His Ultimate Prize

‘Really?’ Rafael made a mental note to have a short, precise conversation with his physio about sharing confidential information.

‘...Dios, are you listening to me? Never mind, I think it’ll be safer for me not to know which part of your anatomy you’re thinking with right at this moment. Bueno, I’ll be in touch later in the week to discuss other business.’

‘No need to wait till next week. I can tell you now that I’m back. I own fifty per cent of our business, after all. No reason why you should continue to shoulder my responsibilities. Come to think of it, you should take a vacation with your family, let me handle things for a while.’ He glanced over to where Sasha stood chatting to Raven. As if sensing their attention, both women turned towards them. Marco’s face dissolved in a look so cheesy, Rafael barely stopped himself from making retching noises.

‘Are you sure?’ Marco asked without taking his eyes off his wife. ‘Sasha’s been on my back about taking some time off. It would be great to take the yacht to the island for a bit.’ They joint owned a three-mile island paradise in the Bahamas, a place neither of them had visited in a very long time.

‘Great. Do it. I’ll handle things here,’ Rafael responded.

His brother looked sceptical.

‘This is a one-time offer, set to expire in ten seconds,’ he pressed as his sister-in-law and his physiotherapist started walking towards them. For the first time he noticed Raven’s open-toed high heels and saw the way they made her long legs go on for ever. Sasha said something to her. Her responding smile made his throat dry.

Hell, he had it bad if he was behaving like a hormonal teenager around a woman who clearly had man issues.

He barely felt it when Marco slapped his shoulder. ‘I’ll set things in motion first thing in the morning. I owe you one, brother.’

Rafael nodded, relieved that the disturbing subject of his father had been dropped.

‘What are you looking so pleased about?’ Sasha asked her husband as they drew level with them.

‘I have news that’s guaranteed to make you adore me even more than you already do.’ He kissed her soundly on the lips before leading her away.

Rafael saw Raven looking after them. ‘I do believe if they had a like button attached to their backs you would be pressing it right about now?’

Her outraged gasp made him curb a smile. He loved to rile her. Rafael didn’t hide from the fact that while he was busy riling Raven Blass, he was busy not thinking about what this place did to him, and that gained him a reprieve from the torment of his memories.

She faced him, bristling with irritation and censure. ‘Whereas if you had a like button I’d personally start a worldwide petition to have it obliterated and replaced with one that said loathe.’

He took her elbow and, despite her resistance, he led her to an exquisitely laid out buffet table. ‘We’ll discuss my various buttons later. Right now you need to eat something before you wither away. I noticed you didn’t eat any breakfast this morning.’

She glared at him. ‘I had my usual bowl of muesli and fresh fruit.’

‘Was that before or after you spent two hours on my beach contorting yourself in unthinkable shapes in the name of exercise?’

‘It’s called Krav Maga. It works the mind as well as the body.’

He let his gaze rake her from top to toe. ‘I don’t dispute the effects on the body. But I don’t think it’s quite working on the mind.’

He stopped another outraged gasp by stuffing a piece of chicken into her mouth. Her only option, other than spitting it out, was to chew, but that didn’t stop her glaring fiercely at him.

Rafael was so busy enjoying the way he got under her skin that he didn’t hear the low hum of the electric wheelchair until it was too late.

‘Buenos tardes, mi hijo. I’ve been looking for you.’ The greeting was low and deep. It didn’t hold any censure or hatred or flaying judgement. In fact it sounded just exactly as it would were a loving father greeting his beloved son.

But every nerve of Rafael’s being screeched with white-hot pain. His fist clenched around his walking stick until the metal dug excruciatingly into his palm. For the life of him, he couldn’t let go. He sucked in a breath as his vision blurred. Before the red haze completely dulled his vision, he saw Raven’s concerned look as her eyes darted between him and the wheelchair-bound figure.

‘Rafael?’

He couldn’t find the words to respond to the greeting. Nor could he find the words to stem Raven’s escalating concern.

Dios m?o, he couldn’t even find the courage to turn around. Because how the hell could he explain to Raven that he and he alone was responsible for making his father a quadriplegic?

CHAPTER THREE

‘DO YOU WANT to talk about it?’

‘The therapy in your job title pertains only to my body, not my mind. You’ll do well to remember that.’

Raven should’ve heeded the icy warning, should’ve just kept her hands on the wheel of the luxury SUV and kept driving towards the stunning glass and steel structure that was Rafael’s home on the other side of the de Cervantes estate from his brother’s villa.

But her senses jumped at the aura of acute pain that had engulfed Rafael the moment he’d turned around to face the old man in the electric wheelchair. The same pain that surrounded him now. Grey lips were pinched into a thin line, his jaw carved from stone and fingers clamped around his walking stick in a white-knuckled grip. Even his breathing had changed. His broad chest rose and fell in an uncharacteristically shallow rhythm that screamed his agitation.

She pulled over next to a tall acacia tree, one of several hundred that lined the long winding driveway and extended into the exquisitely designed landscape beyond. Behind them, the iron gates, manned by twenty-four-hour security, swung shut.

Narrowed eyes focused with laser-like intensity on her. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’ve stopped because we need to talk about what just happened. Your mental health affects your body’s recovery just as much as your physiotherapy regime.’

‘Healthy mind, healthy body? That’s a piss-poor way of trying to extract the hot gossip, Raven m?a. You’ll need to do much better than that. Why don’t you just come out and ask for the juicy details?’

She blew a breath, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘Would you tell me if I asked you that?’

‘No.’

‘Rafael—’

Arctic-chilled eyes narrowed even further. ‘In case you didn’t already guess, that was my father. Our relationship comes under the subject line of kryptonite—keep the hell out to any and all parties.’

‘So you can dissect my personal life all you want but yours is off limits?’

His smile was just as icy. ‘Certain aspects of my personal life are wide open to you. All you have to do is say the word and I’ll be happy to educate you in how we can fully explore it.’

‘That is not what I meant.’

‘You’ve taken pains to establish boundaries between us since the moment we met. This is one of my boundaries. Attempt to breach it at your peril.’

She frowned. ‘Or what? You’ll fall back on your default setting of sexual innuendo and taunts? Rafael, I’m only trying to help you.’

His hand slashed through the air in a movement so far removed from his normal laid-back indolence her mouth dropped open. ‘I do not need your help unless it’s the help I’ve hired you to provide. Right now I want you to shut up and drive.’ He clipped out the final word in a hard bite that sent a chill down her spine.

After waiting a minute to steady her own shot nerves, she set the SUV back onto the road, aware of his continued shallow breathing and gritted-jaw iciness. Her fingers clenched over the titanium steering wheel and she practised some nerve-calming breaths of her own.

From the very first, Rafael had known which buttons to push. He’d instinctively known that the subject of sex was anathema to her and had therefore honed in on it with the precision of a laser-guided missile.

Seeing his intense reaction to his father—and she’d known immediately the nearly all-grey-haired man in the wheelchair was his father—had hammered home what she’d been surprised to learn this morning at the chapel, and had somewhat confirmed at Marco’s villa: that Rafael, as much as he pretended to be shallow and sex pest-y, had a depth he rarely showed to the world.

Was that why she was so driven to pay penance for the way she’d treated him several months ago—because deep down she thought he was worth saving?