‘This is Rigo’s second marriage,’ Ruy admitted rather stiffly.
‘He’s divorced?’
‘Widowed,’ Ruy corrected. ‘His first marriage wasn’t a happy one, though.’
‘Well, then, it’s lovely that he’s met someone else and that he wasn’t soured by his first experience,’ Suzy declared in that upbeat way of hers, so very different from his own more pessimistic outlook on relations between the sexes.
Ruy was almost tempted to say that his twin had been very much soured by his first marital venture and that he had put all the blame and responsibility for that failure squarely on his brother’s shoulders. But he didn’t want to talk about the past or dig up its ugly secrets, particularly not on a day when he was hoping his sibling, Rigo, had finally chosen to move on from that divisive past into a new era. That Ruy had even been invited to share his brother’s big day signalled a very positive change in attitude. Even so, he would have felt a lot less comfortable attending without a woman of his own by his side.
The wedding ceremony was taking place in a huge church in Seville. It was late afternoon as they walked in the sunshine into the big building and the instant she crossed the threshold Suzy felt as if every eye in the place swivelled in her direction. A moment later she caught the whispers about ‘la pelirroja’—the redhead—and faint self-conscious colour mantled her cheeks as she sank into her seat. Ruy was a wealthy, important man in Spanish society, she reminded herself. Naturally the sudden appearance of an English fiancée, whom no one had ever met, would rouse considerable curiosity.
She studied the bridegroom waiting at the altar. Rodrigo’s features were similar enough to Ruy’s for Suzy to have guessed his identity, but he was less ruggedly masculine than Ruy, his build finer and he was more edgy in the fashion stakes, with his trendy-cut narrow suit and his long hair in a ponytail worn with a jewelled clasp. His bride came down the aisle in a flowing off-the-shoulder dress, her pretty face wreathed in smiles. She was a small curvy brunette with big brown eyes.
Afterwards, when Ruy greeted his brother in the crush that formed outside on the steps, Suzy immediately recognised the tension between the two men. It was there in the tightening of Rigo’s mouth, the rather forced smile, and in the taut flex of Ruy’s braced fingers against her spine. Ruy introduced her and she did feel as though her presence and the many questions asked of her got them all through what might have been an awkward moment. Mercedes recognised the tension as well and she was beaming and very talkative, chattering freely about her last trip to London. Suzy didn’t dare tell the bride that she had only visited London twice in her entire life and that one of those occasions had been to attend a funeral. She had no knowledge whatsoever of the luxury hotel where Mercedes had stayed or of the designer shops she had enjoyed.
‘How long is it since you last spoke to your brother?’ Suzy asked in the limo that collected them outside the church.
‘Several years,’ he said stiffly.
‘And how do you feel now?’
‘Relieved that that first awkward meeting is over,’ Ruy revealed flatly. ‘I suspect I have his bride to thank for my invitation. I could see that she was very keen to stress the family connection.’
‘Like me she has no siblings and she is probably struggling to understand the situation between you and Rigo.’
‘I’m sure Mercedes is as well acquainted with the gossip as everyone else,’ Ruy commented in a decidedly raw undertone.
Suzy stilled. ‘What gossip?’
‘It’s nothing that you need to concern yourself with,’ Ruy parried, exasperating her by putting up an immediate stone wall.
‘If other people know whatever it is, shouldn’t I know too?’
‘If we were genuinely engaged to be married, yes,’ Ruy agreed, cutting her to the quick with that blunt distinction. ‘But as we’re not, my past is not your concern.’
Painful colour flooded Suzy’s face and she twisted her head away to look out of the windows at the busy streets of Seville as evening fell. Slowly the colour ebbed from her cheeks again, but she still felt quite sick at being slapped down so hard for her curiosity. Well, that was putting her in her place and no mistake, wasn’t it?
Without warning, Ruy closed a hand over hers. ‘I’m sorry. I’m in a filthy mood,’ he breathed in a savage undertone. ‘I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. You deserve better from me. I simply don’t want to revisit the past because what’s in the past can’t be changed and that frustrates me.’
Suzy snaked her fingers back from his with the instinctive recoil of hurt pride and mortification. ‘That’s all right. I understand,’ she told him.
Ruy settled gleaming dark eyes on her in reproach. ‘Please forgive me,’ he urged.
‘I have.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ Ruy contradicted. ‘I know you too well to be fooled.’
But his wounding words had only reminded her that soon she would be travelling home and that Ruy and Spain and everything that had happened between them would then only be memories of a few stolen days in a world that was not her own. It hurt that he could shut her out so easily. It hurt that he wasn’t willing to confide in her, even though it seemed that other people already knew that same information. It hurt to appreciate that he wasn’t falling in love with her, that he would watch her walk away with the same recollections but neither the pain nor the regret that she would experience. Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, she told herself sharply, toughen up!
‘Suzy...’ Ruy pressed.
‘It’s fine.’
‘Prove it...’ he breathed, releasing her seat belt and lifting her into his arms to settle her across his lap.
Suzy shivered, suddenly gathered into the heat of him, cornered when she was striving to keep her distance, and yet she couldn’t have said that she wanted him to set her free because on some level she couldn’t bear to be at odds with Ruy either. ‘You’ll mess up my make-up.’
He pressed a button and told his driver to take the long route to Mercedes’ home where the reception was being held. He ran his mouth lightly down the cord of her slender neck and inhaled deeply as her head tipped back. ‘You know even the smell of your skin turns me on hard and fast. You smell delicious, like oranges in sunshine.’
‘Fruity hair shampoo,’ Suzy mumbled weakly, because he could make even that sound so much more romantic than reality. Ruy, she conceded, was a mass of contradictions. He said he wasn’t romantic or imaginative and then he said stuff like that and made her pose in a floaty, feathery, very romantic dress in an orange grove in which only her boots cast the discordant note he seemed to like in his paintings.