Kept by the Spanish Billionaire

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Because I told you that you were out of his league?’ Rafael hailed a yellow cab and Amy allowed herself to be shuffled inside. It was late and the traffic was less ferocious than it had been earlier when they had travelled back to the apartment.

  Where, she knew, they were now heading, not least because they both had clothes to collect. His boss might be generous but she didn’t think he would be generous enough to allow his employee to set up indefinite camp in the plush company flat. Which brought her thoughts right back to James and Rafael’s remark.

  ‘I don’t know what it’s like over here,’ she said coldly, ‘but those class distinctions vanished in England a long time ago.’ Their eyes tangled. His disbelieving, hers defensive. ‘Well, more or less,’ she felt obliged to climb down. ‘No one feels as though they’re stuck in their station in life and there shall they remain for ever!’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Rafael pointed out harshly, ‘some wealthy men might not share that particular viewpoint.’

  ‘Are you saying that, from your limited experience of your boss, that he’s a die-hard snob?’

  ‘You’re making a scene.’ Rafael turned to her, eyes as hard as flint. ‘I dislike women who make scenes.’

  ‘And I dislike men who live their lives on generalisations. So there we go. We’re even. We dislike each other.’

  ‘You look like a kitten,’ Rafael muttered under his breath, ‘but you have the claws of a cat.’

  Amy, who couldn’t make out what he had said but assumed it must be an insult of sorts, continued to glare at him.

  ‘What did you say?’ she asked with accusation in her voice. She was darned if she was going to play the silent little lady while he dished out whatever insults happened to fly through his mind!

  ‘I refuse to have a conversation with you until you’ve calmed down.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Are you for real? Don’t you know that self-expression is one of the most important ways of clearing the air?’ She and her ex-boyfriend used to have noisy and exuberant arguments, which had inevitably ended up with one or the other storming out. Thinking about it, she wasn’t too sure whether those rows had ever done anything constructive, but she decided to keep that admission to herself while he sat there, looking at her as though she had taken leave of her senses.

  ‘According to…whom?’

  ‘According to everyone! Pick up any psychology book,’ she sniffed, calming down by the second, ‘and you’ll find them telling you that a good old shout is worth its weight in gold. I know you’re the strong, silent, I’ll-just-work-out-my-feelings-by-pulling-up-a-few-weeds type, but you must have had a few healthy, flaming rows with girlfriends in the past!’

  ‘Never,’ Rafael told her calmly.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘I don’t find women who shout attractive. It demonstrates lack of control.’

  ‘What sort of women do you go out with?’ Amy asked incredulously. Did women really still come in the strong, silent variety? In her experience, most women were emotional creatures who were not backward at expressing their feelings. She didn’t think she was out of the ordinary in that aspect, but judging from the way he was staring at her she was. At least in his eyes.

  ‘Women who don’t give in to hysteria at the drop of a hat.’

  Rafael felt an unholy thrill of enjoyment as she sizzled in teeth grinding silence for a few seconds, then she nodded in apparent comprehension.

  ‘Oh, yes. For a minute there I had to think because most of the women I know actually think that it’s a good thing to express their feelings, but now I can see that the type of woman you’re talking about are the boring types. I’ve met a few of those in my time—’ Amy sniggered ‘—always frowning at you over their sensible spectacles if you laugh too loudly in a public place or making derogatory remarks about “the youth of today.’’’

  Rafael looked away to avoid the risk of bursting into laughter. When he had controlled the impulse, he stared at her impassively. ‘I didn’t say that I dated geriatrics,’ he said without a flicker of amusement.

  ‘Well, if you didn’t rile me I wouldn’t blow my top!’ What sort of women do you date and what do they look like? she wanted to ask. And where on earth do you meet them?

  Then it occurred to her. He met them through James. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of it before? No wonder he didn’t seem like just any ordinary gardener! He was definitely a cut above the rest and, with his looks and body, he would have no trouble attracting the super-rich bored young things he probably met through his boss, or even—who knew?—the super-rich bored older models he might meet through his boss’s mother!

  ‘You fall for inappropriate men. You climb trees in the middle of the night. You say exactly what’s on your mind and to hell with the consequences. I think it’s fair to say that you’re the sort who blows her top without too much provocation.’

  Amy would have liked to have taken him up on his ‘falling for inappropriate people’ accusation. If what she strongly suspected was true, then this was most definitely a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Unfortunately, without evidence, she would be in his direct firing line, especially as he already thought that she said the first thing that came into her head without bothering to think it out first.

  ‘I won’t even bother to defend myself against that,’ she said loftily. ‘You’ve got your opinions and you’re welcome to them.’ She sneaked a glance at him and had a sudden vision of him lying naked on that bed of his, spent after love making. He would be a passionate lover. She was sure of it. Dinosaur or no dinosaur. She tossed her head and looked away quickly. ‘It’s not as though you mean anything to me, anyway.’

  The taxi was now outside the apartment building, which made her realise two things. The first was that she hadn’t even been aware of the passage of time, so lost had she been in their little spat. The second was that they still hadn’t sorted out what was going to happen about returning to the Hamptons.

  As if reading her mind, Rafael, with one hand resting on the door handle, turned to her and said, without bothering to sweeten the pill, ‘It’s far too late to head back to the house now. Sorry.’

  Amy catapulted out of the car and counted to ten, then she walked to where he was standing, still doing the gentlemanly thing and paying the cab driver without asking for her share of the trip, and smiled sweetly up at him.

  He smiled back down at her and spoke before she had a chance to.

  ‘Well done. Congratulations.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She tripped after him into the building. After a long evening out, her feet were aching in her new shoes and she slipped them off and held them in one hand, thereby diminishing her height still further.

  ‘You resisted the urge to rant,’ he said approvingly. ‘Perhaps with time I could yet turn you into one of those so-called boring women who don’t give in to every passing temptation to fly off the handle.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness you don’t have time on your side,’ Amy said with asperity, ‘because I can’t think of anything worse. Except, that is, for staying at this apartment tonight. Which is out of the question.’

  ‘No choice.’ Rafael didn’t look at her but he was very much aware of her at his side. For such a diminutive person, she had an overwhelming presence, he was discovering. Of course there’s a choice.’ Now they were in the lift for the three-floor ride up to the apartment. Amy liked it. It lacked the brash newness of everything else she had seen in Manhattan that day.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, of course.’ The lift bumped to a stop and the doors slid open silently.

  ‘I’m glad you agree with me.’ Admittedly she was a little surprised that she had won the argument with such little fuss. He might not like scenes, but somehow, without creating any, he always seemed to get his own way.

  ‘The choice is for you to make. Stay here or head back to the big house. On your own. Because I, for one, am going nowhere.’ He unlocked the door, pushed it open an
d strode into the apartment without turning around. If he had, he would have seen that she had not stepped over the threshold. In fact, she stood at the doorway, gaping, like a fish suddenly deprived of water.

  ‘I can’t go back there on my own at this hour!’

  ‘Then it looks like you’re stuck with me here.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘On you or on me?’

  Amy ground her teeth together in helpless frustration. ‘I thought you were a gentleman!’

  ‘Which is why I’m now offering you the bigger of the bedrooms.’

  Amy badly wanted to rant. Instead, she straightened her back and strode into the apartment because her choice had been no choice at all and she intended to make the best of the situation, which meant, first off, taking that bigger bedroom he had offered, with its en suite bathroom and dressing area.

  ‘I accept.’ She headed towards the bedroom, ignoring his surprised silence. Maybe he had expected her to let her pride refuse the offer. ‘What time shall we leave in the morning? Or—’ she glanced at him over her shoulder ‘—would you rather stay here and make me return to the house on my own? Just to test the water, see whether I can live up to your ideal woman who wouldn’t dream of creating a scene whatever the hell was thrown at her?’

  ‘Whoever said anything about ideal?’ Rafael murmured.

  ‘Okay. Maybe not ideal.’ Amy had turned around and was looking at him squarely in the face. ‘But the sort of woman you like. The sort of woman you date, go out with, have a relationship with, fall in love with…’ Amy didn’t know where all that had suddenly come from. She did, however, know that she would rather she had kept it to herself. She clapped her hand to her mouth and reddened.

  Suddenly saving James from his fate, protecting him from a potential gold-digger, became an inconspicuous aim on the distant horizon. Rafael had a disconcerting moment in which he lost all sense of perspective. It was as if the ground had suddenly shifted from under his feet.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he said roughly. ‘And no. You won’t have to make your way back to the house on your own.’ He turned away, leaving Amy guiltily aware that her passing remark might have been one invasion too far of his privacy.

  He was disgusted with her, she thought miserably. She had a long bath, washing away the effects of the evening, which had been going so well only to fall apart at the end. With the warm water covering her and foam concealing the few bits of her body that were exposed because she had tipped way too much of the bubble bath in, Amy closed her eyes and relived every minute of the day and night they had spent together.

  She had accepted his offer to show her around Manhattan and, instead of being grateful because he had been doing her a good turn, had proceeded to give him the full, uninvited benefit of her mind. She had been unnecessarily sarcastic when she should have been thanking him for his attempts to distract her from her humiliation over James. How was he to know that her broken heart had been nothing of the sort? How was he to realise that her extreme reaction to him had stemmed from her inappropriate attraction, against all odds?

  She squeezed the sponge and watched the water trickle out of it, making patterns on the surface of the bubbly white foam.

  When she thought about it, she realised that she was either chattering to him senselessly and tediously about bits of her life he probably wasn’t in the least bit interested in, or else jumping down his throat for things he hadn’t said or done.

  And then to have laid into him for not obliging her by returning her immediately and at his inconvenience to the house! She cringed and sank a little deeper into the bath water.

  For a short while she wallowed in a bit of self justification as she remembered his jibe about being out of James’s league. Of all the nerve! And he of all people! But then, she thought with a pleasurable injection of spite, if he spent his time bedding the socialites he met through his employees, maybe he felt himself a bit further up the pecking order than her! Ha!

  She decided that this train of thought was a lot more comfortable to deal with than the one that involved her beating herself up for being a fool.

  She relaxed into a lazy recollection of all the hard work she had put in to become a caterer. Not to mention the parental disappointment she had had to face because both her parents had wanted her to go to university, maybe become a teacher. They had never had the opportunity for further education. They had been keen to instil its importance in all their children from a very young age. Amy had resisted all attempts to manoeuvre her into yet more time spent learning. The thought of years of exams and teaching classrooms of recalcitrant children had brought her out in a cold sweat. Huh! What had he gone through to get his gardening job? she asked herself piously.

  Had he spent years training under some Head Gardener somewhere? Had he been made to fall into line with the rosebush pruning or else face a barrage of abuse? She thought not!

  He had probably just turned up, stripped off his shirt to prove that he had the necessary brawn and got the job.

  She let her mind wander dangerously over the image of him revealing that necessary brawn and yanked it back into line with a mental slap on the wrist.

  Unfortunately doing so also made her pleasantly self-righteous moral high ground disappear like a puff of smoke and she was back where she started. Chastising herself for reacting like a spoiled kid.

  It wasn’t so much a case of what had he been thinking, daring to tell her that James was out of her league. More a case of what had she been thinking to have jumped down his throat at the well-intentioned and probably very true observation!

  With a groan of impatience with herself, Amy dried off and after a moment’s thought stuck on the white towelling robe very kindly provided by the anonymous firm that looked after the apartment. Or at least the woman who had kitted it out.

  She wouldn’t waste time arguing herself out of an apology, she thought, making her mind up with her usual speedy impulsiveness.

  She let herself out of the bedroom and padded across the sitting area to where bedroom number two was located.

  The apartment had been cleverly arranged. One bedroom with its en suite and dressing area lay at the opposite end of the apartment to the second bedroom, which wasn’t quite as big and did not lead into an en suite or dressing area. It also had all the accoutrements for an office, which meant, she supposed, that anyone from overseas who needed to use the place for any length of time would be able to convert the smaller bedroom into an office, complete with desk, Internet connection, phone, fax machine and all the other boring paraphernalia that every businessman seemed addicted to.

  The kitchen, the living area, the dining area—everything was designed in an open-plan fashion so that the feeling was of airiness.

  He was up. She could see the fine line of light under the door. Just as well. It was one thing to apologise on the spur of the moment, but something else to wake him up to do it.

  Amy took a deep breath and knocked. When, after a few seconds, she heard him tell her to enter, she pushed open the door before she had time to back out.

  He was lying on the bed, propped up against the pillows with his laptop computer resting on his thighs. And, aside from a pair of dark, patterned boxer shorts, he was wearing absolutely nothing.

  That was fine, she told herself sternly. She was just here to clear the air and then she would be on her way.

  ‘You’re working?’

  It dawned on her that it was a bit strange for the gardener to be working on a laptop computer at nearly midnight, but her question was answered when he snapped shut the lid and casually told her that he was just catching up with some personal correspondence.

  Amy licked her lips nervously.

  ‘Right. Well…’

  ‘You can come in,’ Rafael said. ‘I don’t bite.’ He slid the laptop next to him and folded his arms behind his head, all the better to observe her embarrassed dithering by the bedroom door.

  The towelling robe she was wearing had
clearly been destined for a much larger wearer because it engulfed her.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked brusquely, slinging his feet over the side of the bed and strolling towards the window so that he could perch on its broad sill. Somehow being in bed while she stood there felt just a little…unsettling.

  Amy drew in a deep breath and said in a rush, ‘I came to apologise. For flying off the handle and being…well…a bit of a misery to be with after all you’ve done for me today.’ She ventured nervously into the room so that she didn’t have to deliver her speech like someone on stage. ‘I showed up on your doorstep and you could have just dumped me back at the house, but you listened to me babble away and you even volunteered to bring me to Manhattan to spare me the discomfort of being in James’s company last night.’ She could feel herself really getting on a roll now.

  Rafael resisted the urge to tell her that it hadn’t been the world’s greatest sacrifice. An unusual good deed from him, true enough, but he had had his reasons and as things turned out had ended up having a…memorable time, despite the anticlimax of the evening.

  Amy took a few tentative steps towards him.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve even really said thank you for…the dress…and the tour guide…and…’ She wondered whether she should start listing all the cabs he had paid for, not to mention the food they had eaten.

  Rafael held up his hand to stop her in mid-flow. ‘I get the general picture.’

  ‘And you were right.’

  ‘Was I? What about?’ Sometimes trying to follow her conversation was like trying to hang on to running water. And she was now standing pretty close to him. Too close. He clenched his teeth together and pinned his eyes to her tremulous mouth, anything to stop them from straying to the opening of the towelling robe, which was revealing slightly more than she probably thought.

  ‘When you told me that I was out of James’s league…’ She came closer and impulsively reached out to circle his forearm with her hand. She looked up at him, trembling with a desperate urgency to really make him feel her sincerity.