to charcoal, and then felt perfectly free to ask him about his work.
‘But don’t you ever relax?’ she asked, appalled after he had reluctantly given her a rundown of his typical day. They were leaving behind the first dismal flurries of snow and Rafael reluctantly abandoned his plans to call his PA, Patricia, for an update on the Roberts deal.
‘You sound like my mother,’ he told her curtly, then, because he could sense rather than see her baffled silence at the harshness of his response, he relented. After all, he only had a couple more hours in her company. Why be offhand when she was so determinedly upbeat? ‘I presume, if you’re your own boss, then you know that running a company is a twenty-four-seven commitment. What exactly do you do, anyway?’
Cristina, who had been a little hurt at his lack of curiosity about her life and what she did, smiled, more than prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was obviously very, very important. She had known, of course, that he came from a moneyed background, but she had had no idea that he was entirely and solely responsible for running the show. Little wonder he was so focused on work with little time to spare making polite chit-chat with her.
‘Oh, nothing very important,’ Cristina said, suddenly a little abashed at her pedestrian occupation.
‘Now I’m curious.’ He half smiled, and that half smile made her draw in her breath sharply, made a frisson of awareness ripple down her spine and send shivers racing all through her body. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time.
‘Well…do you remember I told you how much I love gardens? And nature?’
Rafael had a dim recollection but he nodded anyway.
‘I own a flower shop in London. I mean, it’s nothing much. We each of us children came into some money on our twenty-first birthdays and I chose to spend mine on that.’
‘In England? Why?’ A flower shop? He had had extensive dealings with flower shops, almost exclusively in connection with his girlfriends, to whom flowers were usually sent at the beginning and at the end of relationships. But his PA dealt with all that and he had always assumed that she simply rang one of those huge concerns that delivered worldwide. But there must be one-man-band shows. Cute. She had the appearance of someone who might run a flower shop.
Cristina shrugged and pinkened. ‘I fancied being out of Italy. I mean, I have perfect sisters who lead perfect lives. It was nice getting away from the comparisons. But please don’t mention that to your mother, just in case it gets back to my parents!’
‘I won’t,’ Rafael promised solemnly. Did she imagine that he gossiped with his mother about such things? Nevertheless, her admission was touching, as was her enthusiasm about what she did. The woman was a walking encyclopaedia on trees and plants, and he was perfectly content to listen as she chatted about her shop, her plans to branch out into the landscaping business at some point, starting with small London gardens, but then moving on to bigger things. She was dying for the Chelsea Flower show, which she had been to a couple of times, and which had never failed to amaze and astound her. Her dream was to show her own flowers there someday.
‘I thought your dream was to do some landscaping,’ Rafael said, his cynical palate tickled by her optimistic ambitions.
‘I have lots of dreams.’ Cristina, aware that she had been babbling, fell silent for a few seconds. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I find it doesn’t pay to think too far into the future, which, if I’m not mistaken, is the realm of dreams, so I guess the answer has to be no.’ To his surprise, they had reached London quicker than he had expected. She lived in Kensington, not a million miles away from his Chelsea penthouse—and in a rather nice part of Kensington which, he assumed, would have been paid for by those discreetly wealthy parents of hers.
For the first time he considered the advantages of a woman to whom his money would be a matter of indifference. His girlfriends were almost always impressed by the size of his bank balance. The ones who did have inherited money were almost worse, in a way, because they were motivated by social standing—playing a game of ‘keeping up’ or ‘going one better’ which had invariably involved him being displayed to their other friends as the catch of the day.
This girl seemed to be motivated by neither. Nor, he thought, did she seem interested in playing games with him. There had been none of the usual blatant flirting.
‘Seems a bit drastic, moving over here just to escape comparisons with your sisters.’
‘Oh, I’ve been to England hundreds of times. I went to a boarding school in Somerset, you see. Actually, I’m living in my parents’ flat, as it happens. And I didn’t come just to escape comparisons. Well…actually, I pretty much did. I mean, have you any idea what it feels like to have two gorgeous sisters? No, I guess you don’t. Roberta and Frankie are perfect. Perfect in a good way, if you get my meaning.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Some people are perfect in a nauseating way, the sort who look glorious and never manage to put a foot wrong—but then they know it and want the world to know it too. But Frankie and Roberta are just lovely and talented and funny and kind.’
‘Sound like model citizens,’ Rafael said with heavy sarcasm. In his experience such creatures didn’t actually exist. He was pretty sure that, like a number of things, they were an urban myth.
‘They are, really.’ Cristina sighed. ‘Model daughters, at any rate. They’re both much older than me. I was a bit of a mistake, I think, although my parents would never admit it, and I have to say that I did have a rather wonderful life as the baby of the family. Dad took me to loads of football matches. I think that’s why I’ve always loved football so much. In fact, that’s another one of my dreams. I want to do some football coaching. I used to play a lot when I was younger. I was pretty good, in fact, but then I gave it up, and I would really love to get back into it now. Not on the playing level, but on the coaching level. I might put an ad in the papers. What do you think?’
What Rafael thought was that he had never met such a garrulous woman in his life before. He was beginning to feel a little dazed.
‘Football,’ he said slowly.
‘Yes. You know the sport? It’s the one that involves lots of hunky men running around a field kicking a ball…?’
‘I know what football is!’
‘I was just kidding.’ She was beginning to think that here was a man for whom the world was a very serious business.
‘You’re not exactly a people person, are you?’ she mused aloud, and Rafael was stunned enough at that observation to look at her, speechless for the first time in his life.
‘Meaning?’ he snapped.
‘Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,’ Cristina apologised. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘Why would I be offended by anything you have to say?’
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘It’s the truth,’ Rafael answered with brutal honesty. He turned down Gloucester Road, slowing to accommodate the pedestrians who seemed to think that crossing roads without watching for oncoming cars was perfectly acceptable Sunday behaviour. Her remark niggled at him and, as he turned right into her road, he slotted his car neatly into a space, switched off the
