Kept by the Spanish Billionaire

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Well…I suppose so…address?’

  ‘And the name…?’

  ‘Lee. Mr Lee.’

  But not James, of course. He would have called himself had he wanted her services, which he had, once, since she had left to do her own thing, and professional discretion prohibited her from asking for more details.

  She took the details, was pleased to be told that she could broadly cook what she wanted, and promptly forgot the coincidence of the name until, five days later, she was standing in front of an immensely expensive-looking Georgian town house. Claire, still working at James’s company, had offered to help her set up but Amy had refused. It was a tiny meal, just four people, something she could manage on her own with her eyes closed.

  She didn’t like going to a new place on her own, but neither did she want Claire’s chatterbox company. She felt whacked.

  She rang the doorbell and was inspecting her bags of goodies, doing a mental checklist to make sure nothing had been forgotten, when the door was answered. She didn’t look up. At least not immediately. She was too busy zipping up the cool bag that contained the cold ingredients that she would need for the pudding.

  So the first things she saw were the shoes. Tan brogues. Very shiny. Very well made. Very expensive. In fact, very what you would expect to find standing on the doorstep of an immaculate Georgian house in one of the best post codes in London.

  Amy stood up smartly. Expensive people, she had found, had very short temper spans. They paid their money and expected their exquisite food to magically appear on their table. Witnessing any of the less than magical clutter that went into the preparation of the exquisite food was not something they enjoyed. Nor did they like too much involvement with the people stirring the pots behind the scenes.

  The apology was already on her lips. In fact, her hand was reaching out in introduction when recognition slammed into shock and she felt herself stagger backwards. She had to blink because she was so sure that her mind was playing tricks on her.

  He couldn’t be there! Standing in front of her! Standing on the steps of a house that would have cost millions!

  ‘Hi, Amy. Guess you thought we were never going to meet again?’

  ‘Rafael?’

  ‘Come on in. You look as though you’re about to faint on the pavement.’

  She was dimly aware of him bringing in everything she had been carrying with her, leading her through a magnificent entrance hallway with shining black and white flagstones, through to the kitchen, which was sumptuous, a miracle of high-tech equipment. The sort of kitchen most caterers dreamed of one day owning.

  She felt as though her head had suddenly been stuffed with cotton wool.

  ‘You probably want to know what the hell is going on…’ Rafael deposited her into one of the chairs by the kitchen table. It was leather. Black leather to match the granite work surfaces and the gleaming, matching table top. Everything gleamed through lack of use.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Amy obliged.

  ‘Do you want something to drink?’

  ‘No! I want to know what’s going on!’ She couldn’t help it. Her heart was beginning to pound. She had remembered every inch of him, but she had somehow forgotten his impact. ‘I was told…the woman said…you were a Mr Lee…I thought…’

  ‘James is my brother. I used his surname so you wouldn’t know you were cooking for me.’

  ‘What?’ Amy’s head shot up and she looked at Rafael in stunned bewilderment. ‘What are you talking about?’

  The past two months had not been good for Rafael. He had dismissed his liaison with her as a pleasant but passing interlude, something that had sprung up on the back of his breakup from Elizabeth. But the memory of her had lingered in his head like a burr until every area of his life had been subtly but glaringly compromised. He had found himself staring through windows when he should have been staring at his computer, thinking of her when his head should have been full of reports and deal-making. He had had to stifle the urge to phone his brother and ask what she was doing until he hadn’t been able to stop himself any longer. At which point he had learnt that she had left the company and in those few split seconds when he had realised that he might not see her again Rafael had made his mind up.

  There had been nothing stopping him from coming to England. He had a house there and he ran the company, for God’s sake, even if he had decided a long time ago to focus his energies in New York.

  He hadn’t had to give reasons to anyone. He had known, without a shadow of smugness, that he was the head guy and everyone else would make way for him, as they had.

  And he hadn’t questioned his compelling motives for seeking her out. In his head, the reason was simple. The relationship, fling, affair, call it what you will, had not yet run its course and there was nothing more inconvenient than unfinished business.

  He had begun something that needed to be closed and he was pretty sure that she would feel the same way as he did.

  However, he had not fully envisaged the reaction he would get from her, but it was dawning on him that joy and elation weren’t heavily featured.

  ‘My half- brother, I should say.’

  ‘But you’re his gardener…’ Amy spluttered, bewildered.

  ‘What I know about gardens would fit on the back of a postage stamp,’ Rafael admitted.

  ‘You mean you lied to me?’

  Rafael flushed.

  ‘Why? Why? Why would you do that?’

  ‘If you calm down and let me get a word in edgewise, then I might be able to explain.’

  ‘You want me to calm down? I don’t feel calm! You lied to me and now here you are…for what?’

  Rafael pushed himself away from the counter and reached inside one of the cupboards for a couple of glasses, into which he poured them both a measure of brandy. ‘Drink.’

  ‘I don’t want a drink! I want to know what you’re doing here! And why you lied to me! And please don’t give me any speeches about hating hysterical women. I feel hysterical!’

  But she took the glass from him with trembling hands and swallowed a few mouthfuls, which instantly calmed her down.

  He had pulled up a chair and was sitting facing her. Amy felt faint. ‘You can’t be James’s brother. You look nothing like him.’

  ‘Half-brother.’ Rafael sighed. ‘We share a mother but my father was Spanish, hence my colouring.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why were you pretending to be a gardener?’

  ‘Long story but…’He explained. If he had expected dawning comprehension followed by nodding acceptance he was sorely mistaken. The dawning comprehension was there, sure enough, but it was accompanied by a look of slowly spreading horror.

  ‘So…’ Amy had now finished the glass of brandy. Just like his identity, she assumed his request for a caterer had been as bogus as a three pound note. She had lain in bed night after night fantasising about this man, spinning dreams in which he ended up declaring his undying love after which they would spend the rest of their fairy-tale lives building up a thriving garden centre in the countryside. She felt a ball of resentment well up inside her that he had taken her for a ride, made a fool of her. She wondered whether he and James had laughed about her behind her back.

  ‘Let me get this straight. You were asked to spy on your brother—’

  ‘Keep an eye on…and half-brother.’

  ‘And in the process you met me and thought that you would pretend to be someone you weren’t…because…now why would you do that?’ Revelation struck her with the force of a sledgehammer.

  ‘I told you about James, didn’t I?’

  ‘Don’t start leap-frogging to any conclusions—’

  ‘I happened to mention James—in fact, if I recall correctly, poured my heart out and confessed that I had a crush on the boss, on your brother!’

  Rafael’s teeth snapped together in frustration as he followed the train of her thoughts and watched them gather momentum.

  ‘Is that w
hen you decided that it might be a good idea not to disclose your identity?’ She correctly interpreted his silence for validation of what she was saying.

  She had thought that nothing could hurt as much as leaving him behind. She had been wrong. It hurt much, much more to realise that she had been used.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ she said quietly. ‘You figured you could pump me for information if you pretended to be the lowly gardener. After all, the lowly caterer would be far more likely to confide in someone of equal standing.’

  ‘Of course I was interested when you told me how you felt about James. Do you think it would have been natural if I hadn’t been?’

  ‘Too interested to tell me that you were his brother—oh, sorry, his half-brother, not that that makes a bit of difference!’ Amy had thought that she could remember every word that had passed between them, but now she was trying to she found that she couldn’t, not quite. Snippets of conversation came and went in her head. ‘No wonder you knew so much about James. No wonder you felt free to tell me that I was out of his league.’

  ‘I told you that to try and make you see sense. James…is predictable in his choice of women.’

  ‘Oh…so you were protecting me!’

  Rafael ran his fingers through his hair and scowled. This was the woman who had been wreaking havoc with his carefully ordered life, ruining his concentration, sending him into a mental tailspin. He had done the unthinkable and come to London in pursuit and what did he find? A shrieking harridan who wasn’t prepared to hear him out!

  The shrieking harridan was now proceeding to give him the full, unexpurgated benefit of her mind.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so! You thought I might have been after his money, didn’t you? You thought it might be a good idea to sound me out, find out what my game was…It’s all falling into place now.’

  In the midst of her rant, which had sent the colour rushing to her face, Rafael still couldn’t control the way his eyes compulsively fastened on her, the way he wanted to shut her up by kissing her. He stood up abruptly so that he could pour himself another drink. Not brandy. Nothing that went to his brain like a match. Wine. A glass of red wine.

  He poured himself his glass of wine and stood leaning against the counter. He didn’t expect her to storm over to him. Nor did he think that she would have the nerve to snatch the glass from him and tip the contents down the sink while telling him that, uh-uh, there was no way he was going to ignore what she had to say by getting drunk.

  Then she stood in front of him, hands on hips, daring him to challenge her.

  Rafael, who had absolutely no experience of a woman enraged, instinctively knew better than to rise to the challenge.

  ‘Now I know why you were so horrible to me to start with. You’re a horrible person! Until you decided that you would be better off being just a little bit nicer…because if you want information, being horrible isn’t really the best way to get it, is it!’

  ‘I was horrible because I had to rescue you from a tree in the middle of the night,’ Rafael pointed out reasonably.

  ‘And then all those times when I caught you in front of a computer…Do you know, I actually believed you when you said you were just catching up on personal e-mails?’ She laughed incredulously at her own stupidity. ‘Let’s see…running an empire…catching up on personal e-mails…hmm…not much difference, is there?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake…’ He glared at her in mounting frustration. ‘Let’s sit down and discuss this like adults—’

  ‘Oh, I forgot!’ Amy plastered a sickly, saccharine smile on her face. ‘You hate women who express themselves in any voice louder than half a decibel! It’s just not adult or civilised to rant and rave even when you’ve found out that the man you…’ for a moment she nearly said the word love and was furious with herself for the near miss ‘…had a fling with was using you all along to try and extract information! Well, you know something, Rafael? I’m not very adult and I’m not very civilised when it comes to things like that!’ She turned her back and began gathering up all her assorted bags with utensils and ingredients for a meal she had never been destined to prepare anyway.

  ‘And you could have spared me a taxi fare tonight,’ she yelled shakily, ‘dragging all this stuff here for no reason!’ She stared down at her feet, drained.

  ‘Okay. I made a mistake.’

  Amy ignored him. She had managed to gather all her belongings together and was now struggling with them to the door. She had ingredients for a delicious meal for four. Most of the dishes had been pre-prepared, with only the finishing touches left to do, but it still meant a lot of stuff to carry. She tried not to think about the effort of dragging it all along the road, bag-lady style, while she frantically stopped every five paces so that she could try and flag down a taxi, because there was no way she could manage the trip back to her house on public transport.

  ‘I’m not interested in hearing what you have to say,’ she told him coldly, because she had to say something. He was standing in front of her, blocking her way out. She just couldn’t look at him because it was like looking at a stranger.

  ‘I’ll drop you back to your house, if that’s what you want, and we can talk on the way.’

  ‘I told you…I’m not interested. I’m through talking. I only wish I’d never set eyes on you in the first place.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ Rafael muttered huskily.

  What had he expected? He was realising that he really didn’t know. A bit of discomfort, yes. Because there was no way that he could have skirted round the truth. He couldn’t have shown up in his role of pretend gardener, somehow mysteriously passing through, and he hadn’t wanted to. The truth was unavoidable and, yes, he had known that she would have been surprised, shocked even. But her series of questions, her rapid deductions that had gathered pace before his eyes, had made it difficult for him to object. Not that there was a great deal to object to. Somehow she had managed to find little snippets of truth and string them together into a portrait of himself that he barely recognised.

  And now she was talking of leaving!

  He was driven by a crazy impulse to snatch the bags off her and lock her in the house until they had sorted things out between them. Which, he knew, meant until they ended up in bed together.

  ‘Do you mind getting out of my way?’

  Rafael realised that she was no longer yelling. Her voice was flat and distant and in some way that was far worse.

  ‘Yes. I mind.’

  ‘Then I guess we’ll just have to stay here until you decide to move, but I won’t be having any post-mortem conversation with you.’ She sat down on top of the holdall in which the majority of the food had been transported. She cupped her chin on her balled fist and stared somewhere in the region of his calves.

  After the first furious volley of hurt and outrage, her mind seemed to have zoned out totally.

  She thought back to their brief time together, lethargically piecing together strands of his behaviour that now made sense in retrospect. Like the way he had persuaded her not to say anything to anyone about his presence on the grounds. She hadn’t questioned it at the time, but, really and truly, why on earth should a gardener be so secretive? Then there had been his lack of interest in all things green. She had talked at length about her work, about her love of cooking, about her favourite dishes. He had skirted over all mention of gardens and landscaping and flowers and plants and horticulture in general, with a dismissive shrug of his broad shoulders.

  Then there had been the small matter of the apartment, so-called company apartment, in its prime location in Manhattan. And his fantastic car. The list was endless and Amy could have kicked herself for not paying a single scrap of attention to any of the warning signs that had been flashing in front of her in bold neon lettering.

  In the middle of her clamouring thoughts, she realised that he had stooped down so that he was now on her level, looking at her squarely in the face and way too close to her for her l
iking.

  Amy stared at him blankly.

  ‘I was wrong,’ Rafael told her grimly. ‘And you’re going to listen to what I have to say whether you like it or not. And I don’t intend conversing to you squatting on the floor.’ He stood up and yanked her to her feet and Amy toppled against him and pulled back in dismay.

  She opened her mouth to repeat her mantra about having nothing further to say to him, but she didn’t get very far before she was being swept off her feet and carried—carried!—over his shoulder, out of the kitchen and into the sitting room where she was unceremoniously placed on the sofa.

  Rafael could no more believe he had done that than she could.

  He briefly contemplated locking the door and pocketing the key but every civilised instinct in him reared up at that extreme.

  Instead, he went across to the sofa. She had scooted up one end and was watching him warily.

  ‘I should have told you who I was from the beginning but I didn’t because I honestly didn’t want my time interrupted. I might not be known to the English crew, but everyone else would know exactly who I was and would be damned curious to find out why I was skulking in the grounds. My mother asked me to be there and I did what she wanted.’

  ‘But then even if you had been tempted to tell me who you really were, you soon wised up to the fact that you would find out a lot more about me and my motives if you kept quiet.’

  ‘Correct.’ He looked away and relaxed back into the chair, stretching out his long legs in front of him and clasping his hands behind his head. ‘I wanted to find out for myself if you were after James for a reason.’ He shifted so that he was looking at her now. She had come prepared for a night of hard work, had tied her hair ferociously back into two plaits, was wearing the plainest of clothes. But she still looked edible. In fact, just as he had remembered her.

  ‘By the time we made love, I knew that you weren’t interested in James and, if you had been, his money had had nothing to do with anything.’

  Amy felt hot and shaky. He was certainly respecting her space, was making sure to keep a healthy distance between them, but his eyes were boring holes through her. She didn’t like it when he referred to them making love. It was easier to concentrate on his deception and feel angry about it when she wasn’t thinking of him as a man, as her lover.