The Ring The Spaniard Gave Her - Lynne Graham Page 0,5

that, while she would act as a wife in every other field, she wanted her own bedroom and their union would not include sex. At the time, Percy had agreed, but more recently she had begun to suspect that he regretted that pact and resented her for her refusal to share a bed with him.

Suzy curled up in a tight ball in her bed, burning tears of regret forcing a passage from beneath her eyelids. Had she realised six months ago just how difficult it would be to marry a man she didn’t love and whom she wasn’t remotely attracted to? No, back then, she’d had no real idea of what she was signing up for and now it was too late. She felt trapped but she had agreed to be trapped. Either she told her father the truth and they ended up homeless and broke or she married Percy. Percy, who was suddenly getting rough with her, which frightened her more than she wanted to admit.

Having parted from his nieces, Ruy climbed back into his vehicle, a purely practical choice that would not attract the particular notice that a fancier car or limousine and driver would. He was still marvelling that a young woman as striking as Suzy Madderton could choose to marry an ignorant loudmouth of a bully such as the man he had met. But it was none of his business and had he not still desired to paint her he was convinced he would have thought no more of her. As it was, however, he was unaccustomed to meeting with the word no and running into an obstacle only made him all the more obstinately determined to get what he wanted. Once he was settled into his new property, he would call into the pub and speak to Suzy alone, he decided with satisfaction. Women who said no to Ruy were so rare as to be non-existent.

For the two days before the wedding, Suzy was run off her feet. There was a final fitting for her gown. She was not having any attendants, no bridal party as such, having decided that the fewer people dragged into her masquerade of being a happy bride, the easier it would be. In any case, all her school friends had long since disappeared to go to college or look for jobs unavailable in a rural village, options that had never really been a possibility for Suzy. Besides the dress fitting, which entailed a long drive into the nearest town and took up the entire morning, she had to call into Percy’s country house hotel, which lay several miles outside the village and where the reception was being held, to check arrangements, and she also had to pick up the cake and deliver it. She was doing the flowers in the church with the florist that evening. All else completed, she returned to the pub and was taken aback to see Ruy Rivera lounging by the fire there with a whisky and a broadsheet newspaper.

The first time she had seen him he had been wearing a beautifully tailored suit and she had wondered vaguely if he had been at a wedding or some similar event, but on this occasion he was casually clad in jeans and a knit sweater the colour of oatmeal. His hair, blue black as a raven’s wing and equally glossy and thick, was ruffled back from his bronzed brow, a little longer in length than was strictly conservative. In that first glance she registered afresh that he was so gorgeous he literally stole the breath from her lungs and made her mouth run dry. Fierce embarrassment claimed her as she glanced down at the sparkling solitaire on her engagement finger. Whatever else she owed Percy, she firmly believed that she owed him her loyalty and respect, and looking with interest at another man, no matter how hot he was, felt entirely wrong.

Her fair skin deeply flushed by guilty pink, she stepped behind the bar to give her father a break.

‘I thought you were at the church doing the flowers,’ Roger Madderton said in surprise.

‘The florist changed the time. She has another booking to cover first,’ Suzy explained. ‘Go and get your tea.’

‘Yes, your bossiness.’ Her father chuckled and sped off through the door into their living quarters.

Ruy folded his newspaper and vaulted upright to approach the bar. ‘I was hoping that you would appear.’

Crystalline green eyes glimmered over him as though reluctant to land or linger. ‘What