Guessing the ending of his story, Suzy winced. ‘Oh, Ruy,’ she muttered, pained on his behalf and his brother’s.
Dark eyes grim, he compressed his lips. ‘I don’t believe that she meant to kill herself. I think it was another cry for attention and a desire to punish me. She expected me to find her and get her to a doctor in time. Unfortunately, she wasn’t discovered until the next day by which time it was too late. Rigo blamed me for her death.’
‘I don’t see how he could,’ Suzy breathed, troubled at that unjust bestowal of blame in such tragic circumstances.
‘He had to blame someone...why not me? As he saw it, I had stolen his wife’s affections, treated her with cruel indifference and destroyed her mental health. I tried to reason with him, but he was too bitter back then.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Wasn’t it? Perhaps had I been a little more discerning the night I met her, I would have spent more time talking to her and then I might have realised that we were not suited in any way.’
‘I don’t think that would have mattered when she had already fixated on you. I’m sorry I misjudged you,’ Suzy said truthfully. ‘I shouldn’t have listened to gossip.’
‘None of us should but we all do it,’ Ruy murmured wryly.
‘I didn’t trust my own faith in you because of what Percy did to me,’ Suzy admitted in a shamed rush. ‘You see, I trusted him once too and then I realised how foolish I had been and, after that, I didn’t see how I could trust you...particularly when you seemed too good to be true.’
‘I like the sound of being too good to be true,’ Ruy confided.
Suzy went pink. ‘We were talking about Liliana and your brother,’ she reminded him. ‘I think she married Rigo simply to get closer to you. She used him.’
‘Although it’s taken him years of therapy to get over her, he’s stronger now and Mercedes is, thankfully, a very different woman. Now I want to show you something...’ Ruy paused at the foot of the stairs and regarded her expectantly, a catch in his usually level dark drawl, almost a slight hint of nervousness. ‘Your portrait.’
‘You finished it?’ Suzy prompted eagerly, springing up to approach him.
‘It’s upstairs.’
He cast open the bedroom door and there it was, resting on an easel by the window in the far corner. Suzy slowly crossed the room to stand in front of the vivid image and study it with wondering eyes. Her hair and her skin seemed luminescent. She looked as though she were about to leap off the bench and walk right out of the painting. It was an extraordinary likeness. ‘You’ve made me look as though I’m beautiful, though,’ she whispered self-consciously. ‘And I’m not.’
Ruy smiled. ‘Sí, querida...you are. And you destroyed my artistic objectivity. You modelled for my very first romantic portrait.’
‘You don’t do romantic,’ she reminded him.
‘I do for you. I do a lot of things differently with you,’ Ruy murmured, reaching for her left hand and showing her the diamond ring he was holding as he dropped down very deliberately on one knee. ‘Will you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?’
Thoroughly taken aback by that proposal of marriage, Suzy stared down into anxious dark golden eyes and she dropped down onto her knees as well, covering his lean, strong face with kisses and grabbing the ring in the midst of it. In fact it was a bit of a free-for-all between him trying to get the ring back on her finger at the same time as he claimed her mouth in a fierce ravaging kiss designed to prove to her that she was being claimed for all time as his.
‘Oh, my goodness, Ruy... I love you so much and I wasn’t expecting that...but we’ve only known each other a few weeks,’ she exclaimed in reluctant protest.
‘If I had known what love felt like I’d have proposed the first day but I hadn’t ever been in love before so I didn’t recognise what I was feeling,’ Ruy explained, appraising her dazed face with adoring intensity. ‘At first I assumed it was an overwhelming desire to paint you. But I needed to keep you close as well and prevent anyone and anything from ever hurting you. I wanted to kill Brenton...slowly. I wanted to wake up with you in the morning and go to sleep with you beside me every night. I didn’t just fall in love with you a little. I fell obsessively in love with you.’
‘That’s good...that’s good. Stop saying it as if it’s peculiar when it’s not. I thought I would break in two leaving you behind in Spain because it hurt so much.’ Suzy framed his lean dark face with unsteady hands. ‘And you didn’t try to stop me leaving!’
‘I was so angry that you could believe me capable of such sleazy behaviour, angry...and, sí—’ he sighed ‘—also hurt. I expected you to have more faith in me.’
Suzy flinched at that quiet admission. ‘I didn’t trust my own judgement enough after Percy,’ she confided heavily as she closed both arms round him with so much determination that she almost toppled him. ‘But I swear I’m getting over that now...and look at you, I can see that you haven’t been sleeping, you haven’t been looking after yourself properly...and you’ve lost weight!’ she condemned with ringing disapproval.
‘Our chef is grieving your absence. I’ve eaten Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Indian and Mexican dishes every day you’ve been gone and not one British or Spanish meal. I need you at home with me so that I can eat again and regulate the menu. I need you round the clock.’
‘But marriage—’
‘And soon,’ Ruy urged as he lifted her up off the floor and brought her down on the welcome softness of the bed. ‘Like really, really soon, like possibly this week, and a casual, relaxed wedding that you would like here with your father and Cecile and her family attending. And then possibly a more traditional do for Spain and the rest of my family. You get to pick your own wedding dress too and it doesn’t have to have feathers.’
‘You are insane,’ Suzy told him lovingly as he came down over her. She speared her fingers happily into his tousled black hair. ‘I’m going to drive you nuts sometimes...you do know that? I’m untidy and impulsive and—’
‘You are the woman I love, and I can’t do without you in my life another day,’ Ruy swore vehemently.
‘I’ve got so used to you too. I thought I disliked so much about you, but you made me feel safe, protected, cared for even though I fought with you about your bossiness,’ Suzy told him, hauling him down to kiss her again, revelling in the weight of his body on hers. ‘I couldn’t believe how much I missed you. I fell like a ton of bricks for you and now you’re going to be stuck with me and my irritating habits for ever.’