‘Your brother must know about your art,’ Suzy assumed.
‘No, he doesn’t, and I must ask you to remember not to mention it to anyone at the wedding tomorrow,’ Ruy warned her grimly.
‘You know I won’t if you don’t want me to,’ Suzy told him soothingly. ‘But why is it still a secret? Why do you feel the need to hide such an important part of yourself from the rest of the world?’
Ruy had never asked himself that question, which struck him as an odd glaring omission. ‘Custom, privacy,’ he responded. ‘For many years, it felt like the only thing in my life that was truly mine and I guarded my secret zealously.’
‘Would you give up Valiente Capital to paint full-time?’ Suzy asked.
‘No,’ Ruy answered without hesitation. ‘Once I believed that, given the choice, I would do that, but since then I’ve come to appreciate that I also very much enjoy the cut and thrust of the financial world. I think that’s in my genes as much as the need to paint.’ He set down his palette. ‘That will do us for today. Manuel is providing a picnic lunch for us. I did promise to show you the estate.’
‘I thought you’d forgotten... I want to see the orange grove where you used to hide.’
Ruy closed a hand over hers as she rose and tottered slightly on her stiff limbs. His other hand winding into her curls, he drew her slight frame up against him. The heat of his skin and the aroma of clean, fresh male engulfed her and the pulse at the heart of her quickened. The strength of the hunger Ruy ignited in her unnerved her because she had never thought of herself as a particularly sexual being and now she was learning that she hadn’t known herself as well as she thought she did. Her nipples prickled and peaked and her body dampened, her pupils dilating.
‘Sometimes I want to eat you alive,’ Ruy groaned hungrily against her ripe mouth. ‘I thought this would fade...why isn’t it fading?’
‘Feed a cold, starve a fever,’ she framed shakily. ‘Maybe you were right and we shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Que pasa? What’s the matter with you?’ Ruy growled, ravishing her parted lips passionately with his own in punishment for that suggestion, his tongue delving deep enough to make her shudder against him as if she were in the teeth of a gale. ‘This is us. This is how it is.’
But she felt consumed by him, by the passion she couldn’t deny, by the boundaries she couldn’t make herself respect. He walked her indoors to the air-conditioned cool but still she felt as though her skin had shrunk too tight over her bones and her heartbeat was pounding as if she had run a mile. Ruy wanted to lift her up into his arms and stride upstairs with her, but instead he forced himself to stay in control with her simply to prove that he could do it...this once.
Manuel was beaming at them from a discreet corner. They were definitely putting on an authentic show of being lovers, Ruy acknowledged without the satisfaction he had expected to feel. She would be leaving in a day and a half, straight after the wedding. He already knew that he would miss her. Not just the passion, but the new life she brought to the palacio.
A huge bunch of sunflowers gathered from the edge of a field by Suzy sat in a giant vase on a table, transforming the splendid marble hall into a much warmer space. Suzy cast a kind of spell over the old house, changing practices that had been in vogue for decades. A cardigan she had abandoned over a carved chair provided another splash of colour. She could be rather untidy, Ruy conceded, because he had tripped over the boots she’d left lying on the bedroom floor the night before. Not that on the way into a bed containing Suzy he had felt remotely tempted to complain.
They now ate their meals in the airy orangery, not in the formal dining room, where she had confessed to feeling oppressed by the heavy tapestries on the wall and the giant table. She had taken a notion for fish and chips one afternoon and had casually suggested it to Manuel and, lo and behold, Ruy’s cordon bleu chef had served fish and chips for the first time ever and had then emerged from the kitchens he ruled like a tyrant to enquire as to whether she had any other special requests. Informed that Suzy loved to be surprised, the chef had grinned and Ruy had appreciated that his regimented menu of meals—for he did not like to be surprised by what was on his plate—would be changed for ever. Suzy smiled and said thank you and the staff couldn’t do enough for her.
On the landing he succumbed to the allure of her soft pink mouth and crushed her to him to extract a hungry kiss. They walked into his bedroom and Suzy stopped dead. Ruy frowned at the display of rails holding a wide selection of women’s clothes.
‘What’s all this?’
‘You said you weren’t sure that your clothes were what you needed for your stay here or for the wedding. I ordered a selection of designer garments in your sizes. I’m sorry I forgot to mention it,’ he completed truthfully as he closed a hand over hers. ‘You can look at them later.’
‘Ruy,’ she muttered in frustration. ‘For goodness’ sake, I’m leaving soon!’
‘I thought you could donate them to a charity afterwards,’ Ruy suggested, feeling quite pleased with that community-minded advice. ‘Or even auction them off for a good cause.’
Suzy gritted her teeth at the prospect of garments so expensive that it would be worth auctioning them and groaned. ‘I tell you not to be sneaky and you just get sneakier!’ she complained. ‘And what’s in that giant chest sitting on the dressing table?’
Ruy shrugged. ‘Some jewellery I had Manuel take out of the vault. It belongs to my family and it’s overdue an airing. If you don’t want new clothes, I can guarantee that festooning yourself in diamonds that haven’t been seen in a couple of generations will work as an alternative. Nobody will look beyond the Valiente jewels.’
Suzy sucked in much-needed oxygen. Ruy caught her fingers in his again.
‘Stop trying to distract me,’ she warned him. ‘And unzip this dress.’
Ruy watched her peel off the dress, her slender but delicately curved body emerging from the feathered folds. She kicked off the boots. He automatically toed them out of the way beneath a chair. Wearing only bra and panties, Suzy vanished into the dressing room and appeared mere minutes later in a casual yellow sundress, standing on one foot in the doorway and then on the other as she donned canvas sneakers.
Suzy watched him watching her, tensing as her mouth ran dry and her heart thumped with the excitement she couldn’t suppress. Ruy might often infuriate her but she knew that she was falling in love with him in a very big way. Nobody had ever made her feel as he did and very probably nobody would ever make her feel that way again. The hours she spent with Ruy raced by at supersonic speed because he fascinated her. His sheer passionate intensity enthralled her and had given her back the confidence that Percy had stolen from her, because it was impossible to feel like a lesser being with a guy like Ruy, who could not hide his desire and appreciation from her. He wasn’t just lethally attractive and insanely sexy, he was clever and entertaining and complex. The more she got to know him, the more she wanted to know. But she also knew that their time together was fast running out and that she wouldn’t figure in his future except as a girl he had once painted.