He had heard a woman sob brokenly only once before, in the slum where he had spent the first twelve years of his life. Maria Gonzales had been a neighbour, a kind woman who had often given food to him and his sister. But Maria’s teenage son had been drawn into one of the many drug gangs who’d operated in the slum and Pedro had been stabbed in a fight. Rafael had never forgotten the sound of Maria’s raw grief as she’d wept over the body of her boy.
When Juliet had told him of her financial problems and her fear that she might lose custody of her young daughter the idea had formed in his mind that she would make him an ideal wife. The money he was prepared to pay her would change her life, and more importantly she would have no expectations that their marriage would be anything other than a business deal.
Maybe he was crazy, Rafael thought as he climbed out of his car and glanced around the notoriously rough housing estate—a concrete jungle where the walls were covered in graffiti. A gang of surly-looking youths were staring at his car, and they watched him suspiciously when he walked past them on his way into the tower block. He guessed that the older male in the group, who was wearing a thick gold chain around his neck, was a drug dealer.
Rafael had grown up in a shanty town on the outskirts of Madrid, where dire poverty was a breeding ground for crime and lawless gangs ruled the street. His father had been involved in the criminal underworld, and as a boy Rafael had seen things that no child should see.
His jaw tightened as he took the lift up to the eleventh floor and strode along a poorly lit walkway strewn with litter. The tower block was not a slum but a sense of poverty and deprivation pervaded the air, as well as a pungent smell of urine. It was not a good place to bring up a child.
Juliet and her young daughter were not his responsibility, he reminded himself. But it was hard to see how she would turn down five million pounds and the chance to move away from this dump.
He knocked on the door of her flat and it opened almost immediately. Rafael guessed from the unbecoming nylon overall Juliet was wearing that she must have returned from her cleaning job only minutes before he’d arrived. Without the baseball cap hiding her face he saw that she had delicate features, and might even have been reasonably pretty if she hadn’t been so pale and drawn. Her hair was a nondescript brownish colour, scraped back from her face and tied in a long braid. Only her light blue eyes, the colour of the sky on an English spring day, were at all remarkable. But the dark shadows beneath them emphasised her waif-like appearance.
A suspicion slid into Rafael’s mind, and when Juliet took off her overall to reveal a baggy grey T-shirt that looked fit for the rag bag he studied her arms. There were none of the tell-tale track marks associated with drug addiction.
He flicked his gaze over cheap, badly fitting jeans tucked into scuffed black boots and thought of glamorous Camila Martinez, the daughter of the Duque de Feria and his grandfather’s favoured contender to be Rafael’s bride.
The difference between aristocratic Camila, who could trace her family’s noble lineage back centuries, and Juliet, who looked as if she had stepped from the pages of Oliver Twist, was painfully obvious. It would show his grandfather that he was not a puppet willing to dance to the old man’s tune if he turned up at Hector’s birthday party and announced that he had married this drab sparrow instead of a golden peacock, Rafael mused, feeling a flicker of amusement as the scene played out in his imagination.
‘I told you to call me when you arrived and I would meet you outside the flats,’ Juliet greeted him. ‘If you’ve left your car on the estate there’s a good chance it will be vandalised. There’s a big problem with gangs around here.’
Rafael shuddered inwardly at the thought of his Lamborghini being damaged. ‘This area is not a safe place for you to be out alone at night,’ he said gruffly, thinking that she must have to walk through the estate in the dark every evening when she’d finished her cleaning shift.
He looked along the narrow hallway as a door opened and a small child darted out.
‘Mummy, where are you going?’
The little girl had the same slight build and pale complexion as her mother. She stared at Rafael warily and he was struck by how vulnerable she was—how vulnerable they both were.
Juliet lifted her daughter into her arms. ‘Poppy, I’ve told you I’m going out for a little while with a...a friend and Agata is going to look after you.’
An elderly woman emerged from the small sitting room and gave Rafael a curious look. ‘Come back to bed, kotek. I will read to you and it will help you to fall back to sleep.’ She took the child from Juliet. ‘The baby will be happy with me. Go and have the nice dinner with your friend.’
‘Who is looking after your daughter?’ Rafael asked when Juliet followed him out of the flat and shut the front door behind her. She had pulled on a black fake leather jacket that looked as cheaply made as the rest of her outfit.
For a moment he wondered what the hell he was doing. Could he really marry this insipid girl who looked much younger than mid-twenties?
But her air of innocence had to be an illusion, he reminded himself, thinking of her illegitimate child. And besides, he did not care what she looked like. All he was interested in was putting a wedding ring on her finger. Once he had fulfilled his grandfather’s outrageous marriage ultimatum he would be CEO of the Casillas Group. He did not anticipate that he would spend much time with his wife and would seek to end the marriage as soon as possible.
‘Agata is a neighbour,’ Juliet said. ‘She’s Polish and very kind. I couldn’t do my cleaning job if she hadn’t agreed to babysit every evening. Poppy doesn’t have any grandparents but she loves Agata.’
‘What happened to your parents?’
‘They were killed in a car accident six years ago.’
Her tone was matter-of-fact, but Rafael sensed that she kept a tight hold on her emotions and her breakdown earlier in the day had been unusual.
‘I believe you said that you have no other family apart from some relatives in Australia?’
She nodded. ‘Aunt Vivian is my mum’s sister. I stayed with her and my uncle and three cousins, but they only have a small house and it was a squeeze—especially after I had Poppy.’
So Juliet did not have any family in England who might question her sudden marriage, Rafael mused as they stepped into the lift. Once again he imagined his ultra-conservative grandfather’s reaction if he introduced an unmarried mother who sold sandwiches for a living as his bride. It would teach Hector not to try to interfere in his life, Rafael thought grimly.
The lift doors opened on the ground floor and he took hold of Juliet’s arm as they passed the gang of youths, who were now loitering in the entrance hall and passing a joint between them.
‘Why do you live in this hellhole?’ he demanded as he hurried her outside to his car. ‘It can’t be a good place to bring up a child.’
‘I don’t live here out of choice,’ she said wryly. ‘When Poppy was a baby we lived in a lovely little house with a garden. Kate was my mum’s best friend, and the reason why I left Australia and came back to England was because she invited me and Poppy to move in with her. She was a widow, and I think she enjoyed the company. But Kate died after a short illness and her son sold the house. I only had a few weeks to find somewhere else to live. I had already started my sandwich business and needed to live in London, but I couldn’t afford to rent privately. I was lucky that the local authority offered me social housing. Living on this estate isn’t ideal, but it’s better than being homeless.’
She ran her hand over the bonnet of the Lamborghini. ‘You are a multi-millionaire—you can have no idea about the real world outside of your ivory tower.’