by Lynne Graham
That was the closest thing to a promising suggestion he had made in two weeks. She looked at him hopefully but it was very obvious as the smile slid away that he was not thinking along the same lines.
‘Do you know why I came here tonight?’
‘Abuela embarrassed you into coming. It’s all right,’ he dismissed wryly. ‘I am not angry about it.’
He was anything but pleased about it though and she hid a smile. ‘I intended to tell you that I was…well, that I was agreeable to…’ Already she was losing the thread, suddenly plunged into tongue-tied inadequacy at the fear that he very possibly might not want the assurances she planned to give.
‘Agreeable to what?’
‘To having a normal marriage…to trying again. I only needed some time to think the idea over.’ It wasn’t quite coming out with the flavour she had intended.
‘So you thought it over. That was very sensible of you,’ he conceded flatly, unappreciative of the news. ‘But then that is you. It is not me. You would not want to be guilty of haste or enthusiasm but then it is obvious that you do not feel this is necessary. What did I pass on?’
Sarah was studying him bemusedly. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘While you were for two weeks weighing up whether or not you would stay? Surely I entered these pros and cons somewhere?’ Golden eyes were pinned to her with restrained fury. ‘Two weeks, it takes you. It didn’t take me twenty-four hours to make the same decision!’
Sarah swallowed hard, unable to understand why on earth he should be angry. ‘But as you pointed out a minute ago, I am not you. If you must know, it never occurred to me that I had the choice of not staying unless I planned to return to England without Gilly and Ben.’
He stared at her, a blaze of emotion in his brilliant eyes. ‘Leave them out of this!’
Sarah belatedly grasped what had infuriated him and she wasn’t surrendering, no way was she! He didn’t like the idea that she might be staying solely for the twins’ benefit. On the other hand, he hadn’t balked at dragging her all the way to Spain and keeping her yoked to the same humiliating belief. ‘You weighed heavily in the pros and cons.’
‘I do not want to be weighed like a sack of grain,’ he flashed back at her rawly. ‘I do not weigh you.’
Sarah could see a roaring attack of artistic temperament threatening on the horizon and as she absorbed the driven tension tautening his lean, powerful length, she registered, finally understood on a surge of disbelief that what she felt for him was of such overwhelming importance that he was painfully and unmistakably bracing himself for words that would hurt, words that would wound. Her heart turned over inside her breast and did a double back-flip for good measure. Suddenly she felt incredibly generous.
‘Why do you think I’m wearing this stupid dress? I came here to—er—seduce you,’ she confided tensely.
‘Que?’ he muttered, shaken by the announcement.
‘I thought a drink might help. I hadn’t quite thought out ways and means and when it comes down to it I’m really not that sure what I’m supposed to do,’ she admitted curtly, a stricken look in her eyes.
Rafael was breathing shallowly, rather like someone who had raced up a hill expecting to find a spectacularly rewarding view only to find it blocked at the very last minute. ‘You want to go to bed with me,’ he translated fiercely. ‘As if I was just anybody?’
Sarah was stunned, momentarily quite bemused by this disconcerting response. But as the full force of his derision hit her, it was absolutely the last straw. Anger and pain roared through her in a blaze as she leapt upright. ‘Right now, just anybody sounds a lot more tempting!’ she told him furiously. ‘How can you be so blind? I wouldn’t dream of going to bed with you if I didn’t love you! I wouldn’t do it to keep you and I wouldn’t do it even to keep the children. It takes more than a couple of glasses of wine to make me forget my principles. It takes you, and if you think I’m pleased about that, you’re crazy!’
CHAPTER TEN
‘THAT’S a hell of a way to tell me that you love me,’ Rafael breathed hoarsely.
Maddeningly aware that instead of slapping him down hard she had inexplicably strayed into doing exactly the opposite by betraying herself, Sarah was, if anything, even more furious than she had been a moment earlier. ‘You had your chance and you blew it!’ she told him wrathfully. ‘And don’t you ever dare to refer to this again. As far as I’m concerned, tonight never happened!’
‘But why should we want to forget it?’ A brilliant smile had transformed his dark features. ‘After all, I am also in love with you.’
‘I suppose it just sneaked up on you a second ago!’
‘Por dios, querida—I love you!’ he declared fiercely.
‘I suppose that’s why you’ve been sleeping down here, treating me like a piece of furniture or something…’ Her throat was closing over, clogged with tears and bitterness and a whole host of other emotions, a desperate desire to believe in him, rigorously thrust by fear to the very bottom of the pile.
‘Or someone whom I cannot be near ever without wanting to touch,’ he completed softly. ‘You said you didn’t want me.’
‘I thought you were in love with someone else.’
‘Who is this someone else?’
‘How should I know?’ It was an embarrassed wail. ‘When I asked you what would happen if you did fall in love, you looked sort of…well, you looked like you were hiding something.’
‘Of course I was hiding something! How do you think it felt for you to ask such a question as if it didn’t matter a damn to you?’ he demanded. ‘It hurt because I loved you. Sarah,’ he said her name achingly as though he savoured every syllable individually and her lower limbs went weak but she fought off the sensation in panic.
‘I want to believe you, but—’
‘No but.’ A forefinger rested reprovingly against her tremulous lips. ‘I am willing to spend the rest of my life proving it beyond a doubt. In England, I told you that the very first night I knew what I would do. I knew I still loved you and I didn’t want to admit it.’ He was winding a set of very determined arms round her and wonderful floaty feelings were interfering drastically with her concentration. ‘But all I could think about was this man with his hands on you.’
‘What about that creature pawing you at the party?’ Sarah gasped, not so easily silenced.
‘I am not in the habit of being pawed in public.’ A dark flush had settled on his cheekbones. ‘Now, it sounds very childish but I was not sorry that you should see that another woman should find me attractive. It was pride, it was–’
‘Disgusting,’ Sarah supplied pitilessly but she was reassured.
Disorientatingly, he grinned down at her. ‘Your feelings showed and I couldn’t understand why it should bother you. It made me think, it made me follow you home—’
‘You followed Gordon’s car?’
‘I didn’t think about what I was doing and your reactions to me were very confusing,’ he murmured tautly. ‘And then Gilly came in and after that, for me it is just a blank that evening. I don’t even remember what I said. I was devastated.’
Sarah was discovering that the Armani sweater was worn next to bare skin. Her hands had crept beneath the welt to smooth covetously over warm, hair-roughened flesh. Satisfyingly, he shuddered against her. His fingers suddenly meshed into her silky hair, jerking her head back so that his mouth could possess hers with a voracious hunger and unleashed restraint that threatened to knock her off her feet. Breathing hard, he released her bruised lips and muttered something fiercely apologetic in Spanish.
‘Twice, we have made love,’ he groaned. ‘And twice, I have lost control and behaved like an uncivilised brute. This time, it won’t be like that.’
‘You lost control? I thought you were experimenting.’
He swept her up in his arms with a grin. ‘I thought you were experimenting with me. I nearly took you in the hall, I was so incredibly excited.’ He frowned, tensed. ‘This
‘Wonderful,’ she whispered in urgent contradiction against his cheek. ‘Say it again. You can be as uncivilised as you like.’
He deposited her on a single bed in a bare, almost monastic little room. He smoothed her rucked skirt very carefully down over her slim thighs. ‘This cocktail I mixed has gone straight to your head. I do not think I should share this bed with you tonight.’
‘Why not?’ Snatched cruelly from her haze of wonderfully wanton anticipation, she clutched a handful of his sweater to keep him beside her.
‘Tomorrow, you may feel I took advantage of you. I can wait.’ Wildly impatient and hungry dark eyes slammed into hers and hurriedly veiled. ‘I can give you time. This is not as important as you think to me. You must be very sure that this is what you want.’
‘I want you.’ Dampness stinging her eyelids, she blinked fiercely. ‘I want you so much.’
‘Enamorada…te quiero, te quiero,’ he intoned raggedly, accepting her invitation with an exciting lack of restraint.
He had taught her of pleasure that teased and pleasure that burned and this time he taught her of pleasure that had no limits, pleasure that went on and on and on until she cried out his name, caught up and controlled by the storm of passion and flung gloriously over the edge of the horizon.
He was covering her hot face with kisses when she recovered, talking in a riveting mix of Spanish and English, and there was a lot about how much he loved her, how he couldn’t bear to live without her, how he would never let her out of his sight again. It was heaven, absolute heaven. She lay there drinking it all in, dazed, exhilarated, punch drunk on the amazing knowledge that he was hers, absolutely, irrevocably hers, retrieved at the eleventh hour from the very jaws of death…or whatever you called all those ravenous other women out there, she reflected, feeling a lot more charitable towards those faceless hordes. No competition now.
‘In the morning, we can fly to Madrid,’ he murmured between slightly less teasing kisses, a communicable tension in his hard, muscular length.
‘Madrid?’
‘We have a townhouse there.’ He met her still-dreaming eyes with just the smallest hint of apprehension. ‘Caterina lives and works in Madrid. I would like you to meet her.’
‘Can’t it wait a day or two?’
‘Caterina is not the type to intrude.’ He was practically telepathic in interpreting her lukewarm response and she felt instantly mean and over-possessive. ‘The children can stay here and join us later in the week if they miss us.’
‘If?’ she queried.
‘Our children are very self-sufficient.’
There was no arguing with fact. ‘What age is your cousin?’ she asked curiously.
‘Two years my senior.’
‘She’s divorced, isn’t she?’
He sighed. ‘About eight years ago, she let Lucia browbeat her into marrying a very rich American. She is not like her mother and Lucia has always given her a hard time. Gerry wasn’t much better for her ego. He beat her up regularly.’
‘Oh, lord,’ Sarah breathed in horror.
‘Early in their marriage, his violence cost her the child she was carrying. She had a nervous breakdown,’ Rafael volunteered. ‘She recovered but Lucia didn’t want her to get a divorce. Not only was there the question of religion but also the loss of Gerry’s money. Caterina had signed a pre-nuptial contract. In the event of a divorce, she got virtually nothing. When she confided in me, I persuaded her to leave Gerry. I gave her the strength to do it.’
‘I’m glad. Thank goodness she did listen to you.’ Sarah was warmly sympathetic. ‘Lucia really is a horror, isn’t she?’
* * *
They flew to Madrid on a company jet. Sarah was feeling happy, so happy that she was almost afraid. She had that ‘on a roller-coaster’ sensation and it was a very long time since she had last let her emotions control her to that extent.
‘I ought to tell you about my years in Truro.’ A rueful smile curved her mouth. ‘We shouldn’t have any secrets from each other.’
It seemed to her that Rafael became marginally less at ease within seconds. In fact, come to think of it—and she didn’t really want to think of it—he might be lounging in a relaxed fashion but ever since they had climbed aboard the jet there had been an odd indefinable tension in the atmosphere, a tension that for some reason best known to himself he was working hard to conceal.
‘But you have nothing to explain to me,’ he sighed. ‘I was very much in the wrong and I had no right to speak to you as I did. It was wondrously generous of you to tell me the truth.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘You did believe me?’
‘You have always told me the truth but I am very stubborn when an idea becomes fixed in my head,’ he acknowledged, tawny eyes resting on her with faint amusement. ‘I am also very jealous and I had never had to be jealous of you before. It did me no harm. Now you can tell me about Truro.’
He was very quiet and low-key. Her brow furrowed. What was wrong with him? And then she felt awful, really awful for forgetting how he felt about flying. Bless him, she thought guiltily, he still hadn’t got over that phobia and he was predictably set on being macho for her benefit. Admitting to fear was Rafael’s biggest problem. Admitting to irrational fear was quite impossible for him. On the first flight she had ever shared with him he had pretended to sleep and she had been fooled until he staggered on to solid ground again, grey-faced and drained. Since then he had improved enormously and she would have liked to tell him that, but felt that tact required her to draw no attention to what he was experiencing.
Instead she began to talk, hoping to take his mind off things. Inconsequential chatter, however, did not provide much of a diversion. His responses were monosyllabic and, in the end, she fell silent. A limousine collected them at the airport. Sarah stole a glance at the tension that was now squarely etched in his features and took a deep breath. ‘You probably don’t want me to mention this but I think it would be easier if you just talked about it.’
A line formed between his ebony brows. ‘Talked about what?’
‘Your phobia about flying,’ she said gently.
‘My what?’ He looked at her in astonishment and then suddenly grinned disarmingly. ‘Sarah, I got over that years ago.’
She had to glue her tongue to the roof of her mouth. If that was how he wanted to play it, she guessed that she was expected to abide by the rules. The townhouse was not what she had naively expected. It was a mansion set behind imposingly high walls, not the convenient little pied-a-terre of her imagining.
A manservant opened double doors that gave on to an impressive marble tiled hall. Marble busts on pedestals and Ionic columns vied for her attention.
‘It’s like a museum,’ Rafael breathed unappreciatively. ‘My grandparents used this house as their permanent home when I was a child. Abuela still prefers it to Alcazar. Felipe also let Caterina stay here until she found an apartment.’ He paused. ‘I’ve invited her to join us here for lunch.’
‘Fine.’ But Sarah’s mind had taken a very feminine jump on to what one might wear to meet a fashion designer. ‘I think I’ll freshen up.’
‘I have some calls to make.’
A maid showed her up to their bedroom. Sarah absorbed the massive baroque splendour of the gilded and heavily draped four-poster bed with wide eyes. It was something of a surprise to find a completely up to date bathroom next door. Laying out an elegant Yves St Laurent suit, she began to undress. She was grateful that she had taken the time in Seville to add a few extras to her wardrobe. The fitted V-necked top and flowing skirt in soft complementary shades of grey, purple and blue were very flattering against her light hair and the tan she had acquired.
As she reached the head of the stairs, she heard the front doors opening and Rafael strode out into the hall. A woman hurried to greet him. He stretched out his hands and she gripped them, leaning forward to kiss him Continental fashion on both cheeks. It was only as she drew back that Sarah drew in her breath sharply.
Her fingers tightened bone-white on the banister. Shock was rippling through her in waves. Her heart was thumping like a trip hammer. It couldn’t be the same woman, it simply couldn’t be. How good could her recall be of a photograph she had only seen once five years ago? This woman looked smaller, thinner. Her tumbled dark curls were shorter, held back by ivory combs. They were still holding hands, talking in low urgent voices, entirely intent on each other.
Very slowly, Sarah released her grip on the banister and retreated several steps back on to the landing. She was terrified of being seen. Caterina. Rafael’s cousin. Once married to an American. His silence now made a horrible kind of sense and of course he didn’t necessarily know that there had been a photograph, did he? Caterina had been the woman with him in that hotel room, the woman who had destroyed her marriage, the woman who had caused her untold pain and suffering. It was definitely her and most ironically she was not as beautiful as Sarah had made her in her memory. Her features were too strong for beauty but she was very attractive.
She made it back to the bedroom without realising that she had gone there. Gazing blankly round the room, she made an effort to pull herself together. It didn’t work. What the heck was going on? What had she got herself into? Rafael expected her to sit down to lunch with this woman. To say that at the very least that was tacky of him was to be generous. Incredibly generous. Her stomach heaved.
‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ Rafael was in the doorway, sleek and elegant in a lightweight dark grey suit. ‘Caterina has arrived early.’
‘I saw her.’ Bitter anger shuddered through her and, with it, a sickening sense of betrayal. ‘And I recognised her.’
‘So there was a photograph,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Papa was most thorough. I should have been prepared for that possibility.’
Wide-eyed with disbelief, Sarah stared at him. ‘You weren’t prepared? May you rot in hell for this!’ she launched in disgust.
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