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

They had reached the shop and she turned to him with a little sigh. ‘I guess you probably feel some kind of duty towards me because of the connection with our parents,’ she said kindly, even though being considered a duty to someone else left a very nasty aftertaste in her mouth. ‘But you see, there’s no need. I would never, ever try and find my soulmate through a newspaper advertisement!’

‘So are you telling me that you’ve now got a second job working at some school somewhere?’ He wondered if she knew how dangerous some schools could be, and immediately reminded himself that she really wasn’t his responsibility.

‘Not a job, no.’ She pushed open the shop door and Rafael followed her in. The delivery of flowers had been sorted out and the shelves were stacked with an extraordinary array of plants, exotic blooms that filled the air with a lush, heavy scent.

Cristina looked at him. ‘I’ve volunteered to coach a couple of classes after school. First one on Tuesday. Martin’s not sure what the turnout is going to be, but he’s keen to make this work.’

‘Where’s the school?’

She smiled at him, a sunny smile that lit up her face. ‘It’s pretty close to here, so I can leave the shop with Anthea and get to the school by five. I’m looking forward to it. I need the exercise, at any rate!’

‘Impossible to tell under those layers of clothing.’

She felt his eyes burning through her and the safe, light-hearted change of topic left her feeling heady. ‘And you probably need to get back to work,’ she reminded him.

‘Right.’

He left the scent of flowers, but his mind refused to be reined in by the clinical sanctuary of his plush office. His meetings all went according to plan, but he was distracted and he could feel his PA dithering around him, aware that something was out of kilter.

None of this was going to do. Categorising was his speciality. Women belonged in one category and his work belonged in another, and they never, but never, overlapped. He certainly never found himself staring through his window while his BlackBerry lay on his desk, reminding him that he was contactable twenty-four hours a day without reprieve.

The woman was a liability.

He buzzed through to summon his secretary and on the spur of the moment asked her what his movements were for the next day.

As expected, wall-to-wall meetings, culminating in a mind-deadening event at one of the art galleries. He was surrounded by phenomenally expensive works of art and yet had never actually made it to any of the galleries in the city.

‘Cancel everything after four o’clock,’ he instructed her. ‘I’II keep the art gallery appointment. Some useful people are going to be there.’ He had to repeat the request before the blank, incomprehending expression on her face was replaced by her usual efficient one.

But it felt better knowing that he was going to tackle the thorny situation of Cristina and her meeting with a perfect stranger at a strange school. She might be clueless, but he had sufficient savvy for two. Once he had put his mind to rest that everything was as it should be, he would be able to focus instead of having her niggling away at the back of his mind.

And his mother would be pleased. In fact, he was feeling quite pleased with himself later that evening as he poured himself a whisky on the rocks and switched on his home computer, which interfaced with the one at his office, enabling him to take up where he had left off without any glitches.

He might be an unreliable catch when it came to women, he thought, remembering her accusations earlier on—but never let it be said that he was the sort of man who would not do what he could to protect a member of the opposite sex, even if was from herself.

Having established a pleasing moral high ground, he was finally able to devote his usual one-hundred-and-ten-percent to the work at hand, switching off the computer just after it had turned midnight.

And he was in fine fettle by the next day. Altruism, he thought, was certainly an elixir and not just the impersonal altruism of donating to charity. He gave large sums of money to a variety of worthy causes, both through his companies and personally, but he had never felt as invigorated in the process as he did now—knowing that he was doing the right thing and taking someone under his wing. Someone helpless whether she would ever admit it or not.

When, at four-thirty and just before he was about to leave, Patricia wryly told him that he was almost as scary in a high-spirited mood as he as in a foul one, he actually found it funny and laughed.

‘You’re laughing,’ she said suspiciously. ‘You’re laughing and leaving work early. Please don’t tell me that you’ve got another Fiona in the background?’

Fiona was one of his exes who had been particularly irritating at the demise of their relationship, and had blown all chances of an amicable parting by bringing her resentment into his work place, much to Patricia’s amusement. Patricia, whose contact with his girlfriends was only via the various presents she bought for them and the flowers she sent, had never let him forget ‘Fionagate’, as she had labelled it. And she had got away with it because she had worked for him for a hundred years and was no longer intimidated by him. She was unique in this.

‘Would I be so stupid?’ Rafael asked, sticking on his trench coat and making sure that his mobile phone was in his pocket.

‘Why not?’ Patricia questioned dryly. ‘Most men are.’

‘Except, of course, for Geoff. Have I ever told you how sorry I feel for that long-suffering husband of yours?’

‘Several times. So who is she? Will I be sending her red roses in a month’s time?’

Rafael paused. In the space of a few days he had been reminded several times of his relationships with women. He had a passing vision of himself as an old man, still chasing beautiful girls for brief affairs. A sad old man. It wasn’t a pleasant vision.

‘She is a project,’ he said slowly.

‘A worthwhile one, I hope.’

‘That …’ Rafael looked at his secretary thoughtfully,’… is something we shall just have to wait and see.’

It was cold and breezy outside and already getting dark. He debated whether to hail a cab, but decided against it. He rarely walked anywhere, mostly because he couldn’t spare the time, and the exercise would do him good. He remembered when he used to play sport. Every sport, excelling in most. Those days seemed to be a lifetime away, before work had become the all-consuming beast it now was.

Before he started indulging in the pointless exercise of reminiscing, Rafael simply refocused on the matter in hand—getting to the school grounds, the name of which Patricia had found out without difficulty, finding Cristina, vetting the Martin character for himself.

Unsurprisingly, the grounds were not located at the school but a bracing fifteen minute walk away. He was pointed in the right direction by a very helpful lady at the school reception desk, and arrived twenty minutes after the football coaching had commenced.

Under the glaring floodlights of the football pitch, he could make her out, surrounded by a meagre assortment of girls who seemed to shuffle about lethargically, while on the sidelines, a large number of boys were making known their thoughts of girls intruding on their territory. The heckling, from a distance, was good-natured, but rowdy, and a couple of the girls drifted away from the pitch to take up ranks with the boys.

Rafael felt a sudden alien surge of protectiveness, but he didn’t hurry. Instead, he scoured the pitch for Earring Man, who was noticeably absent.

Then he walked slowly towards the rapidly diminishing group. At this rate, he thought, she would be left with no one to coach, and where the hell was the man who should have been helping her on her first day?

A warm glow of satisfaction spread through him as he felt vindicated in his opinion of the man. Maybe not a thug but definitely a loser.

He was smiling by the time he was within earshot of her. What should have been a coaching session had apparently turned into a coaxing session, but even as she was in the middle of speaking a further two girls, who had been standing at the back kicking the ground in a desultory manner, drifted off to the safety of the group of boys.

She didn’t see him at all. In fact, she was only aware of his presence because the jeers on the sidelines had fallen quiet and all eyes were directed to a point just left of her shoulder.

Rafael, skilled in reading an audience, and even more skilled in a sort of a silent but brutally effective intimidation, now called upon both talents.

He flashed a smile at Cristina, who was gaping at him in astonishment, then he looked at the now-mute crowd and simply took control.

CHAPTER FOUR

CRISTINA hadn’t known precisely what to expect, but she had been disappointed and taken aback to realise that nothing concrete had been arranged. Martin had made it known during his sports lessons with the kids that they would be initiating a course of football coaching towards getting a girls’ team, and had recruited several possibilities, but beyond that he had done very little.

So she had arrived at the school grounds to find her prospective team, but a Martin virtually on the run because his netball team was playing an away game and he had to race halfway across London to get there. He had been full of apologies and had given a pep talk to the girls, while shouting down the boys, and then had disappeared, leaving her in full and complete control of a group of girls inappropriately dressed who seemed to have attended the coaching session out of curiosity and not much else.

Cristina had eyed the glittery trainers and the pink and white track-suits with a sinking heart.

Having never been confronted with a group of young people hell-bent on not listening to a word she had to say, never mind getting themselves dirty on a cold February evening, she had been floundering when Rafael had appeared. Literally like a knight in shining armour. Again. She had almost sagged to her knees in relief.

And he had just … taken over. Cristina had never seen anything like it in her life before. He fought battles in the boardroom, but it appeared that he could also fight on the playing fields, and never mind his sharp suit. He had appeared, sussed the situation, and had immediately been prepared to get his hands dirty so that he could help her!

In an instant, Cristina had forgotten her previous insistence that she didn’t require looking after, that she could take care of herself. She had just watched, fascinated, as he’d corralled the girls, who’d been seemingly over-keen to prove themselves on a football pitch never mind the sparkly shoes. Cristina had joined in when the team was in full flow and had taken over. She, unlike the remainder of her team, had dressed very appropriately in clothes that were designed for cold, damp, rain and mud.

An hour later and she had more than her fair share of recruits signing up for the term, and as they left the field Cristina turned to Rafael with a grateful smile.