Page 45 of Emergency Engagement

‘I think that’s a good idea. I can arrange a flight back for you tomorrow.’

‘Sure. Thank you.’

‘In the meantime, I’ll go to the hotel. Everything’s ready for the opening in a month’s time. There’s no harm in sampling the product.’

‘Quite.’

‘And Sammy...?’

She was beginning to turn away. She twisted to look at him over her shoulder, one last glance at the guy who had turned her world upside down.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted. But, trust me, one day you’ll look back at what we had and you’ll thank me, because you’ll know that I would never have been good for you. You deserve the guy who meets your checklist.’

She nodded and turned away.

Rafael felt as though time had suddenly slowed down. His brain was sluggishly receiving information but processing it was painful—painful but necessary.

He watched as she walked away from him into the house without bothering to slide the glass doors shut behind her. For a while he was frozen, staring at nothing in particular, then he moved to one of the chairs by the pool and sat staring at the glassy water.

He should have known. He should have read the signs. She was romantic. She believed in love and she wanted the happy-ever-after. The second they had embarked on their charade, he should have known that there was a chance that sooner or later what was false had a chance of merging into something real.

For her. For him, it was all just the physical stuff. Okay, so they’d talked, they got along. But he was standing firm by what he’d said, thatgetting alongwasn’t the same asfalling in loveand surrendering his soul into the safekeeping of someone else. There was no leap of faith involved ingetting alongwith someone.

This hadn’t been about drifting into coupledom for him. He had vivid memories of the amount of time his father had wasted on love. He had drowned trying to resuscitate it when it was well and truly dead, and where had that got him? Rafael had been left picking up too many pieces not to have learnt valuable lessons from the experience. Lessons that had protected him from the very thing that had happened to Sammy!

He had sworn never to put himself in a position of vulnerability, open to hurt and pain, and in a place where others might suffer because of his choices. She would be better off without him. She was a special person who needed to find her soul mate.

Uneasy with his introspection, Rafael glanced up at the bank of bedroom windows. He couldn’t see her, because the shutters were closed, but he knew that she would be packing. He texted his PA and told her immediately to book a flight out of the country for Sammy and that her details would be on file. It was done. Half an hour later, his phone pinged with the message that the relevant information had been sent to Sammy.

Making up his mind, Rafael stood up and headed indoors, already on his phone telling the guys at the hotel that he would be testing the sleeping quarters for the next couple of nights.

‘Make sure the mattresses are comfortable,’ he said, heading to his office to complete the call and gather up the work-related stuff which he would do once he was at the hotel. ‘We don’t want any guests deciding that they’re too hard, too soft, too lumpy or just not up to scratch. Wealthy guests always expect the best.’ As an afterthought, he phoned through to the hotel again and asked for a team to be sent to clean the villa as soon as possible.

He knew Sammy. He knew that she would be packing and probably apprehensive about bumping into him.

He scowled as it struck him that he was reluctant to bump into her as well. Everything that had just happened in the past half hour should have turned him off big time but when he thought of her, as he was thinking of her now, his body reacted in unpredictable ways.

He still wanted her. Still craved her.

He would wait an hour then he would go pack a bag and head to the hotel. She would be gone the following morning and...life would return to normal. He might have shared more with Sammy than he had with any other woman but, in the end, he was insulated against the very thing she had wanted. She would ease out of his life just like every other woman had, barely leaving a ripple behind her.

CHAPTER TEN

RAFAELKNEWJUSTwhen Sammy left the island.

In fact, he was in the hotel when he heard the sound of the aeroplane that would deliver her back to England; that was how small the island was. It had roared overhead, and he’d gritted his teeth and tried not to think of her staring out of the window, her heart hardening in the face of his rejection.

Within the week, he too would return to England, and henceforth business dealings with her would be done via his PA. There was no need for him to know anything about what she did with the considerable amount of money he would be handing over to her.

And, as for their fake engagement, it might have been whispered to Sammy’s mother but it had not ignited in the press, so when he returned, there would be no public curiosity to douse.

As for Caroline Payne, he was sure that Sammy would retreat from the make-believe fantasy with no harm done to her relationship with her mother. She would be the decisive one who had cut the ties, having realised the error of her headlong rush into infatuation. She had poured her heart out to him in a no-holds-barred performance that he could only admire, and she would surely be bitter at the way he had reacted—coolly, firmly, with no way back for discussion.

Of course, she would tell whatever story she wished to tell to her mother, and he couldn’t fault that approach. Bitterness would fuel her. He would be in the lead role as Big Bad Wolf, knocked back for the first time in his life, dismissed to lick hiswounds in a dark cave somewhere, and he was happy with that. He couldn’t be happier.

A woman in love with him? No way. He blamed himself because he had been swept away by the sex. The truth was that love had never been a complication he would take on board—couldtake on board—however convenient the situation was and however hot the sex.

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