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

And she had enormous eyes, huge liquid-brown eyes, like a spaniel puppy.

In fact, Rafael thought, she was the human equivalent of a spaniel puppy. The direct antithesis to the languid greyhound sort he favoured. But, hell, a deal was a deal and he had promised to help her out with her predicament.

‘Follow me,’ he said abruptly, and he began leading her out of the kitchen, and through a myriad back rooms which lay between them and the sound of voices and laughter that signalled the party happening at the front of the house.

Of course, the house was far too big for his mother after his father had died, but she wouldn’t hear of having it sold.

‘I’m not yet decrepit, Raffy,’ she had told him. ‘When I need to use stair lifts, then I’ll consider selling it.’ Knowing his mother, that day would never come. She was as energetic in her early sixties as she had been in her early forties, and although there were wings of the house which were rarely used many of the rooms were taken up at various points of the year by friends and relatives staying over.

Rafael now led Cristina to one of the less-used wings and quickly ushered her into a bedroom suite, where she proceeded to look at him with a mournful expression.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, woman.’ He shook his head and favoured her with a direct and assessing look.

‘I know I’m being a nuisance,’ Cristina said on a sigh, ‘But …’ Then she saw the expression on his face and flushed. ‘I know I haven’t got a perfect figure …’ she stuttered in embarrassment. It occurred to her that a man who looked like him, a man whose amazing looks could stop a woman dead in her tracks, would only ever associate himself with his female equivalent—which would probably not be a vertically and horizontally challenged twenty-four-year-old inexperienced woman.

‘I’ve been on countless diets,’ she blurted out into the evergrowing silence, ‘You wouldn’t believe. But like I said, I have my father’s shape.’ She laughed a pitch higher than was necessary and then subsided into embarrassed silence.

‘Your dress has a tear.’

‘What? No! Oh, goodness … where?’

Before she could bend to scrutinise her treacherous garment, Rafael was in front of her, then kneeling like a supplicant, holding up the flimsy fabric of her loose, tunic-styled silk dress which, with its cluttered pattern of red and white tiny flowers against a black background, should have been more than up to the job of camouflaging a tear. Unfortunately, as he held it up, the rip seemed to expand in girth until it was all she could see with horrified eyes.

Through her horror, though, she was very much aware of the delicate brush of his fingers against her leg. It sent a thrilling, wicked shiver straight through her body.

‘See?’

‘What am I going to do?’ she whispered.

They looked at each other and Rafael sighed. ‘What else did you bring?’ Since when had he been in the habit of rescuing damsels in distress?

‘Jeans, jumpers, wellies just in case I wanted to have a walk and look around the garden. I absolutely love looking around gardens. I’m addicted to it. The most boring people can sometimes have wonderfully creative streaks that come out in the way they landscape their lawns. I’m babbling, sorry, getting away from the point … which is that I have absolutely nothing appropriate to wear …’

Rafael had never met a woman who only packed the bare necessities. For a few seconds he was reduced to stunned silence, then he reluctantly told her that he would fish something out of his mother’s wardrobe. She had enough outfits to clothe most of Cumbria.

‘But she’s so much taller than me!’ Cristina wailed. ‘And skinnier!’

But he was already striding out of the room, leaving her to wallow in a very unaccustomed sense of self-pity.

He returned some ten minutes later holding various assorted clothes, all of which seemed hideously bright, not at all suited to someone of a more robust persuasion.

‘Right. I can’t waste much time here, so strip.’

‘What?’ Cristina’s eyes widened and she wondered, fleetingly, whether she had heard correctly.

‘Strip. I brought some … some forgiving items … but you’ll have to try them on and you’ll have to be quick about it. I’m late enough as it is.’

‘I can’t … not with you there … watching …’

‘Nothing I haven’t seen before,’ he drawled, amused by her sudden attack of prudishness.

Cristina, however, refused to budge and he waited, looking at his watch while she tried on the armful of clothes in the privacy of the adjoining bathroom.

He could, he knew, always leave her to get on with it. After all, she wasn’t his problem. But he found himself staying anyway, and when she finally emerged he swung round, ready to tell her whatever she wanted to hear. Anything to get going with the evening, because he had work to do and would have to disappear virtually as soon as he appeared.

He looked at her and stared before muttering the statutory, ‘Looks very nice …’

He hadn’t quite expected this. Yes, she was far from willowy, but neither was she as overweight as the dress had suggested. In fact, there was a definite sign of curves, and her breasts were bountiful, barely restrained by the stretchy lilac fabric. She had the golden colouring of someone brought up in kinder climes, and her shoulders, left bare by the sleeveless style of the dress, were rounded but firm. For the first time in memory he was awkwardly conscious of fumbling for something further to say, and avoided the dilemma by opening the door and standing back to let her through.

‘Thanks.’ Cristina gave him a sincerely felt look of gratitude, then on impulse she tiptoed and kissed him chastely on the cheek.

It was as if she had suddenly been touched with an electric spark. She could actually feel her skin go hot, and it was like nothing she had ever experienced in her life before. She pulled back at roughly the same time as he did and preceded him out of the room, babbling yet again about nothing in particular because she didn’t want him to see how hot and bothered she felt.

It was almost a relief to make their way downstairs and to be greeted by the babble of voices, providing her with a comforting backdrop into which she could conveniently slide.

But not until she made her presence known to Maria, who was fussing over a tray of drinks being carried precariously by a young waitress with a slightly panicked expression.

Now that she was finally here, she could appreciate her surroundings—the fine paintings on the walls, the elegant dimensions of the huge drawing room, which flowed into yet another reception room also filled with people. Vases of flowers, lush and colourful, were scattered on some of the tables, and on the oak sideboard that must have been at least ten-feet long, and the atmosphere was thick with the jollity of lots of people having fun. Young and old, fat and thin, tall and short. She grabbed a glass of white wine from a passing tray and then interrupted Maria, who had been giving instructions on the timing of the food which, she exclaimed, was a complete nightmare to organise—but still, she seemed to be having a great time dealing with her nightmare.

‘That dress …’ Maria quirked her eyebrows, puzzled.

She was, Cristina acknowledged not for the first time, a strikingly beautiful woman—elegant without being in the least bit intimidating, and well-spoken but gentle with it. Rafael might have been a trifle short-tempered, but she warmed at the memory of him putting himself out on her behalf, showing her up to the room, rummaging amongst his mother’s clothes so that he could fetch a selection for her to try on and thereby saving her the embarrassment of greeting strangers with a gaping hole in her dress. And when she had kissed him lightly on his cheek! Her heart did a funny fluttery thing inside her.

She wondered where he was right now. Somewhere in the room, but he had been commandeered by acquaintances long before she had made it over to Maria. Which brought her to the subject of the dress, upon which she launched into an exuberant account of how it was that she was wearing her hostess’s dress. Maria, with her head cocked to one side and smiling with amusement, listened to the end and then assured her that she was more than happy for her to keep the dress because it certainly looked a great deal better on Cristina than it ever had on her.

‘I’ve never quite managed to fill it out at the top in the same way,’ she confided, instantly boosting Cristina’s self-esteem. ‘Now, tell me how your parents are …’

They chatted for a few minutes, then Maria took her on a round of introductions to people whose names Cristina had a hard time remembering. By the time Maria disappeared back into the throng, Cristina was happily ensconced in a lively conversation about gardens with some of the locals, who seemed as enthusiastic about the ins and outs of soil and compost as she was.

Across the room, Rafael absentmindedly looked at her and then took himself off in search of his mother, who would doubtless give him a sound lecture on the virtues of punctuality. He wondered how that would favour an early departure from the scene, thanks to an important overseas conference-call which he had scheduled for eleven-thirty.

But no, there was no mention of his late arrival, and within seconds he knew why.

‘I had no choice,’ he muttered. ‘The woman had ploughed into the side of the road and was hunting down an errant contact lens as if she had a hope in hell of finding it.’ He wondered how well she was taking in her surroundings without the dreaded spectacles, which she had refused to wear, opting instead for one contact lens and the possibility of crashing into something breakable.

She really was generously proportioned in all the right places, he thought distractedly, finding her and keeping her in his sight for a few seconds while he polished off his whisky and soda.

‘She’s a gem,’ Maria said, following his gaze. ‘I’ve known both her parents for such a long time. They own that chain of jewellers … you know the ones? Supply diamonds to all the best people … quietly influential, if you know what I mean.’

Rafael had been half listening, but now his ears pricked up, more thanks to his mother’s intonation than the substance of her words, though he was picking up phrases: not brash like most wealthy people … Italian, of course, very traditional in their outlook, but not suffocatingly so … Happy for their youngest to live and work in London … And then, from nowhere, ‘She would be perfect for you, Raffy and it’s really time you thought of settling down …’

CHAPTER TWO

‘NO, MOTHER!’

They were sitting in the large, farmhouse-style kitchen with a pot of coffee between them and the buzz of the radio in the background telling them that another depression was heading in their direction so that they could expect more bad weather.

It was not yet six-thirty, but Rafael had already been up for an hour, travelling the world via his mobile phone and laptop computer, and Maria was up simply because she found it impossible to sleep beyond six in the morning. Waking early was the habit of a lifetime, and a very handy one when she wanted to corner her son before the rest of her overnight guests started drifting downstairs and commanding her attention.