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.‘Yes, we made love.’‘Was that all part and parcel of the arrangement?’‘Don’t be ridiculous.’Here she was again, turned into a shrieking virago.‘I am not being ridiculous!’‘I never realised that you possessed a voice that could shatter glass.’‘Nor did I!’ But she drew in a few deep, steadying breaths.‘We made love…’‘And it was good.’ His own voice dropped a notch as he recalled their never-ending sessions between the sheets.Why the hell was she making this so difficult? She had been shocked at what she had interpreted as unromantic behaviour, but she would, he knew, get over that.She would come round to his point of view.He wondered whether to risk touching her, and decided that she would probably slap his hand away because she wasn’t—as he was discovering—quite as meek and mild as he had imagined.‘Stop for a minute, Cristina, and think about what I’m saying.We’re good together—good in bed…and out of it, come to that.’‘And so marrying me would make sense.’ She felt jealousy claw at her when she thought of that other woman, the one into whom he had poured all his love, leaving him now without any to give anyone else.She had stolen his dreams and left him with a spreadsheet on which his future could be mapped out like figures in a profit-and-loss column.‘Rafael, the future isn’t some kind of business deal that can be put together on a piece of paper.I won’t sign my life away to someone because it seems to make sense.I would rather take my chances and wait for someone who might be able to give me the whole big thing.’For a few unsettling seconds, Rafael wondered whether his smoothly made plans were in danger of being derailed.Having come this far in overthrowing his habits of a lifetime, in finally accepting the inescapable truth that he needed to settle down, he began to flounder at the preposterous notion that she might, really, be serious.Sure she had handed him back the ring, but women, he knew, were notorious for emotional outbursts later to be regretted.‘There is no such thing as the whole big thing,’ he growled, uneasily aware that this was possibly not the right approach to be adopting in the face of mutiny.‘Maybe not for you,’ Cristina snapped back, once again amazed at the shrew that seemed to have emerged from deep inside her.‘Or maybe you had your stab at the whole big thing and it didn’t work out—but that doesn’t mean that I’m prepared to give up my own dream on the back of the fact that yours fell flat!’‘You were happy enough to be my wife forty-eight hours ago,’ Rafael told her, pointing out what he considered to be an inescapable truth.‘I’m finding it hard to understand what essentially has changed.I’m the same man I was then.Look at me!’ he commanded.‘Have I suddenly turned into someone else? Morphed into an ogre? Grown an extra head? No.’Cristina knew just how persuasive he could be when he put his mind to it.Whatever he wanted, he had once told her with a touch of satisfaction, he got.Simple as that.And sure, when he looked at her like this—covering her with his eyes, willing her to absorb what he was saying and yield to his greater wisdom—she could almost believe that he had a point, that love was just a word that was meaningless.Almost, but not quite.‘You don’t understand,’ she muttered.‘Then enlighten me.’The silence stretched between them until he finally clicked his tongue impatiently.‘Okay—one.Do we have good times when we are together?’‘I guess.’‘You guess?’‘Okay, we do.Rafael, you can’t sum things up like—’‘No.It’s your turn to do the listening now.Two.Do I or do I not turn you on?’‘That’s unfair.You know you do.’‘I know.’ His mouth curled in sensuous satisfaction as his mind lingered on the very seductive image of her writhing under his exploring hands.‘Three.Would I or would I not make sure that your every material need was met?’‘You’re asking the obvious.’‘That’s what life is all about.The obvious.The minute we start layering it with shades of grey, we start getting caught in quicksand
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