Kept by the Spanish Billionaire(46)

‘Oh.’ Amy shrugged. ‘I guess it’s what anyone would say in my shoes. It doesn’t mean I’m hearing wedding bells. I mean, it’s been a laugh but, as we established from day one, we’re not soul mates, are we?’ She laughed to emphasise the silliness of such a notion. ‘But, hey, I just thought we could keep in touch by e-mail…you could come over some time if you ever had a craving to visit Kew Gardens and see how we English do the gardening scene. To be honest,’ she felt emboldened to continue, ‘I was just being polite. I didn’t intend to spark off an international incident. But as we know, you take life way too seriously so I should have known how you would react!’

Rafael didn’t say anything. She had pre-empted what he had intended to say. And that was good. They understood one another. There would be no need for him to wrench her off him when the time came to part. Good! Couldn’t be better.

He surfaced to realise that she was fidgeting, saying something about leaving.

‘Already?’ His eyebrows shot up in surprise as their last night became rapidly condensed into their last few minutes. A groundswell of something seemed to gather apace inside him and he quickly buried it.

‘It’s late, Rafael.’

‘Would you have stayed if I had decided that we did have some sort of short, short future?’

‘I haven’t finished my packing. And I’d really like to get back for at least part of the last night’s festivities. James is planning on fireworks.’#p#分页标题#e#

‘You could watch them here.’

It was tempting. Sitting outside with him, arms around each other. Tempting but pointless. She needed to get away as fast as she could.

‘I could but I’m not going to.’ She sighed and moved towards him, just one last hug, just something for her box of memories. She placed her arms around him. In her flats, she only reached the top of his shoulder. He buried his head in her hair and squeezed her. To his horror, he wanted to beg her not to go, to stay the night. Very gently he pushed her away and firmly reined in his galloping thoughts.

‘That’s fine.’

The back of her throat began to ache from the effort of holding back the tears.

‘I’ll drop you.’

‘No! Please don’t. I…’ She turned away and began walking towards the front door. ‘I know the way back to the house. I know all the short cuts! And the fresh air would be nice.’ She reached for the door knob and gave him one last glance. ‘Been fun, Rafael. Take care of those rose bushes. You know I’m obsessed by them.’

Rafael was seriously beginning to regret that he hadn’t made agreeable noises about the short, short future she had mentioned. But it was too late now. He couldn’t retrieve the situation without sounding weak. He watched her look around to see if she was forgetting anything, then he watched as she walked out of the door and out of his life for good.

Mission accomplished, he told himself. There was no way she would ever look twice at James again. He knew her well enough by now to know that she would be as honest with herself as she possibly could and that honesty would force her to admit that, on the back of what they had enjoyed, anything she might have felt for James would have been an illusion.

Along the way he had had a very nice time. What more could he ask for?





CHAPTER EIGHT




AMY had never been backward at learning lessons. From Freddie, she had learnt to avoid men who placed personal ambition over everything and everyone. Men like that viewed other people as stepping-stones, women included. And from James, her unavailable crush, she had learnt that rich men liked women who melded into their lifestyles. They didn’t want the challenge of a woman who thought holidays every three weeks were a waste of time after a while or whose social consciences were pricked by the extravagance of people who had houses scattered across the globe, half of which they never got around to visiting.

She knew that because she had ended up spending the flight back to London next to him. It had been the first time she had spent more than ten minutes conversing with him. He had been as sweet and charming as she had expected, asking her all the right things, trying his best to get her to reveal how exactly she had spent her time in the Hamptons, because he hadn’t seen much of her at the organised social events.

Amy had valiantly avoided mentioning Rafael. Okay, so it wasn’t as though it would have made any difference, but it had still felt like an invasion of her privacy. She hadn’t want to share those moments with anyone else, least of all James. She hadn’t known how he would react to the fact that his gardener had had a fling with a guest and she hadn’t been about to be responsible for anyone getting fired.