Kept by the Spanish Billionaire Read online

  She almost believed it, almost figured that she had got her emotions under control, when she spotted him later that night, standing outside in the garden, drink in one hand, laughing with a little group of people around him, and then her heart fluttered a bit and she drew in her breath and headed in his direction.

  The barbecue was kicking off in jolly style. Wine was being served and a selection of exquisite canapés, just substantial enough to take the edge off the alcohol before food, was brought out.

  James spotted her weaving her way in his direction and for a second or two he hesitated, then there he was, breaking away from the group and coming towards her.

  Actually, Amy could scarcely believe her eyes. In fact, she turned around to see if there was anyone behind her towards whom he could be heading.

  When she looked back round he was right there, in front of her, his blond hair rumpled, his whole look adorably preppie. He gave her a crooked smile and she smiled back happily.

  ‘I didn’t recognise you.’ He held her hand, stepped back and made her do an impromptu twirl, then he gave a long, low wolf-whistle.

  ‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’ Amy said, cheeks pink. She couldn’t quite make her voice sound husky, but she gave him the best flirty look at her disposal, all fluttering eyelashes and coy smile.

  ‘A very good thing!’ He laughed. ‘The skirt suits you. In fact, your legs suit you. Very nice legs.’

  ‘Hmm. All two of them!’ She felt rather pleased now that she had made the effort to wear the red and black floaty skirt she had brought over, even though the barbecue was being held in the garden so dressing up wasn’t de rigueur. The strappy red top made her feel wonderfully feminine.

  ‘Tell me what you did today,’ he said, eyes on her as he polished off his drink and signalled to a waiter for a refill without actually turning around.

  Amy told him, skipping out certain unfortunate details, such as nearly tipping over their kayak in an attempt to swap places with Justin and getting her jeans soaked to the thighs because she should have worn shorts like everyone else, not to mention the little fact that her glorious bead shoes were now drying on her window ledge and would probably never be the same again. He seemed amused enough at her rendition of the day’s events.

  The one thing she omitted to tell him was about her encounter with his gardener. Why spoil the moment? From feeling a little downbeat, she had bounced right back to her cheerful self, basking in the once-in-a-lifetime experience of being the centre of James’s attention.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Claire grinning like a hyena, and Amy made sure to angle her body away from her friend. She might be crazy about James, but she would die a thousand deaths if he ever discovered that, and Claire with her antics was hardly being the soul of subtle discretion.

  But already she could sense that James was ready to move on, to circulate, and she looked wistfully at his departing back as he reached for another glass of wine and headed off, always solicitous when it came to involving each and every one of his guests.

  For a few seconds, it dawned on her that those few moments of snatched time during which he had complimented her, actually looked at her, really amounted to not very much, but she quickly brushed aside that pessimistic train of thought.

  ‘I think,’ she told Claire later, when food had been eaten and the assembled crowd had moved on to the sort of abandoned dancing that only alcohol could induce, ‘that I’m making headway.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Ames…’ James seemed to have disappeared from the scene, although it was hard to tell because it was dark and there were so many people all over the place.

  ‘He asked me what I thought of the food.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Told him it wasn’t a patch on mine.’

  ‘You never!’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Bad move. Maybe he’ll sack his caterers here and rope you in to do the cooking.’

  They giggled, enjoying the novelty of being far from familiar shores in a setting they would never again experience.

  Amy drained her glass of wine and decided that she would try and locate the errant James.

  It had gone eleven and the party, subdued considered the amount of alcohol on offer, was still going strong. No one, in fact, had gone to bed yet as far as she could see, and Amy wasn’t going to be the first. The American crowd, who were either staying at a local hotel or else returning to their own homes, would be the first to go. She imagined that, with the crowd diminished, she might yet find another opportunity to chat to James, to let him see her in a different light. Hopefully not a sozzled light. However much Amy enjoyed having a good time, she knew when to stop drinking. Despite, and she thought once again of the gardener and his high-handed, self-righteous, priggish judgements, what certain people might think.

  But still…It was fun mingling and fun being asked to dance, and if her glass continued to be topped up despite her feeble attempts at shaking her head whenever one of the waiters poled along, then why shouldn’t she get into the spirit of things?

  Besides, as the evening wore on the wine was doing a very good job of keeping her maudlin thoughts at bay. Having a crush on the boss was the oldest, saddest story in the book. If her brothers ever found out, she didn’t know which of the three of them would die laughing first, and she didn’t think her sisters would be too full of tea and sympathy either. She was a pretty outgoing sort and had had her fair share of boyfriends yet here she was, in the most impossibly stunning location in the world, surrounded by lots of lively people roughly her own age, and what was she doing? Ferreting around to see if she could spot a man who didn’t give her the time of day.

  When she thought like that, her spirits dipped once more. Yet again, her outfit was going to be wasted. She had visions of thousands of outfits being bought and wasted in her attempts to steal James’s attention.

  On that thought, she set down her wineglass and drifted away from the party and the house. Away from the crowds, the glaring realisation that she wasn’t having the good time she should have been hit her and Amy began to feel a little more upbeat. In a minute she knew that her instinct to make the best out of any situation would surface and she would be fine. She would sit a while and let Nature and her naturally buoyant personality take their course.

  She quietly hived off towards the expertly landscaped wooded area, moving steadily away from the noise of the party.

  It was late but not particularly cool and the fresh air was doing wonders for her fuzzy head. Indeed, her spirits were on the up when she was aware of movement in a little clearing in the trees. Goodness only knew how they had managed to do it, but the copse was cleverly interspersed with small benches that had been fashioned roughly out of gnarled tree trunks, so that at first glance they looked like part of the natural scenery. Amy went into immediate stealthy mode and didn’t even bother to try and fight her curiosity.

  She peered, eventually making out who the two people on the bench were. It was dark, but not completely. Moonlight cast a dull, ephemeral light and as the couple moved apart for a few seconds she saw them clearly. The woman she didn’t recognise. Long, poker-straight hair, very fair skin and a body that was in a state of semi undress.

  The man…well, the man…

  She felt a tide of nausea rise up her throat and she took a couple of steps backwards, standing perfectly still when a twig snapped under her foot, but the couple were too engrossed in one another to hear the snapping of any twig. In fact, they would probably have been deaf to an approaching intercity train. When he pulled the woman so that she could straddle him, Amy fled.

  Her heart was pounding. She tried hard to be quiet, but after five minutes the need to get as far away from the sight of James wrapped around a woman was so great that she stopped giving a damn how much noise she made.

  She hit some part of the gardens but she wasn’t sure which part because she could no longer see the house, nor could she hear the strain
s of the music.

  She was sharing a bedroom with Claire, who had turned in a while before. Who was going to miss her?

  Amy willed herself to stop running and to get her breathing under control. Okay, here were the facts. The man she was mad about was involved with someone else. She was also lost. The first she would have to put on hold until she could cry about it later. The second she would have to sort out right away or else risk spending the night somewhere in the acres of estate with only her thoughts for company.

  With typical pluckiness, Amy drew in a deep breath and did what every good Girl Guide book would suggest at a time like this. She looked for a tall tree. Not too hard. Actually, they all looked pretty tall. Enormous, in fact, to someone pretty short, but, drawing in a deep breath, she kicked off her useless strappy sandals, and yet again wished she were decked out in something more suitable—talk about getting her dress code all wrong—and began to climb.

  She got high enough to panic but not nearly high enough to see where the house was, at which point she threw caution to the winds and began yelling her head off.

  When she next got up the courage to look down, it was to see the unmistakable shape of the gardener staring up at her. Of course, it would be the gardener.

  ‘I’m stuck!’

  ‘Why are you up a tree?’ Rafael felt his lips twitch. That blonde tangle of hair announced its owner with a glaring lack of subtlety.

  ‘Never mind that! You need to get me down!’

  ‘Sorry, but I don’t hear you using that special little word.’

  ‘Now’s not the time for games!’

  ‘Always time to be polite.’

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ Amy yelled down, ‘considering your rudeness the last time we met!’ She felt her grip on the tree branch get precariously unsteady and ordered him to go and fetch a ladder instantly! Please!

  ‘There’s no ladder at the cottage. Hang on and I’ll get you down!’

  Amy closed her eyes. She was aware of him climbing up the tree, skilfully manoeuvring the trunk and the branches. She had never felt more of an idiot in her life. Her skirt was everywhere. Floaty was fine at a party but not so fine when it came to shinning up a tree and having to be ignominiously fetched down like a stray cat.

  And Lord only knew what it was doing as he coaxed and aided her down, holding onto her when necessary until he could lever her gently to the ground, then he jumped down and landed softly next to her.

  ‘Thank you.’ Amy dusted down her skirt and avoided looking at him.

  ‘So. Care to tell me what you were doing up a tree at…’ he looked at his watch ‘…twelve thirty in the morning?’

  ‘What were you doing awake?’

  ‘I was up plotting my next attack on the bugs destroying the rose bushes. What do you think? I heard someone screaming like a banshee and thought that I’d better investigate.’

  Rafael glanced sideways at the dishevelled figure next to him. He felt utterly bemused by her random behaviour. Like most men, he had certain preferences when it came to women, and was accustomed to certain codes of behaviour. Not even by the wildest stretch of imagination did climbing trees at midnight fit the bill. He tried to picture any one of his erudite, contained and eminently respectable girlfriends up a tree and failed.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question and, considering you’ve put me through a lot of unnecessary hassle, I think I’m owed an explanation. What the hell did you think you were doing?’

  Amy gave him her best look of defiance and folded her arms, but he wasn’t buying it and eventually she shrugged and looked away. ‘Oh, the usual.’

  ‘Which would be…?’

  ‘Girl meets boy, girl likes boy, girl…’ she glanced down at her now dirty, creased skirt ‘…dons new outfit to impress boy only to find that boy has scuttled off to the woods so that he can be with another girl.’

  ‘And in frustration you decided to climb a tree…’

  Amy remembered just how obnoxious the man was. She glared at him and told him, sounding to even her own ears like a broken record, to point her in the right direction. At this rate, the infernal man would start thinking that she was stalking him.

  ‘The house is a stiff walk away, at least if you take the direct route, and I certainly won’t be sending you back through the deep, dark woods. God knows where you might end up.’

  He turned on his heel and started walking away and, with a mixture of frustration and resentment, Amy half ran behind him, struggling to keep up with his long strides.

  ‘I think I can manage!’

  Was it possible to read someone’s expression from the inclination of their fast-disappearing back? She thought so!

  ‘Please wait!’ she yelled. ‘These sandals weren’t designed for sprinting!’

  Rafael stopped and turned around, waiting for her to catch up with him. The woman was truly off her rocker. How many sane human beings climbed trees at midnight in an attempt to deal with a broken heart? In fact, how many sane adults climbed trees? He hadn’t climbed a tree since he was a kid!

  ‘You should have thought of that before you decided to hike your way across the estate,’ Rafael pointed out in the sort of calm voice that someone might use when dealing with the village idiot.

  ‘I wasn’t “hiking” my way across the estate,’ Amy said icily, ‘I was…’

  ‘I’m all ears.’ He carried on walking, thankfully at a less ridiculous pace, and she reluctantly fell into step with him.

  ‘Taking a bit of time out to get a breath of fresh air.’

  ‘You seem to do quite a bit of that, don’t you? Breathing in the fresh air and covering great distances in the process?’

  ‘Yes, I like walking!’

  They had reached his house. Actually just a few more minutes of running would have seen her safely to his front door instead of up a tree, not that that option was particularly appealing either, but at least her expensive skirt would still have been intact. Now it was fit only to join the beaded silver shoes in that great wardrobe in the sky.

  ‘You’ll have to get out of those things. You’re filthy.’

  ‘I want to go back to the house. I have to go back there. My clothes are all there.’

  ‘I’m not taking you. You’ve put me out already.’

  ‘I know it’s quite a walk, but you can drive me there, can’t you? I mean, you must have a car tucked away somewhere.’ Amy suddenly felt close to breaking-point. She wrapped her arms tightly around her body and kept herself very still so that she didn’t burst into tears.

  ‘I’ll run you a bath.’

  ‘Please take me back to the house. Please.’

  ‘You’re in no fit state,’ Rafael told her without preamble. ‘Never mind the state of your clothes, you look as though you’re about to collapse. You need to get yourself together. Now sit down. I’ll run you a bath and, while it’s running, I’ll make you something hot to drink.’

  The woman was a nuisance but Rafael felt a twinge of concern if only because the same tiring feistiness that got on his nerves was so obviously missing in action.

  Before she could launch into another round of pleading to be taken back to the house, he was heading up the stairs so that he could run her a bath. Then he fetched a clean towel from the cupboard and one of his shirts, which she would have to wear whether she liked it or not. He would stick her clothes in the wash and they would be clean in time for her in the morning. After that, he would send her on her way so that she could, presumably, continue to ruin her life by falling in love with inappropriate men.

  He returned to find her slumped on the ground in the sitting room.

  ‘I didn’t want to get your nice clean furniture dirty,’ she said, meeting his questioning eyes. ‘I’m disgusting.’ She stood up. ‘I give you yet another pair of ruined shoes. Two in one day. A record even for me,’ she told him gloomily, dangling her sorry sandals in one hand.

  ‘What happened to pair one?’ Rafael found himself asking.
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  ‘Waterlogged in a kayaking incident this morning.’

  ‘Right. What else? The bathroom is upstairs. Leave your clothes outside the door and I’ll stick them in the wash. They’ll be ready by morning.’

  ‘I can’t spend the night here.’ She hovered, tapping one bare foot behind her.

  ‘Have a bath. We’ll discuss it when you come out. I’ve left one of my shirts for you to put on.’

  Well, there was nothing to discuss. Amy emerged twenty minutes later, feeling refreshed and wearing only her underwear and his white shirt, which reached a respectable mid-thigh level. It might seem odd to whoever happened to still be up that she was returning to the house in a man’s shirt and not much else, but with any luck the place would be dead. Probably aside from James, who would still be gambolling somewhere in the woods with his lady friend. She felt another attack of self-pity threaten and willed it away.

  Rafael, looking disgustingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, was waiting for her in the sitting room with a cup of hot chocolate on the table, which he pointed at as soon as he saw her.

  His shirt drowned her and she was slight enough to begin with. She had scrubbed off all the warpaint and her skin was satin-smooth with a faint golden tan that must have accumulated over the summer. Her eyebrows, in contrast to the vanilla-coloured, unruly hair, were dark. He wondered whether it was this unlikely contrast that lent her face such animation, even when she wasn’t speaking. Such as now.

  ‘Feel better?’

  ‘Not much. Thanks for asking.’ Amy curled her legs under her and reached forward for the mug, enjoying the creaminess of the drink. She hadn’t had hot chocolate for ages. It reminded her of her childhood.

  Rafael frowned, a little disconcerted by the bluntness of the reply to a perfectly polite question.

  ‘Your clothes are in the wash,’ he informed her, skirting around his reluctant curiosity. ‘So, I suppose I could drive you back but the car is parked a walk away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why is your car parked a walk away? Don’t your employers think that you might want to go out now and again? You might be a very diligent gardener, but don’t they think that you might want a bit of time out now occasionally?’