His Suitable Bride: Rafael's Suitable Bride / The Spaniard's Marriage Bargain / Cordero's Forced Bride

She beamed at Maria and stood back, her hands resting lightly on Maria’s arms. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that hateful diamond glittering mockingly at her, and she sighed.

‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it’s been coming up here.’ She allowed her eyes to linger on the magnificent landscape. The extensive acreage, lawned and forested, blended seamlessly into the fields and open countryside, giving you the feeling that you were, indeed, mistress of all you surveyed.

‘London has a buzz,’ she said, allowing a note of wistful sadness to creep into her voice—and at the back of her mind wondering whence she had dredged her acting skills, she who had always felt so strongly that playing games was a waste of time. ‘But my heart really belongs in the country.’

‘I can tell,’ Maria said wryly.

‘Oh, you mean you’ve noticed? I wasn’t that obvious, was I?’ She glanced at Rafael standing alongside her and looked away hurriedly at his raised brows. ‘Rafael and I have discussed this so many times … the fact that I can’t bear the thought of living in London for the rest of my days …’

‘You’re only young, my dear.’

‘I know!’ Cristina interjected, determined to capitalise on whatever headway she had gained. ‘But I like to think ahead. The bigger picture and all that.’ She fiddled with the lump of rock on her finger. ‘I really had only planned on living in London for a brief time, until I found my feet over here. It seemed the most promising place to start, and I was right; my flower shop is doing great. In fact, Anthea and I, well, we’ve actually thought about extending it, opening another shop—maybe incorporating a landscape-design service. And naturally we would want to do that somewhere in the country. Anthea’s from the country herself … Well, the New Forest area, in actual fact—not entirely sure where that is … quite rural, I gather …’ She could feel herself losing sight of her original purpose, which had been to build for herself the foundations for her eventual escape from the predicament in which she now found herself.

‘You have ambitions … that’s good. So many young women these days are content to squander the money their parents have worked hard to earn, and then they wonder why they aren’t happy.’ Maria looked at Rafael, and Cristina knew that she was thinking about her son’s ex-wife and the lavish lifestyle which had brought her no happiness. This was not the right road. She didn’t want to be considered some kind of paragon of virtue and, before any favourable comparisons could be made, she broke in firmly.

‘The dilemma of where I would want to live, well, that’s a big one … best left for another time, I guess. I’m just hoping that it’s one that can be sorted … but enough of all that.’ She made a show of looking at her watch and then suggested that perhaps it was time to leave.

‘That,’ Rafael said as the house disappeared from view, ‘Was a moderately convincing performance.’

‘Here is the ring back. I can’t bear having it on my finger.’ She wriggled it off and dropped it neatly on the shiny walnut gear-box. The thing had cost an arm and a leg, but instead of taking it Rafael barely gave it a glance. She thought that he had, perhaps, made a crucial mistake in choosing her. He had assumed that her privileged background would work in his favour. Just one more tick in the box. However, had she been from a less advantaged background, then his casual dismissal of that fantastically expensive ring now juddering as the car picked up speed would have impressed her to death. She hoped not sufficiently for her to have ignored her broken heart, but who knew?

With no one around, she felt that surge of hurt and anger rush through her once more.

‘You’re making a mistake,’ Rafael said conversationally, his eyes focused on the strip of road ahead.

Cristina had determined to maintain a dignified silence for the duration of the journey—after all she had already said what she’d needed to—but there was no way that she was going to let that remark go unanswered. She turned to him and valiantly squashed that little flip her stomach did whenever her eyes were confronted with the sheer beauty of his face. The last thing she needed was to be ambushed by her body.

‘I would have been making the biggest mistake of my life if I had married you,’ she said bitterly.

‘How do you figure that?’

‘I …’ She drew in a trembling breath and blinked rapidly to clear the watery film from her eyes. ‘I thought we had something special—’

‘There are tissues in the glove compartment.’

‘How can you be so … so … cold!’ Cristina yelled, shocked by this newly found capacity for rage. Where had that placid person gone—The one who was always upbeat and never, but never, shouted?

‘I am not being cold,’ Rafael said with exaggerated patience. ‘I am simply trying to take the temperature down a notch or two. Getting worked up doesn’t get anyone anywhere.’

‘Oh, sorry, I forgot. You don’t do hysterics.’

‘No. I don’t.’ Without warning, he swerved the car off the main road and down one of the winding country lanes which they had not yet left behind. It would be a while before they hit the motorway system.

Cristina drew back into her chair, alarmed when he killed the engine, unclasped his seat belt and then swung his body around so that he was facing her.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked unsteadily.

‘I’m having a conversation.’

‘We can talk while you drive.’ She looked away and chewed her lower lip until there was the metallic taste of blood on her tongue.

‘We could,’ Rafael agreed smoothly. ‘But I prefer to see your face when you’re calling me a monster.’

‘I wasn’t calling you a monster.’

‘Weren’t you? You accuse me of doing you the disservice of asking you to be my wife because I think you would make a good wife—where is the insult in that?’

‘I can’t marry anyone for those reasons,’ Cristina said, not looking at him. The view of fields and trees was a lot less threatening.

‘You want me to tell you that I love you,’ Rafael ground out, and for a few seconds Cristina just wanted to cover his beautiful mouth with her hand, to stop that flow of words which she knew was coming. ‘I cannot,’ he said flatly. It was his turn now to feel outrage that she could have seen his generous offer as some kind of slap in the face. ‘I’ve been down that road. I’ve told you that. Been down that road and seen for myself what lies at the end of it. So, no, love doesn’t enter the equation.’

‘But …’ Cristina clung to those wonderful, tender memories of their love-making like a drowning person clasping a life belt, even though she could feel her fingers losing their grip as the waves continued to batter her.

‘Yes, we made love.’

‘Was that all part and parcel of the arrangement?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Here she was again, turned into a shrieking virago. ‘I am not being ridiculous!’

‘I never realised that you possessed a voice that could shatter glass.’

‘Nor did I!’ But she drew in a few deep, steadying breaths. ‘We made love …’

‘And it was good.’ His own voice dropped a notch as he recalled their never-ending sessions between the sheets. Why the hell was she making this so difficult? She had been shocked at what she had interpreted as unromantic behaviour, but she would, he knew, get over that. She would come round to his point of view. He wondered whether to risk touching her, and decided that she would probably slap his hand away because she wasn’t—as he was discovering—quite as meek and mild as he had imagined. ‘Stop for a minute, Cristina, and think about what I’m saying. We’re good together—good in bed … and out of it, come to that.’

‘And so marrying me would make sense.’ She felt jealousy claw at her when she thought of that other woman, the one into whom he had poured all his love, leaving him now without any to give anyone else. She had stolen his dreams and left him with a spreadsheet on which his future could be mapped out like figures in a profit-and-loss column. ‘Rafael, the future isn’t some kind of business deal that can be put together on a piece of paper. I won’t sign my life away to someone because it seems to make sense. I would rather take my chances and wait for someone who might be able to give me the whole big thing.’

For a few unsettling seconds, Rafael wondered whether his smoothly made plans were in danger of being derailed. Having come this far in overthrowing his habits of a lifetime, in finally accepting the inescapable truth that he needed to settle down, he began to flounder at the preposterous notion that she might, really, be serious. Sure she had handed him back the ring, but women, he knew, were notorious for emotional outbursts later to be regretted.

‘There is no such thing as the whole big thing,’ he growled, uneasily aware that this was possibly not the right approach to be adopting in the face of mutiny.

‘Maybe not for you,’ Cristina snapped back, once again amazed at the shrew that seemed to have emerged from deep inside her. ‘Or maybe you had your stab at the whole big thing and it didn’t work out—but that doesn’t mean that I’m prepared to give up my own dream on the back of the fact that yours fell flat!’

‘You were happy enough to be my wife forty-eight hours ago,’ Rafael told her, pointing out what he considered to be an inescapable truth. ‘I’m finding it hard to understand what essentially has changed. I’m the same man I was then. Look at me!’ he commanded. ‘Have I suddenly turned into someone else? Morphed into an ogre? Grown an extra head? No.’

Cristina knew just how persuasive he could be when he put his mind to it. Whatever he wanted, he had once told her with a touch of satisfaction, he got. Simple as that. And sure, when he looked at her like this—covering her with his eyes, willing her to absorb what he was saying and yield to his greater wisdom—she could almost believe that he had a point, that love was just a word that was meaningless. Almost, but not quite.

‘You don’t understand,’ she muttered.

‘Then enlighten me.’

The silence stretched between them until he finally clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Okay—one. Do we have good times when we are together?’

‘I guess.’

‘You guess?’