His Suitable Bride(48)

He poured himself a glass of mineral water, looked at the computer waiting for him on the kitchen counter, where he had left it charging in his absence, and grabbed the phone from its handset.

He had almost near-perfect recall, and jabbed in Cristina’s number as he stretched out on the long sofa in the living room. Of course she would be in. Not for a minute did he contemplate the possibility that at ten-thirty on a Saturday evening she might be out doing the London scene.

She might have waxed lyrical about Mr Right, but hunting him down would have been a completely different matter. She wasn’t a hunter. She was utterly, maddeningly feminine and would have been appalled at the concept of getting out there and being proactive.

Sure enough, it was a drowsy voice that answered after just three rings.

‘Have I woken you up?’ Rafael demanded, disregarding all rules of basic politeness.

‘Rafael?’

‘Well? Were you asleep?’

The sound of that dark, velvety and supremely arrogant voice was like a bucket of ice-cold water being thrown over her head.

For the past six weeks she had tried really hard to get him out of her head, and she had managed to convince herself that it was working. She had applied to start a formal evening-course in landscape gardening, and had been ploughing through a mountain of books in preparation. In between her daily running of the flower shop, it had just about been enough to see her through those nasty times when memories of him would pounce, like a monster let out of a cupboard, pummelling her hard-fought good intentions.

For Anthea’s sake she had also tried to put a brave face on things, had shrugged off the cancelled engagement as ‘one of those things’, as though broken engagements were a daily occurrence in her life, and had been as bright and breezy as she could.

She had, however, drawn the line at launching herself into the single life, despite her friend’s attempts to get her out there in the social scene.

Hearing Rafael’s voice now catapulted her straight back in time. Her small hard-won achievements evaporated and she sat up in bed, every nerve in her body tensing.

‘What do you want?’ she asked tightly, and down the end of the line she heard him sigh. Well, she hadn’t asked him to call her, hadn’t heard a word from him for weeks, so why was he sighing as though she had been the one to interrupt him in the middle of his super-busy life? Immediately she thought that Rafael would not have seen things that way and she was so guiltily, stupidly pleased to hear his voice that she fell silent.

‘There’s no need to snap,’ Rafael said silkily. ‘I mean, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’

Cristina dearly wished that she could answer that in the affirmative. But her evening had been spent watching a gardening show on television, having something of a comfort-eating fest on her own and spending half an hour on the phone to her mother who had taken to calling her every couple of days to cheer her up.

‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘Not really. Why are you calling? What do you want?’

What Rafael really wanted was to tell her that he could actually have been in the company of a stunningly beautiful blonde who would never have dreamed of speaking to him as though he were something that had crawled out from under a rock—but in time he remembered that she was probably still angry and bitter with him.

‘I wanted to find out how you were.’ He relaxed, resting his arm under his head and loosely linking his feet at the ankles where he stared down at his black socks, having previously kicked off his shoes by the front door.

‘I’m very well, thank you.’

‘Good. I’m glad to hear it. I was worried about you.’ His voice bordered on pious.

‘Well, I don’t believe that for a minute, Rafael. And you still haven’t told me why you’re calling me at this hour.’

‘Most of London are up at this hour,’ he pointed out. ‘And I was calling to invite you out.’

On a date? was the wild thought that flew through her head. Then she remembered what he was all about. He was the man who had a stone for a heart even if he did manage to give a very good impression of a living, breathing, normal human being.

‘I don’t think so.’ She remembered the way they had laughed together, the way he had indulged her inclination to babble, the way he had made her feel sexy and good about herself. Very firmly, she shut the door on those nagging, enticing memories.

‘To a party I’m having next weekend at my place here in London.’

‘You want to invite me to a party …?’ That was more like it. He wasn’t really interested in finding out about her and how she was doing; he probably felt bad because he had hurt her. Not, obviously, so bad that he wanted to check on her welfare face to face over a cup of coffee, but bad enough to consider asking her along to something large and impersonal which would give him the opportunity to ask a few polite questions with the comfort of having a crowd of his friends around. Just in case she started blubbing or something. She wondered whether his mother had put him up to it.