The Ring The Spaniard Gave Her - Lynne Graham Page 0,2

hadn’t been on a date in longer than he could recall. Love was anathema to him because he had witnessed and experienced how warped and damaged love could become. Someone like his former sister-in-law, Liliana, could get badly burned by that seemingly desirable emotion of love that so many foolish beings chased. Old unforgotten guilt burned in Ruy’s gut as he watched his nieces dance across the stage as very cute little mushrooms. Lucia was sylph-like in comparison to poor little Lola, who stomped like a water buffalo. Slowly, almost painfully, Ruy smiled, reflecting that if it didn’t entail getting married, he would have enjoyed having a child of his own...

‘Reckon you raised a dad temperature or two out there!’ Flora, the concert organiser, teased Suzy as she hurriedly pulled on her clothes at the back of the stage. ‘The men can’t take their eyes off you.’

‘Nonsense, they’re just keen to spot their kids,’ Suzy declared, a little nauseous at the prospect of being the target of lust in public. Wasn’t it bad enough that she had had to recently cope with it in private?

She squashed that self-pitying thought as soon as it popped up in the back of her brain. Hadn’t she chosen her own path? Hadn’t she decided to put her dad first? Her dad, the man who had loved her enough for two parents after her mother died in a car crash when she was a toddler. Roger Madderton was a great father, just not quite farsighted enough to see when a trap was being sprung in front of him. And Percy Brenton had caught both father and daughter in a hellish financial trap and there was no escaping the consequences of that miscalculation. Either she let her father go bankrupt through no fault of his own, and watched him lose his home and business, or she married Percy. And as she was marrying Percy in less than forty-eight hours, she had best settle down and accept the inevitable, she told herself irritably. By the weekend, she would be in Barbados on her honeymoon with Percy, and she cringed at the prospect.

The concert was over. People were already starting to leave as Suzy descended the stage steps. In her haste her rich auburn hair bounced against her spine in a flyaway mop of curls. Lola and Lucia came running across the floor to greet her, full of excitement after their performance. They were the cutest little girls, one seven, one four, and they were in the dance class that Suzy taught every week. Even though she was keen to escape the hall before Percy could put in an appearance, she couldn’t resist the little hands grabbing hold of hers and pulling her forward. Laughing, green eyes sparkling with mirth at their enthusiasm, Suzy found herself looking, not at the parents she expected or even the nanny, but at a tall, dark total stranger.

A tall, dark, quite magnificent stranger, she adjusted, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth, because he was breathtakingly handsome. Olive-tinted skin stretched taut over a superb bone structure that formed the perfect backdrop to spare, flaring cheekbones, a sculpted jawline shadowed with a blue-black hint of stubble, a classic nose and wide, sensual lips. Add in his height and lean, powerful build and he came as close to a fantasy male as Suzy had ever seen in reality.

Beautiful wasn’t an expressive enough word to describe Suzy Madderton, Ruy conceded, taken aback by her sheer visual impact. She glowed like a spectacular sunset with her vibrant copper-red spirals of hair, porcelain-pale skin, a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her small nose and green eyes brighter than polished emeralds. Spirit and energy bubbled out of her. All his defensive antennae came into play, snapping up his reserve like a safety barrier because Ruy instantly loathed the strength of his response to her. Even worse, he was deeply uneasy around any woman he sensed to be volatile in the emotional field.

‘Tio Ruy!’ Lola proclaimed importantly. ‘Our Tio Ruy!’

‘Their mother’s brother, their uncle,’ Ruy interpreted smoothly.

Suzy was ensnared by eyes as dark as Hades and full of sardonic superiority. She didn’t know why or how she read that message in his stunningly dark gaze, but she did, and her chin came up at an angle, her eyes sparkling with animosity. ‘Thanks for the translation but I didn’t need it. My mother was Spanish. I have a few words,’ she murmured, thinking it was very