Kate Walker - His Suitable Bride - Rafael's Suitable Bride / The Spaniard's Marriage Bargain / Cordero's Forced Bride

The girl was not just wet behind the ears, she was positively archaic. Whether he liked it or not, she needed some sort of protection, if only from her own naivety.

Rafael decided that he would take on the onerous task of making sure she put into position one or two defence mechanisms which would help her deal with unfortunate situations, such as the one in which she found herself.

‘Martin.’ Rafael sighed and sat back so that he could study her flushed face. ‘Forgive me if I sound like a know-it-all, but I have considerably more experience than you.’

‘I realise that.’ She was catapulted back into staring at her misguided and very private admission to him a few minutes earlier.

‘Which is why I am going to ask you how long you have known this man.’

‘Who? Martin?’

‘Who else could I possibly be talking about?’ Rafael said irritably.

‘Well … not very long.’ Cristina blushed. ‘In fact, he only answered my ad in the local paper last night.’

‘You put an ad in a newspaper ?’ Rafael was horrified. His opinion of her as archaic in her approach to the opposite sex was disintegrating rapidly. He wondered how her parents could have merrily waved her off to foreign shores when she was so clearly incapable of holding her own. Maybe they had thought that she needed the experience of standing on her own two feet, but frankly she was like a minnow swimming among sharks. ‘Have you any idea how bloody dangerous that can be? Didn’t you learn anything when you were growing up? How protected were you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re implying, Rafael!’ Cristina told him defensively.

‘I’m implying,’ he said in the voice of someone explaining what should have been glaringly self-evident to a halfwit, ‘That you should have realised that putting adverts in newspapers in search of the perfect partner is playing with fire. Only two weeks ago there were headlines in the paper about a girl who had travelled to meet a so-called blind date, some lowlife who had answered an advert in a newspaper, only to discover that Prince Charming was actually Ted Bundy. I don’t know what this Martin character is like but he looks like a thug. He also wears an earring.’

‘I haven’t placed an ad—’

‘You’re inexperienced, Cristina. You’re also of a trusting nature. It’s a lethal combination.’

‘I’m not a complete idiot, Rafael.’

‘No, you’re not an idiot, and I’m not trying to tell you what to do. F’m just giving you a bit of friendly advice.’

‘I don’t need your friendly advice!’

Looking at her, Rafael thought differently. The woman was an accident waiting to happen. Even dressed as she was, in that relentlessly unflattering outfit, she still had curves and a figure that a man could want. And something about her face was softly feminine, with those wide, dark eyes and long lashes and a mouth that promised satisfaction. Of course, she had no idea, wrapped up as she was in comparisons to those sisters of hers, comparisons that were cemented in childhood. He wasn’t getting through to her, and meeting number one had already been missed. He looked at his watch, and before he could say anything Cristina sprang to her feet, suddenly aware of the passing of time and the fact that there was still an awful lot to do with the delivery of flowers before the shop opened at ten. She also had a relatively large order to dispatch to a hotel for a conference room, and it was a commission which she couldn’t possibly ruin because from that could come any number of future orders.

‘I have to go,’ she said breathlessly.

Rafael, who had been about to say precisely the same thing, wasn’t sure that he liked being dismissed. Nor did he care for her heartfelt apology for rushing off because she had some work to do. Wasn’t that his prerogative?

‘We haven’t finished our conversation,’ he grated, following her to the door and then along the pavement as she walked briskly back in the direction of her shop.

She turned and flashed him one of those smiles of hers, this time regretful.

‘I know, but I didn’t like the way the conversation was going anyway.’

‘You didn’t like the way the conversation was going anyway?’ Talking to this woman was like taking a magical mystery tour. Rafael had no idea what she would say next and he was beginning to think that, whatever it was, it would be unexpected and not in a pleasant way. Accustomed as he was to women responding to him as a man, Cristina’s bluntness was a shock to his system.

‘You were practically accusing me of being incompetent in my dealings with other people,’ she explained, glancing across at him and feeling that shiver of awareness. ‘I know you probably mean well,’ she carried on, ‘But it’s actually a little insulting.’

‘Insulting? Insulting? Run that by me, because I don’t see how I’m insulting you by trying to be helpful! You seem to have forgotten that you were the one who insulted me by implying that I don’t treat women well!’ He was beginning to feel a little hot under the collar.

‘I’m not a simpleton, and if you’d listened to me you’d realise that you’d got it all wrong.’

‘Got what all wrong?’ He wondered if she was about to try and convince him that, with her wealth of inexperience, she knew more than he did about the predatory nature of some men. God save him from ever trying to do a good deed!

‘I haven’t been putting ads in a newspaper for a blind date !

No one does that these days anyway! At least, not very many. These days people who want to find someone use the Internet!’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘I put an ad in the newspaper because I wanted to find out whether there were any opportunities for me to coach a women’s football side. Martin replied. He coaches for one of the schools in the area and he thought it might encourage more of the girls to get involved if they had a female coach!’

Rafael grimaced. ‘You should have said that from the start,’ he admonished.

‘You didn’t give me the chance!’

They had reached the shop and she turned to him with a little sigh. ‘I guess you probably feel some kind of duty towards me because of the connection with our parents,’ she said kindly, even though being considered a duty to someone else left a very nasty aftertaste in her mouth. ‘But you see, there’s no need. I would never, ever try and find my soulmate through a newspaper advertisement!’

‘So are you telling me that you’ve now got a second job working at some school somewhere?’ He wondered if she knew how dangerous some schools could be, and immediately reminded himself that she really wasn’t his responsibility.

‘Not a job, no.’ She pushed open the shop door and Rafael followed her in. The delivery of flowers had been sorted out and the shelves were stacked with an extraordinary array of plants, exotic blooms that filled the air with a lush, heavy scent.

Cristina looked at him. ‘I’ve volunteered to coach a couple of classes after school. First one on Tuesday. Martin’s not sure what the turnout is going to be, but he’s keen to make this work.’

‘Where’s the school?’

She smiled at him, a sunny smile that lit up her face. ‘It’s pretty close to here, so I can leave the shop with Anthea and get to the school by five. I’m looking forward to it. I need the exercise, at any rate!’

‘Impossible to tell under those layers of clothing.’

She felt his eyes burning through her and the safe, light-hearted change of topic left her feeling heady. ‘And you probably need to get back to work,’ she reminded him.

‘Right.’

He left the scent of flowers, but his mind refused to be reined in by the clinical sanctuary of his plush office. His meetings all went according to plan, but he was distracted and he could feel his PA dithering around him, aware that something was out of kilter.