by Lynne Graham
‘Por que? Will you put a curse on me if I disobey?’ Lucia surveyed Sarah with cruelly amused contempt. ‘Beware. Rafael is more gypsy than Santovena. He used to light a candle before he would get on a plane. Gypsies are very superstitious, very backward. They live by lies and deception. Education, as you must see with Rafael before you, is wasted on them.’
‘Yours didn’t do much for you,’ Sarah commented before she could bite back her spleen.
Unexpectedly, Rafael flung back his dark head and laughed with rich appreciation. ‘Beware, Lucia. My wife is not so quiet as she looks.’
Ugly colour lit Lucia’s gaunt bone-structure. ‘Why do you not thank us for what we did for Rafael?’ she demanded of Sarah. ‘When he came to Alcazar he was a dirty little savage. He stole food and hoarded it like an animal. He was violent, he threatened me with a knife—’
‘Because you beat me.’ Rafael said it so very softly that Sarah almost missed the insertion. His aunt’s face set into a blank mask. He lifted his wine glass. ‘I believe we have heard enough of the civilising of the little savage. Save it for your charity conventions, Lucia.’
The older woman rose abruptly to her feet. She said something vicious in her own language, flung down her napkin and stalked out of the room. Silence spread in her wake. Ramon stood up, flushed and tight-mouthed. ‘I must offer you both my most fervent apologies. Madre’s illness has put Lucia under great strain,’ he proffered without conviction. ‘Perdonme but I must go to her. Buenas noches.’
‘Buenas noches,’ Sarah managed, noting the almost pleading slither of Ramon’s sad spaniel eyes in Rafael’s direction.
‘Buenas noches, Ramon.’ There was an ironic edge to his intonation.
The scene had upset Sarah. Her stomach had taken a nasty somersault when she’d finally appreciated that Ramon and Lucia were the aunt and uncle once given the responsibility of bringing Rafael up. Ramon was weak, utterly beneath Lucia’s controlling thumb. And Sarah had seen more than malice in Lucia’s eyes, she had seen cold hatred. Her imagination shrank from picturing an embittered Lucia thrust unwillingly into the role of substitute mother. Conscious that she herself was shaken, she glanced searchingly at Rafael. Resting indolently back into his heavily carved chair, Rafael had the slumbrous attitude of a well-fed tiger.
‘You could have been kinder to Ramon,’ she heard herself say.
‘Why? He can control neither his wife nor his son. He should not have brought Lucia here,’ Rafael countered. ‘Do not mistake his loyalty. Ramon is very much Lucia’s satellite.’
Sarah chewed uneasily at her lower lip. ‘Evidently your cousin Caterina is the only member of the family to fall into a different category.’
‘Si. Caterina and I are very close.’ Dark eyes rested on her impassively. ‘We are sure to see her before the end of the summer.’
Tension fuelled by sudden suspicion was a steel wire through her body. She was ashamed of the direction her thoughts were taking and suddenly keen to escape Rafael’s disturbingly acute scrutiny. ‘It’s late and it’s been a very long day. I think I’ll go to bed.’
Rafael smiled, a lazy smile that nevertheless had some elusive quality that increased her unease. Before she could rise, he murmured, ‘Momento, Sarah. I have a sudden desire to hear about Gordon. Don’t rush away.’
‘What about Gordon?’ To her annoyance, she sounded defensive, and then the proverbial penny dropped and her complexion stained with colour. ‘I gather Gilly has been chattering.’
‘Did you sleep with him that night?’ The question was flicked at her with the utmost casualness.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t grill Gilly about that as well!’
‘Cristo, what sort of a father do you think I am?’ he demanded with raw distaste. ‘I questioned her about nothing. It was she who questioned me. She was disturbed by what she saw and, whatever else you did that night, you should have dealt more sympathetically with the child.’
The development of the dialogue had taken an unexpected turn that Sarah was ill prepared for. ‘Perhaps I would have, if I’d known there was a problem, but she was asleep when he left and she didn’t mention it to me again! And I’ve had a lot of other things to worry about over the last few days.’
‘Bueno, but I still await an answer to my original question,’ Rafael breathed impatiently. ‘You could not give me a straight reply. That is always your way, Sarah. The truth is either to be avoided or ignored. I tell you now, that is not how this marriage will work this time.’
Sarah was angry, hurt and confused all at the same time. ‘Do you think I did?’
He did not pretend to misunderstand her. ‘You might have done. Angry women are not always wise in the methods of retaliation they employ. You were very angry with me and if he was already your lover I would not say it was beyond the bounds of possibility.’
Sarah was furious. ‘Thank you for the vote of confidence! I’m not in the habit of using my body to strike back at another man. And Gordon is not and has never been my lover.’
‘Muchas gracias, gatita,’ he murmured gently. ‘Did that hurt so much? Esta bien. We have disposed of Gordon. This is fortunate. He was not a very interesting individual.’
Sarah stiffened. ‘He wants to marry me.’
Rafael shook her by bursting out laughing. He studied her quizzically. ‘A more unlikely candidate for bigamy I have yet to meet.’
‘I don’t find that particularly funny,’ she said tartly, although she had to fight to keep her mouth compressed. ‘I’m going to bed.’
His black spiky lashes cast tiny shadows on his hard cheekbones in the candlelight. ‘Would I keep a woman from her bed?’ he mocked.
Sarah climbed the magnificent staircase slowly, still reeling from Rafael’s volatile ability to swing from brooding cool to sudden amusement. She was annoyed when Caterina swam back into her thoughts like an albatross in search of a neck. He was close to his cousin…well, why not? He must have been grateful to have one friend in this household.
In the forlorn hope of distracting herself, she decided to take advantage of the decadent bath adjoining her bedroom. After her nap earlier, she wasn’t tired enough to retire to bed. As she slid into the caressing warmth of the water a little while later, her rebellious thoughts marched on.
Lucia loathed Rafael. Could money alone create such sheer hatred? By any normal standards, Ramon and Lucia were very rich in their own right. Had Lucia been exaggerating when she accused Rafael of destroying her daughter’s marriage? Could Rafael and Caterina have had an affair? Or was she becoming paranoid? Paranoid was highly probable, she conceded in self-disgust. Look at the fuss she had made about Suzanne! The lady’s husband had been in residence as well. At the time the information had been a minor consolation but in a cooler frame of mind Sarah knew that she had no right to question Rafael’s lifestyle when she had severed their relationship by embarking on a divorce.
Unfortunately reason and actual feelings, she discovered, were frequently a very poor match. The thought of Rafael with another woman hurt her unbearably. It was a gut response and not one she wanted to feel. For so long she had lived with loving Rafael but when he had been out of her life that love hadn’t threatened her, it hadn’t made any demands of her, and she had been one step removed from the pain in her detachment. But it wasn’t like that now. Emotion was controlling her and unless she was very careful it would betray her again as it had in London. And tonight she felt vulnerable, very vulnerable.
Never again would she need to wonder why Rafael had no respect for family connections and why he had not understood her own conflicting loyalties. He had come here at seven years old and from that day on he had been fighting for survival in an enemy camp. The Santovenas could never have been anything but a threat to him and in the light of what she now knew it was hardly surprising that he had made not the smallest attempt to improve her parents’ view of him. He had had no time for them at all and it was that utter indifference which had so enraged her father
.
But then Charles Southcott was very small beans to a male who had grown up against a backdrop like this, she acknowledged, annoyance licking through her again. If anything, Rafael had taken pleasure in emphasising his total unsuitability as a husband.
‘Not in bed yet?’
She hadn’t heard the soft click of the door and her eyes flew wide. In a single driven movement, she leapt upright and grabbed a towel, hauling it frantically round her dripping body. ‘Get out of here!’
Hot golden eyes were wandering slowly and quite unashamedly over the gleaming wet curves exposed by the inadequately sized towel. ‘Sarah…’ he breathed huskily in an entirely different tone as he leant back against the door to close it. ‘Stay where you are.’
She scrambled out of the bath. ‘Open that door!’
In answer, Rafael shrugged fluidly out of his jacket, letting it lie where it fell in open challenge. An impatient hand reached up to jerk loose his bow-tie, an explicitly intent quality to his heated gaze. ‘I have dreamed of you in that bath…’
‘I’m warning you, Rafael.’
‘Of what do you warn me?’ He dropped the tie and embarked ruthlessly on the studs of his white silk dress shirt. ‘Surprise me instead. I like surprises,’ he murmured provocatively.
‘Will you stop taking your clothes off?’ Sarah lost her battle for icy dignity and screeched, seriously alarmed when a muscular wedge of bronzed chest sprinkled with black, curling hair swam into view.
‘You want me to get into the water clothed?’
‘If I were a man, I’d throw you in that bath!’ Sarah raged.
The last stud surrendered. ‘You do not need to throw me. I come willingly…with enthusiasm,’ he stressed.
‘I am not sharing that bath with you!’
‘You are a puritan. Don’t worry. We can overcome this problem.’ His sudden slashing grin radiated megawatts of inherent charm and the sort of ruthless determination that took Hannibal over the Alps.
For a split second she was transfixed by the powerful charge of his attraction. For a split second, he could have persuaded her to slow waltz on hot coals. After a staggered pause, she shot back, ‘I’m a very angry woman and I want you to leave!’
‘To go where?’ Rafael was giving the bath a nakedly regretful scrutiny.
‘To your own room, where else?’ She took advantage of his stillness and slid past him to jerk open the door and move into the bedroom.
‘You are in my room. I could always draw a chalk line down the centre of the bed. It would be like old times.’
Sarah swung round and almost overbalanced. ‘Your room? I’m not going to share this room with you!’
‘You will. We’re not having separate rooms,’ he asserted fiercely, all mockery banished by the look of horror on her face. ‘For years we have lived apart but now we are reconciled—’
‘I’m not reconciled with you!’ Sarah interrupted furiously. ‘I’m not one bit reconciled to what you did to me five years ago and I’m never going to be, either!’
‘I have as much cause to feel the same,’ he countered harshly. ‘But of what profit is it to us now? Sex is not a weapon, gatita, and I will not allow you to use it as one.’
Beneath her enraged stare, he strode back into the bathroom. Sarah dropped the towel and dived for her nightdress, feeling decidedly less exposed within its full-length folds. The early hours of the morning were not the best time for a confrontation. Tomorrow she would speak to Consuelo. No way was she sharing this room. And as for that bed? Birds would be singing in the heat of hellfire before she repeated that fatal error! Her attention fixed on the well-padded chaise longue to the left of the window. She trailed the bedspread off the bed and returned for a pillow.
Fury sparking through her, she battered the pillow into shape and curled up in her makeshift bed. How dared he make advances to her after what he had said in London? How dared he? Dear God, what did it take to satisfy him? They were here in Spain. Wasn’t that enough? She was reluctant to recall the ominous threats he had made in her apartment. He could not in cold blood drag her into that bed. In fact nobody was more aware than she that a marked lack of enthusiasm was all it took to hold Rafael at bay. There had to be certain ground rules in a situation like this and Rafael had to be made to realise that.
She had come here under pressure. On her terms, she had made a lot more than a compromise. Nowhere had she seen it underwritten that with their arrival a marriage that had fallen apart years ago was suddenly to be resurrected from the dead, regardless of how she felt about it! So much for the properly bloodless relationship he had talked about! It was her considered belief that someone of Rafael’s temperament had about as much hope of observing proper behaviour as an alien set down on planet earth.
Sex…she hated that word, hated the casual connotations she could not help attaching to it. Well, she was not a casual person and it was about time he realised that. Just because something that had always gone wrong had miraculously gone right in London was no reason to commit herself to a repeat experiment.
He reappeared, naked but for a carelessly knotted towel hung low on his lean hips. If all else failed, she reflected abstractedly with a suddenly dry mouth, she could always just sit and look at him. Caught red-handed on what was a very sexist thought, Sarah was both amused and shocked by herself. It belatedly occurred to her that in a funny way she was enjoying herself in this battle of wits. And since Rafael did not have a naturally modest bone in his body she read the towel as both concession and retreat.
A second later, she appreciated her mistake. Rafael bent down, scooped her up and dumped her back on the bed. He sent the towel sailing through the air and pinned her flat when she attempted to get up again.
‘That is a hideous nightdress. It would repel nine out of ten men,’ Rafael pronounced thoughtfully. ‘But I am still seeing you in the towel, that so very small towel. This is wasted on me.’
Resentment hurtled through Sarah. Rafael wasn’t playing fair. She could not fight his superior strength. ‘Is holding me down on a bed one more interesting facet of what you called a civilised marriage?’
‘Sarah,’ he reproached. ‘Surely you do not expect me to be civilised twenty-four hours out of every day? You told me you were a reasonable woman.’
‘This is not my idea of a relationship, Rafael.’
‘But we are still finding this relationship,’ he pointed out speciously.
‘All right, if you want it in simple English, I am not in the mood for another experiment!’ she snapped.
‘Tonight…’ His thumb moved caressingly over the sensitive inner skin of her wrist ‘…we make love, we do not experiment, and tomorrow, I paint.’
‘P…paint?’ Involuntarily, Sarah seized on the irrelevancy.
His dark head swooped down, his mouth pressing hotly to the tiny pulse flickering crazily beneath his thumb. ‘You have interfered with my concentration,’ he muttered absently.
An astonishing shiver of awakening awareness snaked through her lower limbs. It took tremendous strength of will to lie rigid. ‘If there was anything heavy within reach, your concentration would be the least of your problems.’ But her quip was shaky and indistinct. Something unforgivable had happened to her own concentration.
‘I like it when you argue with me.’ Rafael gazed down at her with eyes the sensuous shade of wild honey and that treacherous something gave a violent lurch in the pit of her stomach. ‘But not tonight.’
Without conscious intent her muscles were losing tension, easing into the gradually lowering embrace of his hard, virile body. Self-discipline slid, awareness creeping in. Her nostrils flared, reacting to the familiar, drugging scent of him and an elusive warmth began stealing through her. ‘No.’
‘De acuerdo,’ he murmured, choosing to misinterpret her entirely.
She stared up at him dazedly and somewhere inside her head a little voice of reason was screaming itself hoarse behind a locked door. Once again she could barely c
redit what was happening to her. He was barely touching her and her breasts were swelling, heat pooling in her pelvis. He carried her hand to his lips and the tip of his tongue very slowly inscribed an erotic tracery on her palm. It had the most extraordinary effect on her, a low moan breaking at the back of her throat. He brought his mouth teasingly close to hers and let his tongue dip in a single, hungry thrust between her parted lips in a caress that was sweeter than honey, headier than wine and her slender length jackknifed upward, inviting his weight.
‘You see,’ Rafael whispered softly. ‘Alcohol is not necessary.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
RAFAEL rolled sideways, carrying Sarah with him, heat and hunger blatant in the blaze of his eyes as he bound her to him with possessive hands. She could have lost herself in that moment as she slid deeper beneath the powerful spell he could cast. The air between them pulsed with emotional intensity and the unbearable tension jerked up another notch.
‘Touch me,’ he invited raggedly.
Warmth flooded her cheeks as he found her hand and spread her fingers. ‘I can’t,’ she gasped strickenly.
His mouth scorched hers like a burning brand, demanding and receiving her response, sending little tongues of flame through her weakened limbs. Her hand fanned over his lean, bronzed torso, feeling the wild thunder of his heartbeat and the enticing dampness of his skin. Her nightdress was tangled round her hips, forcing her into contact with his hair-roughened thighs. The muscles of his hard, flat stomach contracted violently beneath her roaming fingers and she jerked her hand away, reviling her own clumsiness.
‘Perdicion,’ Rafael groaned as if he was in agony.
His hands bit into her hips, a Spanish curse blistering her ears when he became twisted in the folds of her nightdress. The offending garment was dealt with mercilessly and his urgency melted her bones to water. Connecting with a broad shoulder in the darkness, she pressed her lips feverishly to the lure of his flesh.
Rafael reacted by flattening her to the mattress. ‘Por dios, he did not teach you so much.’ Primal satisfaction laced every syllable.
