Not enough to take over the company but enough to be a nuisance. Under normal circumstances, David would be able to contain the situation, as he has done in the past, but his health has not been good.’ Rafael’s face shadowed. ‘He has lost the desire and no longer has the energy to exert some much-needed control.’
‘I still have no idea where you’re going with this.’
‘I was sent here to see whether you were a worthy heir.’
Silence settled between them. She looked away, sick to her stomach, because she knew now that all that flirting, those dangerously seductive glances, that lazy banter that had made her squirm with crazy, stupid excitement and lust, had all been part of a bigger plan. While she’d been busy letting her heart rule her head, he’d been busy keeping tabs to see what sort of person she was.
‘A worthy heir,’ she said woodenly. ‘A worthy heir to do what, exactly? Bond with someone I don’t know from Adam and have no desire to meet?’
‘A worthy heir to take over from David...at the very least in name.’ He resumed sitting but this time there was a tension in his posture that hadn’t been there before.
Sofia noted it without even realising that she was doing so. Her mind was too full of other things to pay attention to what was happening on the periphery of her consciousness.
She burst out laughing, genuine, unrestrained laughter, because the whole situation was beginning to feel a little preposterous. If it weren’t for the deadly serious expression on Rafael’s face, she would almost have expected a camera crew to jump out from behind the sofa, yelling that she’d been tricked.
‘Share the joke?’ Rafael asked coolly.
‘What’s funny is the thought of me being checked out to see if I fit the bill as a company director! I hate to break the bad news, but nannies don’t really have that level of experience. Sure, I’m doing my accountancy exams in my own time, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to be sufficient, do you?’
‘No. You could no more run my godfather’s company than you could harness a horse and ride to the moon.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Rafael,’ Sofia said acidly.
‘I’m being realistic. You’re not equipped to go near a billion-dollar business. But here’s where it gets interesting, Sofia.’ His eyes locked to hers and a shiver ran up and down her spine, a fast, cold, tickling sensation that suddenly made her pulses race. ‘I’m not just here to check your suitability as an heir. I’m here to check your suitability as a wife.’
For a few seconds she thought that she had misheard him. Her mouth fell open, her eyes widened, but whatever she wanted to stay remained stuck firmly in her throat.
‘You’re in shock,’ Rafael told her calmly. He stood up, vanished for a couple of minutes while she remained sitting as frozen as a statue, then returned with a glass of something strong and golden and told her to drink it.
She obeyed and the fiery liquid coursed a burning path down her throat. It did the trick. She felt the tension ease out of her as she dared to meet his opaque, speculative gaze.
‘Before you tell me that you may have heard incorrectly, let me assure you that you haven’t. Not only was I asked to search you out and verify your personality, but dangling at the end of the request was a very tempting titbit. I marry you and I get ownership of vital sections of my godfather’s companies. Vital shares in certain areas would remain within your control. It’s complicated, because of the size of the concern, but suffice to say that David’s proposition...’ Rafael half-smiled, the tension draining away for a few seconds, ‘Was pretty shrewd. The leisure side of his portfolio would be signed over to me, and that sly old fox has known for a long time that I’ve expressed interest in that side of his company, so handing it over would be quite the temptation. And, as your husband, I would legitimately be able to put things in order within the rest of the company and sort Freddy out once and for all.’
And his godfather would be happy. David’s happiness was all that mattered to Rafael and, as far as he was concerned, a marriage of convenience unsullied by emotion made a lot of sense.
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘I fully intended to take a bit more time getting to know you, but I’ve broached this now because things have unexpectedly come to a head. My godfather...’ He glanced away and Sofia saw the giveaway tightening of his jaw that revealed a depth of emotion that she suspected was never allowed to surface. ‘My godfather, your father,’ he continued, gathering himself in record time, ‘has been rushed to the hospital with another heart attack. The consultant called me to say that he’s out of surgery but whether he will fully recover or not remains to be seen.’
‘I’m really sorry, Rafael.’ Her natural instinct to empathise won over the horror of being manipulated by the man sitting in front of her.
‘Let’s leave that to one side,’ was his brusque response. ‘The fact is that time is no longer on my side. I came here to do a job—suss you out and take the necessary steps.’
‘Well, you’ve wasted your time.’ She stood up, empathy safely back in its box, and walked towards the door. She half-expected him to tell her to sit back down, but he didn’t. However, she still didn’t leave the room, as her head was telling her to do.
‘Like I said, I don’t know my father and I have no interest in finding out about him. And marry you?’ She laughed incredulously. ‘You’re living on a different planet if you think that I would just walk up the aisle with some guy I’ve known for five minutes because he’s running an errand for his godfather and I happen to be part of the errand!’ When he didn’t reply, she threw him a genuinely perplexed look, her slanting green eyes narrowed and questioning. ‘And why would you consider marrying a perfect stranger anyway?’
‘I see it as a business arrangement. I have no sentimental attachment to the notion of marriage. In fact, I’d never considered getting married at all until my godfather mentioned it. As arrangements go, it happened to be one that suited me on a number of fronts. It would solve the difficulties that have been plaguing my godfather for a while. I could legitimately go in and take control. And, like I said, it would also be a nice and interesting addition to my own portfolio of companies.’
‘Why doesn’t he just give you the whole damn lot and be done with it?’
‘Perhaps he would have in time. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have considered it because he has always been a very vital man, more than capable of steering his vast company. But he’s been diminished and Freddy has jumped into that breach to exploit it. Hence his proposal to me,’ Rafael said honestly. ‘And there’s a great deal of sentimentality attached to seeing you. He would like to get to know the daughter he’s never known...at any rate, that’s my interpretation of events.’
‘Not going to happen.’ Sofia thought of the way her mother’s life had meandered in all sorts of unfortunate directions after that life-changing affair had ended, after she’d been dumped—no doubt because at the time David Dunmore had wanted nothing permanent with some woman who had been cleaning his room.
From remarks made over the years, confidences uttered when her mother had been dying, Sofia had worked out that her mother had fallen, and fallen hard, for a guy who had walked away from her, disappeared without warning and without a backward glance. Thereafter she had lost her innocent belief in all that nonsense about love conquering all.
