of sardonic superiority. She didn’t know why or how she read that message in his stunningly dark gaze, but she did, and her chin came up at an angle, her eyes sparkling with animosity. ‘Thanks for the translation but I didn’t need it. My mother was Spanish. I have a few words,’ she murmured, thinking it was very few words, even after the evening classes she had attended for years, because lack of practice had killed her hope of becoming fluent in her mother’s language.
Everything that was masculine and proud in Ruy thrilled to that unexpected challenge and he had all the pride of his hidalgo forebears. A firecracker, yes, he could see that in the aggressive lift of her delicate chin, the toss of her shamelessly untidy hair. She wouldn’t suit his needs at all in the sex department, he acknowledged without hesitation. He preferred his women neat, meek and mild and unlikely to cause waves, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t still want her as a model. After all, he had barely spoken to his last model, now world-famous thanks to the exposure of his previous year’s exhibition because his portraits of beautiful women sold for millions. He didn’t do involvement in any part of his life and that was how he avoided the messy chaos of emotions that had once engulfed him in family disaster.
He spoke to Suzy in Spanish too fast for her to follow in detail and she only got the gist of what he was saying. He was offering her a job as a model. An artist’s model. Her? Suzy couldn’t believe her ears and marvelled that the girls’ friendly outgoing mother, Cecile, hadn’t mentioned the fact that her brother was an artist or that he had come to stay with her.
‘Name your price,’ he said to conclude in English, wanting to be sure she got that message. ‘It would only take a couple of weeks of your time.’
A heavy arm fell round Suzy’s shoulders and her heart sank instantly to the soles of her biker boots: Percy had arrived. ‘Price for what?’ he demanded.
‘I was asking Miss Madderton if she would consider acting as an artist’s model for me.’ Ruy extended his hand politely to Percy. ‘Ruy Rivera,’ he murmured, borrowing his illegitimate half-sister’s maiden name to assure his anonymity. When he was in artist mode and he wanted to be anonymous, he generally used Rivera as a name to cover his tracks.
‘That is absolutely out of the question, Mr Rivera,’ Percy announced with crushing contempt as he ignored Ruy’s extended hand. ‘Suzy and I are getting married the day after tomorrow. She’ll be far too busy!’
‘You could have been nicer to him. He didn’t mean any offence,’ Suzy whispered in sheer embarrassment as Percy herded her domineeringly towards the exit, affecting not to hear the sallies aimed at her from other people.
Angry fingers bit into her upper arm. ‘Don’t tell me how to behave!’ her fiancé snapped in her ear as he thrust her bodily in the direction of his car. ‘And that’ll be the end of all this dance nonsense now. I’m not having my wife up on a stage showing herself off to all and sundry like some stripper!’ he practically spat at her.
Pale and shivering in the cold air, shaken by his anger, Suzy stepped away from him in the direction of the street while rubbing at her arm. ‘You hurt me,’ she muttered unevenly. ‘I haven’t done anything. Why are you so annoyed?’
‘Stop making a fuss, Suzy. Get in the car,’ Percy told her impatiently. ‘You’ll come home with me and get some supper.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m really tired after all that...er...dancing,’ Suzy lied, screening a fake yawn with a slender hand, her wary gaze pinned to the older man’s flushed and still furious face. Supper was merely a euphemism for groping in Percy’s parlance and he had agreed months ago to her demand that theirs would be a marriage in name only. Whether or not he had believed he could change her mind on that score, she had no idea, but she had no plans to engage in an additional war of words and resentment on his sofa after the roughness with which he had handled her. ‘As you said, I have a lot to do for the wedding, so I’ll just head home now. Thanks,’ she completed stiffly, wondering what she was thanking him for but dismayed by the rage in his bloodshot blue eyes and knowing that she was trying to placate him.
‘Suzy!’ Her father’s wonderfully familiar voice hailed her, and she turned in relief to greet him.
Percy took a step back, a forced smile settling on his florid face. ‘Roger,’ he said quietly, all hint of the rage wiped from his expression.
‘Where did you come from?’
‘I ran over to see your dance and stood at the exit watching,’ her father confided. ‘I wouldn’t miss you for the world.’
‘But who’s been watching the bar?’ she asked.
‘Old Man Morgan was left in charge,’ he said with a smile as he named an elderly local who was practically a fixture in the bar and guided her across the road to the pub. ‘Everything all right between you and Percy?’
Suzy stiffened. ‘Yes...why are you asking?’
‘From a distance it looked like you were having a quarrel,’ the older man admitted, looking anxious. ‘I reckon I’m being ridiculous but, for an instant there, I honestly thought he was about to hit you!’
Suzy was pale as milk as she stepped into the familiar heat of the pub where a log fire burned in the stone fireplace and where only one customer propped up the bar. ‘Yes, that is ridiculous,’ she told him firmly. ‘Percy wouldn’t do anything like that.’
‘He looked like he’d been drinking as well and he must be drinking at home or at his hotel because he doesn’t do any drinking here,’ he pointed out worriedly. ‘Are you sure about this marriage?’
‘Yes... I can’t wait to see Barbados!’ she teased, hoping to take him off the subject.
Roger Madderton groaned and brushed a straying strand of red hair off her pale brow. ‘It doesn’t feel right to me...me owing him money, you marrying him, him saying I don’t need to repay it now, like it’s nothing, when he’s known to be as tight as a drum with his cash!’
‘Well, Percy’s right that you shouldn’t have money owing between family members, and after the wedding it will feel more normal,’ she assured her father confidently.
‘I still feel that he’s too old for you,’ Roger admitted. ‘He’s almost as old as I am, for goodness’ sake, no spring chicken, and you wouldn’t catch me chasing a woman half my age!’
‘Everyone’s different and Percy will give me a good life.’
Roger grimaced. ‘If I taught you that a good life had to encompass a big house and foreign holidays, I failed somewhere along the line.’
‘Dad...’ Reluctant to tell him any more cover-up lies, Suzy hugged the older man. ‘Stop being silly. You are the very best father any woman could ever want.’
‘I’m sorry. All I want is to see you happy and I’m not convinced Percy can give you that.’
‘You’ll be convinced eventually!’ Suzy quipped as she headed for the rear door that led into the apartment where they lived, not entirely convinced that Old Man Morgan was as deaf as he seemed. At the end of the day all that she cared about was her father’s happiness and security and marrying Percy would ensure that.
Suzy went upstairs to bed, thinking about all the sacrifices her father had made to raise her alone. There hadn’t ever been any other woman in his life because he had been afraid that he might give her one of those wicked stepmothers straight out of fiction. He had always worked very long hours striving to make the bar a success and it genuinely wasn’t his fault that he was deep in debt.
His problems had begun years ago, after he had borrowed from the bank to renovate the pub in the forlorn hope that it would encourage more customers. When the loan payments had become too much, and he had fallen behind, the bank had threatened to foreclose on him. That was when Percy had come in, softly, softly like a thief in the night, she reflected with a faint shudder of recollection. Back then she had only been eighteen, incapable of seeing that Percy had undoubtedly always intended to take her father’s business from him and that it was possible that she had only been an afterthought. Percy had been Roger’s hero then, taking on the debt and offering lower repayments.
And then one day six months ago, just before her twenty-first birthday, Percy had stopped to give her a lift in the village and he had laid out the facts for her without an ounce of shame. He had threatened to repossess the pub and evict them unless Suzy agreed to marry him. When she had accused him of blackmail, he had made much of the fact that he was offering her the respectability of matrimony and an infinitely more comfortable life than she currently enjoyed, working all hours in the pub as she did, cleaning, cooking and tending the bar. To balance the scales, Suzy had agreed to marry him but she had also insisted that, while she would act as a wife in every other field, she wanted her own bedroom and their union would not include sex. At the time, Percy had agreed, but more recently she had begun to suspect that he regretted that pact and resented her for her refusal to share a bed with him.
Suzy curled up in a tight ball in her bed, burning tears of regret forcing a passage from beneath her eyelids. Had she realised six months ago just how difficult it would be to marry a man she didn’t love and whom she wasn’t remotely attracted to? No, back then, she’d had no real idea of what she was signing up for and now it was too late. She felt trapped but she had agreed to be trapped. Either she told her father the truth and they ended up homeless and broke or she married Percy. Percy, who was suddenly getting rough with her, which frightened her more than she wanted to admit.
Having parted from his nieces, Ruy climbed back into his vehicle, a purely practical choice that would not attract the particular notice that a fancier car or limousine and driver would. He was still marvelling that a young woman as striking as Suzy Madderton could choose to marry an ignorant loudmouth of a bully such as the man he had met. But it was none of his business and had he not still desired to paint her he was convinced he would have thought no more of her. As it was, however, he was unaccustomed to meeting with the word no and running into an obstacle only made him all the more obstinately determined to get what he wanted. Once he was settled into his new property, he would call into the pub and speak to Suzy alone, he decided with satisfaction. Women who said no to Ruy were so rare as to be non-existent.
For the two days before the wedding, Suzy was run off her feet. There was a final fitting for her gown. She was not having any attendants, no bridal party as such, having decided that the fewer people dragged into her masquerade of being a happy bride, the easier it would be. In any case, all her school friends had long since disappeared to go to college or look for jobs unavailable in a rural village, options that had never really been a possibility for Suzy. Besides the dress fitting, which entailed a long drive into the nearest town and took up the entire morning, she had to call into Percy’s country house hotel, which lay several miles outside the village and where the reception was being held, to check arrangements, and she also had to pick up the cake and deliver it. She was doing the flowers in the church with the florist that evening. All else completed, she returned to the pub and was taken aback to see Ruy Rivera lounging by the fire there with a whisky and a broadsheet newspaper.
The first time she had seen him he had been wearing a beautifully tailored suit and she had wondered vaguely if he had been at a wedding or some similar event, but on this occasion he was casually clad in jeans and a knit sweater the colour of oatmeal. His hair, blue black as a raven’s wing and equally glossy and thick, was ruffled back from his bronzed brow, a little longer in length than was strictly conservative. In that first glance she registered afresh that he was so gorgeous he literally stole the breath from her lungs and made her mouth run dry. Fierce embarrassment claimed her as she glanced down at the sparkling solitaire on her engagement finger. Whatever else she owed Percy, she firmly believed that she owed him her loyalty and respect, and looking with interest at another man, no matter how hot he was, felt entirely wrong.
Her fair skin deeply flushed by guilty pink, she stepped behind the bar to give her father a break.
‘I thought you were at the church doing the flowers,’ Roger Madderton said in surprise.
‘The florist changed the time. She has another booking to cover first,’ Suzy explained. ‘Go and get your tea.’
‘Yes, your bossiness.’ Her father chuckled and sped off through the door into their living quarters.
Ruy folded his newspaper and vaulted upright to approach the bar. ‘I was hoping that you would appear.’
Crystalline green eyes glimmered over him as though reluctant to land or linger. ‘What can I get you? Another whisky?’
‘No, thank you. I’m driving,’ Ruy murmured with perfect diction, his Spanish accent purring along the syllables like an expensive sports car, she heard herself think foolishly of his dark, deep, oh-so-masculine drawl. ‘Would it be rude for me to ask about your Spanish mother?’
Disconcerted, Suzy stilled, her eyes reflective. ‘No, not at all. I don’t remember her because she died in a car crash when I was two. She was from Madrid and she lost her parents when she was quite young. She came to the UK as an au pair and met my father. They were married within months. I took Spanish classes because I wanted to feel closer to her, but it doesn’t really work if you don’t get to practise speaking the language.’ She sighed.
‘You could practise on me,’ Ruy suggested. ‘How long have you been giving dance lessons to the local kids?’
‘A couple of years now, first as an assistant until the teacher, who taught me for years, retired because of her arthritis. Dancing was my only hobby growing up,’ Suzy admitted.
‘I’m still hoping that you’ll act as a model for me. I really would like to paint you.’
‘I’m sorry but it’s not possible. I’m getting married tomorrow and then I’ll be away on my honeymoon for a couple of weeks and, in any case, Percy wouldn’t agree to it.’
‘You don’t strike me as a young woman who always does as she’s told. I’m willing to wait a few weeks to paint you,’ Ruy volunteered.
‘I can’t do it and that’s that. Will you please drop the subject now?’ Suzy shot back at him in exasperation. ‘Don’t you know how to take no for an answer?’
A slashing smile slanted Ruy’s wide mobile lips. ‘No,’ he dared.
Suzy’s teeth gritted. ‘Well, it’s a very annoying trait...yes, sir...what can I get you?’ she asked another man who had wandered up to the bar and went to serve him.
Ruy was unused to being left to kick his heels; it was his turn to grit teeth. Just at that moment faking being a more ordinary mortal wasn’t working well for him. The usual awe, flattery and flirtation that women gave him would have been remarkably welcome just then. Hombre! A barmaid was giving him lip! His half-sister’s voice sounded in his conscience and he knew she would have told him that he was being both snobbish and unjust. Cecile, ignored and hidden by their father as the daughter of his mistress, had had a much rougher ride through life than Ruy had ever had, and he had a sneaking suspicion that his opinionated and down-to-earth sibling would have laughed at seeing him being ignored and cold-shouldered by a woman.
‘One last word on the subject?’ Ruy breathed softly as she moved closer to him while wiping the bar top.
‘Name your price for being my model and I will pay it,’ he murmured in sibilant conclusion.
‘You’re just inviting me to pluck some sum of money out of the air? I haven’t a clue what artists’ models charge!’ Suzy objected.
‘I want you, nobody else, which gives you a truly rare and special value,’ Ruy told her. ‘I will pay a huge sum for you to model for me.’
Suzy dealt him a frowning glance of reluctant fascination. ‘That’s crazy. There has to be a limit.’
‘Not with me, there’s not,’ Ruy assured her stubbornly, forgetting in that instant that he was not in his own world of gilded exclusivity where nothing cost too much and nothing he desired was ever out of his reach.
Suzy wondered what it was about her that made men try to buy her. Percy had already done it, she reminded herself wretchedly. She could only think of the horrific sum her father had been told he owed after Percy had added on the interest charges that her poor father had misunderstood how to calculate. ‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ she said mockingly. ‘I’ll do it for—’
‘That’s a deal, then,’ Ruy declared with intense satisfaction, relieved that money was the lure he had assumed it would be because it made him more conscious of the barrier between them, a barrier he was determined to maintain.
Suzy’s brows rose at that response and she surveyed him in complete stupefaction. ‘You expect me to believe that you can pay me fifty thousand pounds to act as your model? Like you’re some Mr Rockefeller or something? Do I look like I still believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy?’ She gulped with a sudden helpless giggle of appreciation. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you for winding me up like that! I needed something to laugh about tonight and that offer was, not only tasteless, but also absolutely priceless!’
Ruy stared back at her in angry astonishment, never before having met anyone who failed to take him very seriously indeed. It was an instant when he surprised himself, learning that he was, in spite of all the many times he had assured himself he was not, a Valiente down to the backbone, proud of his blue-blooded heritage, his power and influence and arrogant as all get-out. He wouldn’t let himself notice how laughter transformed her face from pure Madonna perfection to girlish natural amusement, eyes lighting up like stars, pale slender throat extending, that full pink cupid’s bow mouth that tantalised him pouting in a delicious pillowy curve.
Percy stalked through the door, his mouth tightening when he saw his fiancée laughing behind the bar with Ruy leaning on it.
Unable to judge his mood as he stood in the shadows by the door, Suzy smiled at her fiancé and said, ‘I thought I wasn’t to see you tonight. I’m going over to do the flowers as soon as Dad comes back.’
‘I’ll see you there,’ Percy declared curtly and swung on his heel to leave again.
Suzy breathed in deep and slow to soothe herself, recognising that she was in an anxious, volatile mood because she couldn’t stop thinking about her wedding the next day and her nerves and regrets were really beginning to eat her alive. Making a sacrifice, even for someone that you loved as she loved her father, was much harder than she had thought it would be months earlier...
