Page 25 of Shock Marriage for the Powerful Spaniard
‘Then you’re going to have to make a sterling effort to pretend.’
‘What’s the point of doing that, Rafael? I know I’m being well paid for the job, but pretending to feel something for someone I don’t know from Adam isn’t part of the brief.’
‘Oh, but it is,cara.’
Sofia shivered because this was delivered with just a hint of silky threat.
‘What do you mean?’ she quizzed tartly.
‘Here’s what I mean. You’re not going to avoid seeing David or treat him with disrespect. In any way, shape or form.’
‘I wasn’t doing that.’
‘He’s asking you questions. You’re going to answer them, and you’re going to do a damn good job of answering them with a smile on your face as opposed to the grimace of someone swallowing shards of glass.’
‘But I...’ She dragged her eyes away and stared straight ahead to the other Range Rover in front of them. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘What don’t I understand?’
‘My mum and I were a team. I can’t say that I enjoyed moving around, and I can’t say that I had a lot of time for her falling in and out of love with good-looking guys who used her and then walked away, but we managed—and we managed without David Dunmore on the scene because he’s neverbeenon the scene. You can’t just fabricate interest in someone because you happen to find out that you’re related to them. That’s not how it works.’
‘Maybe not,’ Rafael unbent sufficiently to say quietly. ‘But look on this as a humane gesture. My godfather, your father, has been through the mill with his health. A further barrage of tests this week has reduced him to a person I scarcely recognise. He’s holding on to the prospect of getting to know you like a drowning man clinging to a lifebelt. It’s in your power to alleviate some of his depression by, at least, being civil. Can you honestly tell me that you’re so selfish that you won’t do that?’
Sofia flushed darkly and wondered what he would say if he knew that the depressed elderly man had once been an arrogant forty-something who had not hesitated to dump her mother, having strung her along, eventually making her pregnant. Not, in all fairness, that he had known about the pregnancy, although if hehadknown would the situation have been any different?
‘Why do you care so much?’ she asked, curiosity forcing a way past her resentment.
Rafael flushed. ‘He’s my godfather. Of course I care.’
‘There’s noof courseabout it,’ Sofia returned drily. ‘And somehow I can’t see you as the sort of person who shows affection for someone because other people expect it.’ But she could sense that when it came to David all was not as clear cut as for other people. When it came to his godfather, Rafael was vulnerable, and that realisation softened something inside her, endearing him to her in ways she couldn’t define.
Rafael relaxed, his lean, intensely aggressive features softening into something approaching a smile.
‘What are you trying to say?’ Dark eyes glanced over to her as he sat sprawled against the door, his long legs eating up the space between them in the back of the car, as though too big to be comfortable in any restraining space.
‘That you don’t care what anyone thinks. You’ve told me so yourself.’ She hesitated. It would be easy if she could see him as a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out, but she couldn’t, and the second she tried to she was ambushed by all sorts of conflicting feelings because he was simply so complex. ‘So why are you so...close to David? How is it that he’s your godfather?’
‘You ask a lot of questions.’
‘I’m your wife,’ Sofia was quick to respond. ‘And, if you can tell me what to do and how I should behave, then the least I should be able to do, by way of returning the favour, is to try and find out a bit aboutmy husband.’ She looked at him with arched eyebrows and he grinned, then laughed appreciatively.
‘Whatever our marriage is,’ he drawled, ‘boring it won’t be.’
‘Because I have a mind of my own and I’m not afraid to speak it?’ She sniffed, disarmed by that smile.
‘Amongst other things.’
‘Well?’
She twisted the rose-gold ring on her finger. It felt so odd.
She was married to this big, powerful guy...a guy who commanded attention wherever he went. Eyes followed him whenever he entered a room—people wondered whether they should recognise him because he stood out... Even as a lowly gardener he had commanded her attention.Here, in his stamping ground, he was the king of the jungle.
‘Well, if you insist on the back story, David was my grandfather’s closest friend. They went to university together. Neither had much to speak of but David was the first to secure a bank loan and he used some of it to lend a hand to my grandfather, who then went on to do great things in import and export. David opened up a small hotel on the outskirts of the university town they both went to. Fill a gap, was David’s reasoning. Something small but classy for relatives visiting kids at the university. He’d studied economics and figured that that was the most lucrative way to put his degree to good use.
‘Roll on ten years and that one small hotel had expanded into a healthy dozen or so, at which point he began diversifying, going into different areas...exploring boutique hotels in far-flung places not yet on the tourist radar, dabbling in computer technology before computer technology had taken off. All from one small idea.’
Rafael shook his head and Sofia detected admiration in his dark eyes. ‘He’s always been the finest example of how to work your way to the top on your own merit. You could say that this is the stuff that mentors are made of.’ He shot her a crooked smile but she saw past that. Rafael wasn’t being ironic. He was being utterly truthful. In all aspects, David was larger than life to him, had been there for him in more ways than one.
