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Suzy’s teeth gritted. ‘Well, it’s a very annoying trait...yes, sir...what can I get you?’ she asked another man who had wandered up to the bar and went to serve him.
Ruy was unused to being left to kick his heels; it was his turn to grit teeth. Just at that moment faking being a more ordinary mortal wasn’t working well for him. The usual awe, flattery and flirtation that women gave him would have been remarkably welcome just then. Hombre! A barmaid was giving him lip! His half-sister’s voice sounded in his conscience and he knew she would have told him that he was being both snobbish and unjust. Cecile, ignored and hidden by their father as the daughter of his mistress, had had a much rougher ride through life than Ruy had ever had, and he had a sneaking suspicion that his opinionated and down-to-earth sibling would have laughed at seeing him being ignored and cold-shouldered by a woman.
‘One last word on the subject?’ Ruy breathed softly as she moved closer to him while wiping the bar top.
‘Name your price for being my model and I will pay it,’ he murmured in sibilant conclusion.
‘You’re just inviting me to pluck some sum of money out of the air? I haven’t a clue what artists’ models charge!’ Suzy objected.
‘I want you, nobody else, which gives you a truly rare and special value,’ Ruy told her. ‘I will pay a huge sum for you to model for me.’
Suzy dealt him a frowning glance of reluctant fascination. ‘That’s crazy. There has to be a limit.’
‘Not with me, there’s not,’ Ruy assured her stubbornly, forgetting in that instant that he was not in his own world of gilded exclusivity where nothing cost too much and nothing he desired was ever out of his reach.
Suzy wondered what it was about her that made men try to buy her. Percy had already done it, she reminded herself wretchedly. She could only think of the horrific sum her father had been told he owed after Percy had added on the interest charges that her poor father had misunderstood how to calculate. ‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ she said mockingly. ‘I’ll do it for—’
‘That’s a deal, then,’ Ruy declared with intense satisfaction, relieved that money was the lure he had assumed it would be because it made him more conscious of the barrier between them, a barrier he was determined to maintain.
Suzy’s brows rose at that response and she surveyed him in complete stupefaction. ‘You expect me to believe that you can pay me fifty thousand pounds to act as your model? Like you’re some Mr Rockefeller or something? Do I look like I still believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy?’ She gulped with a sudden helpless giggle of appreciation. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you for winding me up like that! I needed something to laugh about tonight and that offer was, not only tasteless, but also absolutely priceless!’
Ruy stared back at her in angry astonishment, never before having met anyone who failed to take him very seriously indeed. It was an instant when he surprised himself, learning that he was, in spite of all the many times he had assured himself he was not, a Valiente down to the backbone, proud of his blue-blooded heritage, his power and influence and arrogant as all get-out. He wouldn’t let himself notice how laughter transformed her face from pure Madonna perfection to girlish natural amusement, eyes lighting up like stars, pale slender throat extending, that full pink cupid’s bow mouth that tantalised him pouting in a delicious pillowy curve.
Percy stalked through the door, his mouth tightening when he saw his fiancée laughing behind the bar with Ruy leaning on it.
Unable to judge his mood as he stood in the shadows by the door, Suzy smiled at her fiancé and said, ‘I thought I wasn’t to see you tonight. I’m going over to do the flowers as soon as Dad comes back.’
‘I’ll see you there,’ Percy declared curtly and swung on his heel to leave again.
Suzy breathed in deep and slow to soothe herself, recognising that she was in an anxious, volatile mood because she couldn’t stop thinking about her wedding the next day and her nerves and regrets were really beginning to eat her alive. Making a sacrifice, even for someone that you loved as she loved her father, was much harder than she had thought it would be months earlier...
