Suzy was devastated when he failed to contradict her. She had hoped against hope that he would have an explanation, a miraculous excuse, but then that weak hope only reminded her of how poor her own judgement was and of how she could not trust her own feelings. She might love him but that did not automatically mean that he was a decent person. Hadn’t she once believed that Percy was decent too? That unfortunate acknowledgement tore her down even further in her estimation.
‘That is, of course, your choice even if I’m surprised that you would be so judgemental when you can be in possession of few facts,’ Ruy retorted icily.
A kind of rage more powerful than anything Ruy had ever felt before was roaring through him. Liliana had forced him to live through a nightmare and she had cost him and his unfortunate brother so much. He refused to believe that her spectre could cost him Suzy as well. ‘You believed whatever seedy gossip you were told, then.’
‘I didn’t want to, but, yes, I believed it because you wouldn’t discuss anything private with me, which implied that there was something shameful in your past.’
‘Everyone’s got something shameful in their past, Suzy,’ Ruy incised with gritty cynicism at such innocence, and his rage was now roaring inside him like a forest blaze. ‘But logic should tell you that things aren’t always what they seem.’
‘I don’t want to hear some devious explanation that paints you white and her scarlet! That such a thing ever happened is unpardonable. It should be enough for me to say that I can’t be with a guy capable of behaving that way,’ Suzy framed in a pained rush.
Ruy was outraged, deeply offended and hurt by her complete lack of trust in him. His deep anger and his ferocious pride drove him, preventing him from making any further attempt to explain himself or reason with her. ‘Then I too have nothing more to say,’ he bit out with savage brevity.
The silence stretched thick as a blanket and it felt claustrophobic. Pain burning inside her, Suzy gazed silently back at him, willing him to pull a miracle out of his pocket and fix everything but somehow knowing now that that wasn’t going to happen. She felt sick and she simply nodded on the least said, soonest mended rule because his past was still not really her business. And any prospect of it being her business had died when that horrible woman had made her sordid allegations and Ruy had then confirmed the facts.
‘I’ll finish packing, then,’ she said jerkily.
He walked out of the door. If he had slammed it, she would have felt a little better, but he didn’t. She removed the diamond ring on her finger and set it on the dresser. She left the green dress and the blue one she had worn that afternoon over a chair because she wanted no reminders. Didn’t need them, she conceded wretchedly. She suspected that it would be a very long time before she forgot Ruy Valiente and the happiness he had given her before she’d discovered that it was all as much of an illusion as their fake engagement.
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU CAN SIT in the car while I nip into the off-licence,’ her father wheedled. ‘Save me parking across the road.’
‘You usually go on your own... I’m kind of busy here,’ Suzy argued, barely lifting her head from the academic website she was studying.
Roger Madderton frowned down at his daughter. ‘I’ll be blunt, then. I’m tired of you moping about the place like a wet weekend. Two weeks of that is enough. You need to get out of the flat, even come down and help behind the bar—’
‘Flora’s managing fine,’ Suzy reminded her parent stiffly, because it had been something of a shock to discover on her return that her place had been filled more than adequately by the older woman, who was also cooking up a storm of popular meals to sell to their weekend customers. That had stung when Suzy had only contrived to serve up pizzas and paninis, her catering skills being rather more basic.
And then there had been the mortification of all the tales about Percy Brenton that had come her way whenever she was seen. The locals seemed to think it was their bounden duty to tell her anything that related to her ex. Percy had been charged and arrested. As soon as he had got out on bail, he had put his house on the market and he had not been seen since. There was a rumour that his assault on Suzy had not been his first offence and that he had a bitter ex-wife now living in York. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that Suzy couldn’t have cared less and that she was merely grateful not to have to see the man again.
‘Come on,’ her father urged, and with great reluctance Suzy rose from her seat at the desk in the lounge of the flat and followed him downstairs to his car.
She wasn’t moping, she thought resentfully. She had done her best to be cheerful and helpful since she came home. But most of her attention had been reserved for the different educational courses available to anyone planning to work with children. The variety of options had made it hard to choose because she wasn’t sure how high to set her sights or whether or not to settle on a short course or a lengthier one. In short, she had done everything possible to avoid moping and stay busy and if she was miserable she had done her best to hide the fact.
A broken heart was a broken heart, and she couldn’t eat or sleep without thinking about Ruy and feeling a great gush of pain and hollowness engulf her until she felt as if she were drowning.
In truth she had left her heart behind in Spain and she remained furious in her bitterness with Ruy. He hadn’t wanted her enough to fight for her! He hadn’t wanted her enough to defend himself! It was even more galling that she had shut him down before he was forced to define exactly what he had meant by asking her to stay in Spain with him. After all, if you didn’t have a relationship to begin with how did one move on from that point, particularly with the complication of a fake engagement in play? Yes, Suzy would very much have enjoyed hearing Ruy explain what he was asking her to consider. Not, of course, that she could have overlooked what she had discovered about him, but she was only human, she would still have liked to know.
Her father was unusually quiet on his way to the off-licence and when he emerged she was surprised that he was only carrying a little crate of beer.
‘That was a small order,’ she remarked as he reversed the car and drove off again.
On the drive home, she said, ‘Have I really been that hard to live with?’
Roger Madderton groaned. ‘You’re inconsolable. How am I expected to feel as your dad? I want to fix it for you.’
‘You can’t fix it. He wasn’t the guy I thought he was,’ Suzy sighed, patting his knee soothingly. ‘I’ll get over this. Don’t worry about me.’
‘I can help you fix it,’ her father asserted, disconcerting her. ‘You’re very stubborn. He’s very stubborn as well but he’s also a few years older and a little less short-sighted than you can be.’
‘Why are you talking about Ruy like this?’ Suzy twisted in her seat as her father turned off the road down a familiar lane. ‘Why are we driving down here?’