The Ring The Spaniard Gave Her - Lynne Graham Page 0,59

scared me off. I saw how devastated Rigo was by her betrayal. And her death. I thought it was safer to keep my distance from deeper relationships with women and that then I could control things. But you broke through my defences, you made me want stuff I had never wanted before...and I wanted you more than anything I had ever wanted in my life and all of a sudden nothing else mattered. Not my pride and not all the anger and bitterness I had suppressed over Liliana. I suppose, a little like my brother, I was ready to make a fresh start and there you were in your tatty wedding dress, swinging those ridiculous boots over the edge of that tree-house platform and being very cheeky.’

Suzy grinned and traced a fingertip along his full lower lip. ‘And you like cheeky.’

‘I didn’t know that until you fell into my arms in the woods.’

‘That’s not how it happened!’ Suzy argued, her pride stung by that claim.

‘Technically it is and you smelled so good and felt so amazing in my arms, mi corazón,’ Ruy husked, running the very tip of his tongue along the finger she still had resting against his lips. ‘I started to fall for you that same moment, but when you did that handstand in the middle of a modelling session I knew I was definitely in trouble.’

‘How?’

Ruy dealt her a look of wicked amusement. ‘I would have strangled any other model who pulled a stunt like that but when you did it, I thought it was cute,’ he confessed with a chuckle. ‘Cute! Should’ve realised that I was in love with you then.’

‘You’re my first love too,’ Suzy admitted, her hands sliding below his shirt to find the silky skin of his long smooth back, making him flex against her and grind his hips into hers.

That was the sole invitation that Ruy required to ravish her parted lips with his and before very long the breathless kisses they exchanged were interspersed by impatient attempts to rid themselves of their clothes without separating their bodies. And when that was finally accomplished, and they lay skin to skin, there was no more conversation. They made love with frantic passionate energy and lay in each other’s arms afterwards, sated and blessed with a quiet sense of having finally come home.

‘So you want to get married this week,’ Suzy remarked when she had her breath back enough to talk. ‘You realise that there are formalities that have to be met?’

‘Special licence...already have it in the pipeline.’ Ruy dealt her a victorious look. ‘I never suggest anything I can’t do.’

‘I’ll wear the feather dress... I loved it and you painting me in it made it kind of special,’ Suzy told him dreamily. ‘And I may just be persuaded to borrow the small diamond tiara in that family jewel chest you let me rake through—it was very pretty.’

‘Do you want children?’

‘Oh, at least a dozen!’ she replied.

‘A dozen?’ Ruy exclaimed in disbelief.

‘Well, more than one, less than ten. I always kind of saw myself with a little team of kids. You should have asked that question before you proposed,’ Suzy pointed out with a grin. ‘You look so horrified. We can negotiate. Don’t worry about it.’

As a slender hand ran down appreciatively over his abdomen, Ruy discovered that he didn’t have it in him to worry about anything at all. ‘Te amo, tesora mia.’

Suzy sat up in sudden dismay. ‘Oh, my goodness, I left Dad sitting outside in his car and forgot about him!’

Ruy tugged her lazily down to him again. ‘He had driven off before I even brought you up here. I told him I was proposing.’

‘Oh...’ Suzy flopped back. ‘It’s going to be a constant game of one-upmanship with you, isn’t it?’

Ruy kissed her again and she forgot to talk.

EPILOGUE

Four years later

‘I’M AMAZED RUY let that painting out of the palacio from its place of honour at the top of the stairs,’ Mercedes teased as she glanced at the huge portrait of Suzy at the centre of the exhibition, the one of her in her feather dress in the orange grove. ‘Rigo had to really work on him to get him to loan it out for this and he’s gnashing his teeth now because he could have sold it ten times over! And, of course, Ruy will not sell a picture of you to anyone.’

‘Or of Mateo,’ Suzy added, thinking warmly of her two-year-old son and of the pair of little girls