even if it meant rousing Rafael’s displeasure, but David was once again smiling.
‘Best thing I ever did.’ He chortled. ‘You’re a tonic, my dear girl, a tonic.’ He turned to face the assembled crowd and banged his fork sharply on the table until everyone fell silent.
‘To the married couple,’ he toasted, raising his glass. ‘I dare say a sip of champagne for the toast won’t kill me! And I thankfully don’t have my consultant here to argue the point.’ Laughter greeted this and Sofia couldn’t help smiling. He looked at her slyly and winked. ‘Let’s raise our glasses to my very dear Rafael and his beautiful wife and my daughter, Sofia, away for too long but here now to stay. Long may they be happily united!’
Sofia tried not to choke on her champagne and when she caught Rafael’s eye it was to see that he was trying hard not to burst out laughing.
THE LUNCH LASTED three hours, at the end of which Sofia had drunk far too much champagne. Nervous tension had not mixed well with the alcohol, and as she waited kerbside with Rafael for his driver to show up the thought of taking a train back to the cottage was almost unthinkable. She felt sick.
‘Congratulations.’ Rafael, having dispatched the last of the guests, turned to her with a wry expression.
‘For what?’
‘You made my godfather laugh. Don’t know what you were saying, but whatever it was it was doing the trick.’
He channelled her into the back seat of the Range Rover and then angled his body so that he was looking right at her, his long legs loosely sprawled, his hands resting lightly on his thighs.
‘I wasn’t cracking any jokes.’
Restless and excruciatingly aware of him sitting so close to her, she anxiously twisted the rings round and round her finger, choosing to stare through the window of the car rather than look at him, but she was all too conscious of this drop-dead gorgeous guy next to her, all too alert of the way her body had reacted when he had touched it.
She was married and, even if it was a marriage in name alone, her blood still thickened with inexplicable heat at the thought.
Marriage was the one thing her mother had craved and never managed to attain. All things considered, she didn’t think her mother would have been whooping with joy on behalf of her daughter. A marriage of convenience would not have sat well with a woman who’d believed in romance and fairy tales, even if none of them had managed to come true for her.
She slid her eyes across at him and her pulses quickened. Her brain wanted to box this up and neatly label it as the business deal it was, but her body wasn’t falling into line. Her body was too aware of the ring on her finger and all the grey areas that highlighted.
Looking down, she was startled when she felt the light brush of Rafael’s finger under her chin.
‘Look at me,’ he encouraged softly.
‘What?’ She jerked back but their eyes locked, and she found she couldn’t tear her gaze away.
She’d ended up paying little attention to him during the meal. She’d been conscious of him, but her father had consumed her attention. Now, Rafael, her husband, seemed to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere, leaving her breathless and acutely aware of his intense, smouldering masculinity.
The other guests—stepbrother, with whom she had barely exchanged a glance, aside—had been young and attractive. Several of the women had been attached to typical corporate-looking types and had been effusive and welcoming, eager to please the man who made sure their husbands were handsomely paid. Others, like the striking, dark-skinned woman who’d sat next to Rafael, with whom he had been discussing business for most of the meal, had clearly been colleagues.
‘You did well. If you were nervous, then you did a good job of hiding it.’
‘Isn’t that part and parcel of the game we’re playing?’ She looked at him, hating herself, because she knew that there had been instances when it had felt way too real for comfort.
And she knew why. Scratch the surface and you’d find a woman still yearning to touch her forbidden husband.
She sighed and gave him a clear-eyed gaze. ‘I was nervous. David...all those people...not to mention Freddy.’
‘Forget Freddy for the moment. He’s a parasite and a nuisance and will be sorted. As for David...he wants that bond and, whether you were cracking jokes or not, you were letting him in even if it may not have seemed that way to you.’
Sofia reddened and her eyes skittered away. How could he be so nice, so...perceptive...and yet at times so coolly remote?
‘I’m not looking for a bond with anyone, least of all someone who’s never been part of my life,’ she tried, in the guise of a spirited argument to quell that side of her that seemed so foolishly susceptible to the glimpses she kept getting of a guy who could still get under her skin and stay there.
‘Stop looking for an argument, Sofia. We’re going to be...’ his mouth quirked, and again that glimpse of humour that could thread past the defences she knew she should be mounting ‘husband and wife for the foreseeable future. We need to get along...like husband and wife.’ He tilted his head and looked levelly back at her.
‘We’ll be leading separate lives. That’s what you said. We won’t even be sharing the same space.’
He had the most incredible eyes. So deep and dark, glittering with a hard, steely edge that was somehow chilling and sinfully sexy at the same time.
‘We will tonight.’
‘Will what?’
‘Be sharing the same space. We’re going back to my place.’
‘I don’t want to do that.’
‘Yes, you do.’ He raised his eyebrows and stared at her. ‘You drank quite a bit back there in the restaurant. Are you telling me that you fancy the thought of trekking back to the cottage?’
‘You were paying attention to how much I drank?’ Her stomach heaved and she breathed in deeply. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
‘I’m your husband. Of course I was. Right now, I’d say you’re looking a little green round the gills. How much did you eat?’
‘Not a lot.’ Sofia settled resentful green eyes on him but his crooked half-smile was disarming. ‘What did you expect? I was sitting next to...next to...’
‘You can say it.’
‘Next to David. Eating and enjoying the food was the last thing on my mind.’
‘You were nervous. Like I said. Hence my remark that you did well today. My godfather hasn’t looked so energised in a while.’
‘If he was energised, then it wasn’t something I deliberately set out to achieve.’
‘It’s
