by Lynne Graham
Her brow furrowed. ‘He hated you?’
‘Early this year, Felipe met his death very suddenly in a car accident. But for that twist of fate, it would have been many years before I came into my inheritance and I would not have come here like a beggar to the gates.’ His dark eyes flashed. ‘There was no reason for me to boast of what I could not offer you. That is why I did not talk about this before.’
Consuelo entered with a tray of coffee and daintily cut sandwiches.
‘I don’t want anything,’ Sarah mumbled as the housekeeper departed.
‘Don’t be silly.’ Rafael poured the coffee. ‘We don’t dine before ten.’
‘Food would choke me,’ she said truthfully. ‘I feel more like fresh air.’
Opening the balcony doors with shaking hands, she stepped back out on to the terrace.
‘Sarah—’
‘How much are you worth?’ she asked with deliberate crudity.
He rested back against one of the twisted barley sugar columns. ‘I don’t know.’ He fixed impatient dark eyes on her shuttered profile. ‘There is the estate and the commercial interests. Santovenas have always been most efficient at worshipping and doubling the almighty dollar.’
‘Santovena,’ Sarah echoed.
‘The name is on your marriage licence,’ Rafael reminded her. ‘I swore I would not use it while Felipe lived. I kept my promise.’
Rafael Luis Enrique Santovena y Alejandro. It had been many years since Sarah had had cause to recall Rafael’s full name.
‘Santo,’ Rafael filled in helpfully. ‘Santo Amalgamated Industries.’
Sarah went white. She had heard that name bandied back and forth over dinner in business discussions in her parents’ home. Santo was a giant multinational conglomerate with one foot in Europe and the other firmly set in North America. To match Rafael to that heritage was like asking her to walk on the moon. Her brain was frankly not up to the feat.
‘As Felipe’s successor, I am the largest stockholder. If he could have taken his stock with him to the grave, he would have done so.’
‘I feel like a walk.’ Her voice was stifled, choked as she descended the steps.
She felt sick. Money meant power. Power would be all it took to permanently remove her children from her care. It was astonishing that Rafael hadn’t thrown all this at her in London. I have a good case, he had said with what was, in retrospect, nauseating understatement. She could not compete with Santo. She heard Karen’s voice that day in her flat. ‘Elise told me that he’s from a very wealthy background.’ Elise must have had access to privileged information. The press had yet to connect Rafael Alejandro with the massive holdings of SAI.
‘Dios mio, que te pasa?’ Rafael demanded from one side of her.
What is the matter with you? Was he serious? Was he really serious? Ben and Gilly would never be hers again. Rafael would be calling every shot. Rafael would be laying down the rules, whether she went or whether she stayed. Why me, oh lord, why me? Escaping her father’s power and influence had been tough enough. Escaping Rafael backed by the Santo multimillions was beyond the bounds of possibility. She had played right into his hands by coming here and there was no contest now. The battle had been fought and won before she reached the field.
‘I expected you to be delirious with joy,’ he breathed.
‘God, I hate you! Do you hear me? I hate you!’ Sarah launched like a virago as she suddenly found her tongue. Planting her hands up against his chest when he attempted to yank her into his arms, she gave him a violent push and watched with no small amount of satisfaction as he went backwards into the lily-pond with an enormous splash that soaked her as well.
‘I worried myself sick about money when we were married!’ she shouted. ‘And you wouldn’t even let me use my trust fund! Oh, no, I had to rough it and all the time you had all this behind you! You went out of your way to horrify my parents! You told my mother you were a gypsy! You told her you’d never met your father! How many parents want their teenage daughter to marry a gypsy without a steady job and an attitude problem?’
The water was still. Sarah blinked rapidly. Where was he? Oh, my God, my God. Kicking off her shoes like a maniac, she jumped in. Something slimy brushed against her calf and she shrieked. Rafael surfaced, thrusting his dripping hair back off his brow, unholy amusement glittering in his tawny eyes.
‘Y…You pig! You absolute toad! How dare you give me a fright like that!’ Sarah raged.
Endeavouring to climb out again was no easy task, hampered by a sodden full skirt. Rafael stepped out and hauled her up, only he didn’t put her down again. He swept her into his arms. ‘If your mother could only see you now, gatita,’ he chided mockingly.
‘You asked for it!’ Sarah wasn’t backing down but she was shaking with reaction to that last shock, that hideous gut-wrenching moment when she had believed that he might have been hurt and she would have plunged into a ravine if need be to find him.
Rafael was studying her drawn features. ‘You look like a fantasma—a ghost—and in my arms you weigh like a little bag of bones,’ he criticised. ‘I don’t like skinny women. You have been neglecting your health.’
Sarah shut her eyes on a wave of exhaustion, feeling like an ugly, undesirable toothpick. ‘Oh, leave me alone,’ she muttered childishly, close to tears.
‘You need to rest. Dios, Sarah,’ he murmured, determined to drive the point home, ‘you look terrible.’
He carted her up a long staircase and there was the sound of an opening door, a woman’s anxious voice and then silence. She opened her eyes, surprising a purposeful look on Rafael’s taut features. He settled her on her feet and she saw the threat in advance. ‘I can manage,’ she said hurriedly.
‘Don’t be a prude! You are half dead on your feet,’ he condemned, whipping her cerise cotton top over her head and muffling her response. Her skirt dropped to her toes.
‘They’re dry!’ she gasped before he could get a finger near her skimpy undies.
‘Bueno.’ He lifted her and settled her down on the bed, hauling the tapestry bedspread unceremoniously over her. ‘Go to sleep,’ he urged.
Winded, she lay back while he drew the curtains. She was on a bed the size of a football pitch. That was all she had time to notice before the shadows folded in. She would lie still until he left. She wasn’t that tired. In two minutes, she would get up again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A LIGHT knock on the door awakened Sarah. Consuelo entered quietly, switching on a lamp a considerate distance from the bed before smilingly producing her robe. Sarah got up, spreading a dazed glance over the magnificent appointments of her room. She explored through a connecting door to find a fully fitted dressing-room, adjoined by a bathroom that contained an exotic sunken bath covered with tiny multicoloured mosaic tiles. Alice through the looking glass could not have felt more disorientated. The feeling was reinforced when Consuelo reappeared with a maid in tow.
‘This is Pilar, senora. She is learning the good English,’ Consuelo proffered cheerfully. ‘I hope she will be satisfactory.’
‘Muchas gracias, Consuelo.’ Sarah couldn’t think of anything else to say. A maid? What was she supposed to do with a personal maid? Her parents’ staff consisted of a housekeeper, a cook, a gardener and a cleaner who came in daily from the village. There had never been a maid.
‘De nada, senora.’ Consuelo beamed.
Sarah asked where her clothes were and Pilar shyly showed her into the dressing-room. Sarah extracted a sapphire-blue dress and with an apologetic smile vanished into the bathroom. It was half-nine and she wanted to see the twins before she went down to dinner. She eyed the bath and the shower regretfully and made do with a refreshing wash before renewing her light make-up and brushing the tangles out of her hair.
Pilar had not been idle during her absence. The bed was made and her discarded clothes were gone. Pilar was arranging one of her nightdresses with touching care across the smooth bedspread. Its polycotton simplic
‘Are the children downstairs?’ Sarah enquired.
‘I will take you to them, senora. Los ninos, they are in bed.’
Her daughter was sleeping like a royal princess in a canopied bed flowing with lace draperies. The room had clearly been freshly decorated; the furniture was child-sized and more toys than Sarah had ever seen in one place outside a toyshop filled up every available corner. Across the corridor, Ben lay dead to the world in a miniature racing car bed.
‘I have four years to make up.’ In a superbly cut white dinner-jacket and narrow black trousers, Rafael looked arrestingly like a Spanish hidalgo as he crossed the carpet to join her. ‘I don’t want to spoil them but I wanted to buy them everything I saw,’ he confided, a slight roughness to his deep voice. ‘Perhaps I bought too much but I thought these things would help them not to feel homesick.’
‘Homesickness doesn’t usually flourish in the children’s version of paradise. It won’t do them any harm this once,’ she allowed. ‘I’m underdressed, aren’t I? I’m afraid I didn’t bring anything long with me.’
‘You didn’t bring many suitcases either. No importa,’ he dismissed. ‘You can buy more clothes.’
There was a distance about him, an aloof quality that hadn’t been there earlier, but it was absent when he stared down at Ben as if he still couldn’t quite get over the fact that he was a father. She had misjudged him. He was not about to duck the commitment he had promised and it must have been wishful thinking when she had thought he might. Rafael was as unashamedly enthralled with the twins as they were with him and he was sufficiently masculine to see no reason to hide how he felt.
At the head of the curving marble staircase, he abruptly grasped her hand. ‘Where’s your wedding-ring?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t have it any more.’
Rafael gazed down at her incredulously. ‘What did you do with it?’
‘I gave it to Oxfam. A good cause, you’ll agree.’
‘You gave it away?’ he repeated thunderously. ‘What sort of a woman gives away her wedding-ring?’
‘The sort who doesn’t attach very much importance to it,’ Sarah supplied with spirit and continued on down the stairs.
His strong jawline clenched. ‘I will buy another ring and you will wear it at all times.’
Sarah threw back her head. ‘If it’s so important I’ll wear one, but please don’t embarrass me with anything flashy. It may have escaped your notice, Rafael, but I have been divorcing you for the past four and three quarter years. It’s been a very long time since I thought of myself as a married woman.’
Anger had sparked flames of gold in his eyes. ‘That, too, I can do something about.’
A slightly built young man was standing with a drink in the sala. With a distinct sneer on his handsome features, he raised his glass high as they entered the room. ‘Allow me to toast the blushing bride.’ He spoke with a noticeable American accent.
‘Sarah has been my wife for nearly seven years.’ Icy, unvarnished reproof steeled Rafael’s retort. ‘Sarah, this is my cousin, Hernando Santovena y Alvarez.’
‘Bienvenido, Sarah,’ Hernando drawled mockingly. ‘Rafael misunderstood me. I only meant that to my family you are still a bride. We learnt of your existence only last week. Rafael has such a very short memory where your sex are concerned. Why, only a month ago—’
‘Bastante!’ Rafael silenced him with raw contempt. ‘You are drunk. You offend.’
Hernando held up a wavering hand of reproach and drained his glass. ‘Say no more. I’m not staying.’ His air of forced mockery had been quenched. He looked at Rafael with unconcealed loathing. ‘I have no stomach for Consuelo’s celebration dinner. What do I have to celebrate?’
Rafael shocked her by smiling with hard amusement as Hernando stalked out of the room. ‘One down, two to go,’ he quipped. ‘What would you like to drink, gatita?’
‘Gin and bitter lemon.’ She frowned at him. ‘What was that all about?’
His mouth twisted sardonically. ‘It is not very complex. But for my cruel advent into this world, Hernando’s father would have inherited on Felipe’s death. Hernando grew up looking on me as a usurper and an intruder. The news that I have already fathered a male heir has come as a final, devastating blow,’ he delivered with cruel irony. ‘There is now no hope of either Hernando or his father ever reclaiming what they still like to believe should have been theirs.’
‘But how can they believe that?’ Sarah probed. ‘You came here as a child.’
He dealt her a grim smile. ‘I am the son of a gypsy. For Felipe, my very existence was an insult to the family name. He never accepted me. He spent more than ten years struggling to disprove the legitimacy of my birth. His crusade to disinherit and disown me gave Hernando and his parents false hope.’
Sarah was appalled. ‘You were only a child.’
Rafael passed her a crystal glass. ‘But you must remember that the stakes were very high. Had Felipe succeeded, he would have made a very generous settlement on me. In victory, he would not have been uncharitable. The Santovenas are a very rich and very conservative family with immense pride in their pure blood lines and a strong belief in the hereditary factor.’ He smiled. ‘How do you think Felipe felt when he was presented with me?’
‘You were still his grandson!’
‘But he had washed his hands of my father before I was even born,’ Rafael said drily. ‘My father was the bad apple in the family barrel. He was a drunk and a womaniser and a gambler, and that is to mention his most presentable flaws of character.’
‘That shouldn’t have made any difference. Your father was dead!’ Dear God, what a horrific childhood he must have had! After his mother’s desertion, he had been rejected all over again by his father’s family. A family who had had neither poverty nor ignorance to excuse their behaviour. Involuntarily her eyes were stinging with tears. Her surroundings ebbed in their seductive attraction. In this beautiful house, Rafael had suffered.
A taut forefinger feathered over the glistening moisture on her lashes. ‘So much heart, amada. You fascinate me. Where was your heart when I gave you mine?’
Snatching in a shuddering breath, she did not trust herself to speak.
He dropped his hand. ‘I was very much a romantic. I loved you the same moment I saw you. It took more than a moment to forget you again.’ His half-smile was derisory, whipping with the cutting sting of a lash over her pain-filled amethyst eyes. ‘But it is in the past and I do not pine for it. My soul was no longer my own and in my heart I need to be free. As long as you keep that in mind, ours should be a very civilised marriage. Properly bloodless. I no longer cherish a burning desire to share your every waking thought. That should make you more comfortable.’
Sarah had gone very pale. ‘It makes me feel anything but comfortable. It’s a recipe for disaster. I came here for the children—’
‘Don’t be a martyr, gatita. I have no time for martyrs,’ Rafael warned. ‘Here you are at last in the heartland of your most ambitious expectations. The jewel set to a fitting frame. I am certain that even Mama and Papa could be prevailed upon to set aside their prejudice and visit. So don’t talk of disaster. All this and family approval too?’
Rafael could be cruel, very cruel when he wanted to be. And she had not been wrong in noting his change of mood from her arrival. Before she could consider that knowledge more deeply, the sound of voices infiltrated her self-preoccupation, sending her attention to the door.
‘Sarah—allow me to introduce you to Hernando’s parents, my uncle and aunt,’ Rafael drawled. ‘Ramon and Lucia.’
Lucia was tall, blonde and very thin. Her blue eyes were cold as gemstones and hard as the diamonds that glittered at her throat. Ramon was broad-built and stocky with a heavily lined face and an over-hearty manner. Sarah’s arrival was acknowledged by Lucia with the barest minimum of either interest or politeness. Ramon made sporadic attempts to ease the tension with inconsequential remarks. Rafael made no effort to chat at all. The chill of bitter antipathy that kept the conversation stilted was daunting. It was a relief when Consuelo announced dinner.
They took their seats in a splendidly proportioned room, enriched by a dramatic colour scheme of scarlet and gold. The long table might have been set for a banquet. Heavy silver candelbra and old crystal vied with a superb dinner service for prominence.
‘I’m surprised that Caterina is not here,’ Lucia said sharply.
‘She is working round the clock on her next collection,’ Rafael murmured evenly. ‘The career of a fashion designer is a precarious one. Abuela understands this.’
‘I am her mother and I do not understand.’ The look Lucia dealt Rafael was venomous. ‘Caterina has become a stranger to us and you are to blame.’
‘I do not think—’ Ramon interceded with a weak smile, but what he did not think was to remain a mystery, for Lucia simply talked over him.
‘You’re the one who destroyed her marriage. You encouraged her to leave Gerry,’ Lucia accused brittly. ‘Now you finance her so called career. Whatever Caterina wants, Caterina receives, es verdad?’
‘It is indeed a new sensation for her to enjoy.’ Rafael’s smile was sardonic.
‘My poor Hernando does not meet with this generosity.’ Lucia was becomingly increasingly strident.
‘I will not preach nepotism to the board for Hernando’s benefit.’ Rafael turned to address Ramon, indicating that the subject was closed.
Lucia was not to be silenced. ‘We are returning to New York tomorrow.’
‘Abuela will be disappointed,’ Rafael responded expressionlessly.
‘It is excitement, not disappointment that is dangerous for her.’ Lucia smiled coldly at Sarah. ‘Your arrival almost killed her. I wonder why.’
‘Lucia,’ Rafael breathed. ‘You may insult me but not my wife.’
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