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CHAPTER EIGHT
‘DON’TMOVEYOURHAND,’ Ruy instructed. ‘And, no, don’t twist your face up like that. You’re a creature of perpetual motion, querida. You must learn how to sit still.’
‘Were you like this as a kid?’ Suzy queried impatiently. ‘Did you make your friends sit like statues while you drew them?’
‘My friends didn’t know about my artistic propensities.’
Suzy studied him intently, taking in the gleaming black hair, the proud high cheekbones, the dark deep-set eyes that flashed gold in sunlight or emotion. He was gorgeous, particularly when dressed down to paint in worn jeans and a tee that showcased every inch of his lean, beautifully muscular body. The sensuality of that thought brought colour to her cheeks but six days of pretty much constant intimacy with Ruy had wrecked her ability to step back and maintain her cool. Now she looked at him and her own body clenched and throbbed in reaction even though she ached from their mutual enthusiasm.
‘And why was that?’
‘My father punished me for drawing or for showing any interest in art.’
‘But why?’ she exclaimed in disbelief.
‘My father’s younger brother, Lorenzo, was an artist. He was also defiantly gay. My father was a bigot and he cut his brother out of his life, but he grew up associating any kind of artistic leanings in a man with homosexuality. My desire to draw horrified him and he tried to beat it out of me.’
‘That’s appalling!’ Suzy gasped in shock at his calm manner of talking about such inhumane treatment.
‘I learned to hide my interest at an early age,’ Ruy admitted, his sensual mouth quirking. ‘But, perhaps, Armando was rather unlucky with his sons. Rodrigo, after all, has a similar creative streak. He’s become a successful art dealer and is the owner of a fashionable art gallery in Seville. This palacio is, after all, the home of one of the most valuable private art collections in Spain, consisting of paintings assembled over many hundreds of years by my ancestors. Art and collecting is in our blood.’
Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Your father sounds like a monster. Is that why you keep your artistic side a big secret?’
Ruy’s strong jawline clenched. ‘It was the start of it, certainly. I wasn’t strong enough to fight my father off and stop those punishments of his until I was a teenager and by then a lot of damage had been done and the secrecy had become a habit.’
‘Your brother must know about your art,’ Suzy assumed.
‘No, he doesn’t, and I must ask you to remember not to mention it to anyone at the wedding tomorrow,’ Ruy warned her grimly.
‘You know I won’t if you don’t want me to,’ Suzy told him soothingly. ‘But why is it still a secret? Why do you feel the need to hide such an important part of yourself from the rest of the world?’
Ruy had never asked himself that question, which struck him as an odd glaring omission. ‘Custom, privacy,’ he responded. ‘For many years, it felt like the only thing in my life that was truly mine and I guarded my secret zealously.’
‘Would you give up Valiente Capital to paint full-time?’ Suzy asked.
‘No,’ Ruy answered without hesitation. ‘Once I believed that, given the choice, I would do that, but since then I’ve come to appreciate that I also very much enjoy the cut and thrust of the financial world. I think that’s in my genes as much as the need to paint.’ He set down his palette. ‘That will do us for today. Manuel is providing a picnic lunch for us. I did promise to show you the estate.’
‘I thought you’d forgotten... I want to see the orange grove where you used to hide.’
Ruy closed a hand over hers as she rose and tottered slightly on her stiff limbs. His other hand winding into her curls, he drew her slight frame up against him. The heat of his skin and the aroma of clean, fresh male engulfed her and the pulse at the heart of her quickened. The strength of the hunger Ruy ignited in her unnerved her because she had never thought of herself as a particularly sexual being and now she was learning that she hadn’t known herself as well as she thought she did. Her nipples prickled and peaked and her body dampened, her pupils dilating.
‘Sometimes I want to eat you alive,’ Ruy groaned hungrily against her ripe mouth. ‘I thought this would fade...why isn’t it fading?’
‘Feed a cold, starve a fever,’ she framed shakily. ‘Maybe you were right and we shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Que pasa? What’s the matter with you?’ Ruy growled, ravishing her parted lips passionately with his own in punishment for that suggestion, his tongue delving deep enough to make her shudder against him as if she were in the teeth of a gale. ‘This is us. This is how it is.’
But she felt consumed by him, by the passion she couldn’t deny, by the boundaries she couldn’t make herself respect. He walked her indoors to the air-conditioned cool but still she felt as though her skin had shrunk too tight over her bones and her heartbeat was pounding as if she had run a mile. Ruy wanted to lift her up into his arms and stride upstairs with her, but instead he forced himself to stay in control with her simply to prove that he could do it...thisonce.
Manuel was beaming at them from a discreet corner. They were definitely putting on an authentic show of being lovers, Ruy acknowledged without the satisfaction he had expected to feel. She would be leaving in a day and a half, straight after the wedding. He already knew that he would miss her. Not just the passion, but the new life she brought to the palacio.
A huge bunch of sunflowers gathered from the edge of a field by Suzy sat in a giant vase on a table, transforming the splendid marble hall into a much warmer space. Suzy cast a kind of spell over the old house, changing practices that had been in vogue for decades. A cardigan she had abandoned over a carved chair provided another splash of colour. She could be rather untidy, Ruy conceded, because he had tripped over the boots she’d left lying on the bedroom floor the night before. Not that on the way into a bed containing Suzy he had felt remotely tempted to complain.
They now ate their meals in the airy orangery, not in the formal dining room, where she had confessed to feeling oppressed by the heavy tapestries on the wall and the giant table. She had taken a notion for fish and chips one afternoon and had casually suggested it to Manuel and, lo and behold, Ruy’s cordonbleu chef had served fish and chips for the first time ever and had then emerged from the kitchens he ruled like a tyrant to enquire as to whether she had any other special requests. Informed that Suzy loved to be surprised, the chef had grinned and Ruy had appreciated that his regimented menu of meals—for he did not like to be surprised by what was on his plate—would be changed for ever. Suzy smiled and said thank you and the staff couldn’t do enough for her.
On the landing he succumbed to the allure of her soft pink mouth and crushed her to him to extract a hungry kiss. They walked into his bedroom and Suzy stopped dead. Ruy frowned at the display of rails holding a wide selection of women’s clothes.
‘What’s all this?’
