Kept by the Spanish Billionaire(50)

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.#p#分页标题#e#

‘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.