The Ring The Spaniard Gave Her - Lynne Graham Page 0,6

can I get you? Another whisky?’

‘No, thank you. I’m driving,’ Ruy murmured with perfect diction, his Spanish accent purring along the syllables like an expensive sports car, she heard herself think foolishly of his dark, deep, oh-so-masculine drawl. ‘Would it be rude for me to ask about your Spanish mother?’

Disconcerted, Suzy stilled, her eyes reflective. ‘No, not at all. I don’t remember her because she died in a car crash when I was two. She was from Madrid and she lost her parents when she was quite young. She came to the UK as an au pair and met my father. They were married within months. I took Spanish classes because I wanted to feel closer to her, but it doesn’t really work if you don’t get to practise speaking the language.’ She sighed.

‘You could practise on me,’ Ruy suggested. ‘How long have you been giving dance lessons to the local kids?’

‘A couple of years now, first as an assistant until the teacher, who taught me for years, retired because of her arthritis. Dancing was my only hobby growing up,’ Suzy admitted.

‘I’m still hoping that you’ll act as a model for me. I really would like to paint you.’

‘I’m sorry but it’s not possible. I’m getting married tomorrow and then I’ll be away on my honeymoon for a couple of weeks and, in any case, Percy wouldn’t agree to it.’

‘You don’t strike me as a young woman who always does as she’s told. I’m willing to wait a few weeks to paint you,’ Ruy volunteered.

‘I can’t do it and that’s that. Will you please drop the subject now?’ Suzy shot back at him in exasperation. ‘Don’t you know how to take no for an answer?’

A slashing smile slanted Ruy’s wide mobile lips. ‘No,’ he dared.

Suzy’s teeth gritted. ‘Well, it’s a very annoying trait...yes, sir...what can I get you?’ she asked another man who had wandered up to the bar and went to serve him.

Ruy was unused to being left to kick his heels; it was his turn to grit teeth. Just at that moment faking being a more ordinary mortal wasn’t working well for him. The usual awe, flattery and flirtation that women gave him would have been remarkably welcome just then. Hombre! A barmaid was giving him lip! His half-sister’s voice sounded in his conscience and he knew she would have told him that he was being both snobbish and unjust. Cecile, ignored and hidden by their father as the daughter of his mistress, had had a much rougher ride through life than Ruy had ever had, and he had a sneaking suspicion that his opinionated and down-to-earth sibling would have laughed at seeing him being ignored and cold-shouldered by a woman.

‘One last word on the subject?’ Ruy breathed softly as she moved closer to him while wiping the bar top.

‘Name your price for being my model and I will pay it,’ he murmured in sibilant conclusion.

‘You’re just inviting me to pluck some sum of money out of the air? I haven’t a clue what artists’ models charge!’ Suzy objected.

‘I want you, nobody else, which gives you a truly rare and special value,’ Ruy told her. ‘I will pay a huge sum for you to model for me.’

Suzy dealt him a frowning glance of reluctant fascination. ‘That’s crazy. There has to be a limit.’

‘Not with me, there’s not,’ Ruy assured her stubbornly, forgetting in that instant that he was not in his own world of gilded exclusivity where nothing cost too much and nothing he desired was ever out of his reach.

Suzy wondered what it was about her that made men try to buy her. Percy had already done it, she reminded herself wretchedly. She could only think of the horrific sum her father had been told he owed after Percy had added on the interest charges that her poor father had misunderstood how to calculate. ‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ she said mockingly. ‘I’ll do it for—’

‘That’s a deal, then,’ Ruy declared with intense satisfaction, relieved that money was the lure he had assumed it would be because it made him more conscious of the barrier between them, a barrier he was determined to maintain.

Suzy’s brows rose at that response and she surveyed him in complete stupefaction. ‘You expect me to believe that you can pay me fifty thousand pounds to act as your model? Like you’re some Mr Rockefeller or something? Do I look like I still believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy?’ She gulped with a