Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Passionate Bargains. Michelle Smart

of him under the circumstances, but from now on he would not put up with it.

      Tomorrow, the deeds would be signed and she would be indebted to him.

      Curiosity made him look at the papers sprawled over her desk.

      A few moments later he sat on the chair still warm from her body heat with a frown on his face.

      Peering more closely through the stack before him, he saw she’d taken each room of the new building and committed to paper her ideas for the renovations. Each drawing was done to scale.

      Charley had said she’d done these plans.

      Had she been lying in an attempt to impress him?

      But no—the notes in the margins, the numbers indicating the measurements, these were all in her girlish writing.

      He rubbed at his temples, his chest tightening as he imagined her sitting in that tiny study in the tiny home she’d been living in, working diligently on these plans. Alone.

      * * *

      After a quick shower and shave, Raul found Charley in the living room.

      ‘You’re ready?’ he asked, astonished to find her waiting for him. He was equally astounded at what she was wearing: a pair of cropped grey figure-hugging patchwork trousers and a sheer black blouse. On her feet were a pair of flat black strappy sandals.

      ‘Yes.’ Rising from the sofa, she passed the window, the low early evening sun shining through to allow him to see perfectly the lacy black bra she wore beneath the seemingly modest blouse.

      ‘What?’ she asked, a scowl forming.

      ‘Are you really intending to go out for a meal with friends wearing that?’

      ‘Yes, Raul, I am. Why? Is there something wrong with it?’

      ‘I’m surprised, that’s all.’ She looked good—she looked beautiful—there was no denying that but he could not recall a single time after they’d married when she’d worn trousers or jeans. Now, other than the party she’d gatecrashed and the morning of her meeting with the bank manager, he’d not seen a single sign of her legs. The Charley he’d been married to wouldn’t have dreamed of going out for dinner in anything less than a designer dress and five-inch heels. She would hardly breakfast in anything less.

      ‘This is what I have in my wardrobe.’

      ‘What happened to the rest of your clothes?’ Charley had had a wall at the back of her walk-in wardrobe filled with shoes alone. Thinking about it, he couldn’t see how her tiny Valencian bedroom would fit even a fraction of her clothes in it.

      ‘I gave most of them to charity shops.’

      ‘What did you do that for?’

      She shrugged. ‘There’s not much call for Dolce & Gabbana at Poco Rio.’

      ‘I’ll give my sister a ring and see if she’s free to go on a shopping trip with you over the next few days.’ He reached into his pocket for his phone.

      Charley folded her arms and shook her head, but the scowl disappeared, replaced by a look that was almost...sad. ‘I don’t want to go on a shopping trip. I like my wardrobe just fine as it is.’

      ‘Charlotte,’ he said, striving for patience, ‘over the next four months we will be dining out and socialising as we always used to do. The clothes you have are fine for what you’ve been doing at the centre but those days are currently over. You’re my wife and you know what that means.’

      ‘That I have to dress up like a doll?’

      ‘No.’ She was being deliberately obtuse. ‘But being a Cazorla does mean projecting a certain image—’

      ‘Why?’

      He rubbed the nape of his neck and whistled air through his teeth. ‘We discussed this when we first became engaged. My family is highly respected here, our hotels some of the finest in the world. People look up to us.’

      It had been for her sake that he’d wanted her to fit in. He knew what it was like to be judged as not good enough and had never wanted that for her. He hadn’t wanted the woman he loved to enter a social situation and feel insecure about anything. He’d done his best to give her all the tools she’d needed to assimilate into high society as if she’d been born into it.

      ‘I still don’t understand why that means I have to dress like a doll.’

      ‘You don’t have to “dress like a doll”,’ he said, his jaws clamping together. ‘I really don’t understand what the problem is. You loved dressing up when we lived together before.’

      He remembered the light in her eyes after that first shopping trip with Marta and their personal shopper and Charley’s bursts of laughter as she’d carefully taken each item out of its box for him to look at and comment on. Her happiness hadn’t been fake, of that he was certain.

      The corners of her lips curved into a whimsical smile, the closest thing to a real smile he’d seen all week, although there was nothing happy about it.

      ‘I did at first, yes. But what twenty-year-old wouldn’t love being let loose in one of the most exclusive shopping arcades in Europe with an unlimited credit card?’

      ‘So you admit, you did marry me for my money?’

      She shook her head, her blonde hair brushing over her shoulders. ‘I won’t lie; your wealth turned my head. Your whole lifestyle did. But I would have married you if you’d lived in a shack.’

      He laughed humourlessly. ‘It is lucky your nose is not like Pinocchio’s or it would be sprouting leaves as we speak.’

      Her eyes held his. ‘If I’m such a gold-digger, why did I walk away and leave it all behind?’

      ‘You left with ten million euros.’

      ‘Money I never asked for,’ she pointed out. ‘And you know as well as I do I could have asked for a whole lot more.’

      ‘And you know as well as I do that until our divorce is final, you still can.’ He reached out a hand and traced a finger down her cheek, not liking the disquiet prodding at him.

      She was right. She hadn’t asked for his money. He’d given it freely.

      Nor had she asked for the credit cards and everything else he’d given her when he’d wanted nothing more than to see that smile from her first shopping trip replicated.

      None of that mattered any more. The only smile he wanted to see on her face now was the smile of pleasure.

      One more night of sleeping on his own and she would be his again.

      ‘It is hardly coincidence that you returned to my life when the money had almost run out,’ he pointed out.

      She made to speak but he cut her off by rubbing his thumb over her lips. ‘If you play your cards right over the next four months, you will find my generosity knows no limits. Play your cards right and I will give you so much money it would take you a lifetime to spend it.’

      She slapped his hand away, angry colour heightening her cheeks. ‘Once the centre has been redeveloped, the only thing I will want from you is my freedom.’

      ‘Your freedom will be guaranteed.’ Unable to resist dropping his face into her neck and inhaling that musky vanilla scent that turned him on so much, he added, ‘And so will mine.’

       CHAPTER FIVE

      CHARLEY WAS OUT of the centre before Raul’s watch registered her being even one minute late. She hurried to the car, her excitement tangible. She’d been the same that morning, unable to keep still for a second, downing coffee as if it were going out of fashion but unable to eat a morsel of the eggs his