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She pressed herself into the leather seat, hoping he would not notice the pulse at the base of her throat that she could feel thudding erratically. It would add to her humiliation if he guessed that she was attracted to him—especially as he quite obviously did not feel the same way about her.
‘It will have to be after nine,’ she told him. ‘I work the evening shift as a cleaner at a shopping centre close to where I live.’
Juliet felt a mixture of relief and disappointment when Rafael straightened up and moved away from her.
He handed her a business card. ‘Here is my phone number. Text me your address and I’ll collect you from your home at nine-fifteen.’ He frowned. ‘What about your daughter? Does someone look after her while you are at work in the evenings?’
‘Of course I have childcare for Poppy. I certainly wouldn’t leave her on her own,’ she said indignantly, stung by his implication that she might be an irresponsible mother.
It was the accusation that Bryan’s lawyer had levelled against her, and remembering the custody battle she was facing over her daughter evoked a heavy sense of dread in the pit of her stomach.
Five million pounds would enable her to hire her own top lawyer to fight Bryan’s claim on Poppy, Juliet thought as she climbed out of Rafael’s car and ran through the rain back to her van. But she would be nuts even to consider the idea.
* * *
Rafael parked his Lamborghini outside a grim-looking tower block and his conviction that it had been a mistake to suggest to a woman he had never met before today that she should marry him grew stronger. He visualised Juliet Lacey, who had resembled a drowned rat when he’d shoved her into his car out of the rain. Her voluminous apron had covered her figure, but from what he’d been able to see she was skinny rather than curvaceous. Her face had been mostly hidden behind by the peak of a baseball cap that was surely the most unfeminine and unflattering headwear.
In Rafael’s opinion women should be elegant, decorative and sexy, but the waif-like sandwich-seller failed on all counts. His fury that she had damaged his beloved Lamborghini had turned to impatience when she’d burst into tears. He was well aware of how easily women could turn on the waterworks when it suited them. But as he’d watched Juliet literally fall apart in front of him he’d felt a flicker of sympathy.
He had heard a woman sob brokenly only once before, in the slum where he had spent the first twelve years of his life. Maria Gonzales had been a neighbour, a kind woman who had often given food to him and his sister. But Maria’s teenage son had been drawn into one of the many drug gangs who’d operated in the slum and Pedro had been stabbed in a fight. Rafael had never forgotten the sound of Maria’s raw grief as she’d wept over the body of her boy.
When Juliet had told him of her financial problems and her fear that she might lose custody of her young daughter the idea had formed in his mind that she would make him an ideal wife. The money he was prepared to pay her would change her life, and more importantly she would have no expectations that their marriage would be anything other than a business deal.
Maybe he was crazy, Rafael thought as he climbed out of his car and glanced around the notoriously rough housing estate—a concrete jungle where the walls were covered in graffiti. A gang of surly-looking youths were staring at his car, and they watched him suspiciously when he walked past them on his way into the tower block. He guessed that the older male in the group, who was wearing a thick gold chain around his neck, was a drug dealer.
Rafael had grown up in a shanty town on the outskirts of Madrid, where dire poverty was a breeding ground for crime and lawless gangs ruled the street. His father had been involved in the criminal underworld, and as a boy Rafael had seen things that no child should see.
His jaw tightened as he took the lift up to the eleventh floor and strode along a poorly lit walkway strewn with litter. The tower block was not a slum but a sense of poverty and deprivation pervaded the air, as well as a pungent smell of urine. It was not a good place to bring up a child.
Juliet and her young daughter were not his responsibility, he reminded himself. But it was hard to see how she would turn down five million pounds and the chance to move away from this dump.
He knocked on the door of her flat and it opened almost immediately. Rafael guessed from the unbecoming nylon overall Juliet was wearing that she must have returned from her cleaning job only minutes before he’d arrived. Without the baseball cap hiding her face he saw that she had delicate features, and might even have been reasonably pretty if she hadn’t been so pale and drawn. Her hair was a nondescript brownish colour, scraped back from her face and tied in a long braid. Only her light blue eyes, the colour of the sky on an English spring day, were at all remarkable. But the dark shadows beneath them emphasised her waif-like appearance.
A suspicion slid into Rafael’s mind, and when Juliet took off her overall to reveal a baggy grey T-shirt that looked fit for the rag bag he studied her arms. There were none of the tell-tale track marks associated with drug addiction.
He flicked his gaze over cheap, badly fitting jeans tucked into scuffed black boots and thought of glamorous Camila Martinez, the daughter of the Duque de Feria and his grandfather’s favoured contender to be Rafael’s bride.
The difference between aristocratic Camila, who could trace her family’s noble lineage back centuries, and Juliet, who looked as if she had stepped from the pages of Oliver Twist, was painfully obvious. It would show his grandfather that he was not a puppet willing to dance to the old man’s tune if he turned up at Hector’s birthday party and announced that he had married this drab sparrow instead of a golden peacock, Rafael mused, feeling a flicker of amusement as the scene played out in his imagination.
‘I told you to call me when you arrived and I would meet you outside the flats,’ Juliet greeted him. ‘If you’ve left your car on the estate there’s a good chance it will be vandalised. There’s a big problem with gangs around here.’
Rafael shuddered inwardly at the thought of his Lamborghini being damaged. ‘This area is not a safe place for you to be out alone at night,’ he said gruffly, thinking that she must have to walk through the estate in the dark every evening when she’d finished her cleaning shift.
He looked along the narrow hallway as a door opened and a small child darted out.
‘Mummy, where are you going?’
The little girl had the same slight build and pale complexion as her mother. She stared at Rafael warily and he was struck by how vulnerable she was—how vulnerable they both were.
Juliet lifted her daughter into her arms. ‘Poppy, I’ve told you I’m going out for a little while with a...a friend and Agata is going to look after you.’
An elderly woman emerged from the small sitting room and gave Rafael a curious look. ‘Come back to bed, kotek. I will read to you and it will help you to fall back to sleep.’ She took the child from Juliet. ‘The baby will be happy with me. Go and have the nice dinner with your friend.’
‘Who is looking after your daughter?’ Rafael asked when Juliet followed him out of the flat and shut the front door behind her. She had pulled on a black fake leather jacket that looked as cheaply made as the rest of her outfit.
For a moment he wondered what the hell he was doing. Could he really marry this insipid girl who looked much younger than mid-twenties?
But her air of innocence had to be an illusion, he reminded himself, thinking of her illegitimate child. And besides, he did not care what she looked like. All he was interested in was putting a wedding ring on her finger. Once he had fulfilled his grandfather’s outrageous marriage ultimatum he would be CEO of the Casillas Group. He did not anticipate that he would spend much time with his wife and would seek to end the marriage as soon as possible.
‘Agata is a neighbour,’ Juliet said. ‘She’s Polish and very kind. I couldn’t do my cleaning job if she hadn’t agreed to babysit every evening. Poppy doesn’t have any grandparents but she loves Agata.’
‘What happened to your parents?’
‘They were killed in a car accident six years ago.’
Her tone was matter-of-fact, but Rafael sensed that she kept a tight hold on her emotions and her breakdown earlier in the day had been unusual.
‘I believe you said that you have no other family apart from some relatives in Australia?’
She nodded. ‘Aunt Vivian is my mum’s sister. I stayed with her and my uncle and three cousins, but they only have a small house and it was a squeeze—especially after I had Poppy.’
So Juliet did not have any family in England who might question her sudden marriage, Rafael mused as they stepped into the lift. Once again he imagined his ultra-conservative grandfather’s reaction if he introduced an unmarried mother who sold sandwiches for a living as his bride. It would teach Hector not to try to interfere in his life, Rafael thought grimly.
The lift doors opened on the ground floor and he took hold of Juliet’s arm as they passed the gang of youths, who were now loitering in the entrance hall and passing a joint between them.
‘Why do you live in this hellhole?’ he demanded as he hurried her outside to his car. ‘It can’t be a good place to bring up a child.’
‘I don’t live here out of choice,’ she said wryly. ‘When Poppy was a baby we lived in a lovely little house with a garden. Kate was my mum’s best friend, and the reason why I left Australia and came back to England was because she invited me and Poppy to move in with her. She was a widow, and I think she enjoyed the company. But Kate died after a short illness and her son sold the house. I only had a few weeks to find somewhere else to live. I had already started my sandwich business and needed to live in London, but I couldn’t afford to rent privately. I was lucky that the local authority offered me social housing. Living on this estate isn’t ideal, but it’s better than being homeless.’
She ran her hand over the bonnet of the Lamborghini. ‘You are a multi-millionaire—you can have no idea about the real world outside of your ivory tower.’
You think?
Inexplicably Rafael was tempted to tell her that he understood exactly what it was like to live in poverty—wondering where the next meal was coming from and struggling to survive in an often hostile environment. But there was no reason why he should explain to Juliet about his background. He dismissed the odd sense of connection he felt with her because they both knew what hardship felt like. His childhood had given him a single-minded determination to get what he wanted, and Juliet was merely a pawn in the game of wills with his grandfather.
He opened the car door and waited for her to climb inside before he walked round to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel.
‘I know that five million pounds could transform your situation and allow you to provide your little girl with a safe home and a very comfortable lifestyle free from financial worries.’ He gunned the Lamborghini away from the grim estate and glanced across at her. ‘I’m offering you an incredible opportunity and for your daughter’s sake you should give it serious consideration.’
* * *
It occurred to Juliet as she sank into the soft leather seat of the sports car that this might all be a dream and in a minute she would wake up. Things like this did not happen in real life. A stunningly handsome man offering her five million pounds to be his wife was the stuff of fantasy and fairy tales.
She darted a glance at Rafael’s chiselled profile and felt a restless longing stir deep inside her. It was a long time since she had been kissed by a man, and she’d never felt such an intense awareness of one before.
Bryan had been her first and only sexual experience. She’d spent her teenage years at a boarding ballet school, and although she’d known boys, and danced with them, she had been entirely focused on her goal of becoming a prima ballerina and hadn’t had time for boyfriends.
The scholarship she had been awarded had paid the school’s fees, but there had been numerous other costs and her parents had scrimped and saved so that she could follow her dream. She’d always felt that she owed it to her mum and dad to succeed in her chosen career.
But the car accident which had taken her parents’ lives had left Juliet with serious injuries—including a shattered thigh bone. The months she’d spent in hospital had intensified her sense of isolation and loneliness.
She had been painfully naïve when she’d met Bryan Westfield, soon after she’d moved out to Australia to stay with her aunt Vivian and uncle Carlos. She’d been looking for someone to fill the hole in her heart left by her parents’ deaths, and blonde good-looking Bryan had seemed like ‘the one’—until she’d realised he had only wanted sex.
‘You’re not the first young woman to have your heart broken and be left with a baby and you won’t be the last,’ Aunt Vivian had said briskly when Juliet had admitted that she was pregnant.
Her aunt had meant well but Juliet had felt stupid, as well as bitterly hurt by Bryan’s rejection, and she’d vowed never to lay herself open to that level of pain again. It made her reaction to Rafael’s undeniable sexual magnetism all the more confusing.
The look of distaste that had flickered over his face when she’d opened the door to him wearing her cleaning overalls had made her shrivel inside. She knew from photographs of him in gossip magazines—invariably with a blonde glamour model or actress hanging on to him—that she was as far from his ideal woman as the earth was from Mars. But his lack of interest in her made it easier to consider his proposition.
‘You said I would be your wife in name only? Does that mean the marriage would not be...’ she hesitated ‘...consummated?’
She was thankful that her scarlet cheeks were hidden in the dark interior of the car. If he laughed she would die of mortification.
‘Physical intimacy between us will not be necessary,’ he said coolly.
He did not actually state that he wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole but the message was clear. Juliet swallowed, feeling ashamed that the gorgeous man beside her found her repellent. They were both wearing jeans, but his were undoubtedly a designer brand, and she’d noted when he had walked around to his side of the car how the denim clung to his lean hips. His tan leather jacket looked as if it had cost the earth, while her clothes came from a discount store and her boots had seen three winters.
With a sigh, she turned her head and stared out of the window.
‘We’re here.’
Rafael’s voice pulled Juliet from her thoughts and she discovered that he had turned the car onto the driveway in front of a large and very beautiful house.
‘Where is “here”?’ she asked when he switched off the engine.
‘My home in England—Ferndown House. It’s too dark to see now, but the house backs on to Hampstead Heath.’
Juliet looked down at the rip in her jeans. ‘I suppose you don’t want to be seen with me in public when I look like this,’ she said flatly.
He turned his head towards her but she could not bring herself to look at him and see his disdainful expression.
After a moment he sighed. ‘I brought you to my home because we will be assured of privacy while we talk, which we would not be in a bar or restaurant. There is no shame in being poor. It is obvious that you work hard to provide for your daughter, but I can help you. We can help each other. Now, come inside and meet my housekeeper. Alice has prepared dinner for us.’
If Juliet could have designed her dream home Ferndown House would have been perfect in every way. From the outside it was a gothic-style Victorian property, but inside it had been cleverly remodelled and refurbished into a sophisticated modern house which still managed to retain many original period features.
She caught her breath when Rafael showed her one huge room, with a stunning parquet floor and floor-to-ceiling mirrors on one wall.
‘The previous owners enjoyed hosting parties in here, but I don’t entertain very often and the room is not used much,’ he told her.
The room would be an ideal dance studio, Juliet thought. It was her dream to one day own a ballet school, and she visualised ballet barres along the walls and a box of the powdered chalk called rosin on the floor, for dancers to rub onto their pointe shoes to help stop them slipping.
She followed Rafael along the hall and looked into another reception room, a study, and a library that overlooked the garden. Outside lighting revealed a large, pretty space with wide lawns, where Poppy would love to play. Juliet gave a faint sigh, thinking of the couple of rusty swings in the playground on the housing estate where she sometimes took her daughter.
Upstairs on the second floor they walked past what she guessed was the master bedroom, with a four-poster bed. Juliet carefully avoided Rafael’s gaze as she wondered how many women had spent the night with him in that enormous bed.
‘There is a nursery along here,’ he said, leading the way along the corridor. He opened a door into a large room with painted murals of fairies on the walls and laughed at her startled expression. ‘I’m not planning to fill the nursery with my own children, but my sister has four-year-old twin girls who sometimes come to stay here.’
They went back downstairs to the dining room, where a cheery fire burned in the hearth and velvet curtains were drawn across the windows.
‘You have a beautiful home,’ Juliet murmured when Rafael drew out a chair at the table and waited for her to sit down before he took his place opposite her.
He was silent while Alice served a first course of gooey baked brie with warm pears. Then the housekeeper left the main course on a heated trolley for them to serve themselves and Rafael poured wine.
‘If you agree to my proposition Ferndown House will be yours and your daughter’s home for the duration of our marriage. When, after a few months, the marriage is dissolved, five million pounds will be transferred into your bank account and you will be able to buy a property of your own. Have you any ideas about where you would like to live?’
‘Somewhere on the coast,’ she said instantly. ‘When I was a child my parents took me on holiday to Cornwall a few times. We stayed in a caravan next to the beach.’ Memories of a happy childhood full of love and laughter tugged on her heart. ‘I’ve always thought how wonderful it would be for Poppy to grow up by the sea.’
‘Agree to my deal and you can make your dreams reality,’ Rafael said in a softly persuasive tone.
Excitement fizzed inside Juliet, overriding the voice of caution in her head. With the money that Rafael was offering she could buy a little cottage with a garden and a sea view. She didn’t want a mansion—just a place that she and Poppy could call home. But what Rafael was asking was wrong, her conscience whispered. Marriage should be a life-long commitment. Her parents had enjoyed a happy marriage and, although Juliet had learned a harsh lesson with Bryan, she still hoped that one day she would fall in love with someone special who would love her in return.
She took a small sip of her wine, determined to keep her wits about her. ‘I’m curious to know why you need a wife so badly that you’re prepared to fork out five million pounds for one.’
‘My grandfather has demanded that I marry before he steps down as head of the Casillas Group and appoints me as CEO of the company and Chairman of the board of directors,’ Rafael said curtly. ‘The dual roles have been passed down to the eldest son for generations. My mother does not have any siblings, which means that I am the next firstborn male and I should be Hector’s successor. Dios, it is my birthright.’
He slapped his hand down on the table and Juliet flinched.
‘Why does your grandfather want you to marry?’
‘He disapproves of my lifestyle.’
She nodded. ‘You do have a reputation as a playboy, and your affair with the wife of a prominent politician was reported in most of today’s newspapers.’
‘I spent one night with Michelle two months ago. The paparazzi must have seen us leave the nightclub together and go to a hotel, but those pictures did not appear in the papers the next day.’ Rafael’s jaw hardened. ‘My guess is that someone paid the photographer to delay offering the pictures to the tabloids until the day the Casillas Group’s biggest-selling retail line Rozita launched a new bridal collection.’
Juliet stared at him. ‘Why would anyone do that?’
‘It could have been a competitor, hoping to damage the company’s reputation, or more likely someone who wanted to blacken my name and convince my grandfather that I would not be a responsible CEO.’
‘Do you have any idea who?’
‘In all probability it was someone on the Casillas Group’s board who does not support my claim to be Hector’s successor, or one of my relatives for the same reason.’
‘How awful that someone in your own family might have betrayed you,’ Juliet murmured. ‘Families are supposed to support one another.’
Rafael stared at her broodingly. ‘The pursuit of power is a ruthless game, with no place for weakness or emotions,’ he said harshly.
While he served their main course of chicken cooked in a creamy sauce Juliet played his words over in her mind and felt a little shiver run through her. She had no doubt that Rafael was ruthless, and he must be utterly determined to become CEO if he was prepared to pay such an incredible amount of money for a wife.
Could she do it? His proposition had seemed crazy at first, but now she understood that his grandfather was forcing Rafael to marry. What he was suggesting was a business deal, she told herself.
The chicken was delicious, and a welcome change from the cheap, microwavable ready meals she tended to live on because fresh, good-quality produce was so expensive. She concentrated on eating her dinner, glad of the distraction.
Rafael got up to throw another log on the fire. The flames crackled and an evocative scent of applewood filled the room. The wine, the food and the general ambience of the room was helping Juliet to relax, and she gave a soft sigh.
‘Can you honestly tell me that you’re not tempted?’
Rafael’s seductive voice curled around her. She took another sip of her wine.
