Rafael's Suitable Bride Read Free Page A

and genuine woman, and kind and genuine people tended to have kind and genuine offspring. She gave him a beaming smile because she realised that, however curt his outward attitude might appear, he was as kind as she had initially judged him to be. ‘Your mother’s a wonderful person.’
    â€˜I’m glad you think so. On that one thing we at least agree.’ Without giving her time to respond to that ambiguous statement, he let himself out of the car and proceeded to help her out, while a man, who seemed to have materialised out of thin air raced out to get the bags. This could only mean that his mother had requested a lookout for her tardy son, which was a bit of a bother, considering he was now a reluctant knight in shining armour who had to somehow shuffle his unexpected cargo up the stairs and into one of the guest suites—whichever one was unoccupied, because he suspected a fair few people would be staying over.
    He had a few quick words with Eric, the man who had been taking care of everything to do with the house for as long as Rafael could remember, and then signalled to Cristina.
    In the remorseless light of the back hallway, he was surprised to see that she wasn’t actually the unremittingly plain woman he had first thought.
    Of course, no one could call her beautiful. She was way too…He rooted around in his head for a suitable adjective and opted for ‘stout’…not precisely fat, but solidly built. The sort who could probably pack a mean punch if the occasion demanded, although a less aggressive person he could hardly have hoped to find. Her face was open and warm, and although she was still looking nervous he could tell that she would be someone given to easy laughter.
    And she had enormous eyes, huge liquid-brown eyes, like a spaniel puppy.
    In fact, Rafael thought, she was the human equivalent of a spaniel puppy. The direct antithesis to the languid greyhound sort he favoured. But, hell, a deal was a deal and he had promised to help her out with her predicament.
    â€˜Follow me,’ he said abruptly, and he began leading her outof the kitchen, and through a myriad back rooms which lay between them and the sound of voices and laughter that signalled the party happening at the front of the house.
    Of course, the house was far too big for his mother after his father had died, but she wouldn’t hear of having it sold.
    â€˜I’m not yet decrepit, Raffy,’ she had told him. ‘When I need to use stair lifts, then I’ll consider selling it.’ Knowing his mother, that day would never come. She was as energetic in her early sixties as she had been in her early forties, and although there were wings of the house which were rarely used many of the rooms were taken up at various points of the year by friends and relatives staying over.
    Rafael now led Cristina to one of the less-used wings and quickly ushered her into a bedroom suite, where she proceeded to look at him with a mournful expression.
    â€˜Oh, for God’s sake, woman.’ He shook his head and favoured her with a direct and assessing look.
    â€˜I know I’m being a nuisance,’ Cristina said on a sigh, ‘But…’ Then she saw the expression on his face and flushed. ‘I know I haven’t got a perfect figure…’ she stuttered in embarrassment. It occurred to her that a man who looked like him, a man whose amazing looks could stop a woman dead in her tracks, would only ever associate himself with his female equivalent—which would probably not be a vertically and horizontally challenged twenty-four-year-old inexperienced woman.
    â€˜I’ve been on countless diets,’ she blurted out into the ever-growing silence, ‘You wouldn’t believe. But like I said, I have my father’s shape.’ She laughed a pitch higher than was necessary and then subsided into embarrassed silence.
    â€˜Your dress has a tear.’
    â€˜What? No! Oh,