Rafael was beginning to realise just how simple his love life had previously been. He met women easily, either through friends or more usually in the course of work. Elizabeth he had met over a deal and their shared interests in the vagaries of company law had led to a relationship that had trundled on quite nicely for a while. He had never had to work at a relationship and he had certainly never had to persuade a woman into bed.
But the challenge of unknown territory sent an alien excitement through him. It was something like the thrill he got at the start of a new and complex deal, one that might work or might not, but this excitement had the added edge of sexual conquest, and loathsome though it was for him to view any woman in those terms, he couldn’t help the primitive kick of undiluted adrenaline that was pumping through his body. The unsophisticated concept of the chase and every cavemanlike instinct associated with it was proving to be an irresistible turn-on.
‘What…?’ He realised that he hadn’t heard a word she had been saying to him.
‘I said,’ Amy repeated very slowly, ‘I think we ought to be getting back to the house. It’s…rude for me to abandon the party when everything has been laid on especially. Not especially for me, of course, but for all of us here. Not that I’m not grateful to you for taking my mind off…things…’ what a crazy piece of irony, she thought ‘…but…’
‘But you’re scared…’
Amy froze, hands on hips, and glared at him. ‘Scared of what?’ He had carried on walking. Now he turned around and slowly walked back towards her. Even his economical, graceful movements were peculiarly mesmerising.
‘Of wearing that dress I bought for you…’
Of all the inaccurate things he could have said, that took the biscuit. Amy burst out laughing. ‘I’d love to wear the dress!’ she told him. ‘I never wear dresses. I always wear trousers or skirts. But, believe me, I’m not scared of getting into a dress just because I also happen to wear jeans!’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Rafael said, as cool as a cucumber, one hand holding the assorted bags, the other shoved deep into his trouser pocket. ‘Do you feel you might be out of your depth in a swinging New York restaurant?’
‘Because I’m just a lowly nobody from across the Atlantic?’ Amy snapped, hurt. ‘Isn’t that something like the pot calling the kettle black?’
‘Oh, New York’s my home. And besides, as you pointed out, I have expensive tastes, whatever my profession. Here in New York you’ll find that wearing the right clothes is a passport to pretty much anywhere.’
‘Oh, and you’re really going to fit in wearing jeans or those shorts you’ve got on!’ Unfairly, she thought he probably would.
‘No problem. I’ll buy something decent.’
‘Just like that!’ She snapped her fingers and wondered, not for the first time, about the seemingly limitless stream of money he kept tapping into. She had no dependants either, but she still always seemed to be counting her pennies and trying to work out finances on scraps of paper. Just like that,’ Rafael agreed. He never thought about money. He made vast sums of it and therefore had no need to economise in any way whatsoever. The women he had dated in the past, though not in his league at all, had been substantial earners in their own right. Lengthy debates about the price of a pair of shoes were alien to him. And he had always considered himself by far the more laboriously realistic brother! ‘But before you turned down my offer without hearing me out, the company flat isn’t in use at the moment. I’m not buying you, but it’s getting late. We might just as well grab something here and you can wear your dress. Unless you’d rather get back early and drink your sorrows away over a makeshift roulette table…?’
Mindful that, to him, he was doing her a good deed, taking her out of herself, and aware that the last thing she wanted would be to give him any inkling that the storm raging inside her had nothing to do with James, Amy gave his proposition some thought. If she really had been reeling from a broken heart at finding the love of her life in the arms of another woman, what would she be inclined to do? Mope? She had never moped in her entire life. She had had friends who moped at the end of a love affair and she had always wondered how they could expend so much energy on doing nothing but wandering around under a cloud of depression, seeking out people to whom they could analyse, for hours, why what had happened had happened and how it could have been prevented from happening.
If she had been nursing a broken heart, she decided, then, yes, she would want to take her mind off things by having a good time, by dressing up and going out. And he had bought that red dress for her, even though it hadn’t been all that expensive and with her protesting all the way to the checkout till. It seemed churlish now to refuse his offer for dinner. For all she knew he might hardly ever get out! It might even be construed, she thought, that she would be doing him a kindness by accepting his invitation.
And of course, she thought with guilty anticipation, she wanted to spend time in his company. Oh, it wasn’t going anywhere and she wouldn’t want it to because, aside from the small technicality of the Atlantic Ocean, he wasn’t a keeper. He was a free spirit. No ties and none wanted. That was the impression he gave and she was pretty sure she was spot on target. But that was fine because she wasn’t looking for a relationship anyway. Just some light-hearted banter and that glorious little sizzle she felt when she looked at him. Also it was fun locking horns with him because the guys she knew were all so frivolous in comparison.
She shrugged and nodded. ‘I can’t believe the perks you have with your job,’ she teased. ‘Company flat. Company fantastic house on great grounds doing not very much from the looks of it…’
Rafael laughed and glanced across at her with amused appreciation. The sun was working on her skin, turning it a light, healthy golden colour and streaking her already pale hair with even paler highlights. She was now asking him how often he stayed at the company flat, making joking noises about wanting a company flat herself, but maybe somewhere hot and sunny like the Caribbean.
‘I think I’ve stayed in the flat once,’ Rafael said honestly, ‘a few years ago.’
‘But you have a key?’
‘There’s porterage. I expect James will call him and warn him of my arrival.’
‘Wow.’
Rafael hadn’t heard anyone say ‘wow’ since he was a kid. His lips twitched.
‘So we just get there, use the place and then disappear for something to eat?’
‘There’s always the option of spending the night there,’ Rafael said casually and he could feel her visibly tense. Again he felt that primitive kick of arousal. The civilised half of him was disgusted by the reaction but the other half was already rising to a challenge he’d never thought he would seek. Where the hell was the urbane, sophisticated, opera-and theatre-loving man now? he wondered. He reached out, hailing a cab, prepared for the gridlock traffic that almost defeated the point of a taxi.
He guided the conversation back to safe waters, sensing her relax so that by the time they finally arrived at the apartment building, which was old and immaculately kept, away from the main drag of the city, she barely reacted to the idea that they would be alone in an apartment together.
Even when they had stepped out of the taxi and his witty anecdotes about life in New York had temporarily ceased as he paid the cab driver, she still didn’t feel any gut-wrenching nerves.
Why should she? she told herself. It had taken her by surprise but it was no crime to be attracted to him. She would be heading back to London in a couple of days and he would be a pleasant memory. The gardener who was not like any gardener she had ever met. A novel experience. One she would forget on the flight over because that was just the nature of things.
CHAPTER SIX
AMY could hear herself babbling. It was something that usually happened after a couple of glasses of wine, when she was relaxed and expansive in confiding her emotions to whoever happened to be listening. Her friends told her that it was very sweet. She interpreted that,
once she had sobered up, to mean that it was an intensely irritating and boring trait that they put up with because they were her friends.
Rafael Vives was not her friend. She wasn’t quite sure what he was, but he certainly wasn’t her friend even though he had bought her a fantastic dress that felt great and looked better, and was now in the process of spending money feeding her. At what appeared to be a very expensive restaurant even though he had assured her that it was in fact very reasonable and part of a chain, making it sound as though it really were on a level with the Pizza Hut she went to every so often for something to eat after work with her friends.
‘You need to get out more often,’ Amy said suddenly, interrupting herself in mid-flow with a sudden change of topic. She was impressed to see that Rafael didn’t bat an eyelid at the abrupt digression. He just topped up her glass and raised his eyebrows enquiringly. He did that very nicely, she thought with tipsy appreciation. Little inclination of the head, slight smile playing on his lips, just a fetching hint of amusement in his expression.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, all this effort for a stranger?’ Amy looked around her. ‘I know you’ve told me that this is some kind of cheap fast food chain—’
‘I don’t recall describing it as “cheap” or “fast food”.’
‘Technicality.’ Amy waved her hand to dismiss his interruption. ‘Fact is…’ she leaned towards him and made a very concentrated effort to sound grave and in control of her wayward mouth, which had a tendency to let her down at the best of times, never mind after a couple of drinks ‘…you didn’t have to bring me on this sightseeing tour of The Big Apple…’ She frowned. ‘Where does that expression come from anyway? The Big Apple? Funny things, expressions…’ She propped her chin in the palm of one hand and looked at him thoughtfully. At any rate, thoughtful was the expression she was aiming for rather than gawping, which she felt very much like doing, as she had felt since the night had kicked off two hours earlier with a drink at a trendy bar in downtown Manhattan. She had dressed in her flimsy, sexy red dress, feeling like a million dollars, and he had dressed in something he had bought in the space of five seconds on their way back to James’s company apartment. How could a five-second shop produce such a staggering result? she had later wondered.
The black trousers, plain shirt and dark brogues might well have been the sort of outfit that she would have found ridiculously stodgy on a man, but on him it looked fantastic. So even though she had been conscious of him all the time they had been at the apartment, it really hadn’t been too bad. The place was enormous, big enough for them to get ready without actually crossing paths, which she was pretty sure would have bothered her a lot more than it would have bothered him. It was only as she had seen him in his full regalia that her heart had gone into insane overdrive.
In that instant, he had stopped being the gardener and turned into someone else. She told herself that the notion was silly because people didn’t fundamentally change according to their dress code, but she had still become idiotically tongue-tied and took the fastest route to self-control via a stiff Bloody Mary at bar number one, followed by some wine at bar number two and now at the restaurant.
In a minute she would start slurring her words and nobody could ever say that that was a ladylike way to behave. She took a couple of gulps of mineral water and breathed in deeply.
‘Hysterical,’ Rafael said, amused.
‘What is?’
‘Never mind. You were saying? About my decision to introduce you to some of New York?’ Rafael marvelled that there could be something so utterly feminine about a woman who had clearly had too much to drink, something he had always found abhorrent in the past. The red shoestring strap of her dress was in the process of slipping off one slender shoulder, despite her valiant efforts to keep it in place, and her hair was everywhere she probably didn’t want it to be. She was looking at him very earnestly, so earnestly, in fact, that he suspected she was trying to get her thoughts into some kind of coherent order. He was happy to wait in silence for her because her frowning concentration was mesmerising.
‘Yes. Right. Why did you? You never really said.’
Rafael shrugged. ‘Why did you accept? You never really said.’
‘I hate the way you do that. Answer a question with a question. It’s rude. My mum said that if you’re asked a question, it’s only polite to answer it.’
‘I’ve heard a lot about your mother. I’d like to meet her.’
‘She’s part Irish and would eat you alive.’
Since no one had ever come close to doing any such thing, Rafael couldn’t resist a low laugh. ‘Would she now?’ he murmured lazily.
‘Yes, she would,’ Amy informed him testily because he suddenly looked very arrogant and way too big for his boots for her liking.
What a favour he was doing his brother, Rafael thought. If only James knew! This woman could oh, so easily have got her hooks into him because, as Rafael was increasingly seeing for himself, she was far from the ditzy blonde he had originally imagined her to be. In fact, she shared her mother’s carnivorous appetite because she would have eaten James alive! James, for all his experience of the opposite sex, would have been putty in Amy’s hands, had she managed to get them on him, because underneath that cute blonde exterior she was as sharp as a knife. James’s blondes were malleable dolls in comparison. He had no experience of the knife-wielding variety.
‘I felt sorry for you,’ he told her. ‘Making the mistake of falling for the boss isn’t a crime in itself—stupid, yes, but not a crime—and being stuck on foreign shores when you happen to realise your stupidity isn’t fun, I should imagine. Manhattan seemed a useful antidote.’
Amy tried to sift through his words, suspiciously aware that not many of them were flattering to her.
‘Why is it stupid?’ she snapped, ruffled at herself for staring at a man who thought she was stupid.
‘Because bosses rarely notice minions.’ He, certainly, had no idea what the woman who did their catering looked like, if indeed it was a woman.
‘Oh, right, and you speak from bitter experience, do you?’ Amy sniggered, sensing a perfect opportunity to get back at him. ‘Do you have a crush on your boss? Is that why you’re cooped up doing his garden instead of living in a house that you own, married with two kids, doing your own garden?’
It took a few seconds for Amy’s words to sink in, then he couldn’t help himself. He laughed until his face ached, until he could feel people staring curiously at him wondering whether he was all right, until tears threatened to roll down his cheeks. Finally, when the laughter had subsided he risked a look at her and laughed all over again at the frosty expression on her face.
Amy waited until he had quite finished. ‘I don’t know what you find so funny,’ she told him, looking down her nose and trying to ignore the way that burst of laughter had made him seem even sexier. ‘It’s pretty odd that a man like you is still living in someone else’s house, doing someone else’s gardens.’
‘A man like me?’
Amy shrugged and stared down at the remnants of coffee in her cup. For somewhere cheap and cheerful, the restaurant had proved to be top-notch as far as food was concerned, and full of people who looked neither cheap nor, for that matter, particularly cheerful.
‘Lots of people fall for their bosses,’ she said defensively, because he looked as if he might succumb to another bout of uncontrollable laughter. ‘Unscrupulous secretaries are always running off with the men they work for!’
‘Are you saying that you’re unscrupulous?’
‘I’m saying that it’s not the most incredible notion in the world for a woman to fall for the guy she happens to work for.’
‘You’re not James’s secretary.’ Thank God, Rafael added to himself. He could picture her bending over his desk, exposing a little too much cute little thigh, looking at him with all that blonde curly hair falling over her face, looking young, girlish and wanton all at the s
ame time. A bit like she looked now. He felt his body respond with slamming speed and he shifted in his seat to try and rid himself of his inconvenient erection.
‘I realise that,’ Amy snapped. ‘Oh, I have no idea why I’m having this conversation with you! You would never understand!’
‘Because I’m not a boss?’
‘Well, you are a boss…’
‘But none of my employees are sexy little pieces…’
Was he referring to her as sexy? She gulped back some more water hurriedly and reddened.
‘And if they were, I would certainly be attracted to one of them. That’s a little Victorian, isn’t it? I realise you think I’m a dinosaur, but I’m certainly not a male chauvinist.’
‘I didn’t say that you were…I’m just defending my…feelings for James. Yes, crazy. Yes, stupid, as you so kindly pointed out. But, no, not that unusual.’
‘You mean the feelings you had for James.’
‘Well, it’s not really any of your business, is it, Rafael? We keep getting back to this. Why are you so interested in whether I’m after your boss or not, anyway?’
‘He’s out of your league.’
Amy snapped out of her meandering thoughts and looked at Rafael, shocked. ‘Now that is an antiquated way of thinking,’ she said slowly. ‘And I think that it’s time we went now if we’re to make it back to the house at all tonight.
Rafael paid without argument but as soon as they were out of the restaurant, he turned to her and said abruptly, ‘Spit it out.’
‘I thought,’ Amy said, without bothering to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about, ‘tonight that maybe I had been wrong about you. I thought that maybe, just maybe, you weren’t as arrogant and…well…but I was wrong…’
Kept by the Spanish Billionaire Page 9