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‘You said you weren’t sure that your clothes were what you needed for your stay here or for the wedding. I ordered a selection of designer garments in your sizes. I’m sorry I forgot to mention it,’ he completed truthfully as he closed a hand over hers. ‘You can look at them later.’
‘Ruy,’ she muttered in frustration. ‘For goodness’ sake, I’m leaving soon!’
‘I thought you could donate them to a charity afterwards,’ Ruy suggested, feeling quite pleased with that community-minded advice. ‘Or even auction them off for a good cause.’
Suzy gritted her teeth at the prospect of garments so expensive that it would be worth auctioning them and groaned. ‘I tell you not to be sneaky and you just get sneakier!’ she complained. ‘And what’s in that giant chest sitting on the dressing table?’
Ruy shrugged. ‘Some jewellery I had Manuel take out of the vault. It belongs to my family and it’s overdue an airing. If you don’t want new clothes, I can guarantee that festooning yourself in diamonds that haven’t been seen in a couple of generations will work as an alternative. Nobody will look beyond the Valiente jewels.’
Suzy sucked in much-needed oxygen. Ruy caught her fingers in his again.
‘Stop trying to distract me,’ she warned him. ‘And unzip this dress.’
Ruy watched her peel off the dress, her slender but delicately curved body emerging from the feathered folds. She kicked off the boots. He automatically toed them out of the way beneath a chair. Wearing only bra and panties, Suzy vanished into the dressing room and appeared mere minutes later in a casual yellow sundress, standing on one foot in the doorway and then on the other as she donned canvas sneakers.
Suzy watched him watching her, tensing as her mouth ran dry and her heart thumped with the excitement she couldn’t suppress. Ruy might often infuriate her but she knew that she was falling in love with him in a very big way. Nobody had ever made her feel as he did and very probably nobody would ever make her feel that way again. The hours she spent with Ruy raced by at supersonic speed because he fascinated her. His sheer passionate intensity enthralled her and had given her back the confidence that Percy had stolen from her, because it was impossible to feel like a lesser being with a guy like Ruy, who could not hide his desire and appreciation from her. He wasn’t just lethally attractive and insanely sexy, he was clever and entertaining and complex. The more she got to know him, the more she wanted to know. But she also knew that their time together was fast running out and that she wouldn’t figure in his future except as a girl he had once painted.
Suzy wasn’t fanciful and she didn’t believe in miracles. She knew that Ruy viewed her as an enjoyable fling and nothing more. He had warned her that he didn’t have relationships as such with women and she had listened, but her heart and her body had overruled her common sense. She had given in to temptation. She had honestly believed that she could stop her emotions getting too deeply involved but that had proved to be a naïve hope. Now she knew that heartbreak loomed on her horizon. She had been too trusting, too confident in her assumption that she could protect herself and too ignorant of how intimacy could change and strengthen everything between a man and a woman.
Even so, she wasn’t one to cry over spilt milk and she didn’t think that she had any true regrets. She couldn’t say that she wished that she had never met Ruy because she had revelled in every high and low of being with him. She was almost twenty-two years old and he was the first man in her life—she didn’t count Percy. At her age, it was normal to succumb to physical attraction and hope that it would develop into something deeper. It was equally normal to fall in love and get hurt. She would learn to live with the disappointment, she told herself fiercely.
Ruy answered his phone and began to talk in Spanish. It was his sister, Cecile, and Suzy saw him frown and start to pace as the conversation heated up. After several strained responses when she could clearly see that he was hanging onto his temper by a thread, the call ended.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to remain one full day longer after the wedding.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘Why?’
‘Cecile was phoning to warn me that my family are throwing an engagement party here for us the day after Rigo’s wedding,’ he explained. ‘Manuel refused to make any arrangements without the go-ahead from me, which is why Cecile has shared their plans in advance.’
‘No, I can’t stay any longer,’ Suzy interrupted worriedly, keen to stick to the timetable initially agreed between them.
‘Would you really leave me to face an engagement party without a fiancée?’ Ruy demanded in astonishment.
Suzy reddened. ‘What’s the point? I’ll be leaving and disappearing from your life soon anyway.’
‘One day,’ Ruy emphasised, dark golden eyes brilliant. ‘We’re talking about one day. Why are you in such a hurry to get home?’
‘Because I’ve got plans,’ Suzy responded with determined cheer. ‘Dad doesn’t need me working at the pub any more. I’d like to work with children in the future and I’m going to look into studying towards that goal. I’ll need to get applications in now if I want to get onto a course.’
‘One more day, querida,’ Ruy murmured drily. ‘Don’t make it a big deal. I didn’t ask for this party either.’
Suzy sucked in a sustaining breath, wanting to be fair and yet resenting him for putting pressure on her. ‘I’ll agree because it would be unreasonable to say no in the circumstances, but no is really what you deserve...’ She waved a meaningful hand at the racks of clothing and the antique box of jewellery. ‘You constantly chip away at what I want to try and turn it into what you want instead. I don’t like that.’
The faintest colour edged Ruy’s sculpted cheekbones. ‘I enjoy smoothing out problems for you, solving them,’ he argued as he moved forward. ‘You’re letting me paint you. You’re faking being my betrothed for my benefit. I owe you and I like to pay my debts.’
‘Some things in life are free, Ruy,’ Suzy declared, her pulses pounding at the smouldering glitter in his gaze. ‘You don’t owe me anything and I don’t owe you anything either. Let’s keep this simple.’
‘You want me to return the clothes?’ he prompted tautly.
‘Not until I’ve picked out something suitable for a fancy engagement party,’ Suzy responded with a rueful roll of her bright eyes. ‘And now Cecile knows about our pretend engagement as well.’
‘Cecile knows the truth...that you’re doing me a favour,’ Ruy contradicted.
‘Like I’m about to complain about a week in a palace abroad where I’m being waited on hand and foot!’ Suzy quipped, flashing him a look of amusement, needing to come across as light-hearted and fully aware that nothing between them was real or lasting. ‘And the sex isn’t bad either.’
‘Cheeky,’ Ruy remarked with a sizzling smile, reaching for her and discovering that at the very last minute she wasn’t there any more.
‘Lunch,’ she reminded him from the bedroom door. ‘I’m starving!’
She would keep it light and chirpy right up until the moment she departed. She wasn’t the clingy, needy type and, worse, he would be repelled by any hint of clinginess after suffering the attentions of a stalker in the past. No, there would be no behaviour of that nature on her part. She would laugh and she would smile, and she would stay normal and buoyant right to the bitter end.
