Forbidden To Her Spanish Boss by Susan Stephens

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ROSEWOKESLOWLY, unsure for a moment where she was. She only knew as she stretched and rubbed her eyes that she’d enjoyed the best and deepest sleep she could remember.

In Raffa’s bed?

She shot up to find him slumbering beside her, spread across every spare inch of the bed. She’d never seen him so relaxed. Running inventory on her sleep-warm body proved they’d slept and nothing more. They’d lifted a huge burden before they’d settled down to sleep together last night. Grief wasn’t easily dismissed, but they’d found ways to deal with it. Everything was easier together.

How her mother would have rejoiced at the news of this baby, Rose reflected as she reached for her phone. She’d downloaded an app that showed a child in various stages of development in the womb. Theirs was the size of a blueberry, soon to become a plum, with a lemon and a grapefruit to follow. A fruit salad of joy, she reflected happily as she rested back on the plump bank of pillows.

‘What are you doing?’ Raffa grunted sleepily.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘What’s so urgent you had to use your phone? Do you have a problem, Rose? Is it something I can help with?’

‘No. Here. Take a look.’ She passed the phone.

‘What am I looking at?’ Raffa asked, perplexed.

‘That’s the size of our child,’ Rose explained.

‘Are you giving birth to a blueberry?’

She laughed with sheer happiness. ‘No, to a beautiful child.’

Leaning over to share the moment, she felt a tear on her hand. ‘Raffa... So, you have no feelings?’ she said gently.

No feelings? Raffa was drowning in them. That it had taken the graphic of a blueberry, showing the approximate size of a baby at around six weeks old, was ridiculous—but true. Wherever his feelings had been hiding, Rose had released them. Having started the process last night, she’d delivered the coup de grâce on the small screen of her phone.

‘What have you done?’ he whispered, accepting and welcoming the emotion overwhelming him.

‘I don’t know,’ Rose responded in the same gentle tone. ‘What have I done?’

A wave of regret hit him. ‘I wish my parents were alive to see this.’

‘And my mother,’ Rose agreed softly.

‘Life can be cruel.’

‘No,’ she argued with a firm shake of her head. ‘Life is wonderful. Just when you think you’ve lost everything, you stumble across something new that lifts you to the sky and makes you see the possibilities.’

‘You see the bright side of everything,’ Raffa commented huskily.

‘Not always,’ she reminded him. ‘I see what there is to be seen. You can see it too. We owe this child of ours to be open and happy, and free from guilt. Let’s not burden the next generation with our regret.’

‘How did I get to be so lucky?’ Raffa growled.

‘You asked the wrong woman to go to bed with you?’ Rose suggested.

‘I asked the right woman,’ he insisted. ‘I just didn’t know it at the time.’

‘I only know that I love you, and I understand you, Raffa, and I’ll spend the rest of my life proving that you’re not to blame for anything, if I have to. When grief and guilt is so deep-seated, it takes time to ease, but we’ll keep chipping away until it gets better. I’ll always be here for you.’

‘Whether I want you or not?’ he said.

‘Quick study,’ Rose approved. ‘Even if you send me packing, I’m on the end of a phone.’

‘I won’t be calling, because you’ll be here at my side. I love you with all my unworthy heart. Maybe I should have started with a marriage proposal at Sofia’s wedding, and saved myself a lot of trouble.’

‘You know I wouldn’t have said yes,’ Rose countered.

Turning her beneath him, Raffa loomed over her. ‘As I’m on one knee at the moment, this seems like the perfect moment for you to answer my question. Will you do me the great honour of becoming my wife?’

‘This is not the perfect moment,’ Rose argued on a laugh. ‘You’ll have me saying yes for another reason altogether.’

‘I’m prepared to risk it—but hurry up, you’re stretching my patience.’

‘That’s not the only thing that’s stretching,’ Rose observed wickedly.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Yes, I’ll marry you,’ Rose confirmed, feeling as if her entire world had turned in the right direction at last. ‘Of course I will. My answer’s...yes!’

News that Raffa Acosta, the world’s most eligible bachelor, was off the market spread like wildfire. Sofia was the first to congratulate Rose, with Rose’s friend Adena hot on Sofia’s heels. Some of the publicity regarding Raffa’s previous reputation was unkind, but Rose brushed it aside, because she knew the man beneath the hype, the man who was so much more than his press suggested.

Raffa made sure they had plenty of private time to build on the deeper connection that was growing between them every day. They understood each other on so many different levels. When it came to sex, which it so often did, Rose remarked that if she hadn’t been pregnant, she would have been by the time they got married.

Their wedding was to be held at Raffa’s beach house on the beautiful Spanish island of Ibiza, where their guests could bathe in gin-clear water beneath a cloudless sky. Raffa arranged for the Acosta jet to fly everyone over. It would include a mystery guest, he revealed to Rose this morning in bed. ‘I love a good mystery,’ he teased, ‘but I’m not going to discuss it now, when we have so many better things to do—’

‘Like...?’

Rose’s question was lost in a shriek of laughter as Raffa brought her on top of him. ‘I love you,’ she whispered later, when they were both lying contented on the bed.

‘Not as much as I love you and our child,’ Raffa assured her as he moved down the bed to lavish kisses on the gentle curve of her stomach, before moving even further down, to kiss Rose in the way she could never get enough of, no matter how long they spent in bed.

Sofia and Adena were Rose’s attendants at the wedding, with Máire in the role of high-spirited matron of honour. ‘Never has so much chiffon and lace been put to better use,’ Máire declared as she turned this way and that to admire herself in the mirror. ‘You don’t look too bad, either,’ she told Rose, with a cheeky grin.

Rose’s gown was a simple sheath of ivory silk that revealed a hint of the curve of her belly. Rose had no intention of hiding the evidence of her pregnancy, any more than she would try to hide the depth of her feelings for Raffa and her friends on this special day.

Those friends shrieked in unison as Raffa strode unannounced into the room.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Sofia scolded her brother.

‘Rose?’ Switching his demanding gaze to Rose, Raffa only had to raise a brow for Rose’s senses to sharpen.

‘Could you give us a few minutes?’ she tactfully asked her friends.

As soon as they’d gone, she held Raffa to account. ‘Must I stand here all day with only a robe covering the dress you’re not supposed to see?’

‘There’s an easy solution,’ he advised. ‘Take it off.’

Reduced to a quivering mass of love and lust, she slipped out of the dress, and managed to hide it from sight beneath the robe she’d been wearing. ‘You’re overdressed,’ she complained as Raffa took her in his arms. ‘Not only that, you have the tang of the stable about you. Have you come here straight from riding?’

‘I have an important duty to perform.’

‘Call that an excuse?’ she asked as he unbuttoned his fly and pressed her back against the wall.

‘No. I call this an excuse,’ he said as he reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, at exactly the same moment as he took her deep.

‘Am I supposed to be able to concentrate?’ Rose gasped out.

‘Enough to recognise there’s no room for a velvet jewel box in my breeches,’ Raffa groaned out.

‘There’s no room for much else but this,’ Rose remarked on a half moan, half sigh as he twisted his hips skilfully in the way he knew she loved.

Thankfully, by this time, Raffa had put the box down on the dressing table, all the better to concentrate fully on what he’d come to do. Efficient to a fault, he was fast and firm, and soon had Rose gasping out her pleasure just before he found his. When they were both calm again, he reached for the velvet box.

The wedding ring he’d chosen was a perfect circle of diamonds. ‘A symbol of our love,’ he explained. ‘Fiery, constant and unbroken. But, of course, totally impractical for a hands-on woman like you.’

Rose shook her head in bewilderment. ‘So...?’

‘So, these are our forever rings.’

He delved into his shirt pocket again, producing another velvet case, this one containing two plain matching platinum bands. ‘I’ve changed the insurance policy,’ he explained, ‘to accommodate your not-so-secret visits to the stable, and I guessed diamonds would get in the way.’

‘Diamonds never get in the way,’ Rose protested on a laugh.

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ Raffa teased.

‘I may be practical, but you’ve taught me never to be ungrateful,’ she said, ‘and I promise not to take risks. Our child is too important for that. In fact, I insist you accompany me on all my visits to the stable.’

‘Deal,’ Raffa agreed with a breath-stealing look.

Holding up the glorious diamond circlet to the light, so it flashed blue fire from its prisms, Rose smiled her delight as Raffa drew her into his arms. The kiss lasted perhaps longer than it should have done, but no one was battering down the door yet, and some things couldn’t wait.

‘As you’re so pleased with your diamond ring,’ Raffa remarked as he rearranged his breeches, ‘I hope you like this one too.’

Rose could only gape with astonishment as she stared at the magnificent diamond ring he was now holding up. ‘What’s this for?’

‘High days and holidays?’ he suggested with a shrug.

The huge, flawless emerald-cut diamond on a slim, diamond-studded band was exquisite. ‘I can’t possibly,’ Rose protested.

‘Of course you can,’ Raffa insisted. ‘Part of our deal demands that I spoil you.’

‘Why haven’t I seen that clause?’ Rose demanded with a teasing smile.

‘Put it on,’ Raffa prompted softly. ‘The diamond is one of a kind, just like you.’

‘But I’m not flawless,’ she pointed out.

‘And I am?’ he challenged with a sideways look.

‘No, thank goodness, you’re not,’ she agreed as he reached for her. ‘Raffa! No! We can’t. There isn’t time,’ she protested.

Putting one tanned finger over her lips, he proved her wrong.

‘Don’t shave,’ she begged afterwards as he gently rasped his stubble across her neck.

‘And look like a ruffian on my wedding day?’

‘Just don’t,’ she begged.

Raffa’s black eyes stared into hers, and then he lifted Rose’s ring hand to kiss her palm. ‘Whatever you say, Rose Kelly.’

There was nothing complicated about love, Rose concluded. When two people were meant to be together, nothing, not even fate, could intervene. She’d place her hand in Raffa’s with total confidence when they joined their lives forever.

Rose and her attendants were escorted to the beach by a Spanish guitarist. The tunes he played moved everyone to tears, or maybe the emotion was due to the mystery guest Raffa had included in the ceremony, as he’d promised Rose.

The reunion with her father, who was waiting for Rose on the beach, to walk her down an aisle composed of white rose petals, came as a complete surprise, and almost threw her. Regaining her composure as fast as she could, she was made up by the change in him. His eyes were clear and his bearing was proud, and he was obviously moved to see his only daughter. ‘How can I ever thank you?’ he began.

‘Don’t,’ she begged in a whisper as she linked her arm through his to bring him close. ‘You don’t have to thank me for anything. Your recovery is all down to you. You had to want it, and you had to find the strength to make it happen. I’m so proud of you, Dad, and so glad that you’re here. It could never be the same without you.’

‘D’you mean that, Rose?’

There were tears in her father’s eyes. ‘I do,’ she stated firmly.

Everything took on a new and brighter aspect as everyone stood to greet the bride. Rose was proud of her father, and so very thrilled to have him walk her down the aisle. In a few short words, he’d explained that Raffa had arranged for her brothers to bring him over. Leaving the retreat was a wrench, he explained, as now he was responding positively to therapy, he was able to help others, which was a much healthier focus than thinking about his next drink.

‘Just so long as I don’t have to leave the retreat, Rose. I’ve made my home there now. It’s somewhere I truly belong.’

‘According to Sofia Acosta, you have a job there for life, if you want it.’

‘I do want it,’ her father confirmed with feeling. ‘I love you, Rose. You’ve made everything possible, and I know I don’t deserve you.’

Raffa had made everything possible, Rose thought as she fixed her gaze on the man she loved, standing unshaven beneath a bridal arch lavishly decorated with flowers as delicate as he was strong.

‘Happy?’ Raffa whispered as her father placed Rose’s hand in his.

‘Always and forever when you’re around,’ she pledged with deep love and trust.