‘Time for us to board,’ Ruy advised as the passenger door was opened by the driver.
The pilot and two stewardesses greeted them at the foot of the steps. There was a lot of what Suzy regarded as bowing and scraping and the ladies were very flirty with Ruy. Suzy frowned as she mounted the steps and moved into what struck her as the very last word in opulent cabin interiors. There were reclining seats, coffee tables, polished wood, pale leather surfaces, and through the arch at the foot she could see an actual conference table surrounded by chairs. She stepped back as the four men she had seen at Ruy’s secluded home passed by them and headed towards the back of the plane, where they disappeared from view.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Ruy advised.
‘A private jet?’ Suzy queried, settling stiffly down into a reclining seat but keeping it upright, quite unable to relax in so sumptuous a setting.
Ruy vented a rueful laugh, raw charisma in the lazy half-smile he angled in her direction. ‘I suppose it’s time to come clean.’
‘I think it is,’ Suzy agreed with a dangerous glint in her clear green eyes. ‘You have access to a private jet or is some friend allowing you to use it?’
‘Strictly speaking the jet belongs to Valiente Capital, the Spanish investment firm. I am the CEO of Valiente Capital. That I also paint is a secret, a diversion from my normal life as a hedge-fund manager and I use the pseudonym V for my portraits to conserve that privacy,’ Ruy explained with cool precision.
Investment, hedge funds? Suzy’s brain swam. She would probably have been less taken aback had he announced that he was a bullfighter. But some sort of financial wizard? That was so far removed from what she had so far seen of Ruy that she was wildly disconcerted, and then her thoughts took a step back and she recalled that cool, arrogant side to his nature. ‘Why weren’t you honest with me about who you were from the start?’ she demanded tightly.
‘My two identities are kept very much separate and few people know the truth. Cecile is one of the few. I’m not sure our investors would be happy to learn that I’m an artist as well. I bought the house in England as a bolt-hole where I could paint when I take time off and I see no reason to tell anyone that I’m also involved in the financial markets.’
‘How rich are you?’ Suzy shot at him thinly, an unpleasant thought suddenly occurring to her. ‘Rich enough to have paid me that fifty thousand pounds I mentioned that night in the pub and think nothing of it?’
Steady dark eyes with only a gleam of gold in their depths rested on her as Ruy compressed his lips and jerked his chin in confirmation.
‘And I laughed and asked if you thought you were Mr Rockefeller or something!’ Suzy recalled with a shudder of humiliation, her cheeks burning. ‘You’ve had a lot of fun at my expense!’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Ruy countered, taken aback by the charge.
‘I may not have the right to know your secrets, but I did have the right to know the identity and status of the man I slept with. I was entitled to be told who you really were before that happened,’ Suzy condemned. ‘Because I can tell you right now that if I’d known you were some flash hedge-fund whizz-kid, I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you in the first place!’
‘Why the hell not? What possible difference could it have made?’ Ruy slammed back at her, angry for the first time in her presence, thoroughly nettled by that word, ‘flash’, which seemed to suggest that he was some sort of untrustworthy braggart.
‘I don’t even know your real name!’ Suzy yelled back at him above the roar of the engines as the jet rolled down the runway.
‘Ruy Santiago Valiente,’ Ruy supplied with icy precision. ‘Rivera was Cecile’s mother’s surname and I borrow it when I don’t wish to be identified.’
‘How convenient to have an alternative name!’ Suzy snapped between clenched teeth of scorn.
Ruy exhaled slowly, cocked an ebony brow and murmured, ‘I really don’t see what the problem is. I’ve told you now.’
Suzy gripped her right hand with her left because she wanted to hit him. ‘You deceived me. You betrayed my trust.’
‘Those are serious accusations,’ Ruy bit out, his temper stirring even more.
‘And they’re true. You didn’t give me a choice. I feel like an idiot for not seeing that, the way you behaved, you couldn’t possibly have been the forthright artist you were pretending to be!’
Ruy gritted his teeth. ‘Most women would be ecstatic to find out that I’m a wealthy man.’
Suzy’s hands both flew up in the air to emphasise her furious frustration with him and his refusal to look at the situation from her point of view. ‘If they’re greedy, if they want you to spend your money on them, but I don’t! Now I can see that you’ve used your wealth like a weapon against me from the moment we met!’ she framed with bitter resentment.
The jet was finally in the air and Ruy released his seat belt and vaulted upright to his full intimidating height. He stared down at her with scorching dark golden eyes. ‘Valgame Dios! How do you make that out?’
Suzy released her belt and got up as well, moving away several feet before spinning back round to face him. ‘You tried to bribe me.’
‘And it would have worked a treat had you known who I was at the time because you were desperate to save your father and his livelihood,’ Ruy reminded her drily.
Suzy stamped a pompommed toe. ‘That is not the point!’
‘That is exactly the point. Everything has turned out very well for you and your father...why?’ Ruy prompted expectantly, as if he were a teacher giving a young, not very bright child a lesson in life. ‘Because I have money, and I was able to use that money you deride to protect you and your father from further interference and intimidation from Brenton. Don’t you dare snipe at me for telling you the truth you don’t want to hear or accept!’
As Suzy angrily parted her lips the cabin door opened and a stewardess appeared. Deeply flushed, Suzy backed down into her seat again and sat there frozen in place while refreshments and snacks were served. She was so angry she was trembling with the force of her feelings. On one level she knew that Ruy was right. He had saved the pub from her ex’s machinations. He had made her father’s life a lot easier by releasing him from years of worry about money. But, ultimately, she was convinced that Ruy had bought into the pub to ensure that Suzy agreed to model for him and accompanied him out to Spain to pose as his fiancée.
‘Yes, what you did may have delivered a happy result for my father, but it doesn’t change the unscrupulous way you operate. You bought into the pub to put pressure on me.’
‘I bought into the pub to take pressure off you,’ Ruy stressed curtly.