Instead of telling her about her mysterious legacy, he strode to a cabinet, looked through its contents and pulled out a bottle of whisky and two crystal glasses. ‘Drink? Or shall I have one of the staff make up a strawberry daiquiri for you?’
Beth’s cocktail of choice. Her social media posts showed her enjoying them at regular intervals.
‘Thank you, but I’m driving.’
‘Very responsible,’ he said drily, filling a glass for himself to the brim.
‘Practising to be an alcoholic?’ she asked with a grin she only managed by imagining herself throwing the whisky all over his ultra-expensive hand-tailored suit.
He raised the glass to her and drank half the contents. ‘Dutch courage.’
‘You are full of intrigue,Señor de la Rosa, but I’ve got a flight to catch so tell me about this legacy. Has he left me one of his paintings? Or maybe a car?’ A thought made her blanch. ‘Not Diego? I’m not allowed pets.’ Not in her apartment building. And she had no garden.Surely, he wouldn’t have left his Spanish Water Dog in her care? Surely, he’d have left him in his housekeeper Salma’s care?
‘He’s left you the lot.’
She blinked, unsure of what she’d heard. ‘He’s left me apot?’
‘The lot.Everything. The villa and all its contents. All his cars and holiday homes. His personal helicopter and his shares in the business. Diego. Everything. It’s all yours.’
She studied his serious face a long moment before bursting into laughter. ‘That’s a good one. You nearly had me going for a minute. Go on, tell me, what’s he really left me?’
Not a flicker of amusement crossed his face. ‘Your grandfather has left you everything, Beth.’
Still grinning widely, she shook her head. ‘Not a chance. He took great delight in reminding me of his intentions for his estate every time I visited him—he was leaving his Rosbel Group shares to your family and everything else to charity.’
‘He kept saying that in the hope it would entice you into changing your mind about working for the company. He never seriously intended to disinherit you—it was just a threat, a ploy for you to give in and comply with his wishes. You were his only living heir, and that meant everything to him.’
She laughed to cover how unsettled she was with the whole situation and jumped off the desk. Snatching the glass from Xavi’s hand, she tipped the remaining whisky down her throat.
Beth hated whisky, but right then she needed something to cut through the effect of being in an enclosed space with Xavi and the shock of what he’d just told her. The hefty measure burning her throat wasn’t enough, and she refilled the glass and drank it in three swallows.
‘I thought you were driving,’ Xavi said, eyebrow risen.
‘Stuff it, I’ll get a taxi. After all, you’ve just told me I’m rich.’ And with that, she burst into another peal of laughter.
Rich? Possibly the biggest understatement in the world.
Beth’s mother, Lorena, had died in childbirth. Beth had been raised by her father and her grandparents. Her childhood had been happy. She’d missed having a mother, but in a very abstract, curious way. She couldn’t miss her as a mother because she’d never known her, but she’d been filled with curiosity about her. Everything she’d learned about her had painted a picture of a fierce but happy, loving Spanish woman who loved to dance and run barefoot. A free spirit, much like Beth.
One thing, though, that Beth had never been told about was her mother’s family. The impression she’d been given growing up was that her mother didn’t have any family.
This impression had been a lie engineered by her father. She’d only learned the truth on her eighteenth birthday when an elderly Spanish man knocked on their door and introduced himself as her grandfather.
Lorena, it transpired, had been estranged from her father since her late teens. Her own mother had left him when Lorena was only twelve. When Lorena had moved to England, she’d never seen either of her parents again.
Beth’s father had respected his dead wife’s feelings and had refused to let her father have any involvement in their daughter’s life until she was eighteen and old enough to make her own judgement about him.
Learning of her Spanish grandfather’s existence had come as a huge shock. A lifetime of barely satisfied curiosity about her mother, and all along she’d had a grandfather? To then learn her Spanish grandmother had died only two years earlier…
That had been a huge blow, but she’d swallowed her hurt and anger at the lies of omission from her father because he was her father and she loved him, and even through her hurt, she’d known he’d acted for what he thought was the best. Her English grandparents had felt compelled to go along with his decision on the matter.
The second shock Beth had received that fateful day was learning her grandfather was rich.
Not just rich but stupendously rich. Raul Belmonte was co-owner of the Rosbel Group, one of the wealthiest companies in Europe, making Beth’s grandfather one of the richest men in Europe.
His wealth, though, had meant nothing to her, not when she was gazing at the face of the only living biological link to the mother she’d never known. Her desire to know him had been strong, but she’d known before she agreed to spend a summer with him that he wasn’t the fluffy, kindly old man he was trying to portray himself to her as. After all, her mother had been estranged from him for a reason, and just because he’d not been allowed to see her didn’t mean he couldn’t have helped her father out financially or put some money aside for her.
Those thoughts weren’t motivated by greed but by comparing him to her paternal grandparents, who’d taken their son and his motherless newborn baby into their small home and helped raise their grandchild. On the day her super-rich grandfather presented himself to her like a long-lost unicorn, they’d presented her with a bank statement worth four thousand pounds. It was money they’d invested over the years in a child-saver bank account for her, money they’d hoped would be useful as she stepped into adulthood. Her grandfather probably earned that amount—if not more—in interest on an hourly basis.
