by Lynne Graham
A fleeting frown touched her forehead but she did not quite connect with his meaning. His mouth had found the soft, scented valley between her breasts and all power of thought was cast into oblivion. His tongue laved a taut pink nipple, lingered, circled, teased until her fingers clawed into his tousled hair and he ended the torture, giving her what she mindlessly sought until excitement arrowed a tight, coiling message of need to the very heart of her and her nails dug protestingly into his shoulders.
He lifted his head from her swollen breasts and let his hands shape the achingly tender flesh, making her arch her spine, and sweeping down over her quivering stomach to slide tormentingly against her where she most needed to be touched. The ache inside her was intensifying, the pressure was mounting and the motion of his hand as he delicately explored the moist heat of her femininity made her sob out his name as convulsive pleasure overwhelmed her, spinning her recklessly out of control.
In the moonlight he pulled back from her, totally, magnificently male, and she rejoiced in his virile splendour like an idolatress before a golden god. As he knelt between her parted thighs, he raised her and linked her fingers round his strong brown throat. Leaning forward, he slid his hands under her hips and lifted her, holding her poised above him. With a whimper of shock, her passion-glazed eyes clashed with the savage brilliance of his.
‘I want to watch you while I love you,’ he breathed fiercely. ‘I do not want you to forget who I am.’
A smile as untamed as he was slashed his darkly handsome features as he brought her down, the compulsive heat of his mouth stifling her cry at the powerful surge of his possession. His movements were fierce and elemental, invoking an intensity of sensation that brought her to screaming point. The dance of love was more erotic and more demanding than she had ever dreamt it could be. She was abandoned, divorced from everything but the shatteringly insistent demands of her own body. There was a glorious sense of oneness, of a joining that went beyond the physical as her spine arced in ecstasy and she was engulfed by wave upon wave of shuddering release.
It took her a long time to return to reality. Rafael was no longer with her. He was silvered shadow by the open door that led out on to the balcony. The merest hint of a breeze fluttered the draperies that had been drawn back, cooling her damp skin. She shifted over to the edge of the bed in a sensual, happy daze. ‘Rafael?’
‘Go to sleep.’
Her darkened eyes clung to his hard-edged profile. ‘What are you thinking about?’ she whispered.
‘You do not want to know.’
She pressed her hot face into a cold spot on the pillow. When he made love to her, the past and the present vanished. There was no thought and no discipline strong enough to withstand what he could make her feel. He knew that now without any shadow of a doubt. Had she possessed the same ability seven years ago, their marriage might have survived.
Silent submission had not been enough to satisfy Rafael. She had not rejected him. In the end he had rejected her. And as the physical gulf had widened between them the misunderstandings had begun to multiply. Dear God, she did not feel equipped to deal with the same situation in reverse. She was stunned by the power he had over her and tonight he had used that power as a weapon against her. Neither her pride nor her principles had protected her. On his terms she had surrendered to a purely physical experience that had nothing to do with the marriage bond and even less to do with sentiment. Did that make him feel good? Her stomach turned over sickly. Did that settle the score for the blow she had once dealt to his ego? But if that was true, where was his triumph? Brooding silence did not suggest satisfaction.
‘I do want to know,’ she said defiantly.
‘It is a most exquisite irony.’ Dark eyes flicked from the disordered bed to her flushed face, his meaning explicit. ‘I was thinking back through the years. Then this might have saved us…not forever, you understand, but for a little while longer.’
‘I don’t think so.’ His cool philosophical attitude chilled her. ‘After what happened in New York—’
‘It was the tip of the iceberg,’ he cut in roughly. ‘No marriage can survive without trust and without communication.’
‘Your idea of communication was a blazing row. I didn’t find it encouraging. As for trust?’ she muttered tightly. ‘Trust is something that has to be earned.’
‘Is it really? I loved you and I married you. What more did you want?’
‘Big deal,’ Sarah quipped.
‘Si…yes, for me it was a very big deal; it was the most important commitment I would ever make to another human being.’
‘I can remember you strolling in at dawn without a single word of explanation.’
‘Did you ask where I had been? No!’ he snapped.
‘If you’re trying to excuse yourself—’
‘For what?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘For stopping to give first aid to the victim of a road crash? For spending hours waiting for les flics to take my statement as a witness?’
Sarah had paled. ‘You saw an accident?’
‘What use is it to talk of this now? It is unimportant.’
It was not unimportant to Sarah. For her that night had been a milestone at the brow of what looked like an exceedingly slippery slope. She could remember the days before her father had taken a flat in the city, the last-minute cancellations, the late arrivals, but most of all she could remember her mother’s silence, the absolute insistence on behaving as though nothing had happened. For the first time she appreciated that she had distrusted Rafael long before he gave her any cause for suspicion. Her belief that he would inevitably betray her had been there right from the start.
‘Or is it? Now in your eyes we are equal,’ he gibed, his eyes glittering intensely over the pale oval of her face. ‘You are still my wife though you have slept with other men. But I should not be mentioning this fact when we have lived apart. It is fashionable to cultivate the short memory, es verdad? It is conventional to pretend indifference—’
‘Rafael—’ she broke in.
‘Crude and positively medieval of me to be thinking that that beautiful pale skin of yours carries more fingerprints now than a police file!’ he completed rawly. ‘No me gusta…I don’t like it. And don’t tell me that I do not have the right not to like it! I still don’t like it. I don’t accept it. I will not deny what I feel.’
His naked candour was shocking, oddly touching on some level that she flatly refused to probe inside herself. She could not fathom how he did it but guilt was surging up on her out of nowhere. She fought off a compulsion to tell the truth. After all, she had not told a lie in the first place. The ensuing complications were not her responsibility, were they?
‘Do you ever wonder how I felt in the same situation?’ she enquired unsteadily.
A lean hand made a fierce gesture of repudiation. ‘It is not the same! In no way is it the same! You didn’t want me any more. You wanted me to leave. You made that clear long before I went to New York.’
How could he have believed that? Was that how he had really felt? Rafael, so strong, so innately sure of himself? She was hit hard by the realisation that he had described exactly how she had felt and thought five years ago. The comparison, resurrecting as it did the anguish of rejection, anger and pain, was very disturbing. It was so difficult for her to believe that Rafael might have experienced anything similar. For so long she had lived with a picture of him swinging on his heel and walking away with little more than a backward glance, relieved to have his freedom back. Only now did she see that that had always been an unrealistic picture. Nobody as emotional as Rafael could possibly be that shallow.
‘I’m going out.’ Before she could speak, he strode into the dressing-room. Cupboard doors opened and slammed, drawers were rifled. She could see him through the ajar door. He was hauling on a pair of paint-stained jeans. Somebody had obviously made a most praiseworthy attempt to hide them. There was something inexplicably vulnerable about the long, golden-brown sweep of his b
She sat up and sighed. ‘There haven’t been any other men.’
A broad shoulder lifted in an infinitesimal shrug of indifference as he pulled on a shirt. ‘No importa.’
‘I never said that there were.’ Sarah was resisting a very powerful urge to throw something large and heavy at him. ‘You thought up the idea all on your own.’
‘I think what you wanted me to think.’
‘Well, perhaps a part of me did want you to think that for a while,’ Sarah confessed awkwardly. ‘But I don’t want you to think it any more.’
‘And I don’t want your lies!’ It was a contemptuous dismissal.
‘For the last time,’ she snapped, ‘I am telling you the truth.’
He released a derisive laugh. ‘You must think me a fool.’
Sarah nodded in furious agreement. ‘Yes, I am starting to think that. I’m also beginning to wonder why it should matter so much to you.’
He thrust long fingers through his thick black hair, his strong features hard and taut. ‘You would not understand.’
She swallowed hard. ‘I could try.’
‘But I don’t want you to try.’
It was a shock to come up against that brick wall. The door thudded softly shut on his departure and she lay down again, feeling as though he had slapped her in the face. She was shaken, badly shaken by his disbelief. Rafael had never doubted her word before. Rafael had always trusted her and until this moment she had not appreciated just how horrible it felt not to be trusted any more.
* * *
She awoke late the next morning to the blinding sunlight flooding through the windows. She had dozed on and off throughout the remainder of the night. Rafael had not returned and she had worked through the stages of annoyance and worry before succumbing to a deep sense of hurt rejection. She felt raw and bruised. Last night, for her at least, had been special, or so it had seemed until she refused to go back to sleep and did what she had never used to do with Rafael when he was in a dark mood—ask questions. Obviously there was an art to such tentative advances, an art or perhaps, she conceded painfully, an influence that she just didn’t have.
After showering and washing her hair, she pulled out a matching cerise top and skirt and wrinkled her nose at her unexciting reflection. Funny that it should take her until now to concede that Karen’s nagging had not been without cause. Her wardrobe was uninspiring. Very practical, though. Everything went with everything else, everything washed. When had she become so safe and sensible? For a couple of years in Truro she had at least experimented with different styles but after a while the fun had gone out of it and she had had other more pressing concerns. Letitia’s illness had taken priority. Her face shadowed at the memory.
Consuelo greeted her in the hall. ‘Buenas dias, senora. You would like breakfast?’
A table awaited her in a charming, sunlit inner courtyard. The air was heavy with the scent of roses and hibiscus. A maid brought her brioches and hot chocolate and a bowl of choice fruits. ‘Where are the children?’ Sarah asked.
‘Los ninos are with Don Rafael in the studio, senora.’
This I have got to see, Sarah promised herself, but she lingered over her meal, unconsciously revelling in the first peaceful and leisurely breakfast she had enjoyed in years. Stealing a last succulent grape, she was rising from her chair when Consuelo walked out on to the patio.
‘Dona Isabel asks that you visit her, senora.’ The housekeeper had the uneasy look of someone delivering a royal command. ‘In the afternoon, she must rest. You will come now, por favor?’
‘Of course.’ Sarah hid her dismay behind a strained smile. ‘I hope that—er—Dona Isabel is feeling better today?’
‘She is still weak,’ Consuelo responded with warmth. ‘But this morning, when the little ones come to see her, she is much brighter than she has been.’
So Gilly and Ben had already met their great-grandmother. Between them Rafael and his staff were making her feel pretty superfluous as a mother. The next item on his agenda would probably be a nanny, she thought tautly. Her close ties with the children would be undermined even more. Was she being unfair to Rafael? Did he regard her presence in this house as permanent? Dully recalling his chilling withdrawal the night before, she decided that she was wise to feel insecure.
Consuelo led her up a rear stone stair and into another wing. It was distinctly different from what she had so far seen of the rest of the house. They passed through a door and the wide, airy spaces and soaring ceilings were left behind in favour of long dark-panelled corridors with uneven floors and walls hung with family portraits which she would have liked to examine. Unfortunately the housekeeper’s steps were brisk. Dona Isabel, she deduced, did not like to be kept waiting.
Consuelo rapped lightly on a low-lintelled door. It was opened by a woman in a crisp white nursing tunic and Sarah was ushered in.
‘You may go, Alice.’ A tart voice emanated from the utilitarian hospital bed so at variance with the elegantly furnished room. ‘If I require your services, I’ll ring for you.’
The nurse withdrew with pronounced reluctance.
‘Come over here where I can see you properly,’ Sarah was urged. ‘You’re standing in the sunlight.’
‘You speak very good English.’ Sarah spoke the thought out loud without realising it, staring helplessly at the gaunt old lady raking her up and down with faded but sharp blue eyes.
‘My father was a diplomat in London for many years,’ Dona Isabel informed her. ‘Please sit down. People who stand over me make me dizzy.’
Sarah took the chair by the bed and withstood an unapologetically thorough appraisal.
‘Rafael is no woman’s fool.’ There was reluctant approval in his grandmother’s critical gaze. ‘You look like a lady.’
Involuntarily Sarah smiled. ‘Appearances can be deceptive.’
‘At my age, I’m not easily deceived,’ Dona Isabel responded drily. ‘I would like to ask why you parted from my grandson but you are together again with the children. That is all that should concern me.’ She paused. ‘No doubt you are curious to know why this should concern me. Rafael cannot have failed to have told you how this family treated him.’
Sarah met the challenging stare levelly. ‘He hasn’t.’
The old lady rested back against the banked-up pillows. The frail hand that gripped the raised bed-rail was the only sign of her tension. ‘I must try to explain our behaviour.’
‘That isn’t necessary,’ Sarah said uncomfortably.
‘I disagree. I lie here remembering what I did and what I didn’t do. My conscience—it troubles me even now,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘Once we were a happy, united family. Felipe and I had three sons. One was a blessing, one was a curse and one a nonentity. Que? You speak?’
Sarah moved her head in urgent negative, having stifled a gasp over the blunt maternal dismissal of Ramon. As the sole surviving son, he was no more popular with his parent for lack of competition.
‘Antonio was the eldest and we adored him. Toni was like the sunshine…everyone loved him.’ Although her attention remained fixed on Sarah, there was a faraway look in the old lady’s lined features. ‘Toni was irreplaceable…’
As the silence lengthened, Sarah moistened her dry lips. ‘And Rafael’s father?’
‘Marcos.’ The sunken eyes shut for an instant as if to ward off images that brought pain. ‘He was always in trouble even as a child. He was very jealous of Toni. He cost us a fortune when we were not so privileged as we are now. Felipe could not control him. Yet he had charm, tremendous charm when he wanted to use it. He seduced the girl whom Toni loved. He didn’t want her. He did it to hurt Toni,’ she shared harshly. ‘Marcos liked to break things. Look at Lucia now, bitter, so bitter and unpleasant…poor Lucia. She was passionately in love with Marcos. I still pity her.’
‘Lucia?’ Sarah prompted, certain she had lost the thread. ‘Ramon’s wife?’
‘I’m sorry.’ But as Sarah spoke she swiftly met her error in the old lady’s daunting stare of aloof enquiry.
‘He married the gypsy when he was dying of his injuries in hospital. She was many months pregnant. He married her out of malice.’
‘Malice?’ Sarah queried.
‘Without our knowledge, Toni had had some contact with Marcos. Marcos knew that Toni had leukaemia; he knew that Toni’s chances of survival were small and that his child, be it boy or girl, would come before Ramon to take all that should have been Toni’s had he lived.’ The thin voice was jagged, ravaged by the strain of relating tragedy with proud detachment. ‘Toni had a long period of remission. We learnt to hope but it was not to be. He died the same year that Rafael came to us. Perhaps we would have reacted differently had we discovered his existence sooner. But we did not. We knew nothing of the marriage. Rafael was delivered to us like a parcel. He had Marcos’s eyes and they accused us. Felipe could not bear to look at him.’
‘So you handed him over to Ramon and Lucia.’ Sarah felt sick, too sick to hide how she felt. She saw it all now. Lucia, cruelly jilted and humiliated by Rafael’s father, Ramon suddenly deprived of his status as next in line by a child nephew.
‘Ramon agreed. Someone had to take charge of him,’ Dona Isabel said defensively but she could not meet Sarah’s pained scrutiny. Her thin fingers tightened convulsively on the bed-rail. ‘I was still grieving for Toni. Rafael made me feel guilty. It was easier to turn my back and pretend he didn’t exist. Felipe…he was so certain that he could not be Marcos’s child…and yet I knew…I knew,’ she muttered in a distressed undertone.
Sarah’s mouth tightened and she drew in a slow, deep breath.
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