Rafael's Suitable Bride

by Cathy Williams

  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.

  From the looks of things, he had been way off target. He had never seen her in a get-up like this before. She looked… sexy as hell and ready for anything.

  An imagination which he’d never known he possessed suddenly slammed into action, and he had vivid images of her dealing with her loss in the classic way. He pictured her going out on the town, meeting strange men in strange bars. God. When he had called her the week before and imagined that he had caught her sleeping in on a Saturday night, she had probably been in bed all right. But not alone.

  ‘You’re barely decent!’ He found himself positioning himself directly in front of her, blocking her from the crowd of people milling around inside.

  Having left all arrangements in the capable hands of his secretary, the party of twenty people had somehow turned into a lavish affair with more than forty people, who had been steadily getting tipsy on the champagne and Chablis from the moment of their arrival well over an hour ago. The waiters were assiduous in their duties, never allowing a glass to remain empty for longer than five seconds, it seemed, and the array of delicious and abundant canapés were doing the rounds, but were hardly robust enough to mop up the quantity of alcohol on offer. Rafael had no doubt that he would have to send out for something more substantial on the food front at some point, but at the moment…

  He shuffled so that he could now half shut the door behind him.

  His movements didn’t go unnoticed and Cristina, who had left her house feeling a million dollars, now wanted to tug the dress down and stick her little clutch bag in front of her breasts. Was he embarrassed at her? Did he think that her outfit was going to lower the tone of his party?

  Nothing like this had ever happened to her before, and she was mortified to think that it could be happening now.

  ‘If you’d rather I left…’ She risked a quick, desperate glance over her shoulder.

  ‘Of course not. You’re here now. I’m just surprised at your choice of clothing.’

  ‘Anthea gave me a hand,’ Cristina confessed.

  ‘Right.’ Rafael wondered what else Anthea had done to give her a hand since they had broken up. Taken her to a few rave parties, maybe? Dressed like that, there wasn’t a man in London who wouldn’t have done a double take.

  ‘Well…shall we go inside?’

  ‘Of course!’ He stood back and watched grimly as she entered the room and, as he’d expected, the red dress—or rather the lack of it, in combination with her all too obvious womanly charms—had every man in the room covertly looking in her direction. And naturally Cindy, whose eyes narrowed as she strolled over slowly, but very purposefully, in their direction.

  She had dressed to impress and had toed a fine line between sexy and ‘blonde but wanting to be taken seriously’. Consequently, she had ended up looking somewhat like a very attractive, super-efficient air stewardess, in a dove-grey skirt with small matching jacket, grey shoes and a white blouse with a couple of buttons discreetly left undone. Next to Cristina, she was a pale shadow of a woman, but he still smiled winningly in her direction and slung his arm casually around her shoulders as she nestled against him and gave Cristina a very thorough once-over.

  ‘Welcome to our little gathering,’ Cindy said. She gave Rafael a little squeeze that was clear indication to Cristina that he really and truly had moved on. Moved on to a gorgeous, leggy blonde who wasn’t dressed like a clown. Cristina wanted the ground to open and swallow her up, but she smiled brightly, because there was no law against Rafael finding happiness with someone else even if it was like a dagger through her heart.

  The waiter came round with a tray of drinks and Cristina hurriedly grabbed one, making up her mind there and then that she would need a couple of drinks to see the evening through.

  Cindy, all smiles and elegance, was now taking charge, shooing Rafael away to his guests and assuring him that she would take little Cristina under her wing, make sure that she was introduced to some interesting young people.

  Cristina gulped down what was left of the wine in her glass and tried not to feel like a kid in fancy dress at an adult gathering.

  After three glasses of Chablis and no nibbles, because she felt fat, the party was taking on a much more agreeable tenor. For a start, Rafael might have thought that she looked cheap and tarty, but several of the young men there appeared to be of a different opinion. In fact, several of the more mature men seemed to share the feeling.

  By the time she happened to glance at her watch it was after midnight and she had, she thought, done rather well. She had kept a healthy distance from Rafael—not wanting to be reminded of his newly evolved state with the glamorous and very solicitous Cindy—and she had, in addition, gathered a few very useful numbers from people who were interested in talking to her about her landscaping plans.

  Indeed, one was, at this very moment, in the process of persuading her that he was in desperate need of her talents.

  ‘But I thought you lived in an apartment,’ she pointed out gently.

  ‘I do, and you need to get over there and have a look. My potted plants are in dire need of some love and attention…’

  ‘You’re drunk, Goodman. Time to go. I’ve called a cab and it’s waiting.’

  Cristina, who had been enjoying the flattery and wondering if she shouldn’t be asserting her joy of singledom by accepting his invitation to view his boxed plants, swung round at the sound of Rafael’s voice.

  The room had emptied. How and when had that happened? She looked around in panic for her forgotten clutch bag, but by the time she had visually located it Rafael was back, standing in front of her, arms folded, his face grim.

  ‘I’ll just be on my way,’ she said, backing away in the direction of the bag. ‘I had no idea everyone had disappeared!’ She gave a nervous little giggle.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you did,’ Rafael grated. ‘You were so absorbed in the charms of James Goodman that the proverbial sky could have fallen down and you wouldn’t have noticed.’ The night, as far as Rafael was concerned, had been a disaster. The guests had bored him after half an hour, Cindy had been appalling in her desperation to prove her hostess abilities and stake her claim—and Cristina, whom he had imagined might come and shyly hang back, compelling him to draw her out, had stolen the show. He had no intention of telling her, but several people had asked about her, wondered who she was. The whole experience had not been a good one, and now here she was, eager to scuttle off, probably in the hope of catching Goodman before he left the scene of the crime.

  ‘Where’s…um…Cindy?’ she asked, in the face of his stony silence. ‘She seems a very nice woman…’

  Rafael was in no mood to think about Cindy, whom he had dispatched twenty minutes earlier in a move that would certainly herald the demise of any fledgling relationship. He wasn’t too concerned. If after having met her only a couple of times he had found her company grating
, then it was clearly doomed.

  ‘I could warn you that, if this is your way of handling our break up, then you’re heading for an almighty fall, but…’ He shrugged elegantly. ‘It’s entirely up to you how you behave in public…’

  ‘How I behave in public?’ Cristina said, with mounting anger at his attitude. He seemed to think that it was perfectly fine to spend the evening with a six-foot blonde draped over him like ivy—but she, on the other hand, had arrived dressed indecently and now, from what he was saying, had made a fool of herself. She tried to count to ten but only managed to make it to three, then she placed her hands squarely on her hips and glared ferociously at him.

  ‘I’m free, young, single, and…and…’ And what? ‘And looking for fun! Yes, I might be dressed in a short skirt…’

  ‘With every inch of your body on display.’ Rafael interposed tightly.

  ‘But you’ve taught me how to get out there and face the world!’

  ‘So now it’s my fault that you’re now prowling for men?’

  Cristina thought of her nights in with cocoa and gardening books and decided not to correct him. How dared he? When he had already replaced her?

  ‘I don’t have to prowl for men!’ she said, thinking on her feet and for once coming up with a stinging riposte. ‘I’ve noticed that a fair number of them find me quite attractive! In fact…’ She walked quickly towards her clutch bag and pulled out a little wad of telephone numbers. There was no way that she was going to tell him that most of them were genuine enquiries about her landscaping services from some of the wives who had been there.

  ‘Look—numbers! Telephone numbers! Including Jamie’s! And, yes, I won’t be sitting around waiting for them to call me!’

  CHAPTER NINE

  RAFAEL’S week had not gone well. He had wasted a great deal of time reliving his party, and had been inconveniently plagued with thoughts of Cristina in her sexy and—as he liked to mentally describe it—tarty outfit. Out there looking for fun.

  He had felt sorry for her, gentleman that he was, had invited her because he had wanted to make sure that she was doing okay. She was, he had been forced to concede to himself, doing more than okay. She was, judging from the looks of it, painting the town red.

  He had also had a couple of very uncomfortable conversations with Cindy, who had mistakenly interpreted three dates as the wheels beginning to turn on a bandwagon of ‘getting to know one another’. He hadn’t wanted to retaliate in any way to her accusations of being used, but in the end had been forced to tell her that they simply weren’t compatible. Instead of being consoled by that suitably vague excuse, she had begun to cry down the telephone and had launched into a really aggravating attack on him personally—at the end of which she had dared shout at him that he was just the sort of man her mother had always warned her about, after which she had slammed down the receiver.

  Well, he could cope with that. Indeed, it had been a relief, because the whole business of going out with another woman, going through the getting-to-know-you routines which he had always rather enjoyed, had been giving him a headache. He could have been a bit more tactful, he supposed, in letting her know how he felt, but all that was in the past now.

  No, that had been fine, but this…

  He stared darkly at the phone on his desk, which he had only just replaced on its handset.

  It was just as well that it was Friday, that he was the sole person left in the office—everyone else having virtually stampeded out of the building by the ridiculously early time of seven—because he was finding it difficult to focus after his conversation with Goodman.

  He had hesitated before calling the man, but a couple of shared games of squash and the occasional work titbit tossed his way in the past had more than qualified him, in his eyes, for a surprise call. He had, naturally, sweetened things considerably by holding out the dazzling carrot of investing some money in the man’s company. Not such a far-flung idea, as Rafael had been toying with extending his portfolio for a few months, and sure enough Goodman had leapt at the bait. It had taken only the tiniest strand of curiosity, thrown in virtually as an afterthought before ringing off, for Rafael to learn what he had wanted to know from the very beginning.

  Namely whether Goodman had any intentions of seeing Cristina.

  Rafael had not cared for the answer. The handkerchief-sized red dress which had accentuated all her natural assets, along with her looking for fun frame of mind, had worked its magic. A date, he had been informed with a disgusting amount of relish, was planned for later that evening. In fact, Goodman had practically crowed down the phone, he’d had to get his skates on if he was to meet her in time at the restaurant he had booked in the West End.

  Rafael had received this information through gritted teeth, and had immediately taken precautionary action by telling him that he would have to cancel his hot date.

  ‘Going to spring something on you, Goodman,’ he had said, without a twinge of conscience. ‘But my legal team have done rather more work on this particular investment than I originally let on, and if we’re to move ahead we’ve got to do it quickly. I’m going to download an evening’s worth of work…and I’ll need your comments by tomorrow morning.’ He had allowed sufficient time for his silence to be construed as rueful. Also for Goodman to appreciate just how much his firm would benefit from Rafael’s much-needed injection of funds. He had added with killer instinct, ‘’Course, I have a number of companies I’m thinking of investing in…the opportunity would not be lost elsewhere…’

  The conclusion to their conversation had been predictable: hot dates were good, but work came first.

  Now, staring at the telephone as though at an object capable of spreading contamination, Rafael tried and failed to put the whole thing out of his mind. He really would have liked to sweep the matter under the carpet, but he was realistic enough to realise that that just wasn’t going to happen.

  For some reason the woman had got under his skin and, even now, with their relationship dead and buried, she was still getting under his skin.

  He thought of Goodman, eyes popping out, staring at her breasts, mentally calculating how long he could feasibly wait before he tried to get her into bed, and congratulated himself on taking the action that he had.

  Without bothering to talk himself out of his decision, he grabbed his jacket and stuck it on while his computer was logging off, then he headed for the door.

  This was unprecedented behaviour. He was fully aware of that, but all rational thought processes appeared to have disengaged and his feet had a game plan of their own, taking him down the stairs because the exercise was good, into the underground car park and towards the Ferrari which had been parked up for the past four days.

  It started at the first attempt, and before he could think through what he was doing he was on his way to her apartment.

  The traffic, to his immense frustration, was atrocious. He hadn’t noticed before, but London seemed to be awash with road works—and, he thought, scowling, even with a million red-and-white cones in place no one appeared to be working.

  He had plenty of time to imagine what the course of her evening would have been like had he not ensured that it was stillborn. Drinks and dinner at Harvey Nicols, where the noise levels in the bar would have been loud, the service slow and the opportunities boundless for Goodman to make sure that she worked her way through a decent amount of alcohol before dinner. He couldn’t imagine that it was her sort of place, but then neither could he have imagined her dressed in a red handkerchief and looking for fun.

  It was well after eight by the time he had circled her road a couple of times and managed to find a spot to park.

  At least he didn’t have Goodman to worry about. He had picked up a message on his BlackBerry a couple of minutes earlier, assuring him that the caseload was being scanned even as he spoke.

  He pressed her flat number and waited for her to pick up, which she did. Goodman would have told her by now that the date was off.
He wondered whether another had been set. Maybe the man had intimated that he would drop by later for a nightcap.

  ‘I was in the area,’ Rafael said, ‘So I thought I’d drop by.’

  Cristina pulled back as if someone had suddenly shot a bolt of electricity through her body. James, her date, had called to say that he was in a bit of a pickle with work, and she had been guiltily aware of feeling a sense of relief. Having agreed to go out with him in the first place, she had spent the past two days having second thoughts.

  He was an unashamed flirt. Without the safety net of a roomful of Rafael’s friends and colleagues, she had been getting that ‘out of her depth’ feeling that had only increased a couple of notches when he had said, over the phone, that he would call her the following day because ‘he couldn’t wait to show her a good time’.

  So Rafael’s voice on her intercom, while a shock to the system, left her feeling a little giddy with relief. She had thought for a split second that James had decided to jettison the heavy workload and had somehow managed to get to her place so that he could show her this good time he had mentioned.

  Not that she was going to give Rafael any inkling of what was going through her head. Not a chance. She had spent the past few days thinking about the new woman in his life, and telling herself that she needed to likewise move forward by having a chap on her arm. Or at least a possibility in her address book.

  ‘Well? Are you going to open the door or not?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said, stalling.

  ‘I told you. I was in the area. Why not drop by? After all, we hardly spoke at the party.’

  ‘Well, we did, actually,’ Cristina was constrained to point out. ‘When I arrived, you told me that I looked awful, so after that I thought it best to keep out of your way.’

  ‘Open up the door. We can talk about this when I’m inside.’

  Cristina chewed her lip, hesitating, and finally she pressed the button to open the front door downstairs because she knew that he wasn’t going to go away until he was allowed in. Besides, despite all the bracing lectures she’d given herself on a daily basis about the unfeeling, cold, sad human being that he was—a man she was well rid of—her unruly heart still wanted to lay into him for the speed with which he had moved on to another woman.