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Roger Madderton groaned and brushed a straying strand of red hair off her pale brow. ‘It doesn’t feel right to me...me owing him money, you marrying him, him saying I don’t need to repay it now, like it’s nothing, when he’s known to be as tight as a drum with his cash!’
‘Well, Percy’s right that you shouldn’t have money owing between family members, and after the wedding it will feel more normal,’ she assured her father confidently.
‘I still feel that he’s too old for you,’ Roger admitted. ‘He’s almost as old as I am, for goodness’ sake, no spring chicken, and you wouldn’t catch me chasing a woman half my age!’
‘Everyone’s different and Percy will give me a good life.’
Roger grimaced. ‘If I taught you that a good life had to encompass a big house and foreign holidays, I failed somewhere along the line.’
‘Dad...’ Reluctant to tell him any more cover-up lies, Suzy hugged the older man. ‘Stop being silly. You are the very best father any woman could ever want.’
‘I’m sorry. All I want is to see you happy and I’m not convinced Percy can give you that.’
‘You’ll be convinced eventually!’ Suzy quipped as she headed for the rear door that led into the apartment where they lived, not entirely convinced that Old Man Morgan was as deaf as he seemed. At the end of the day all that she cared about was her father’s happiness and security and marrying Percy would ensure that.
Suzy went upstairs to bed, thinking about all the sacrifices her father had made to raise her alone. There hadn’t ever been any other woman in his life because he had been afraid that he might give her one of those wicked stepmothers straight out of fiction. He had always worked very long hours striving to make the bar a success and it genuinely wasn’t his fault that he was deep in debt.
His problems had begun years ago, after he had borrowed from the bank to renovate the pub in the forlorn hope that it would encourage more customers. When the loan payments had become too much, and he had fallen behind, the bank had threatened to foreclose on him. That was when Percy had come in, softly, softly like a thief in the night, she reflected with a faint shudder of recollection. Back then she had only been eighteen, incapable of seeing that Percy had undoubtedly always intended to take her father’s business from him and that it was possible that she had only been an afterthought. Percy had been Roger’s hero then, taking on the debt and offering lower repayments.
And then one day six months ago, just before her twenty-first birthday, Percy had stopped to give her a lift in the village and he had laid out the facts for her without an ounce of shame. He had threatened to repossess the pub and evict them unless Suzy agreed to marry him. When she had accused him of blackmail, he had made much of the fact that he was offering her the respectability of matrimony and an infinitely more comfortable life than she currently enjoyed, working all hours in the pub as she did, cleaning, cooking and tending the bar. To balance the scales, Suzy had agreed to marry him but she had also insisted that, while she would act as a wife in every other field, she wanted her own bedroom and their union would not include sex. At the time, Percy had agreed, but more recently she had begun to suspect that he regretted that pact and resented her for her refusal to share a bed with him.
Suzy curled up in a tight ball in her bed, burning tears of regret forcing a passage from beneath her eyelids. Had she realised six months ago just how difficult it would be to marry a man she didn’t love and whom she wasn’t remotely attracted to? No, back then, she’d had no real idea of what she was signing up for and now it was too late. She felt trapped but she had agreed to be trapped. Either she told her father the truth and they ended up homeless and broke or she married Percy. Percy, who was suddenly getting rough with her, which frightened her more than she wanted to admit.
Having parted from his nieces, Ruy climbed back into his vehicle, a purely practical choice that would not attract the particular notice that a fancier car or limousine and driver would. He was still marvelling that a young woman as striking as Suzy Madderton could choose to marry an ignorant loudmouth of a bully such as the man he had met. But it was none of his business and had he not still desired to paint her he was convinced he would have thought no more of her. As it was, however, he was unaccustomed to meeting with the word no and running into an obstacle only made him all the more obstinately determined to get what he wanted. Once he was settled into his new property, he would call into the pub and speak to Suzy alone, he decided with satisfaction. Women who said no to Ruy were so rare as to be non-existent.
For the two days before the wedding, Suzy was run off her feet. There was a final fitting for her gown. She was not having any attendants, no bridal party as such, having decided that the fewer people dragged into her masquerade of being a happy bride, the easier it would be. In any case, all her school friends had long since disappeared to go to college or look for jobs unavailable in a rural village, options that had never really been a possibility for Suzy. Besides the dress fitting, which entailed a long drive into the nearest town and took up the entire morning, she had to call into Percy’s country house hotel, which lay several miles outside the village and where the reception was being held, to check arrangements, and she also had to pick up the cake and deliver it. She was doing the flowers in the church with the florist that evening. All else completed, she returned to the pub and was taken aback to see Ruy Rivera lounging by the fire there with a whisky and a broadsheet newspaper.
The first time she had seen him he had been wearing a beautifully tailored suit and she had wondered vaguely if he had been at a wedding or some similar event, but on this occasion he was casually clad in jeans and a knit sweater the colour of oatmeal. His hair, blue black as a raven’s wing and equally glossy and thick, was ruffled back from his bronzed brow, a little longer in length than was strictly conservative. In that first glance she registered afresh that he was so gorgeous he literally stole the breath from her lungs and made her mouth run dry. Fierce embarrassment claimed her as she glanced down at the sparkling solitaire on her engagement finger. Whatever else she owed Percy, she firmly believed that she owed him her loyalty and respect, and looking with interest at another man, no matter how hot he was, felt entirely wrong.
Her fair skin deeply flushed by guilty pink, she stepped behind the bar to give her father a break.
‘I thought you were at the church doing the flowers,’ Roger Madderton said in surprise.
‘The florist changed the time. She has another booking to cover first,’ Suzy explained. ‘Go and get your tea.’
‘Yes, your bossiness.’ Her father chuckled and sped off through the door into their living quarters.
Ruy folded his newspaper and vaulted upright to approach the bar. ‘I was hoping that you would appear.’
Crystalline green eyes glimmered over him as though reluctant to land or linger. ‘What can I get you? Another whisky?’
‘No, thank you. I’m driving,’ Ruy murmured with perfect diction, his Spanish accent purring along the syllables like an expensive sports car, she heard herself think foolishly of his dark, deep, oh-so-masculine drawl. ‘Would it be rude for me to ask about your Spanish mother?’
Disconcerted, Suzy stilled, her eyes reflective. ‘No, not at all. I don’t remember her because she died in a car crash when I was two. She was from Madrid and she lost her parents when she was quite young. She came to the UK as an au pair and met my father. They were married within months. I took Spanish classes because I wanted to feel closer to her, but it doesn’t really work if you don’t get to practise speaking the language.’ She sighed.
‘You could practise on me,’ Ruy suggested. ‘How long have you been giving dance lessons to the local kids?’
‘A couple of years now, first as an assistant until the teacher, who taught me for years, retired because of her arthritis. Dancing was my only hobby growing up,’ Suzy admitted.
‘I’m still hoping that you’ll act as a model for me. I really would like to paint you.’
‘I’m sorry but it’s not possible. I’m getting married tomorrow and then I’ll be away on my honeymoon for a couple of weeks and, in any case, Percy wouldn’t agree to it.’
‘You don’t strike me as a young woman who always does as she’s told. I’m willing to wait a few weeks to paint you,’ Ruy volunteered.
‘I can’t do it and that’s that. Will you please drop the subject now?’ Suzy shot back at him in exasperation. ‘Don’t you know how to take no for an answer?’
A slashing smile slanted Ruy’s wide mobile lips. ‘No,’ he dared.
