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CHAPTER SEVEN
ASTHELIMOUSINE that collected Ruy and Suzy from the airport pulled away from the kerb, the silence within the vehicle was frigid. Suzy played with her phone and did everything she could to avoid looking in Ruy’s direction while he passed his time with business calls, switching with enviable ease between several different languages. Having no idea exactly where they were heading and still too angry with Ruy to ask, Suzy was exasperated with both him and herself by the time the limo turned off a rural road to move up a long straight driveway. The lane was bounded by tall dark cypress trees that cast spear-shaped shadows across the pale sunlit gravel.
A gargantuan building came into view at the top of the drive. The substantial house in the centre was extended on either side by wings. It was a mansion, composed of several storeys and countless windows.
‘Welcome to Palacio Valiente,’ Ruy murmured as the limousine drove below an archway and came to a halt in a cobbled interior courtyard, adorned with a marble fountain.
An arched veranda with polished floor tiles ringed the entire space. Elegant urns of colourful flowers tumbled from every corner. Suzy climbed slowly out of the car. A hand lightly cupping her elbow, Ruy moved forward to greet the small middle-aged man awaiting them. They moved indoors down a short corridor into a vast echoing marble entrance hall in which life-sized classical statues stood in niches.
‘Manuel is scolding me for bringing you into the house for the first time by the rear entrance,’ Ruy told her with amusement. ‘He manages the staff and the household—’
Suzy was still in shock at the size and style of Ruy’s home while telling herself that she should have guessed by his attitude that he would live in a literal palace. How he had accommodated his pedigreed expectations to that relatively small, if spacious, house in Norfolk she had no idea because by his standards he had been roughing it. Ruy had not only grown up with the proverbial silver spoon, he had grown up with an entire silver canteen. The entrance hall was cool, splendid and thoroughly intimidating, designed, she felt, to remind less high-flown mortals of their lowlier place in life.
A sweeping staircase that split in two higher up to curve in opposite directions sat before her. Suzy thought in sudden horror, Oh, my goodness, my clothes just aren’t going to cut it here! He had said a high-society wedding, but she had seriously underestimated the level of glitz and expense that would be expected. And once again that was all his fault for not being more honest. He had worn an elegant business suit to travel home, she had put on cropped trousers and a tee and that contrast said it all.
Ruy thrust open the door of a room off the landing and stood back. Her delicate profile tight, she moved ahead of him into a breathtakingly magnificent bedroom. A superb canopied and draped ornate bed sat at the far end of the room. ‘This looks like somewhere royalty would sleep,’ she whispered uneasily, feeling as if she should be standing behind a rope reading a guidebook on some official tour.
‘No, this is where we sleep,’ Ruy countered.
‘We?’Suzy almost gasped.
‘It may be an old house but expectations here are as contemporary as anywhere else. Engaged couples share a bed,’ Ruy informed her smoothly.
‘Even when they’re barely speaking?’
‘Particularly in that case. Never let the sun go down on anger,’ Ruy quipped.
‘Any more clichés to offer?’ Suzy was playing for time because back in England she had become accustomed to having a bed to herself. Ruy had stayed in his studio, she had stayed upstairs. After their fleeting bout of intimacy, that division, that privacy, had provided a welcome escape from the turmoil of emotions Ruy’s presence incited inside her. But whether she liked it or not, he was correct in his assertion that people would expect an engaged couple to share a room.
Ruy crossed the room to tug open a door onto a balcony. ‘I want you to put on the feather dress and your boots and I’ll meet you down...there.’ He indicated the wrought-iron staircase that ran down to the charming inner courtyard below them.
‘It’s an orange grove,’ she whispered in recognition, gazing down on the plump fruit bright against the rich evergreen leaves of the trees.
‘Yes... I’ll get changed. I don’t usually paint here but for you I will make an exception. After all, there is no one alive now who cares what I do,’ Ruy breathed abstractedly, dark shadowed eyes lightening as he glanced up at the azure-blue sky above. ‘I should celebrate that freedom whenever I can.’
Her luggage and his arrived while Suzy was still mulling over his words and trying to fathom why he had sounded both regretful and energised. A maid appeared to tackle her cases and Suzy quickly lifted the feather dress in its garment bag and her boots and vanished into the bathroom to dress in private. As she descended the outside steps into the courtyard the intoxicating sultry scent of the oranges rose in the midday heat.
A few minutes later Ruy strode down the stairs, his attention welded to the slender silhouette of Suzy standing in the white dress beneath the trees. In that instant, reality and fantasy smoothly merged into a perfect whole for him. He directed her down onto the worn stone bench below one of the trees and arranged her in a sideways pose, one booted foot braced on the bench, the other on the ground, her face turned towards him, her riot of vibrant copper curls spiralling round her slight shoulders, slender legs edged with a jagged white feather hem. With her luminous skin warmed to a hint of a soft pink glow by the heat, she looked utterly amazing.
Suzy studied Ruy as he sank down opposite her. She had no other choice when she was not permitted to move her head. In his suit he had looked sleek and sophisticated and distant. In well-worn jeans and a shirt, he looked overwhelmingly masculine and somehow rougher and sexier round the edges with dark stubble outlining his hard jawline and accentuating his wide, sensual mouth. Her body clenched as she remembered the taste of him, the pounding urgency of his lean, hard body on hers. A very slight shudder slivered through her, her nipples pinching taut, her skin prickling with that unstoppable tide of awareness and tightening her flesh round her bones.
A phone was buzzing. It had to be his because he ignored it, ebony brows flaring in annoyance. A door opened nearby. Manuel appeared, wringing his hands apologetically and imparting the message that someone just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Ruy swore under his breath and tossed aside the sketch pad. He dug out his phone, stabbed buttons, paced away before swinging back to her to take a photo of her and that particular pose. ‘We’ll have to call it a day. I have to go into the office. Feel free to explore.’
‘I will.’ Suzy rose slowly and straightened her stiff muscles. She was hungry and thirsty and tired but determined to make the most of her freedom. She climbed the stairs and unzipped the dress, removing it to drape it over a chair arm. She kicked off the boots and pressed her warm feet against the relief of the cold tiled floor before going for a shower. Her clothes had been neatly put away for her in the cabinets and wardrobes in the same room that Ruy had used. She pulled out shorts and a vest top, more suitable for the heat. Manuel was waiting for her when she came downstairs to usher her into a wonderfully air-conditioned room and serve her with a beautiful salad while offering to show her round the palacio after her meal.
Ruy couldn’t settle at work. He dealt with the minor crisis that had erupted but his laser-sharp concentration swiftly evaporated. He looked several times at the photo of Suzy on his phone and wondered what she was doing, grimly amused by his wandering thoughts. Of course, he was always driven and obsessed in the first fine flush with a new model, a new painting, he reminded himself. His fascination would ebb once he had finally contrived to pin down and capture Suzy’s effervescent spirit on canvas.
His sexual fascination? That, he sensed, might be another story because that was without precedent. He paced his office, wondering why that hunger refused to quit. One and done was his pattern. He took a woman for one night and treated her like a queen for that night but there were no repeats, no extended interludes. He didn’t get involved in relationships. He had tried a couple of times, but within the space of a handful of dates the women concerned would get on his nerves and begin assuming that they were more important to him than they were and then he had to let them down gently. In truth, he didn’t like hurting people, women in particular, and some individuals, like Liliana, were dangerously fragile. It was easier simply to stick to one-night stands. Nobody misunderstood what was on offer then and nobody got hurt.
But, unfortunately, one experience of Suzy hadn’t been enough to satisfy him. He hadn’t even got a whole night with her. And worst of all, every moment of that impulsive, hasty encounter was etched on his mind like a scar. From her point of view, it must have been a pretty poor introduction to sex and that dented his ego and shamed him, but he hadn’t known, couldn’t have guessed that she would be that innocent. Even so, he didn’t believe that let him off the hook. And now he would never have the chance to show her how different it could be. After her experience with her ex and then his own callous words in the aftermath, the last thing Suzy needed now was another man trying to put pressure on her. He had promised that he wouldn’t do that. He had to keep that promise.
Ruy arrived home in time for dinner and found Suzy in the long portrait gallery with Manuel. Manuel was carefully naming pieces of antique furniture in Spanish and correcting Suzy’s pronunciation while giving her a potted history of the characters in the portraits. As most of them had led lives of stultifying boredom, Ruy was surprised to hear her laughter ring out. He was already trying not to let his gaze linger too long on her long shapely legs in denim shorts and the perky tilt of her unbound breasts or even the glorious messy tumble of her curls. That silvery peal of laughter only energised the throb at his groin.
‘Ruy!’ she exclaimed when she noticed him, tall and dark and devastatingly handsome in his silvery grey designer suit.
Manuel smiled and left them alone.
‘Poor Manuel,’ Suzy sighed. ‘He thinks you’re going to marry me and so he’s trying to get my Spanish up to speed and educate me about your home and your ancestors.’
