‘Where’s … um … Cindy?’ she asked, in the face of his stony silence. ‘She seems a very nice woman …’
Rafael was in no mood to think about Cindy, whom he had dispatched twenty minutes earlier in a move that would certainly herald the demise of any fledgling relationship. He wasn’t too concerned. If after having met her only a couple of times he had found her company grating, then it was clearly doomed.
‘I could warn you that, if this is your way of handling our break up, then you’re heading for an almighty fall, but.’ He shrugged elegantly. ‘It’s entirely up to you how you behave in public …’
‘How I behave in public?’ Cristina said, with mounting anger at his attitude. He seemed to think that it was perfectly fine to spend the evening with a six-foot blonde draped over him like ivy—but she, on the other hand, had arrived dressed indecently and now, from what he was saying, had made a fool of herself. She tried to count to ten but only managed to make it to three, then she placed her hands squarely on her hips and glared ferociously at him.
‘I’m free, young, single, and … and …’ And what? ‘And looking for fun! Yes, I might be dressed in a short skirt …’
‘With every inch of your body on display.’ Rafael interposed tightly.
‘But you’ve taught me how to get out there and face the world!’
‘So now it’s my fault that you’re now prowling for men?’
Cristina thought of her nights in with cocoa and gardening books and decided not to correct him. How dared he? When he had already replaced her?
‘I don’t have to prowl for men!’ she said, thinking on her feet and for once coming up with a stinging riposte. ‘I’ve noticed that a fair number of them find me quite attractive! In fact …’ She walked quickly towards her clutch bag and pulled out a little wad of telephone numbers. There was no way that she was going to tell him that most of them were genuine enquiries about her landscaping services from some of the wives who had been there.
‘Look—numbers! Telephone numbers! Including Jamie’s! And, yes, I won’t be sitting around waiting for them to call me!’
CHAPTER NINE
RAFAEL’S week had not gone well. He had wasted a great deal of time reliving his party, and had been inconveniently plagued with thoughts of Cristina in her sexy and—as he liked to mentally describe it—tarty outfit. Out there looking for fun.
He had felt sorry for her, gentleman that he was, had invited her because he had wanted to make sure that she was doing okay. She was, he had been forced to concede to himself, doing more than okay. She was, judging from the looks of it, painting the town red.
He had also had a couple of very uncomfortable conversations with Cindy, who had mistakenly interpreted three dates as the wheels beginning to turn on a bandwagon of ‘getting to know one another’. He hadn’t wanted to retaliate in any way to her accusations of being used, but in the end had been forced to tell her that they simply weren’t compatible. Instead of being consoled by that suitably vague excuse, she had begun to cry down the telephone and had launched into a really aggravating attack on him personally—at the end of which she had dared shout at him that he was just the sort of man her mother had always warned her about, after which she had slammed down the receiver.
Well, he could cope with that. Indeed, it had been a relief, because the whole business of going out with another woman, going through the getting-to-know-you routines which he had always rather enjoyed, had been giving him a headache. He could have been a bit more tactful, he supposed, in letting her know how he felt, but all that was in the past now.
No, that had been fine, but this …
He stared darkly at the phone on his desk, which he had only just replaced on its handset.
It was just as well that it was Friday, that he was the sole person left in the office—everyone else having virtually stampeded out of the building by the ridiculously early time of seven—because he was finding it difficult to focus after his conversation with Goodman.
He had hesitated before calling the man, but a couple of shared games of squash and the occasional work titbit tossed his way in the past had more than qualified him, in his eyes, for a surprise call. He had, naturally, sweetened things considerably by holding out the dazzling carrot of investing some money in the man’s company. Not such a far-flung idea, as Rafael had been toying with extending his portfolio for a few months, and sure enough Goodman had leapt at the bait. It had taken only the tiniest strand of curiosity, thrown in virtually as an afterthought before ringing off, for Rafael to learn what he had wanted to know from the very beginning.