Page 30 of Shock Marriage for the Powerful Spaniard
‘I don’t want to have this conversation, Rafael.’ Her voice hitched and she stared down at the expensive shoes. ‘I feel sick and tired and...overwhelmed...’
‘You have an annoying habit of starting conversations you don’t want to finish.’ He raked his hands through his hair then, without warning and just as she was about to take a few tottering steps towards the kitchen, her mouth as dry as the desert, he covered the distance between them.
She froze, and then promptly un-froze when he scooped her up in one easy movement, carrying her towards the kitchen and kicking the door open with his foot while she wriggled and tried to disentangle herself.
‘Keep still,’ he warned.
‘Put me down!’
‘I intend to.’
He deposited her on one of the kitchen chairs and then stood back as she straightened herself with one shaking hand, barely able to meet his eyes.
‘Why did you do that?’ she asked accusingly.
‘Because I got fed up having a long, going-nowhere conversation in my hall with you.’ He turned and fetched her a glass of water. ‘Drink this. You need to hydrate. Do you want something to eat?’
‘Something like what?’
‘God, you’re the most difficult woman I have ever met in my entire life.’
‘Well,thatdoesn’t augur well for this marriage of ours!’ Sofia couldn’t contain her sarcasm and he suddenly grinned. Her pulse-rate accelerated into overdrive.
‘Like I said, the one thing it ain’t going to be is boring,’ he murmured. ‘Now, stop talking for five seconds and listen to me carefully. I don’t have relationships with married women. Never. I don’t care how many of them throw themselves at me and I don’t care what they look like. A married woman is out of bounds.’
‘But you would be happy to have an affair with another woman even thoughyou’remarried!’ Sofia threw at him for the sake of argument, promptly forgetting all good intentions to keep things cool and civil between them without emotions of any sort getting in the way.
‘As we both know, this isn’t the real deal. If it were, then there is no way I would go near any woman. Believe it or not, I may have relationships but I like to stick to one woman at a time. You look sick. You need to go to bed.’
‘I drank too much,’ Sofia conceded. She stood up but her legs were suddenly wobbly and she had to stand still to gather herself for a few moments. She knew that he was looking at her, so cool, so urbane, so sophisticated. So much the opposite to her.
And just like that the tears she had been desperately trying to hold back began to leak out.
Horrified, she stared down at her feet and clenched her jaw.
‘You’re...crying. Are youcrying, Sofia?’
Sofia shrugged. She didn’t trust herself to speak but she heard him curse softly under his breath and then he was lifting her up again, as if sweeping her off her feet was becoming a habit, and this time she didn’t bother to put up a fight.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Her dress was riding up, exposing her thighs, but she couldn’t be bothered to redress that by trying to tug it down.
Instead, she kept her eyes shut while he laid her very gently on the bed, then she immediately turned away and buried her head in the crook of her arms.
‘Wait right there,’ Rafael said gruffly. ‘I’m going to bring up a jug of water and some tablets. And something to eat. You need to put food into your stomach. Don’t move.’
How long was he gone?
She didn’t know. She was aware of him putting the water on the table by the bed, and after a while she heard the sound of the door shutting quietly. When she peeped out, it was to find that an inelegantly enormous door-wedge of a sandwich had been made for her, which made her smile.
It was man fare, but it tasted wonderful.
And then, still feeling sick but so, so relieved to be in bed, she found herself drifting off.
The day she had been dreading was at an end. She would put all thoughts of her father on hold for the moment. She would definitely put all thoughts of Rafael on hold! Although, she felt herself smiling again at the sandwich he had made for her, stuffed full of cheese and ham but lacking everything else.
She fell asleep to the throbbing of a dull headache.
When she next opened her eyes, the room was pitch-black and it took her a few seconds to surface and remember exactly where she was.
