A Fiery Baptism

by Lynne Graham

  ‘What did you do in Truro?’ Rafael probed darkly.

  ‘I did whatever I wanted to do,’ she said truthfully. ‘Letitia was the only unconventional member of my mother’s family. Before I met her, I had lived twenty years on this planet without realising that freedom is every individual’s inalienable right. Freedom from other people’s wishes, expectations and demands. You have no idea how glorious it was just to be myself after I got over the guilt. Yes, it took me a while to work up the courage to spread my wings but in the end I was putting in more flying time than an airline stewardess.’

  Tempted by another prawn, Sarah reached for it. ‘These are really good.’ She paused. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  His nostrils flared. ‘What did doing whatever you want entail?’

  Sarah munched unselfconsciously at her prawn and thought for a second or two. ‘I really don’t think that’s any of your business any more.’

  ‘It is very much my business while you remain my wife.’

  ‘You sound like Gordon…well, the way Gordon would like to be if he had the guts—but his wife was a feminist. He’s secretly terrified of feminists.’

  Sunbrowned fingers were beating out a soundless tattoo on the edge of the table. Rafael’s body language was so gloriously, exquisitely self-expressive, Sarah reflected with satisfaction. For once she had managed to turn the tables. Later she would feel pain, that went without saying, but for now a patina of breezy insouciance was more of a cushion to her decimated pride than the role of embittered and soon to be ex-wife. ‘What about that long, tall blonde you’re living with? Are you thinking of marrying her?’

  The fingers tensed, stretched and stilled. ‘I am married to you.’

  Sarah produced a laugh that should have qualified for a champagne tribute. ‘Since when has that inhibited you? Then as you once told me,’ she said playfully, ‘sex is not a serious business.’

  Blazing golden eyes crashed a collision course with hers. Her heartbeat gave a sick thud. ‘Suzanne—’

  ‘Oh, is that her name? Rather elegant…it suits her.’ With a generously bright smile, Sarah took masochism to new and serious limits. She relocated her glass as if it were an anchor. ‘Does she cook? If she cooks as well, you’ve got it made, Rafael. Speaking for myself, however, if I should ever remarry it will be to someone—to borrow a phrase from Karen—who is seriously rich and who wouldn’t dream of expecting me to soil my little princess hands in anything so mundane as a kitchen. You said once that I was born to be a rich man’s toy. Of course you were pretty close to starvation at the time but you really ought to have added, in the interests of fairness, that cosseted little toys have a wonderful time in the rich man’s playroom because that’s where they belong.’

  Colour lay in a definitive arc over his angular cheekbones. Undertones and tension and seething emotion were heating the atmosphere to boiling point. Sarah revelled in the awareness. It was like a stimulating drug racing through her bloodstream. She could not recall when she had last enjoyed herself so much.

  ‘Suzanne—’ he gritted.

  Sarah held up a hand. ‘One little hint. Toss an unplucked chicken at her and ask her to whip up something exotic for six unexpected guests. That’s the sort of high-jump that picks out the women from the girls. I should know.’

  ‘Suzanne is married to one of my best friends.’

  Sarah opened her eyes wide. ‘And she runs round your apartment in a little tiny bathrobe, offering you breakfast after she gets out of your shower? It must be a very open marriage. Rather like ours, I expect,’ she tacked on. ‘Don’t you think it’s marvellous that we can sit here being perfectly civilised after all these years?’

  ‘I think it is obscene!’ he raked at her. ‘We did not have that sort of relationship.’

  ‘No, it was rather one-sided in that direction, wasn’t it? You strayed and I stayed home.’

  He was breathing shallowly. ‘I also think you are trying to shock me.’

  ‘Do you think I could?’ Sarah was almost mesmerised by the savage brilliance of his stare and the surprising fact that Rafael was swallowing what she said without exploding. ‘What would it take?’

  He flicked her a glance of flaring, cutting perception. ‘Considerably more than a very clumsy attempt to make me jealous.’

  Sarah didn’t think about what she did next. She acted on instinct. She plunged upright and sent the contents of her glass flying at him. As soon as it was done, she was appalled by her own behaviour.

  ‘Sit down!’ Rafael roared at her, snatching up a pristine napkin. ‘I don’t think lunch was such a good idea.’ Sarah fled, her courage spent.

  She emerged from the restaurant into a heavy downpour. Rain was falling in sheets, bouncing back off the dusty pavements again. Within a minute Sarah was drenched, her thin blouse plastered to her skin, her skirt clinging damply to her thighs. She was in an emotional daze, devastated by the surge of incredible anger that had driven her into an act that was quite out of character. Dimly it occurred to her that she had done quite a few things that were out of character in recent days.

  She went haywire in Rafael’s vicinity. A couple of glasses of wine on an empty stomach and she was suddenly treating him to a floorshow! He had invited her to lunch solely to discuss Gilly and Ben and what had he got? Well, he certainly hadn’t got the chilly little civilised chat he had undoubtedly expected. I am married to you, he had said without even a human twinge of discomfiture. And she had wanted to kill him…slowly and with many refined tortures and not an ounce of mercy.

  Saving face had been uppermost in her mind. Or so she had believed. It had suddenly become overwhelmingly important that Rafael should believe that his departure from her life had been a blessing in disguise. Only Rafael had somehow understood her better than she understood herself. Clumsy. The word was like a poison dart digging deep into her oversensitive skin. As an attractive woman, Sarah had little confidence in her powers to attract. That really hadn’t bothered her until her particular bete noire sauntered back on to her horizon again, exploding her calm, demolishing her wits and flinging her into violent turmoil all over again. She had gone right over the top inside that restaurant and he had let her talk herself into the grave. And not for the first time, she conceded unhappily, drawn unwillingly back into the past.

  Eighteen months into their marriage, she had been simmering like a pressure-cooker on too high a heat. She had taken a good hard look at herself and she hadn’t liked what she saw. She had had no identity beyond that of Rafael’s wife and the Southcotts’ daughter. The real Sarah couldn’t defend herself because she simply didn’t know who she was. She spent her time constantly striving to measure up to other people’s expectations and apologising for her apparent failings. In short she was a doormat, who lacked the aggression to demand the freedom to be herself.

  She had challenged Rafael’s dominance on one score alone. He had wanted her to have a baby. She had carefully avoided even discussing the idea, changing the subject whenever it was raised.

  It was a minor incident which ironically had triggered the tension that had been building between her and Rafael for months. One of his models repeatedly wandering half naked round the apartment had set Sarah’s temper off. In the grip of suppressed fury over the fashion in which the model had simply ignored her strictures, Sarah had informed Rafael that she didn’t want the woman in her home ever again. Rafael had called that unreasonable. Sarah had responded very unreasonably by emptying a drawer into a suitcase and threatening to leave.

  ‘You’re not going back to them,’ Rafael had assured her with raw, blistering emphasis.

  ‘This has nothing to do with my parents,’ she had whispered in sudden despair. ‘This has to do with me for a change. Me…my feelings…nobody else!’

  But he hadn’t understood; he hadn’t recognised that she was at the end of her tether and the storm in a teacup had blown up into a hurricane. That night, Rafael had disposed of her birth control pills
and had made love to her coolly, deliberately and with none of the tenderness that he usually employed.

  Six weeks later, she had learnt that she was pregnant. In the scene which followed both of them had said some pretty unforgivable things. Afterwards Sarah had promised herself that she would never again allow Rafael to enforce his wishes over her own. A constraint had leapt up between them long before her father had phoned to tell her that her mother was ill.

  She had been packing when Rafael emerged from his studio.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She straightened reluctantly from her task. ‘Mother’s not well. I’m booked on an evening flight.’

  Brilliant dark eyes raked her with glinting incredulity. ‘And this is the first I am to know of your plans?’

  She turned pale under threat of an argument.

  Rafael sank with deceptive indolence down on to the deep sill of the window behind him. ‘What is the matter with her?’

  Sarah made a grudging explanation, on defensive alert for the first sign of contempt. ‘It could be her heart,’ she completed anxiously.

  ‘It could be her imagination.’

  ‘That’s a despicable thing to say.’

  ‘My exhibition opens in New York in ten days,’ he reminded her grimly. ‘We have to be there in—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I want you with me.’ His jawline squared. ‘I don’t want you to go to England now. Your father has been premature. When your mother has had results of these tests—’

  ‘No,’ she broke in stiffly. ‘I’m going now.’

  Dark colour barred his high cheekbones. ‘I don’t want you to go. That should mean something to you,’ he said softly.

  It was the familiar crack of a whip over her head, telling her exactly what her limitations were. Silently she began folding another garment as if she hadn’t heard him. It was her only defence.

  ‘Sarah…we should not be apart now. You are carrying my child. It is selfish of your father to distress you like this,’ he protested angrily. ‘But if you must go I will accompany you.’

  In spite of her protests, he had, and of course there had been no relaxation for her in the days which followed. Rafael and her parents under one roof would have driven any peacekeeper’s nerves to screaming point.

  ‘She’s pretending,’ Rafael had diagnosed her mother’s health bluntly within hours. ‘You can travel to New York with me.’

  Outraged on her mother’s behalf, Sarah had righteously refused and reproached him for his insensitivity, but she had planned to join him within the week. When it came time for her to leave, however, Louise Southcott had suffered a relapse. Another week had drifted by before Rafael presented her with an ultimatum.

  On the phone he cut ruthlessly through her efforts to make safe conversation. ‘Your parents are destroying our marriage,’ he interrupted. ‘I think you have a decision to make. Them or me. I won’t wait forever. I am not a pet dog, querida.’

  ‘You’re not—’

  ‘The fool you take me for? I have run out of patience,’ he bit out, anger transforming his husky voice into a throaty growl. ‘You have forty-eight hours. If you’re not with me before the deadline I’ll assume that you’ve decided to stay with Mama and Papa forever. But should you decide to honour your marital vows, muneca mia, you have made your last visit to your parents’ home.’

  ‘You can’t threaten me like that,’ she gasped.

  ‘The threat is a promise, querida. You must choose between us. I will no longer stand for their interference in our lives. I have stood enough. Your place as my wife is with me, not with them,’ he delivered harshly. ‘If you cannot acknowledge that reality, I cannot continue to think of you as my wife.’

  ‘You can’t give me a choice like that…’

  ‘Can’t I? I believe I just have. And I should have done it sooner.’

  He had asked the impossible of her at a time when she had genuinely believed that her mother was developing a heart condition. Her pride, too often battered by his dominance, had warmed to the knowledge that she would for once stand firm. Even so, it was with a fast-beating heart that she had let that deadline approach, acquainted as she was with the volatility of Rafael’s temperament…

  As the rain slackened off, she came back to the present with a jolt.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘CRISTO, Sarah!’ A powerful hand fastened on her shoulder and spun her round. ‘You are soaked through.’

  She tried to shake free of his grasp. ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘No!’ It was raw and unequivocal. Shrugging off his jacket, he draped it round her. His body heat and an evocatively masculine scent that she had almost forgotten enclosed her chilled skin and yet still she shivered.

  Her flat was just round the corner. She walked fast, not looking at him. Inside the lift the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense. With a flourish she removed his jacket but before she could return it he closed the distance between them. He slid long fingers very slowly into the damp tangle of her hair. Fierce dark eyes searched her pale, upturned face. Heat rushed up to the surface of her fair skin.

  ‘Por dios, Sarah,’ he breathed raggedly. ‘What is it that you want from me?’

  A dull ache stirred in the pit of her stomach. The thump of her heartbeat filled her eardrums. An overpowering sexual excitement unlike anything she had ever experienced had her entrapped, preventing her from moving away. Yet she didn’t want to move away. That part of her that incredulously and finally recognised what she was feeling was instinctively greedy for the breathtaking high of awareness to continue. It brought her alive. It was heady, new and terrifying.

  A brown forefinger brushed the base of her throat where a tiny pulse was going crazy. His hand was not quite steady. She stopped breathing. Rafael was not breathing either. He was watching her with burning intensity. His other hand skated down to the shallow indentation of her spine, pulling her into the hard cradle of his pelvis. She knew she only had to say a word and he would free her but she couldn’t find that word, didn’t want to speak it. She knew that just as he knew it, her secret no longer a secret, his knowledge thrown back at her by the glittering onslaught of his narrowed stare. He lowered his dark head so gradually that she trembled before he engulfed her mouth in the scorching heat of his.

  Shock reverberated through her but shock was swiftly drowned by sensation. Her hands clenched convulsively into his broad shoulders. His tongue penetrated hotly between her lips, imitating another far more elemental possession, and the ground rocked and fell away beneath her feet. It was a savage awakening to a hunger that had no boundaries, a hunger that boldly seized and controlled.

  She was weak and dizzy, wildly disorientated, when he released her mouth and vented a stifled groan into her hair. ‘I don’t know you like this,’ he muttered roughly, angrily.

  If he had freed her immediately she would have fallen. Her legs didn’t feel as though they belonged to her any more. She was afraid to test her voice. Her body felt alien, unfamiliar. Taking a jerky step back from him, she bent her head over her bag to fumble for her key. So that’s what it is like, so that is what I was supposed to feel, she was thinking in a fever of disbelief.

  ‘I suggest that we vacate the lift,’ Rafael murmured gently.

  A minute later he reached over her shoulder and extracted the key from her shaking fingers to unlock the door. Her arm brushed against his hard, flat stomach and she flinched away from the contact, suddenly gripped by a very basic need to put as much space as possible between them.

  ‘When do you collect the children?’

  ‘I don’t. A girl on the ground floor is giving them a lift back. Her daughter’s at the same school and she’s helping at the party,’ Sarah volunteered in a strained rush, taking refuge in unnecessary detail. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get changed.’

  As she turned towards her bedroom door, a strong hand enclosed hers and tugged her relentlessly back. ‘But why should I excuse you when I can he
lp you?’ Rafael enquired in a silky soft purr.

  Her lashes fluttered in bemusement. He couldn’t possibly mean what she had thought he had meant for a crazy moment. ‘H…help me?’

  ‘Why not?’ A sunbrowned fingertip traced the tremulous curve of her swollen mouth, skimmed with aching slowness along her delicate jawbone and finally came to rest in a tiny, blue-veined hollow at the base of her slender throat. By the time he reached that point, every skin-cell in her body was behaving as though it had a life and a purpose all of its own.

  Clashing unwarily with luminescent gold challenge, she could feel her hold on reality loosening even more. ‘Don’t…’ she whispered shakily.

  ‘You speak with such conviction,’ he mocked.

  Alarm bells rang loudly in her head as his measuring gaze dropped to the prominent thrust of her small, high breasts and lingered on the pointed buds pushing against the damp cotton, damning indictments of her response to him. He was very still, dull coins of colour overlying his hard cheekbones, his breathing shallow and audible.

  ‘You say “don’t”,’ he noted in a low-pitched growl.

  A peculiar lassitude was sweeping over her. Time seemed to have slowed down to a third of its normal speed.

  ‘But I say si…I say yes,’ he completed.

  In dumb shock she watched brown fingers drop to the first button on her blouse and expertly slide it free. For an endless moment he paused and the silence became a thunderbeat of unbearable tension before he deftly moved on to the next. She was paralysed, unable to think, unable to move, unable to protest. What was happening between them was unreal. An apparently careless forefinger unhooked the front clasp of her bra. The silk dropped away and he curved a dark hand in a possessive statement over one pouting breast. Sarah shivered violently, shutting her eyes as though by denying sight she might deny all responsibility.

  With his other hand he pressed her into the invasive heat of his thighs. ‘Feel what you are doing to me,’ he invited hoarsely.

  She could not have been unaware. Against her stomach she could feel the mounting male power of him, the predatory readiness of every leashed line of his abrasively masculine body. A drowning, debilitating weakness quivered through her lower limbs. That strange and increasingly painful ache kicked hard at her stomach again. Involuntarily she leant into him for support.