Rafael's Suitable Bride by Cathy Williams Read Free Book Online

with a minimalism that left little room for individual touches. Just the way Rafael liked it. No family photos adorned the surfaces, no mementoes of holidays taken, no random books lying dog-eared on tables waiting to be picked up and explored. Instead, the living area was dominated by two sprawling, cream leather sofas, between which was a thick, cream rug with a barely visible abstract pattern and which had cost the earth.
    The paintings on the walls were likewise abstract, splashes of colour which were demanding rather than soothing. Likewise, they too had cost the earth.
    He dumped his case on the ground, poured himself a glass of water and immediately went to check his answer machine. Nine messages, eight of which he would deal with later. The ninth…
    Rafael played it back with a frown of annoyance.
    Delilah. A damned stupid name he had thought at the time, but he had been prepared to overlook that because she was exquisitely beautiful. Very tall, very leggy and with a serenely angelic face that cleverly hid the personality of a shrew.
    Theirs had been one of the few relationships which he had allowed to drift, largely because he had been out of the country so much at the time that a face-to-face confrontation had never been engineered, and Rafael had not sought one out. Delilah was prone to hysterics, and if there was one thing that he couldn’t stand it was a hysterical woman.
    Now, after nearly four months, she was back on the scene. His mother’s words slammed back at him—different mistresses every week…running away from a past he never wanted to revisit…living life in a vacuum…
    He leaned back on the sofa, closed his eyes and thought that maybe, just maybe, it really was time to think about settling down.

CHAPTER THREE
    T HAT thought had cleared his mind by the time he awoke on the Monday morning to the insistent beeping of his mobile phone at the ungodly hour of…
    Five o’clock!
    And a text message from Delilah. The text message, with all those abbreviations which Rafael found so annoying, informed him that she had been away—an extended holiday in the Caribbean—but that now she was back and would love to meet so that they could catch up.
    Once a relationship had been terminated, Rafael was the sort of man who moved on. Not for him any scenarios which involved meeting up with an ex-girlfriend so that they could talk over the bad old days about a bottle or two of wine. He had moved on from Delilah, although he had to admit that it had not been a clean break.
    Without giving himself time to switch into work mode, he dialled in her number, then waited all of two rings before it was picked up. Not a good sign. Women who waited by phones were women who became very dependent very fast, and a very dependent woman was a liability.
    It was not a comfortable conversation and he knew that it should have been conducted face to face. He had optimistically figured that deliberate absence from the scene and a lack of communication would be sufficient indication of a breakup, but he had been lazy.
    Hence he could hardly blame her for the tears, the accusations, the insults—which he was unsurprised to hear consisted of a wide range of adjectives—and, worse than all that, the plaintive, rhetorical question of what she had done wrong.
    It was nearly six before he was finally off the phone, having endured his full frontal attack, and close to eight by the time he had showered, changed, sent some emails and was heading out of his front door.
    It was barely light outside with a cold, blustery wind that felt damp even though there was no sign of rain. Rafael, still in a foul mood after his conversation with Delilah, would have missed the flower shop had it not been open for a delivery just as he happened to be walking past.
    He had never noticed it before, but then that was hardly surprising. Flower shops did not feature highly on his list of desired destinations, nor did he