Rafael's Suitable Bride (16 page)

As if tuning in to her innermost thoughts and reading her mind, Rafael drawled, ‘You're not scared of seeing me, are you?'

Cristina forced herself to relax by breathing slowly and deeply—another piece of received wisdom from one of the many magazines she had devoured as a youth when she should have been out there gaining valuable experience with boys, as all her friends had been doing.

‘Don't be silly. Why should I be scared of seeing you?'

‘I'll let you know more details closer to the day.'

‘I thought you said that it was going to be next weekend?' Cristina found herself distracted by his vagueness. ‘Haven't you arranged it as yet?'

‘Oh, I won't have a hand in that. Patricia's going to take care of the whole thing.'

Typical, she thought. Not for a single second would it have occurred to him that last-minute affairs stood a greater than average chance of being flops. How many people were avail
able at such short notice? But of course, this was Rafael Rocchi, the man for whom people jumped through hoops.

‘I take it from your silence that you don't approve of my lack of involvement?'

‘You can take it from my silence that I'm not surprised at your lack of involvement. I'll have to look in my diary and see what I'm doing next weekend,' she said, buying herself time, because she honestly wasn't sure whether she could face him or not.

‘Good. I'll see you then. And Cristina…?'

‘What.'

‘Feel free to bring a date.'

Those were the words, spoken with lazy amusement, that galvanised her into a positive decision. Cristina knew that she didn't have to prove anything to anyone, but she really needed to start getting her life back together. She had done the right thing in standing up for herself, for holding on to her dreams of a happy marriage with the right guy who could love her back—but what was the point of doing the right thing if she then proceeded to spend the rest of her days moping around and thinking about Rafael?

She had turned down all of Anthea's well-intentioned invitations to go out, had buried herself in indoor pursuits, had assured her mother and her sisters that she was doing just fine, when in fact she had spent the past few weeks hiding out in her apartment as if scared to venture outside in case she collapsed. Why should she collapse? From the sounds of it, Rafael was as chirpy as a cricket and getting on with his life, and she wasn't going to let him join the queue of people silently feeling sorry for her.

* * *

Anthea, of course, was overjoyed.

‘It'll do you the world of good to get out,' she said firmly.
‘And you can show him that you've moved on. Maybe you could ask Martin to go along with you? Sort of
borrow
him for the evening?'

Tempting though the thought was, Cristina baulked at the thought of such an obvious piece of deception. She liked Martin a lot as a friend, but she wasn't going to use him as a pretend trophy-boyfriend just to prove a point.

But she did allow herself to get swept into shopping for an outfit, something new and colourful to reflect her new and colourful life. Privately, Cristina thought that the description made her sound as though she had taken up pole-dancing in a nightclub. But she was happy to let Anthea steer her in and out of shops until, by the end of the week, she had accumulated one dress, way too short, one pair of shoes, way too high, and various assorted bits of costume jewellery which would have sent her father into an early grave had he clapped eyes on them.

‘And I'll be round at six on Saturday to fix you up!' Anthea told her. ‘You're going to be the belle of the ball!'

Cristina was far from sure about that. The dress was a vibrant deep red with a neckline that went beyond plunge into full-blown dive, but her breasts, her friend had declared, were her assets and should be displayed with pride. And no, she wouldn't fall face-first in front of the assembled crowd in her high heels. She would walk in a sexy but dignified manner and all eyes would be on her. Cristina accepted those words of wisdom with a little sigh of resignation.

Rafael's secretary, when she had called earlier in the week with details of the evening, had offered to send his driver round to collect her, but Cristina had refused, preferring to make her own way there by taxi. And it was just as well,
because Anthea was late in arriving and, by the time she had been ‘fixed up', she was already running behind time.

But she did, she had to admit, look glamorous. The dress, which had looked idiotic in the changing room when tried on with her trainers, did all the right things. It accentuated her bust, nipped in her waist, and her legs looked much longer than they really were in the shiny, patent-black high heels.

They had bought loads of costume jewellery, which jangled around her neck down to her waist, and Anthea had done clever things with her hair, pinning it up but very casually so that it tumbled around her face and made her eyes look sultry and enormous. She had managed to argue her way out of vast amounts of make-up, but her lips were still red, and the faint blush on her cheeks highlighted cheekbones which she had never known really existed.

All told, Cristina was confident that she at least looked her best, even if inside she felt far from it.

The flutter of nerves which had begun the minute she had accepted the invitation were in full force by the time the taxi dropped her outside his place.

Patricia had said that it would be a small, quiet gathering, really in honour of their Japanese clients with whom they had recently closed a major deal.

Standing outside his door, it sounded neither small nor quiet. She was discreetly pressing her ear against the door, anxiously chewing her lower lip and wondering whether she could sneak back out and escape under cover of gathering darkness, when the door was pulled open and there he was. Tall, darkly, fatally handsome and waiting to catch her as she stumbled against him.

Cristina hurriedly gathered herself, flustered.

‘What are you doing?' Rafael asked, as taken aback to see
her standing there as she was to find the door opened when she had been pressed against it.

He wasn't quite sure what had brought him to the door. At the back of his mind, with the party in full swing and Cindy playing the perfect hostess, much to his annoyance he had been waiting for Cristina to arrive. She was one of the most punctual women he had ever met and he knew that after an hour he had been glancing at his watch every three minutes, his mind only half on what was happening around him.

He hadn't expected to open his door to find her toppling against him.

Nor had he expected her to be wearing what she was wearing.

He held her at arm's length and looked at her appraisingly.

‘You said it was a party,' Cristina said defensively before he could say anything. ‘So I dressed for a party.'

‘So I see.' His hands appeared to be temporarily glued to her arms and he quickly removed them. ‘I'm not sure I would call this strip of red cloth a
dress
.' He had wondered how she was, had thought about her far too much for his liking, had assumed that she was missing him. In fact he had been worried enough about her well-being, and
caring
enough to invite her to his party, magnanimous as he was.

From the looks of things, he had been way off target. He had never seen her in a get-up like this before. She looked…sexy as hell and
ready for anything
.

An imagination which he'd never known he possessed suddenly slammed into action, and he had vivid images of her dealing with her loss in the classic way. He pictured her going out on the town, meeting strange men in strange bars. God. When he had called her the week before and imagined that he had caught her sleeping in on a Saturday night, she had probably been in bed all right. But not alone.

‘You're barely decent!' He found himself positioning himself directly in front of her, blocking her from the crowd of people milling around inside.

Having left all arrangements in the capable hands of his secretary, the party of twenty people had somehow turned into a lavish affair with more than forty people, who had been steadily getting tipsy on the champagne and Chablis from the moment of their arrival well over an hour ago. The waiters were assiduous in their duties, never allowing a glass to remain empty for longer than five seconds, it seemed, and the array of delicious and abundant canapés were doing the rounds, but were hardly robust enough to mop up the quantity of alcohol on offer. Rafael had no doubt that he would have to send out for something more substantial on the food front at some point, but at the moment…

He shuffled so that he could now half shut the door behind him.

His movements didn't go unnoticed and Cristina, who had left her house feeling a million dollars, now wanted to tug the dress down and stick her little clutch bag in front of her breasts. Was he embarrassed at her? Did he think that her outfit was going to lower the tone of his party?

Nothing like this had ever happened to her before, and she was mortified to think that it could be happening now.

‘If you'd rather I left…' She risked a quick, desperate glance over her shoulder.

‘Of course not. You're here now. I'm just surprised at your choice of clothing.'

‘Anthea gave me a hand,' Cristina confessed.

‘Right.' Rafael wondered what else Anthea had done to
give her a hand
since they had broken up. Taken her to a few rave parties, maybe? Dressed like that, there wasn't a man in London who wouldn't have done a double take.

‘Well…shall we go inside?'

‘Of course!' He stood back and watched grimly as she entered the room and, as he'd expected, the red dress—or rather the lack of it, in combination with her all too obvious womanly charms—had every man in the room covertly looking in her direction. And naturally Cindy, whose eyes narrowed as she strolled over slowly, but very purposefully, in their direction.

She had dressed to impress and had toed a fine line between sexy and ‘blonde but wanting to be taken seriously'. Consequently, she had ended up looking somewhat like a very attractive, super-efficient air stewardess, in a dove-grey skirt with small matching jacket, grey shoes and a white blouse with a couple of buttons discreetly left undone. Next to Cristina, she was a pale shadow of a woman, but he still smiled winningly in her direction and slung his arm casually around her shoulders as she nestled against him and gave Cristina a very thorough once-over.

‘Welcome to our little gathering,' Cindy said. She gave Rafael a little squeeze that was clear indication to Cristina that he really and truly had moved on. Moved on to a gorgeous, leggy blonde who wasn't dressed like a clown. Cristina wanted the ground to open and swallow her up, but she smiled brightly, because there was no law against Rafael finding happiness with someone else even if it was like a dagger through her heart.

The waiter came round with a tray of drinks and Cristina hurriedly grabbed one, making up her mind there and then that she would need a couple of drinks to see the evening through.

Cindy, all smiles and elegance, was now taking charge, shooing Rafael away to his guests and assuring him that she would take little Cristina under her wing, make sure that she was introduced to some interesting
young
people.

Cristina gulped down what was left of the wine in her glass and tried not to feel like a kid in fancy dress at an adult gathering.

After three glasses of Chablis and no nibbles, because she felt fat, the party was taking on a much more agreeable tenor. For a start, Rafael might have thought that she looked cheap and tarty, but several of the
young
men there appeared to be of a different opinion. In fact, several of the
more mature
men seemed to share the feeling.

By the time she happened to glance at her watch it was after midnight and she had, she thought, done rather well. She had kept a healthy distance from Rafael—not wanting to be reminded of his newly evolved state with the glamorous and very solicitous Cindy—and she had, in addition, gathered a few very useful numbers from people who were interested in talking to her about her landscaping plans.

Indeed, one was, at this very moment, in the process of persuading her that he was in desperate need of her talents.

‘But I thought you lived in an apartment,' she pointed out gently.

‘I do, and you need to get over there and have a look. My potted plants are in dire need of some love and attention…'

‘You're drunk, Goodman. Time to go. I've called a cab and it's waiting.'

Cristina, who had been enjoying the flattery and wondering if she shouldn't be asserting her joy of singledom by accepting his invitation to view his boxed plants, swung round at the sound of Rafael's voice.

The room had emptied. How and when had that happened? She looked around in panic for her forgotten clutch bag, but by the time she had visually located it Rafael was back, standing in front of her, arms folded, his face grim.

‘I'll just be on my way,' she said, backing away in the direction of the bag. ‘I had no idea everyone had disappeared!' She gave a nervous little giggle.

‘No, I don't suppose you did,' Rafael grated. ‘You were so absorbed in the charms of James Goodman that the proverbial sky could have fallen down and you wouldn't have noticed.' The night, as far as Rafael was concerned, had been a disaster. The guests had bored him after half an hour, Cindy had been appalling in her desperation to prove her hostess abilities and stake her claim—and Cristina, whom he had imagined might come and shyly hang back, compelling him to draw her out, had stolen the show. He had no intention of telling her, but several people had asked about her, wondered who she was. The whole experience had not been a good one, and now here she was, eager to scuttle off, probably in the hope of catching Goodman before he left the scene of the crime.