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Rafael Sanguardo stood, empty champagne glass loosely held in long fingers, and let his dark gaze rest on his opulently baroque surroundings, painted and gilded to profusion. It was an irony not lost on him that, as one of the sponsors of the charity, he should be a guest here—considering that it had been the exploited wealth of the Americas that had built this eighteenth-century splendour and that it had been the labour of his peon ancestors, albeit under Spanish colonial masters and not British ones, who had so signally contributed to this display of old-world wealth.
But now history had turned its wheel of fortune. In the global village of the twenty-first century it was the industrious entrepreneurship of former colonials who generated much of the world’s wealth—and Rafael Sanguardo knew he could count himself one of their number.
Thanks to his own intelligence, determination and drive, he had transformed himself in little more than a dozen years from an orphaned teenager living in one of the smallest of the string of countries stretching from Mexico to Colombia, via a philanthropic scholarship to a prestigious North American university, into a serial entrepreneur who had backed a succession of highly successful companies and who could now, had he so wished, have made his home in just such a palatial pile as the one he was tonight a guest in.
That was not his preference, however. He was footloose, preferring to rent apartments in London and New York and stay in hotels in whichever other countries he did business in. ‘Settling down’ was not on his agenda.
Not any more.
Madeline had seen to that.
Into his head stabbed the last words she had thrown at him. Mocking. Furious. Thwarted.
‘Why, Rafe, darling, what a puritan you are!’
But her taunting had masked anger, lashing out at him. Repelling him as much as what she had disclosed to him had repelled him.
Repelled him still...
He pulled his thoughts away. Madeline was history. Out of his life. And she should be out of his head, too. She was not worth even the memory...
There was only one thing Madeline was worth—had only ever been worth—and that was what was most precious to her.
Money.
Rafael’s mouth tightened. His eyes darkened. Well, now Madeline had all the money she craved—but money was all she had. Even though she had once craved more. Memory darkened his expression again. She had once craved him—craved everything that had once been between them.
Their affair had lit up like a torch between them. It had been a match that had seemed to be ideally cast. He the self-made, darkly handsome Latino multimillionaire, she the British flame-haired British beauty whose business abilities had made her as rich as him. They had been a wealthy, glamorous couple, cutting a swathe wherever they went.
Then it had ended.
Like an unwelcome replay, he saw the scene inside his head yet again.
Madeline was looking at him. Looking at him with her almond-shaped emerald eyes from where she lay on the bed, her fabulous auburn hair tumbling sensuously around her naked shoulders. Her lush, peaked breasts were on show for him. So was the rest of her curved, enticing body. She lay, lounging back on the pillows. Alluring. Seductive.
‘Now tell me you don’t want me, Rafe, darling,’ she purred.
She let her thighs slacken, easing her hand sensually along the divide between her legs.
He walked to the bedroom door. Turned to look at her. Still repelled.
‘Be gone by the time I get back,’ he told her.
Then he left.
He heard her laughter—that rich, mocking laughter—infused with what he knew was a jibing anger at him for his rejection of her, following him as he shut the front door of his apartment behind him.
It tried to follow him still, that mocking, jibing, angry laughter, as he knew she wanted it to.
But its power was gone.
