Kept by the Spanish Billionaire Read online

  ‘Maybe I think it might be a bit of a busman’s holiday to spend yet more time outdoors when most of my time is spent there anyway. Mowing lawns. Weeding. Felling the occasional tree.’

  Amy frowned. Was he laughing at her? She thought she had been making a perfectly sensible observation.

  ‘In fact, this isn’t my idea of fun at all,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Too much sun, too little shade, sand in the sandwiches.’ He stood up and Amy scrambled to her feet. ‘I suggest we hop in the car and see where the wind takes us. We can eat something on the way. Somewhere.’ Rafael couldn’t quite believe his own ears.

  Amy gave him a brilliant smile. ‘Okay. But what about the food? I mean, it must have cost quite a bit and you didn’t let me pay…perhaps I could treat you to lunch? I know you have better things to do than ferry me around because I was stupid enough to land up on your doorstep last night.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Four hours later, Rafael had to admit that he was enjoying himself. As novel experiences went, spending time in the company of a woman who had no particular interest in the news, no knowledge of the opera, little experience of the theatre and an unhealthy interest in reality television was an eye opener. There was no intellectual conversation about the state of the country, the world economy, and, certainly in the case of Elizabeth, the frustrations of the American legal system.

  Instead he had fielded off a thousand intrusive questions about himself, heard all about her chaotic, massive family and discovered, by the time they had made it back to his house, that he had not actually learnt anything at all about her intentions towards his brother. Which had been the whole point of the exercise. And now she was demanding to leave.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because people will be wondering where I am.’ Amy ticked off all the reasons on her fingers. ‘Because there are all sorts of games laid on for this evening and it should be fun. Because I can’t stay wearing the same clothes indefinitely.’

  Rafael was forced to concede defeat but, having accomplished precisely nothing during the course of the day, he decided, there and then, that he would simply have to put his work on hold for a couple more hours and entertain the woman the following day. It would all be for a good cause.

  ‘Games…’ Rafael could think of nothing worse.

  ‘Yup. Casino night. Of course, not with real money, but should be a laugh.’

  Rafael grunted. ‘Okay. Hop back in the car. I’ll take you to the house.’

  Amy, strangely disappointed, sat in silence for the short duration of the drive.

  ‘I’ll drop you off by the gates, if you don’t mind.’ He pressed a button on his key ring and the gates slowly inched their way open.

  ‘Guess it’ll be a bit uncomfortable for you…’ he insinuated casually, killing the engine and leaning back against the door to look at her. The sun had brought her out in a light sprinkling of freckles and, combined with the lack of makeup, made her look very young, very defenceless. James had not paid her a bit of attention, it would seem, since she had started working for the company, but he would be seeing her in a new light here and very young and defenceless could prove a winning combination for him, even if he did have a girl lurking in the background. Knowing James, whoever it was would be a temporary fling, easily discarded.

  Amy, as he had discovered throughout the course of the day, might not have the striking model looks his brother favoured, but she had an open, infectiously gregarious personality that could be just as lethally attractive.

  ‘I mean, being around your boss…knowing that he’s got another woman, that he really hasn’t the time of day for you…’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Especially when you’d invested time and energy spinning fantasies about getting him into bed…’ He didn’t like the image in his head of her in bed with his brother, not at all.

  Amy was torn between indignation at his assumptions and sheepishness at how accurate they were. Yes, she had wasted time and energy spinning fantasies, not to mention a fair amount of money on a certain wardrobe that seemed intent on self-destruction. Probably fate’s way of making sure no one looked at her twice. Not even, she brooded, the gardener sitting next to her. Not once had she seen him give her that once-over that was the age-old sign of a man’s attraction to a member of the opposite sex. Not once!

  ‘I’m not that sad!’ Amy lied. ‘Anyway, there are lots of people around. It’s not as though I shall be forced to talk to him if I don’t want to.’

  ‘And would you want to…?’

  ‘Would I want to what?’

  ‘Talk to him. Or are you all over that now?’

  She flushed. With the benefit of cruel hindsight and unfortunate, inevitable disillusionment, Amy could see all too clearly that, not only was she cured of her misguided infatuation, but that the infatuation had never been more than a temporary balm to her ego after Freddie. She had been dumped in the most mortifying way possible, never mind that she herself had been thoroughly fed up with him, and the occasional flirting with James had been a pleasant way of passing the time while she recovered her spirit. She had no idea what she might have done had James actually turned around and expressed a desire to get into bed with her.

  ‘Women don’t just get over broken hearts in the space of a few hours!’ she remonstrated, wriggling out of a direct answer.

  ‘Your heart wasn’t broken. Did you think of the man once during the course of the day?’

  ‘Of course I did!’ Not once! ‘Not,’ she emphasised, ‘that it’s any of your business!’

  Rafael thought that she might well be surprised if she knew just how much of his business it was. ‘Because,’ he murmured, ‘I thought you might want to take a bit of time out and spend the day in Manhattan tomorrow…’

  He dangled the carrot in front of her and watched her contemplate the tasty bait. She had never been abroad. This was the first time she had stepped foot outside the country. There had always been too many children for her parents to contemplate the expense. He had learnt all this during the course of the day.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Amy told him, dragging her mind away from thoughts of skyscrapers and Central Park, which she had seen on television a million times. ‘You can’t possibly just take time off whenever you want. I know you probably call the shots with your staff, but don’t you think your boss might be a bit miffed if he realises that you’re leaving them to their own devices for two days on the trot? You might just be pushing his generosity and I wouldn’t want to land you in any trouble.’

  ‘That’s very considerate of you,’ Rafael said, amused, ‘but there’s no need to concern yourself on my behalf. The boss and I have a very…amicable relationship. Of course, if you’d rather not…’ He found that he wanted her to. The realisation was short-lived but overpowering.

  ‘I suppose it might be a relief not to be in James’s company, knowing that I’ve made a fool of myself…’ She remembered that she was a woman of substance and still reeling with disappointment from Love’s Cruel Blow. ‘And it would be hard to see him, knowing what I know and yet still…wanting him…’

  This was not what Rafael wanted to hear. ‘Still wanting him’ implied the possibility of ongoing pursuit the minute they were back in England and circumstances had reverted to their normal status quo. It would be evident that whoever had been at the receiving end of James’s attentions in the Hamptons would no longer be around and for all she thought that she had been an invisible presence, she might well be surprised to discover that that had not been the case. What normal, red-blooded male could fail to notice her understated appeal? She might not have legs up to her armpits or breasts that announced themselves minutes before their owner arrived, but her sense of humour was irreverent and infectious and her personality was vibrantly captivating. As far as James would be concerned, Rafael amended to himself. He liked fun-loving. The fact that this one came in a different, vastly more intelligent package could well make the difference betwee
n a passing affair and a marriage proposal. Rafael couldn’t think of that slim possibility without a surge of rage washing over him and an immediate and overwhelming determination to prevent it at all costs.

  ‘So I take it that’s a yes…’

  He collected her at eight-thirty promptly the following morning. Amy had been up and ready since seven. She was back to her jeans, but this time twinned with a small, tight vest-top and her gorgeous new shoes. She had a date with the gardener, she told Claire breezily, who was secretly relieved that she had given up her pointless pursuit of James, and contented herself with only a couple of questions. Notably how she could manage to meet a guy in the space of twenty-four hours, but then she knew the answer well enough. Amy had a sunny personality that people were drawn to, even though she was merrily unaware of the fact. She was also cuter than she thought, with her wild blonde hair and big blue eyes giving her a gamine appeal that many men found captivating. She was far more suited to dates with a gardener than dreaming about the impossibly rich playboy James who represented everything that was unreliable about the opposite sex.

  ‘Bring me back a souvenir,’ Claire told her.

  ‘Only if it can be really tacky!’ Amy laughed.

  ‘And don’t fall for the gardener,’ her friend warned, uneasily aware that there was something different about her. ‘It would be hard to commute from London to New York three times a week.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Amy said sincerely, ‘there’s no chance of that!’ She thought of Rafael. He might have smouldering good looks, but he was not easy company. She found herself trying to explain the conundrum to Claire until she was interrupted.

  ‘Okay, okay, I get the picture! Though why you would want to spend time with someone you find hard going, I have no idea. That’s not like you at all.’ Curiouser and curiouser, Claire thought. She refrained from saying anything but wondered if jumping out of the frying-pan and straight into the fire would do her friend any good.

  Amy rattled off the excuse provided by Rafael and which she had eagerly adopted as her own. ‘I’d rather not be around James just at the moment. I feel like an utter fool, to be honest. I mean, it’s not as though I haven’t known that he’s had women, but I suppose seeing it for myself up close and personal just really brought it home to me. I’ve been an idiot, Claire.’

  Claire made indeterminate noises that might have been agreement or might have been denial. Fortunately, her friend did not ask for clarification.

  ‘So I just think it would work for me not to be around him too much here if I can help it, and no one’s really going to notice because we can all do our own thing if we want to. I mean…you could come out with us today if you want…’ She found herself guiltily hoping that her friend would turn down the offer, as she did, then she felt guilty that she could have been so selfish. She should want Claire around to dilute the sheer get-under-her-skin nature of Rafael’s personality.

  ‘Well, you won’t be missing much,’ Amy said stoutly when Claire declined. ‘It’s not as though the gardener’s a shed load of fun. I mean, the only time he laughs is when he’s laughing at me!’

  ‘But he’s good-looking…’ Claire said thoughtfully.

  ‘Not my type. You know I like the fun-loving sorts…and, yes,’ she continued irritably when Claire raised her eyebrows and grinned, ‘I suppose some people might find him hand-some…not cute, I hasten to add. In fact, he’s about as cute as a man-eating shark, but I suppose he gets a couple of looks when he goes out…’ A couple of hundred, she thought, recalling the heads that had swung around to get a glimpse of him. ‘But then he would,’ she said. ‘All that manual outdoor work…rippling muscles everywhere…but not a very sensitive kind of guy…’ she added.

  ‘So why do you think he’s taking a day off just to ferry you around New York?’ Claire asked with lively interest.

  ‘Maybe he feels sorry for me,’ Amy said, frowning. She couldn’t really imagine Rafael feeling sorry for anyone. ‘I did lay it on a bit thick about my broken heart.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Claire told her with drama in her voice, ‘he’s fallen for the charms of the beautiful Amy…’

  Amy felt the colour start from the tips of her toes and work its way up. The laughter disappeared from her voice instantly. ‘That’s a ridiculous idea,’ she said huriedly.

  ‘But he’s spending a whole day with you, even though he doesn’t have to…’

  ‘Maybe he just likes the idea of going out with someone from The Big House…’

  ‘Even though he knows that you’re not made of money?’

  ‘Who knows what makes the man tick?’ Amy said irritably, looking at her watch. ‘Who cares?’ She wanted to clear off before James came down for breakfast. She didn’t want to be answering a series of questions from him about where she was going and with whom, not that he would probably even notice her sitting in front of her plate of half-eaten croissant and streaky bacon. She thought about that and, ‘hrrmphed,’ in irritation at how pathetic she had been, never mind that she had been recovering from Freddie, who hadn’t actually been worth recovering from anyway! And she didn’t want to hang around answering Claire’s questions. Normally, she would have been the first to have a laugh at her unexpected date, but not, for some reason, this time.

  She excused herself, returned to her room and didn’t emerge for another half an hour, at which time she sneaked out of the house and found herself running down to the gates at the bottom of the ridiculously long and winding drive.

  Which was why, when she saw the sports car waiting for her, her heart was racing. It was just the exertion of the run.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RAFAEL was not in the best of moods. Having had a telephone conversation with his brother the night before regarding a hiccup with one of their prospective deals, he had somehow ended up admitting to James that he would be taking Amy out for the day and, because he could not reveal the reason why, had had to endure an inordinate amount of laughter and a lengthy and unedifying lecture on the wisdom of taking a break from the boring power-suited women he usually dated.

  As if that hadn’t been bad enough, news of his departure from the norm had spread with the speed of light, and at a stupidly early hour this morning he had received an unexpected telephone call from his mother. He had seen through her initial pleasantries in roughly two seconds and then had stuck the phone on loudspeaker and for the duration of the call had actually had time to cook himself some breakfast, download a couple of e-mails and change.

  Anyone would think, Rafael thought ill humouredly, that he had decided to book a flight to the moon. When he had casually mentioned that there must be very little of interest happening in his mother’s life if she could get excited over something as small as him taking a woman out for the day, he had had to suffer through an amused, pithy speech on how much good it would do him to do something unexpected for once.

  ‘When was the last time you actually took time off work on the spur of the moment?’ she demanded.

  Rafael diplomatically refrained from telling her that spontaneous breaks from work just whenever the mood grabbed him wouldn’t exactly be in the best interests of the company that he ran with such stunning success. Instead, he said, ‘About a week ago when I found myself caretaking James…’

  ‘Oh, but that was on the spur of my moment,’ his mother was quick to point out. He couldn’t win.

  ‘What on earth are you wearing?’ he asked, as soon as Amy was in the car.

  ‘Jeans,’ Amy told him. ‘And good morning to you too.’

  Rafael looked at the strip of bare midriff on display and grunted. ‘They’re very low.’

  ‘And you sound like someone’s father when you say stuff like that. This is the style.’

  ‘Really. And that would be according to…?’

  ‘According to anyone under the age of thirty…which I guess rules you out…’

  And so here we go again, Amy thought, like two combatants circling each other, taking quick punc
hes whenever the opportunity arise. She closed her eyes and let the breeze whip through her hair. Curiously, she felt excited and happy, even though sniping really wasn’t her style. She half opened her eyes and peeked at him. The dark sunglasses were in place again and he was driving with one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting lightly on the gearbox. She would never have thought that a gardener would suit a low-slung, convertible sports car, but he did. The latent power of the car fitted him somehow.

  ‘I haven’t even seen you in a pair of jeans!’ she said, pulling herself together.

  ‘Because I don’t own a pair.’

  ‘Everyone owns a pair of jeans!’

  Rafael shrugged. That was a fair enough assertion. He wondered how she would react if he told her that he had accounts at New York’s most exclusive stores and a personal shopper who kitted him out in whatever he needed. He had neither the time nor the inclination to drift from store to store in search of trendy clothing. He did not possess any jeans because he had never expressed any particular desire to own a pair. Consequently, his casual trousers were hand-tailored but just in less formal and more wearable fabric than his suits. He didn’t have to look at her face to know that her expression would be one of horrified fascination at someone whose fashion style resided somewhere in the dinosaur era.

  Rafael, who generally didn’t give one hoot what other people thought of him, found himself scowling.

  ‘Hmm. No jeans. Maybe we should do a bit of shopping today,’ Amy said mischievously. ‘Get you looking a little less like an old fuddy duddy.’

  ‘You think I look like a fuddy-duddy?’ Rafael shot her a crooked smile and Amy blinked. No! He mightn’t wear jeans but the last thing this man was was a fuddy-duddy! Her mouth went dry and she could feel her heart speed up. What was going on? she thought, panicked.