His Suitable Bride

by Cathy Williams/Abby Green/Kate Walker

  With admirable self-absorption and a running commentary on how important it was to dress for the part—because, wherever she was, she was always representing her company—Cindy lost herself in pleasant contemplation of the prospect, leaving Rafael time to muse on another dawning idea. A very good idea, as a matter of fact.

  He thought of Cristina and her hot cup of cocoa. His mother had been shocked and disappointed at the outcome of their relationship. In fact, for reasons quite beyond him, she had jumped to the conclusion that it had all been his fault—a misunderstanding Rafael had not hastened to remedy, because a complicated story of Cristina and her childish nonsense about not wanting to marry anyone who didn’t spout rubbish about undying love would have upset Maria. Worse, it would have incited lengthy and endless sermons on the topic of his cynicism, which was a trait his mother had never found particularly endearing.

  She would heartily approve of him doing the decent thing and inviting his ex to his party. Taking her under his wing, so to speak, for all the right reasons. He had moved on with his life. Wouldn’t it be the generous thing to do to make sure that Cristina wasn’t heading for some kind of depression? He hadn’t heard a word from her since she had flounced out of his car, pink faced and self-righteous, and trying to get information from his mother had been the equivalent of hitting his head on a brick wall.

  He had even debated getting in touch with her parents in Italy, just to make sure that the woman hadn’t done something incredibly silly. But then he had reminded himself, with a generous helping of that cynicism his mother so detested, that the only incredibly silly thing Cristina was likely to do would be to waste away her life in search of the non-existent.

  ‘Are you going to be involved in the arrangements?’

  Rafael surfaced and looked blankly at his date for a few seconds. Then he was back to reality, smiling and assuring her that he would naturally be taking no part in arranging anything.

  ‘Why should you?’ Cindy asked, her green eyes lingering seductively on his face. ‘You’re an important man. Why not let someone else do all the boring stuff?’

  ‘Why not indeed?’ Rafael murmured. He knew when his ego was being stroked and it was being stroked now. He also knew when a woman’s eyes were lingering on him with one thing in mind. He looked at his watch and then regretfully signalled for the bill. ‘Afraid I’m going to have to let you get your beauty sleep tonight,’ he told her without preamble. ‘I’m on a plane to Australia first thing in the morning, and I have a thousand emails to get through before my head hits the pillow.’

  More or less the truth, but if his libido was anything to go by he was really more tired than he’d thought; even that kiss on the lips, which should have had him dismissing his driver and following her into her flat in Battersea, barely got his pulses racing.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he promised, guiltily aware that she wanted a hell of a lot more than he was in the mood to give. ‘I’m going to get my secretary onto this whole party thing and I’ll let you know the details.’ With the engine running and his driver waiting, Rafael kissed her again, this time with slightly more vigour. But when she would have pulled him closer towards her so that she could press her amazing but surgically enhanced breasts against his chest, he pulled away, gently loosening her hands from his neck.

  ‘Get something for yourself to wear from Harrods,’ he said, vaguely aware that this was meagre compensation for leaving her on a Saturday night on her own, when she had clearly been offering her company into the early hours of the morning. ‘Just tell them to put it on my account. I’ll make sure my secretary clears it.’

  That, at least, did the trick. Cindy’s face, on the verge of a pout, broke into a radiant smile.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  Relieved to be off the hook, Rafael nodded and took a step back. ‘Whatever you want,’ he told her. ‘I want you looking … Well, let’s just say you won’t have to try very hard.’

  ‘But I’ll still enjoy it, especially when I know that you’ll be waiting to see what’s under the sexy clothes as soon as the last person leaves …’

  She drew her finger tantalisingly along her exposed cleavage and shot him a slow, coy smile. Rafael could well imagine that a thousand men would have melted from the heat of that smile, but his head was already racing away to the emails he had to send, and to a certain call he would make as soon as he got back to his apartment.

  He nodded his head, appreciating her with his eyes, but relieved that his driver gave him the excuse to beat a retreat. His attention was firmly elsewhere by the time he was finally back in his apartment and switching on the lights.

  He poured himself a glass of mineral water, looked at the computer waiting for him on the kitchen counter, where he had left it charging in his absence, and grabbed the phone from its handset.

  He had almost near-perfect recall, and jabbed in Cristina’s number as he stretched out on the long sofa in the living room. Of course she would be in. Not for a minute did he contemplate the possibility that at ten-thirty on a Saturday evening she might be out doing the London scene.

  She might have waxed lyrical about Mr Right, but hunting him down would have been a completely different matter. She wasn’t a hunter. She was utterly, maddeningly feminine and would have been appalled at the concept of getting out there and being proactive.

  Sure enough, it was a drowsy voice that answered after just three rings.

  ‘Have I woken you up?’ Rafael demanded, disregarding all rules of basic politeness.

  ‘Rafael?’

  ‘Well? Were you asleep?’

  The sound of that dark, velvety and supremely arrogant voice was like a bucket of ice-cold water being thrown over her head.

  For the past six weeks she had tried really hard to get him out of her head, and she had managed to convince herself that it was working. She had applied to start a formal evening-course in landscape gardening, and had been ploughing through a mountain of books in preparation. In between her daily running of the flower shop, it had just about been enough to see her through those nasty times when memories of him would pounce, like a monster let out of a cupboard, pummelling her hard-fought good intentions.

  For Anthea’s sake she had also tried to put a brave face on things, had shrugged off the cancelled engagement as ‘one of those things’, as though broken engagements were a daily occurrence in her life, and had been as bright and breezy as she could.

  She had, however, drawn the line at launching herself into the single life, despite her friend’s attempts to get her out there in the social scene.

  Hearing Rafael’s voice now catapulted her straight back in time. Her small hard-won achievements evaporated and she sat up in bed, every nerve in her body tensing.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked tightly, and down the end of the line she heard him sigh. Well, she hadn’t asked him to call her, hadn’t heard a word from him for weeks, so why was he sighing as though she had been the one to interrupt him in the middle of his super-busy life? Immediately she thought that Rafael would not have seen things that way and she was so guiltily, stupidly pleased to hear his voice that she fell silent.

  ‘There’s no need to snap,’ Rafael said silkily. ‘I mean, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’

  Cristina dearly wished that she could answer that in the affirmative. But her evening had been spent watching a gardening show on television, having something of a comfort-eating fest on her own and spending half an hour on the phone to her mother who had taken to calling her every couple of days to cheer her up.

  ‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘Not really. Why are you calling? What do you want?’

  What Rafael really wanted was to tell her that he could actually have been in the company of a stunningly beautiful blonde who would never have dreamed of speaking to him as though he were something that had crawled out from under a rock—but in time he remembered that she was probably still angry and bitter with him.

  ‘I
wanted to find out how you were.’ He relaxed, resting his arm under his head and loosely linking his feet at the ankles where he stared down at his black socks, having previously kicked off his shoes by the front door.

  ‘I’m very well, thank you.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad to hear it. I was worried about you.’ His voice bordered on pious.

  ‘Well, I don’t believe that for a minute, Rafael. And you still haven’t told me why you’re calling me at this hour.’

  ‘Most of London are up at this hour,’ he pointed out. ‘And I was calling to invite you out.’

  On a date? was the wild thought that flew through her head. Then she remembered what he was all about. He was the man who had a stone for a heart even if he did manage to give a very good impression of a living, breathing, normal human being.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She remembered the way they had laughed together, the way he had indulged her inclination to babble, the way he had made her feel sexy and good about herself. Very firmly, she shut the door on those nagging, enticing memories.

  ‘To a party I’m having next weekend at my place here in London.’

  ‘You want to invite me to a party …?’ That was more like it. He wasn’t really interested in finding out about her and how she was doing; he probably felt bad because he had hurt her. Not, obviously, so bad that he wanted to check on her welfare face to face over a cup of coffee, but bad enough to consider asking her along to something large and impersonal which would give him the opportunity to ask a few polite questions with the comfort of having a crowd of his friends around. Just in case she started blubbing or something. She wondered whether his mother had put him up to it.

  ‘Hello? Are you still there? Or have you dozed off in mid-thought?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t dozed off!‘ Cristina snapped. ‘See? You’ve only been on the phone for two seconds and already you’re making me shout!’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with emotional responses.’

  ‘That’s not what you’ve said in the past,’ Cristina reminded him sourly.

  That, Rafael had to concede to himself, had a ring of truth about it.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Can I count you in or not?’

  ‘Why have you asked me? Do you feel sorry for me? Did Maria put you up to it?’

  ‘No one has put me up to anything, in answer to your first question. And in answer to your second … Is there any reason why I should feel sorry for you? I mean, life moves on, doesn’t it?’ He tried to visualise Cindy’s face in his head, but instead a very clear image of Cristina’s rose to the forefront.

  So he did feel sorry for her. His non-answer was as good as a positive response and, while Cristina didn’t want to go to any party he might be having—didn’t want to be in his presence at all, not when she was obviously still so vulnerable to his overpowering personality, even when she was just receiving it via radio waves at the end of a telephone—well, to refuse would be to admit that she just couldn’t face him. He would feel even sorrier for her then!

  As if tuning in to her innermost thoughts and reading her mind, Rafael drawled, ‘You’re not scared of seeing me, are you?’

  Cristina forced herself to relax by breathing slowly and deeply—another piece of received wisdom from one of the many magazines she had devoured as a youth when she should have been out there gaining valuable experience with boys, as all her friends had been doing.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Why should I be scared of seeing you?’

  ‘I’ll let you know more details closer to the day.’

  ‘I thought you said that it was going to be next weekend?’ Cristina found herself distracted by his vagueness. ‘Haven’t you arranged it as yet?’

  ‘Oh, I won’t have a hand in that. Patricia’s going to take care of the whole thing.’

  Typical, she thought. Not for a single second would it have occurred to him that last-minute affairs stood a greater than average chance of being flops. How many people were available at such short notice? But of course, this was Rafael Rocchi, the man for whom people jumped through hoops.

  ‘I take it from your silence that you don’t approve of my lack of involvement?’

  ‘You can take it from my silence that I’m not surprised at your lack of involvement. I’ll have to look in my diary and see what I’m doing next weekend,’ she said, buying herself time, because she honestly wasn’t sure whether she could face him or not.

  ‘Good. I’ll see you then. And Cristina …?’

  ‘What.’

  ‘Feel free to bring a date.’

  Those were the words, spoken with lazy amusement, that galvanised her into a positive decision. Cristina knew that she didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, but she really needed to start getting her life back together. She had done the right thing in standing up for herself, for holding on to her dreams of a happy marriage with the right guy who could love her back—but what was the point of doing the right thing if she then proceeded to spend the rest of her days moping around and thinking about Rafael?

  She had turned down all of Anthea’s well-intentioned invitations to go out, had buried herself in indoor pursuits, had assured her mother and her sisters that she was doing just fine, when in fact she had spent the past few weeks hiding out in her apartment as if scared to venture outside in case she collapsed. Why should she collapse? From the sounds of it, Rafael was as chirpy as a cricket and getting on with his life, and she wasn’t going to let him join the queue of people silently feeling sorry for her.

  Anthea, of course, was overjoyed.

  ‘It’ll do you the world of good to get out,’ she said firmly. ‘And you can show him that you’ve moved on. Maybe you could ask Martin to go along with you? Sort of borrow him for the evening?’

  Tempting though the thought was, Cristina baulked at the thought of such an obvious piece of deception. She liked Martin a lot as a friend, but she wasn’t going to use him as a pretend trophy-boyfriend just to prove a point.

  But she did allow herself to get swept into shopping for an outfit, something new and colourful to reflect her new and colourful life. Privately, Cristina thought that the description made her sound as though she had taken up pole-dancing in a nightclub. But she was happy to let Anthea steer her in and out of shops until, by the end of the week, she had accumulated one dress, way too short, one pair of shoes, way too high, and various assorted bits of costume jewellery which would have sent her father into an early grave had he clapped eyes on them.

  ‘And I’ll be round at six on Saturday to fix you up!’ Anthea told her. ‘You’re going to be the belle of the ball!’

  Cristina was far from sure about that. The dress was a vibrant deep red with a neckline that went beyond plunge into full-blown dive, but her breasts, her friend had declared, were her assets and should be displayed with pride. And no, she wouldn’t fall face-first in front of the assembled crowd in her high heels. She would walk in a sexy but dignified manner and all eyes would be on her. Cristina accepted those words of wisdom with a little sigh of resignation.

  Rafael’s secretary, when she had called earlier in the week with details of the evening, had offered to send his driver round to collect her, but Cristina had refused, preferring to make her own way there by taxi. And it was just as well, because Anthea was late in arriving and, by the time she had been ‘fixed up’, she was already running behind time.

  But she did, she had to admit, look glamorous. The dress, which had looked idiotic in the changing room when tried on with her trainers, did all the right things. It accentuated her bust, nipped in her waist, and her legs looked much longer than they really were in the shiny, patent-black high heels.

  They had bought loads of costume jewellery, which jangled around her neck down to her waist, and Anthea had done clever things with her hair, pinning it up but very casually so that it tumbled around her face and made her eyes look sultry and enormous. She had managed to argue her way out of vast amounts of make-up, but her lips w
ere still red, and the faint blush on her cheeks highlighted cheekbones which she had never known really existed.

  All told, Cristina was confident that she at least looked her best, even if inside she felt far from it.

  The flutter of nerves which had begun the minute she had accepted the invitation were in full force by the time the taxi dropped her outside his place.

  Patricia had said that it would be a small, quiet gathering, really in honour of their Japanese clients with whom they had recently closed a major deal.

  Standing outside his door, it sounded neither small nor quiet. She was discreetly pressing her ear against the door, anxiously chewing her lower lip and wondering whether she could sneak back out and escape under cover of gathering darkness, when the door was pulled open and there he was. Tall, darkly, fatally handsome and waiting to catch her as she stumbled against him.

  Cristina hurriedly gathered herself, flustered.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rafael asked, as taken aback to see her standing there as she was to find the door opened when she had been pressed against it.

  He wasn’t quite sure what had brought him to the door. At the back of his mind, with the party in full swing and Cindy playing the perfect hostess, much to his annoyance he had been waiting for Cristina to arrive. She was one of the most punctual women he had ever met and he knew that after an hour he had been glancing at his watch every three minutes, his mind only half on what was happening around him.

  He hadn’t expected to open his door to find her toppling against him.

  Nor had he expected her to be wearing what she was wearing.

  He held her at arm’s length and looked at her appraisingly.

  ‘You said it was a party,’ Cristina said defensively before he could say anything. ‘So I dressed for a party.’

  ‘So I see.’ His hands appeared to be temporarily glued to her arms and he quickly removed them. ‘I’m not sure I would call this strip of red cloth a dress.’ He had wondered how she was, had thought about her far too much for his liking, had assumed that she was missing him. In fact he had been worried enough about her well-being, and caring enough to invite her to his party, magnanimous as he was.