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CHAPTER THREE
CECILEWASBRISKand kind, the very best she could have been in such circumstances. She gently insisted on documenting and photographing Suzy’s abrasions, informing her that it was a matter of legal procedure.
‘But I don’t want the police involved,’ Suzy proclaimed.
‘Have you really thought that through? Has it occurred to you that he has probably done this sort of stuff before and got away with it? Or that if you don’t make a complaint, some other woman after you will suffer the same as you are now? It could have been much worse for you, Suzy...and he could come after you again.’
All those sensible points got through to Suzy and made her squirm and feel sick and ashamed and frightened, because Percy’s attitude had given her the impression that she was not the first woman that he had attacked. ‘I know it could have been worse...look, I’ll think about it,’ she muttered uneasily.
‘Obviously what you do is up to you,’ Cecile conceded gently. ‘For now, I recommend that you have a nap, because you look exhausted.’
‘I’d love a shower first... I don’t suppose—’ Her voice ran out as the other woman helpfully tugged open a door on the other side of the room.
Alone, Suzy crept barefoot into the fanciest bathroom she had ever seen outside a magazine. Natural stone with veins of quartz that glimmered like gold covered the floor and the walls and provided a massive shower, while the bath sat up a short flight of steps by the window and looked very much like the sort of backdrop a film star might have used. Eyes wide, Suzy peeled off her clothing, picking up the pitiful roll of banknotes she had thrust into her bra earlier that day. She glowered at her own reflection, seeing the shadows beneath her eyes and the ugly bruising on her body before turning away from the view and switching on the shower.
Downstairs, Cecile surveyed her younger brother. ‘I know you must want your peace back. I suppose you want me to take her out of here for you,’ she assumed. ‘She doesn’t want to go home yet because of the bruises.’
‘No. I want her to stay.’
‘Stay? But where are you planning to put her?’ the vivacious brunette asked in surprise. ‘You haven’t got a spare room.’
Put on the spot while cursing his stubborn refusal to consider extending the house when he had bought it , Ruy shrugged a broad shoulder with something less than his usual cool. ‘I’ll sort something out. I have the studio. I’ll buy a bed. I want her to stay because I want to paint her.’
‘You want to...paint her?’ Cecile shook her dark head in visible disbelief. ‘Right now, she needs support and understanding, not some guy who just wants to use her in some other way!’
‘I have no plans to use her in any way,’ Ruy retorted drily.
‘I’m sorry, but seeing her like that upset me. She’s such a kind girl and usually so lively.’ His sister sighed. ‘I think that awful man, Brenton, must have some kind of nasty hold on her because I can’t understand why she’s reluctant to report him to the police. I bet it’s something to do with money. Ever since we moved here I’ve heard rumours that the pub is going bust.’
Ruy tensed, his hard, expressive mouth compressing. ‘May I ask if—?’
‘No, you can’t ask me anything confidential about a patient and you should know better!’ Cecile told him firmly. ‘Now, tell me, have you accepted the invitation to our brother’s wedding yet?’
Ruy grimaced. ‘Not yet. Had he extended the invite to you and Charles as well I would have accepted immediately.’
‘Rodrigo isn’t prepared to recognise me as a sibling yet. He’s a complete snob,’ Cecile commented with the dry amusement of indifference on that score. ‘I’m just grateful he has a twin who isn’t. I think you should give him a second chance, Ruy, and trust that there will be no unpleasantness this time.’
Ruy said nothing. The history of what Cecile called unpleasantness between the brothers had begun when they were children and eight years earlier had significantly worsened to the extent that the brothers no longer spoke at all. He refused to think about the murky secret in their past, the reason behind that complete breakdown in communication. Yet that was why Ruy had been astonished by the wedding invite and he was as reluctant to refuse it and cause offence as he was to attend and risk an angry scene.
What he really needed, he reflected uneasily, was a female companion to act as a buffer between him and his brother and his bride, but any woman of his acquaintance whom he invited to accompany him to a family wedding would immediately assume that their relationship was more meaningful than it was. That was a hassle he didn’t need but it made him think of Suzy again, Suzy who struck him as more a wild and free young woman than a conventional conservative one. Someone like her would make the perfect companion. She would be different enough to intrigue his relatives and his brother but too young and restless to harbour any serious expectations of him afterwards.
A couple of hours later, Suzy stirred and awakened, stretching with a wince because pushing her head into the pillow ensured she felt the tender swelling on the back of it. Cecile had tried to persuade her to go for a hospital scan, but Suzy was confident that it was simply a painful bump. She lay there picturing the guests who must have turned up for her wedding and their incredulity over her non-appearance and she flinched, wiping her mind free of the embarrassing images again. What was done was done, she told herself, and she could not regret backing out of her agreement with Percy.
She had returned to bed with her wet hair wrapped in a towel and it took inventiveness to make herself even vaguely presentable because her curls had gone crazy. She finger-sorted and flattened and dampened and gave up in the end, glancing in the mirror and frowning before putting on her biker boots again and leaving the room.
Emerging onto a landing she didn’t even recall seeing before, she headed for the stairs since there didn’t appear to be anywhere else to go.
Ruy looked up from his sketch pad and saw her on the stairs, long pale, shapely legs thrust into those ridiculous boots, his capacious tee shirt almost hanging off one slender white shoulder. Her hair was wild and untamed, a messy mass of curls surrounding her triangular face in a cloud of Titian glory, huge green eyes striking his. He was entranced and he knew it, knew it was the artist in him, not the man, because for the first time in her presence he hadn’t got hard.
‘Ruy,’ she said, awkward in the buzzing silence, her attention falling to the slew of discarded sketches littering the coffee table and squinting at the nearest image, involuntarily impressed by the few slashing strokes on the page, which even she registered as recognisable. ‘Have you been drawing me?’
Ruy tossed the pad down on the coffee table, the faintest colour defining his remarkable cheekbones, dark eyes flaring gold as ingots as he looked up at her.
‘You look so guilty!’ Suzy carolled in unexpected delight, a teasing grin forming on her lips as she settled down on a capacious sofa and curled up. ‘You know you should have asked permission first.’
Unaccustomed to being read that accurately, Ruy suppressed a sardonic retort because she was smiling, and then the entirety of his attention was stolen by a glimpse of slender inner thigh that sent a pulse thrumming directly to his groin. It was that flawless skin of hers, so translucent and smooth that he could only wonder how it would feel beneath his fingertips. ‘I should have done,’ he agreed in a driven undertone, averting his gaze and willing his hormones to stop derailing him, disconcerted that she could make him react with so adolescent a lack of restraint. ‘But occasionally the desire to draw pushes me beyond the limits of courtesy. I apologise.’
‘You don’t need to,’ Suzy told him immediately, wondering why his admission that the pull of his art tempted him into forgetting his manners should strike her as so very, very sexy. She didn’t think like that, at least, she never had before meeting him. It was downright unnerving, in the wake of that first kiss initiated by her, to appreciate that around him she still didn’t seem capable of behaving normally. ‘You helped me today and I won’t forget that.’
