Shock Marriage For The Powerful Spaniard

Sofia hesitated. She rarely got the chance to talk to guys. When she wasn’t working, she was studying, looking ahead to a brighter future.

Guys and dating didn’t feature in her calendar, not at this point in time.

But having this good-looking man here in the kitchen, asking her about herself...

She could feel her guard drop a little. The man was going to be around until James and Elizabeth returned with the kids and chances were that they would be thrown into each other’s company frequently. Life would be easier if she opened up a little.

And he was so damned good-looking, so darkly, sinfully spectacular, and he didn’t make her feel...threatened.

She was far too practical for a guy like him to get to her, but he was brilliant eye-candy, and it wouldn’t hurt to give a little. At least converse.

‘I... I spent a great deal of my life on the move,’ she volunteered hesitantly. She sat opposite him and propped her hand under her chin. ‘My mother and I actually used to live in this part of the world, and we returned here eventually, but in the interim life was spent with suitcases at the ready.’

‘That so? Why? It’s a beautiful area...just the sort of place made for roots being put down.’

Sofia shrugged. There was only so far she was prepared to go sharing confidences with a complete stranger, however compelling his attentiveness was. ‘At any rate, we moved about a bit, here and there. Long story, and frankly none of your business. I picked up English from some of the people we met along the way and made sure to practise whenever I could. I’ve always been good at languages.’

And libraries had such huge choice when it came to audio-learning. Wherever and whenever, she’d made the local library her first port of call. In a life of constant moving, libraries had become safe havens, places of stillness and peace. There was a big world out there and she would need to be fluent in English to navigate it successfully. One day.

‘And your mother? Where is she now?’

Sofia glanced away. ‘She died a few months ago. But she’d been ill for a couple of years prior to that. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not talk about that.’ She stood up and smiled politely. ‘I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.’

Rafael vaulted upright. As he came to stand behind her, once again Sofia was intensely aware of his physicality.

At five-ten, she was tall, but he was several inches taller and something about his height, his muscularity, his lazy, masculine magnetism, made her feel feminine and girlish and nothing like the woman with her head firmly screwed on who was determined to control the outcome of her life because she had never had much control over the experiences of her past.

She’d moved from her home in Argentina to another and another before her mother had decided that settling down with an American tourist who had been backpacking through South America at the time might be a good idea. He had been ten years her junior and as responsible as a toddler. The marriage had lasted a year and a half, at which point he had disappeared back to his home in Florida, and they had upped sticks and headed in the opposite direction.

Story of her mother’s life. Pregnant by an older man who had dumped her, breaking her heart in the process, from there on she had launched herself into a career of making the most of her good looks, which had never faded over time.

But that had all changed when, after years spent abroad, they had returned to her mother’s home town where she had spent her final years being cared for by her sister, old friends who had rallied together and, of course, her daughter.

She wondered what this guy would make of her convoluted life history. He had landed here, roving gardener, so he must love moving around, never standing still, the very things she had come to loathe. They couldn’t be more different and yet the urge to confide was so strong that it was scary.

‘If you’re ready?’ She eyed his bag and moved towards the door. ‘I have things to do...’ She glanced away from dark, speculative eyes that were a little too interested for her liking.

So darkly, dangerously sexy...

For a fleeting second she wondered... What is he really doing here...?

CHAPTER TWO (#u29463852-34f6-5881-96e9-7da7e5cef3ba)

‘NICE PLACE,’ RAFAEL said neutrally as they headed out of the house, swinging round to the back, away from the main lodgings.

Night had gathered around them and Rafael had morphed into a tall, dark shadow, his gait loose-limbed and oddly graceful for a man of his size.

Sofia was accustomed to the size of the mansion where she worked, as well as to the several acres of manicured lawns surrounding the house.

‘It’s very big,’ she agreed, breathing in the fragranced air and making sure to keep some distance between them. It was cooler now, with a whispery breeze that lifted her hair and blew tendrils away from her face.

‘Enjoy working here?’

‘That’s where you’ll be staying. Straight ahead. It’s entirely self-contained, so there will be no need for you to come to the main house.’

‘Unless I want to.’

Sofia shivered and hugged herself. She had picked up something in that low, lazy drawl but then, when she thought about it, she wondered whether it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks on her.

‘Have you been to this part of the world before?’

‘This particular country has passed me by,’ Rafael murmured.

‘In that case, I can tell you where you need to go to buy...err...food or whatever else you might need.’

‘Or you could show me.’

Sofia didn’t say anything. Was this a come-on? It sounded like one but it didn’t feel like one because his drawl was lazy and mildly amused. None of that skin-crawling invasion of her privacy and space that always alerted her to a man on the make.

She thought back to all those years ago and to one of those men on the make, but she had just been a kid of fifteen and he had been old enough to be her father—a friend of a friend of her mother’s, drunk at a house party, one of the few her mother had ever had. She remembered the terror of her bedroom door slowly being pushed open and the fear when she had worked out why he had crept into the room.

Sofia knew that she might not have had the strength to fight him off and that he had only scarpered because a couple had stumbled up the stairs, opening doors in search of the upstairs bathroom. They had spooked the guy out of the bedroom because, drunk as he was, he’d still known what the fallout would be if he were to be caught. She’d been saved by the bell but it had been a sharp learning curve for her. Be wary had become the motto branded at the back of her brain, and she had lived her life accordingly.

Four years later, when she had made the mistake of falling for a boy her own age—only to discover that she had been the object of a bet as to whether he could get the hot chick into bed inside a month—‘be wary’ had become ‘stay away’.

She was disturbed that these wayward memories had jumped out of her without warning because she’d always thought that they were buried and forgotten.

She slid her eyes sideways. He wasn’t looking at her. He was frowning and staring at the grand quarters they were approaching, usually used as guest quarters for overspill at parties. James had decided that it would do for the gardener, possibly because it would have been unthinkable to accommodate him in the main house. A gardener roaming through their luxury villa and making himself at home in their kitchen would never have done.

Sofia stuck the key in the lock and stood back so that he could precede her into the two-bedroomed dwelling. She switched on all the lights and watched as he strolled around for a few seconds before heading off in the direction of the kitchen, having tossed his battered hold-all on the ground by the staircase.

She followed. The housekeeper had tidied the place but it felt stuffy and airless.

‘Who usually uses this?’ He appeared in the doorway of the kitchen and lounged indolently against the doorframe, looking at her with his head tilted to one side.

‘Overnight guests. If the big house is full.’ He was so breathtakingly beautiful that she couldn’t help but stare at him. It was almost too much of a mammoth effort to look away.

‘I’m surprised they didn’t choose to stick you in here,’ he mused, spinning around and then heading straight for the kitchen cupboards, which he proceeded to open and close. ‘The very least they could have done was to equip me with a few essentials.’

Sofia gasped and then burst out laughing, surprising herself as much as it seemed to surprise Rafael. Laughing with a guy, any guy, wasn’t something she could remember having done in years.

‘Share the joke?’ He raised both eyebrows and her outburst of laughter subsided into a wicked grin.

‘You. You’re so...so...brazen...’

‘Explain.’ But he was smiling crookedly back at her, his dark eyes unreadable.

‘You don’t seem at all grateful to be here.’