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Steady dark eyes with only a gleam of gold in their depths rested on her as Ruy compressed his lips and jerked his chin in confirmation.
‘And I laughed and asked if you thought you were Mr Rockefeller or something!’ Suzy recalled with a shudder of humiliation, her cheeks burning. ‘You’ve had a lot of fun at my expense!’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Ruy countered, taken aback by the charge.
‘I may not have the right to know your secrets, but I did have the right to know the identity and status of the man I slept with. I was entitled to be told who you really were before that happened,’ Suzy condemned. ‘Because I can tell you right now that if I’d known you were some flash hedge-fund whizz-kid, I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you in the first place!’
‘Why the hell not? What possible difference could it have made?’ Ruy slammed back at her, angry for the first time in her presence, thoroughly nettled by that word, ‘flash’, which seemed to suggest that he was some sort of untrustworthy braggart.
‘I don’t even know your real name!’ Suzy yelled back at him above the roar of the engines as the jet rolled down the runway.
‘Ruy Santiago Valiente,’ Ruy supplied with icy precision. ‘Rivera was Cecile’s mother’s surname and I borrow it when I don’t wish to be identified.’
‘How convenient to have an alternative name!’ Suzy snapped between clenched teeth of scorn.
Ruy exhaled slowly, cocked an ebony brow and murmured, ‘I really don’t see what the problem is. I’ve told you now.’
Suzy gripped her right hand with her left because she wanted to hit him. ‘You deceived me. You betrayed my trust.’
‘Those are serious accusations,’ Ruy bit out, his temper stirring even more.
‘And they’re true. You didn’t give me a choice. I feel like an idiot for not seeing that, the way you behaved, you couldn’t possibly have been the forthright artist you were pretending to be!’
Ruy gritted his teeth. ‘Most women would be ecstatic to find out that I’m a wealthy man.’
Suzy’s hands both flew up in the air to emphasise her furious frustration with him and his refusal to look at the situation from her point of view. ‘If they’re greedy, if they want you to spend your money on them, but I don’t! Now I can see that you’ve used your wealth like a weapon against me from the moment we met!’ she framed with bitter resentment.
The jet was finally in the air and Ruy released his seat belt and vaulted upright to his full intimidating height. He stared down at her with scorching dark golden eyes. ‘Valgame Dios! How do you make that out?’
Suzy released her belt and got up as well, moving away several feet before spinning back round to face him. ‘You tried to bribe me.’
‘And it would have worked a treat had you known who I was at the time because you were desperate to save your father and his livelihood,’ Ruy reminded her drily.
Suzy stamped a pompommed toe. ‘That is not the point!’
‘That is exactly the point. Everything has turned out very well for you and your father...why?’ Ruy prompted expectantly, as if he were a teacher giving a young, not very bright child a lesson in life. ‘Because I have money, and I was able to use that money you deride to protect you and your father from further interference and intimidation from Brenton. Don’t you dare snipe at me for telling you the truth you don’t want to hear or accept!’
As Suzy angrily parted her lips the cabin door opened and a stewardess appeared. Deeply flushed, Suzy backed down into her seat again and sat there frozen in place while refreshments and snacks were served. She was so angry she was trembling with the force of her feelings. On one level she knew that Ruy was right. He had saved the pub from her ex’s machinations. He had made her father’s life a lot easier by releasing him from years of worry about money. But, ultimately, she was convinced that Ruy had bought into the pub to ensure that Suzy agreed to model for him and accompanied him out to Spain to pose as his fiancée.
‘Yes, what you did may have delivered a happy result for my father, but it doesn’t change the unscrupulous way you operate. You bought into the pub to put pressure on me.’
‘I bought into the pub to take pressure off you,’ Ruy stressed curtly.
‘I had the right to know your true identity before I slept with you,’ Suzy sliced back at him sharply.
‘It was casual sex, Suzy...not a life-changing choice!’ Ruy raked back at her cuttingly.
Her face flamed at the wounding reminder. What had meant a great deal to her had meant considerably less to him and that hurt, yes, it did, no matter how hard she resented that reality. Ruy had lied to her and that scared her and made her very wary, particularly after she had innocently chosen to trust Percy. She had already suffered the knowledge that she was not that perfect a judge of character and she knew she needed to be more careful.
‘Yes, it worked out so well for you when you ended up bedding a stalker!’ Suzy reminded him helplessly, needled by the statement that their encounter had been casual on his terms when it had been anything but casual for her when he had become her first lover.
A muscle pulled taut at the corner of Ruy’s unsmiling mouth. ‘You slept with me because you wanted me. It would have been wrong had I been married or concealing some other relevant fact that you needed to know, but I wasn’t.’
‘I wouldn’t have chosen to become intimate with a guy so far removed from my own world!’ Suzy retorted fiercely.
‘That’s inverse snobbery,’ Ruy countered, marvelling at the stubborn manner in which she held onto her ire, refusing to be soothed or to accept that he had done nothing wrong.
‘No, it’s not. You’re rich and I should’ve worked that out for myself because you don’t really hide it that well. You’re very arrogant. You think you can buy whatever you want and that your wishes and needs are more important than other people’s. You rearranged my life and my father’s purely to suit yourself.’
