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Furious with Ruy for using her dad to do his bidding and mysteriously contriving to shift the older man’s loyalty away from his daughter, Suzy stomped up the steps. Ruy opened the door himself and her heart skipped a beat straight away. His black hair was still damp from the shower, his jawline freshly shaven. Sheathed in jeans and a shirt, he should have seemed familiar but he was definitely changed with his lean, strong face rather fined down, his spectacular dark eyes under-shadowed. Her first thought was that he had been ill, and alarm clutched at her and only with the greatest difficulty did she resist the urge to demand proof of his health.
‘Ruy...’ It was all she could do to squeeze those syllables from her dry throat.
‘Don’t blame your father for this. I phoned him last night and persuaded him that this meeting was for the best.’
‘But it’s not,’ Suzy whispered, sidling past him, careful not to brush against him.
‘Hear me out and then say that,’ Ruy framed harshly.
What Suzy wasn’t about to say to him was that seeing him again and refreshing her memories only made their separation more painful for her. ‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll listen.’
Ruy strode into the spacious reception area. ‘I told you about my stalking ordeal eight years ago.’
‘Well, you didn’t tell me how you settled it,’ Suzy remarked in a brittle voice.
‘I didn’t settle it, but eventually I involved the police and she was charged. I had to do something. The longer it went on, the worse it became. She assaulted a woman I took out to dinner. When the police arrested her and searched her apartment they discovered that she had gathered a huge amount of information about me long before I met her. She had deliberately targeted me in the club the night we met.’
Suzy was frowning. ‘That’s creepy. What happened to the poor woman she assaulted?’
‘She was shaken up, but she managed to get away from her. Although I was convinced it was my stalker who had attacked her, we weren’t able to prove it. The assault made me bring in the police,’ Ruy admitted. ‘After she was arrested, her parents approached me and begged me to drop the charges. They said the prosecution would ruin her life. They promised to get her psychiatric treatment and swore that I would never see her again. I dropped the charges and to this day, I don’t know whether that was the right or wrong thing to do.’
‘I don’t understand what all this has to do with your brother’s wife—’
‘Bear with me,’ Ruy cut in. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘A white wine.’
Ruy filled a glass for her, his lean brown hands deft, and she watched him, studying his sculpted profile, his black hair gleaming as it dried in the sunlight arrowing through the tall windows. ‘I was sympathetic towards my stalker’s parents because my brother also had mental-health issues,’ Ruy explained. ‘Rigo had a nervous breakdown in his teens. He got hooked on prescription drugs and eventually he had to go into rehab to get clean. Six months after that he phoned me to tell me that he had got engaged and that he wanted me to meet his future wife, whom he had met in the same clinic. He was besotted with her. She was a beautiful woman. Her name was Liliana, my former stalker.’
‘Good grief!’ Suzy croaked, finally grasping the connection. ‘What did you do when you realised?’
‘I was honest with him. I told him that I had had a one-night stand with her, which quite naturally angered and upset him. No man wants the woman he loves to have already slept with his brother. I also gave Rigo chapter and verse on her stalking activities and I went to see her parents and asked them to be honest with him as well. They flat out refused. They believed Liliana was in love with my brother and that he was the best chance she had of a normal life. At the same time Liliana gave Rigo some nonsensical story about how I had led her down the garden path and broken her heart, which of course made him sympathetic towards her. I, on the other hand, was convinced she had chosen him because he was my brother...and in the end I was proven right on that score.’
Suzy gulped down a mouthful of wine. ‘She really did put you through the mill. What happened?’
‘He married her, and she began to stalk me again. She was very manipulative. My brother accused me of trying to lure her away from him when I would have done anything to be rid of her attentions!’ Ruy admitted in a driven undertone. ‘But, no, I certainly never wished her dead. She interrupted a business lunch I was having one day...my brother’s wife, my sister-in-law, walking in and draping herself over me as though we were lovers. Her behaviour caused a great deal of talk and I warned Rigo that he had to rein her in or that I would take steps to keep her away from me.’
‘My word, Ruy...she made your life hell.’ Suzy sighed, understanding all at once why Ruy was so set on not getting into relationships. Liliana had scared him off and had probably made him wary and distrustful of every woman he met after her. ‘And your brother’s too.’
‘The last time I saw her I tried very hard to persuade her to see a psychiatrist and I told her that there was no chance of her ever having a relationship with me, but she became hysterical and I had to drop the subject. That afternoon she bribed a cleaner to gain access to my apartment and took an overdose there,’ Ruy related grimly. ‘She knew my schedule and usually I would have been home that evening but a crisis had arisen and I flew to Brussels instead.’
Guessing the ending of his story, Suzy winced. ‘Oh, Ruy,’ she muttered, pained on his behalf and his brother’s.
Dark eyes grim, he compressed his lips. ‘I don’t believe that she meant to kill herself. I think it was another cry for attention and a desire to punish me. She expected me to find her and get her to a doctor in time. Unfortunately, she wasn’t discovered until the next day by which time it was too late. Rigo blamed me for her death.’
‘I don’t see how he could,’ Suzy breathed, troubled at that unjust bestowal of blame in such tragic circumstances.
‘He had to blame someone...why not me? As he saw it, I had stolen his wife’s affections, treated her with cruel indifference and destroyed her mental health. I tried to reason with him, but he was too bitter back then.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Wasn’t it? Perhaps had I been a little more discerning the night I met her, I would have spent more time talking to her and then I might have realised that we were not suited in any way.’
‘I don’t think that would have mattered when she had already fixated on you. I’m sorry I misjudged you,’ Suzy said truthfully. ‘I shouldn’t have listened to gossip.’
‘None of us should but we all do it,’ Ruy murmured wryly.
‘I didn’t trust my own faith in you because of what Percy did to me,’ Suzy admitted in a shamed rush. ‘You see, I trusted him once too and then I realised how foolish I had been and, after that, I didn’t see how I could trust you...particularly when you seemed too good to be true.’
