His Suitable Bride(39)

‘You were saying?’

Cristina, lost in her thoughts, had almost forgotten what she had been saying. She focused her eyes on the man sitting next to her on the sofa and blinked.

‘I was saying that your mother … Maria said something and I need you to clarify.’

‘Get to the point, Cristina.’

Was he being understandably impatient because she was waffling, or were these just the signs of arrogance which she had conveniently chosen to overlook but which had been there all along?

‘She said that she was really happy … that you had decided to finally settle down.’

‘And so she is. Are we going somewhere with this or is it just the circles thing?’

‘She said that she had spoken to you … told you that it was time that you found a suitable wife.’ Bitterness had crept into her voice, and Rafael’s face darkened. ‘I need to find out what this is all about, Rafael,’ she pursued doggedly. ‘Finding a suitable wife. Is that what this is all about?’ The words were wrenched out of her and spoken straight from the heart.

‘You’re beginning to sound hysterical, Cristina, and I don’t do hysterics.’

‘I’m not being hysterical. I’m just asking you to tell me the truth, whether you were put up to this.’

‘I don’t think I like that expression,’ Rafael said, his lean, handsome face taut.

‘Well, I can’t think of another one to use. Your mother said that she told you that it was time to find a suitable wife and, lo and behold, here I am!’

‘You seem to have a problem with that term and I don’t understand why.’ The relaxing weekend Rafael had anticipated seemed to be going rapidly pear-shaped and he was at a loss to explain why. Cristina, so obliging for the past few months, was now asking questions which he personally found unnecessary, and standing her ground. Why? She should have been pleased that he considered her a suitable wife! He had already been through a wife who had been totally unsuitable. What higher compliment than to be chosen for her suitability?

Cristina’s hope that she had somehow misinterpreted Maria’s remark crumbled into ashes.

‘Yes, my mother suggested that it was time I settled down and I agreed with her.’ He gave a casual, elegant shrug. ‘Where is the problem in that? There comes a moment in every man’s life when he must weigh the advantages of playing hard against the peace of tying the knot.’

Cristina had a mental image of a pair of scales with ‘Fun and Frolics’ on one side and herself, ‘Giant Knot’, on the other. No love to be seen and, without love, how long before ‘Giant Knot’ lost its appeal? Would he then expect to resume his fun and frolics, with the added bonus of having Giant Knot at home raising children, cooking meals and waiting for him to return?

‘So this would be a bit like a business transaction, in other words?’

‘Why do you insist on using such emotive language?’ Rafael enquired impatiently.

Cristina turned away, the sting of tears making her blink rapidly, willing herself not to cry because she was pretty sure that he probably didn’t do crying along with hysterics.

‘It’s not going to work.’ She wriggled the engagement ring from her finger, turned back to him and silently held out her hand with the ring in her palm. ‘The diamond was too big anyway. How could I do football coaching or my flowers wearing it?’ She forced herself to smile in the face of his stony expression. ‘I should have seen that as a sign. We couldn’t even agree on the ring.’





CHAPTER SEVEN


THE evening and following day were a nightmare of misery and tension. Cristina had handed Rafael back his ring, but he had refused to accept it. Instead, he had looked at her with a long, cool expression and told her to consider the implications of not wearing it. The explanations to his mother, which would be uncomfortable at the very best. What would she say—that they had had a massive row and she had decided to call the whole thing off? His mother, he had assured her, would smile indulgently and probably tell her something wise about pre-wedding nerves. Or else she could go for the truth, tell his mother … that what? She considered herself at the wrong end of a deal which she had now decided she didn’t care for—a deal to marry one of the most eligible men in the world?

‘Wear the ring,’ he had told her. ‘We can discuss this later.’

Coward that she was, Cristina, faced with the scenario which Rafael had succinctly depicted in sparse but extremely graphic detail, had silently slipped the ring back onto her finger, but it had felt like barbed wire against her skin.