Dina stared into his eyes and saw there a fierce, beckoning flame. It blazed up, then sank down, and she saw his face contort as if in pain. 'Oh, Raf,' his name was a soft, broken cry. 'If you care, then don't make things harder for me-'
'So you admit that it isn't going to be easy?' He bit out the words with his hard white teeth.
'Is anything easy in this life?' she asked. 'I wish to heaven I had never met you! Why—why did you have to come and speak to me?'
'Law of the jungle, Dina. I saw my equal, my match, and if all I was to have was a snatch of con-
versation, then I'd have it. I'd have more—everything, but you're so damnably straight and I don't want to break your spirit. You're such a—a thoroughbred, and one doesn't use a whip or a spur on you.'
She sat silent, moving a piece of shrimp around her plate With her fork. She loved him, then, as never before. Not because of what he thought of her, but because he held his hand and kept control of what smouldered in his eves.
'It's ironic, is it not?' His smile was infinitely sombre. 'That an Italian should fall hopelessly in love with a girl of a different race, religion and class. My parents would be shocked, my sisters sceptical, and my priest would advise caution, but I would disregard them all if I could have you without hurting you. I've never felt this way before— protective of a woman and possessive at the same time. This should have happened to me when I was a youth. Calf love can be painful, but it isn't incurable.'
Dina didn't want to be thrilled by his words, but they did thrill her, tightening her skin and making it tingle. No one would ever have for her the strange magic that Raf had, and yet she had to deny it and walk away from him. She owed too much to Bella, and Raf was strong enough to forget her and find someone else to take her place.
'Your parents would be right to be shocked,' she said. 'You love and admire your own kind of people ... whatever we feel it was never meant to be. A brief interlude, Raf. A few bars of music snatched in the air. Let it be that way, with no regrets.'
'Don't be so sure about the regrets,' he said, a
little harshly. 'I have you here with me now, and it won't be easy to let you go.' 'But you will let me go?'
'I can't be sure, donna mia. There's a devil in me.'
'But you're in control of it.'
'At this moment, Dina, but what will happen when I have to open my door to let you out of my life?' His eyes held hers, a stern kind of gravity in them. 'Will you take dessert?'
'Dessert?'
'It's something a little special. Cassata, an icecream bombe of cream and fruit encased in whipped cream.'
'It sounds delicious, Raf.'
He sat there looking at her, slowly moving his eyes over her face, her hair, the amber-stoned lobes of her ears, the slim length of her neck. 'For me that term applies to you-'
'Raf, you're breaking that promise you made!'
'I'm not touching you, I am merely looking.'
'A—a look from you is all it takes, and you know it!'
'You're trembling—ah, Dina, why deny me, yourself—you want me to touch you with more than my eyes? You ache and hurt with it as I do, and by the saints, I am not made of martyr substance even if you are!' Back went his chair, skidding and crashing sideways on the parquet floor. A couple of impetuous strides and he was by her side, reaching for her, the heat of his hands through the fine silk of her shirt. She heard his throaty whisper and felt the warm crush of his arms. At the touch of his lips on hers a flame shot through her blood and her response to him was like the shaking of a lamp
which had burned with a still and constant light until this moment.
For a single wild moment she resisted him, and then to be this close to what she must surrender was too much for her and she allowed her lips, her heart, her very bones to fill with love of him. They clung fiercely, like two people on the deck of a sinking ship ... like lovers kissing goodbye before plunging from a burning building.
Her fingers sank deep into his black hair, holding him as he held her, as if there were no tomorrow ... and for them it was bleakly true, there was nothing beyond these breathless moments, their bodies locked as their souls were locked.
Dina hadn't known that the body could come alive like this ... to such an unbearable pitch that they wrenched apart in the same instant, staring at each other with tormented eyes.
'Let me love you,' he groaned.
'No—oh no, Raf. There'd be no strength, no will to leave, and I have to leave—you.' She turned and ran into the sitting-room, where her legs went weak as water so that she half fell on to the nearest couch, burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders trembled when his touch came, down over her flesh and bones, a part of her so that she wanted to reach out for his hand and pull it to her heart ... the heart she gave to il tigre in the body she must deny him. If he took her body he took everything and she had a debt of pride and honour to repay.
'It hurts like hell itself.' His fingers crushed the silk that covered her. 'You're mine and I won't give you up! Why should I ? I have every right to what cleaves to me, burns for me, as I burn. You're ice—
sheer frozen ice for any other man, and you know it!'
'Take me home,' she pleaded. 'I—I can't bear any more.'
'Your home is where I am.' His hand wrapped itself about her neck and he forced her to look at him. His eyes poured down into her a kind of scalding incandescence of love and desire ... a worship and a wanting that she would never see again beyond this moment. Raf, loving for the first time as she loved ... loving for the last time, as she did.
'Have a little mercy on me, darling Raf,' she whispered. 'You said I was straight, you said I had a certain virtue—if it was those qualities that moved you and made you care for me, then don't ask me to bend them and tarnish them.'
'Why should I care, if I have you?' he growled.
'You'd have the body, but would you have the soul? Would you have that, Raf, if you made me— made me give myself?'
'It would be something,' he half snarled. 'What shall I have if I let you go out of here, to him, with nothing for myself? I have my feelings, Dina. I'm not a damned robot!'
'I have feelings as well—do you think I haven't?' Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, and she longed with every particle of herself to reach up and take his lean, love-twisted face into her hands. She wanted to kiss his eyes and lose herself in the molten hunger of his hard lean body ... but for the guilt afterwards, and the haunting fear of what Bella might have the power to do to him. She had friends in high places, and Raf's past as the grandson of a notorious criminal could be raked up and
the shining life he had made for himself in America could be smeared and ruined ... these things could be done so easily, and Dina had always known that her godmother was a ruthless woman ... far more ruthless than Raf would ever be.
Raf, who loved her. She knew it more certainly than she had ever known anything. She felt it, reaching out like a living thing, fine and strong, and not to be broken even when she wrenched herself apart from him.
'Couldn't you be a lesser woman?' he groaned. 'Why do you have to be one hell of an angel? I never wanted an angel—I only asked for a mate to share with me the things I've worked for.'
'You'll find her, Raf, and you'll make a good life for yourself, fulfilled and warm with good things—
children-' She broke off, unable to suppress a
gasp of pain from inside her, and from without, for his hands were suddenly biting into her shoulders, unaware or uncaring that they were cruel in their strength and their passion.
'I want your children,' he said, his voice deep and harsh. 'Made with you and born from your body and heart. I'll have no others, I take my oath on that! No son, no daughter, unless you give them to me. Don't you understand yet? I love you, utterly, completely, with my bones, my body, my brain. If I can't have you, then I'll have nothing and nobody! That's the way I am made, Dina. All or nothing.'
And there was no doubting what he said. His
face was drawn into harsh lines of pain, and his eyes had gone dark with it. He looked as a man would look when being tortured, in a kind of ecstasy of agony. It was almost frightening for
Dina, to see him like this, he who had been like a solitary eagle flying in arrogant aloofness and sure-ness, his very own master.
Now he was mastered by what he felt for her, and every instinct in Dina wanted to respond to him, in pity and passion; in love and longing.
'I—I'm desperately sorry, Raf.' It was all she could manage to say, and she knew how inadequate the words sounded, for she couldn't speak aloud what lay in her heart. She didn't dare reveal the depth and torment of her own suffering ... no pain had ever been this personal, deep down in those secret recesses that were the very woman of her. She clamoured to be close to this man and to never know again what it felt like to be apart from him, but stronger than desire was her need to make him safe from any kind of vengeance. Because he loved her, he didn't deserve to have his life wrecked. Dina couldn't endure the thought of it. He had worked long and hard, and he had buried the past. It must stay buried, and if that was all she could give him, then she would give it with both hands and with all her heart.
'Don't they say che sera, sera in Italy?' she asked. 'Whatever will be, will be? You knew when you first spoke to me that I wasn't—free.'
'I knew of your engagement—when we spoke together I knew you didn't love the man whose ring you wore. I looked into your eyes, Dina, and I saw there the loneliness that a mutual love would long since have shut out of your life. To find such a love is never to be lonely, even when you're apart from the one who wants you, needs you—as the body the fresh air, and the warm sun. That is why I approached you, why I spoke to you. I was curious to
see if you carried in your eyes the unmistakable love light, but instead I saw only the cool golden beauty of your gaze and I knew that you were to be sacrificed on the altar of a socially desirable marriage. You will never know how fierce was my inclination to carry you off with me, away from people who regard themselves as the epitome of civilised living and yet who live by the rules of old Roman society, ancient Greek law, when the young and lovely were either forced into vestal virginity, or married off into wealthy households regardless of their personal desires.
'Ah, Dina,' his voice sank down as he knelt beside the couch where she sat, and he reached for her hand and she knew that it was an object of ice in his warm fingers ... so warm, so strong, so vital with life. She looked at him and in the strange light filtering into the room from windows that seemed hung with a fine impenetrable gauze, his face seemed to her like those faces of gothic knights seen in the tinted windows of Cistercian chapels. And it was the chivalry in him to which she had to appeal.
'If you truly care for me, Raf, then be understanding of what I must do. It's my cross, and I don't want you to speak of being alone yourself. I—I couldn't bear that. You weren't made for it.'
'No,' he agreed, the faintest hint of irony stealing back into his eyes. 'I haven't the temperament of a monk, but nature made me choosy and I don't think I could ever find another girl who is just like cassata, a delicious mixture of hot and cold, all wrapped up in a pure creamy skin. Cristo santo, I
can't be near you and not—not-' He leapt to his
feet, vibrant as a dangerous animal driven to the
very edge of an attack.
He stood very still, gazing tensely at the mist-shrouded windows of his penthouse. All sound was curiously muffled, and there seemed to be a tint of flame beyond the mist.
'The sun is going down,' he murmured, 'and the city is drowned in the vapour. You must eat cassata with me, and then I'll take you home—if that is what you want me to do?'
Dina didn't dare to contemplate what she truly wanted ... merely to look at him was to feel a clutch of excitement and doom. 'I—I don't think I could manage another bite-'
'Try,' he urged. 'Let me pretend just this once that I share a real Italian sweet with you on some very secluded beach where afterwards you would lie in my arms and not use the tricks of judo on my defenceless anatomy.'
He gave a slight laugh and went into the dining-room. Dina got quickly to her feet, snatched up her handbag and the box which held her wedding slippers, and made for the door that led out to the lobby. Her heart was hammering. She had to reach the escalator before Raf heard her, and once she was downstairs she could hail a cab and be away ... not looking back in case it hurt too much and made her cry out.
She was halfway across the lobby when the telephone rang. The sudden clamour of it made her nerves leap as if they were on wires and the shoe-box fell from her hand. In a fever of trepidation Dina grabbed up the box and ran to the lift.
'Don't!' he cried out behind her. He had heard the phone and had come hurrying to answer it. 'Dina—please!'
It was a command and a painful appeal, and she stood there like someone teetering on the edge of a dark pit. The button that would summon the lift was just there beyond her reaching hand, and she had to force herself to touch that button with enough strength to bring the lift to the penthouse floor.
Beyond the lobby of Raf's apartment she heard him speaking on the phone, crisply, his voice as incised as words on metal. Still her heart was pounding as if she had been running and she put a hand against her throat and prayed for the lift to arrive before he finished his conversation.
'You won't go—not now!' He was striding across to her and she swung round to confront a face turned to stone, in which his eyes held a terrible blaze. Dina backed away from him, hearing the swish of the lift doors opening behind her just as Raf caught roughly hold of her.
'You're staying—with me. Nothing, nobody, can now do a thing about it. I'm claiming what is mine!'
'Raf, you must let me go! Please, don't make a scene!' She struggled with him, but with arrogant strength he swept her up into his arms and carried her back into his penthouse, leaving behind them the gaping doors of the escalator. His arms were like bands of steel around her and he held her with a force that she couldn't fight.
'Raf,' instinct directed her words, 'who was that on the phone?'
'The fire chief of the Pasadena fire-fighting brigade.' He gazed down at her, holding her eyes with his. 'Adam's Challenge has been burned to the ground and they caught the arsonist immediately
afterwards—a bit of a boy who was paid to set fire to my property. The police aren't gentle with fire-raisers and they managed to get from him the name of the person who hired him to do the job.'
Raf paused and Dina saw a cruel twist of anger on his lips. He held her bruisingly close to him and she felt the hard pounding of his heart through the material of his brown shirt.
'It seems that your godmother telephoned Royal and Weale to ask if you had called in—they said you had, in the company of a Signor Ventura. Enough said, eh? Bella Rhinehart then made a second call from her sickbed, and a short time later my house became a flaming inferno, as it would be with cans of paint and cleaning fluid on the premises. Thanks to mercy the workmen had left for the day!'
No! Dina wanted to deny his allegation that Bella was involved in anything so shocking. She moistened dry lips, but the words wouldn't come. In her mind's eye she saw the flames against the night sky, heard the roar of falling timbers, saw the portrait of the Penrose girl fall from the wall into the greedy, consuming heat. Gone was the fair ghost, and Raf's dream of turning that old house back into a real home ,.. somewhere he could go when the pressures of his work built up.
Oh God, she didn't want to believe that Bella could arrange such a revenge, not when she had left her on a bed of pain ...
And had promised to be home just as soon as the final fitting of the wedding dress had taken place!
'You are not going back to that woman.' Raf spoke decisively, his mouth grim, his eyes dominating Dina. 'You are staying here with me, where
you belong. Now you see to what extremes she will go to have her own way. She gave to you with one hand, and with th
e other she underlined your duty to repay her for every tiny favour. This she has drilled into you until you hardly knew if you were living her life or your own.
'Now,' his eyes became exultant, 'now she has set you free by her own egotistical hand. Now you will live your own life—with me!'
Dina heard him as in a kind of dream. Her head drooped against his shoulder. Was it remotely possible that she could do as he said, cast free her chains and stay with him in love and honour?
'No,' she murmured, 'I have to speak with her. I have to hear what she has to say. I—I can't not go back—don't you see?'
'I see only your white face and your big eyes. I know only that I want to protect you from her.' He lowered Dina to a couch and sat beside her, holding her hands and chafing some warmth back into them. 'You must have a brandy to take away the shock.'
'Oh, Raf, what could have induced her to do such a thing?' Dina's eyes clung to his and all she could think of was that her deepest fears had been realised. Because of her Raf was in danger. Because she was here with him, his house had been burned down.
'It's because I love you,' he said, leaning forward to kiss her pale cheek. 'Because you love me. There are people who have never known it and she is one of them, and I think she made up her mind long ago that you were going to be used to pay back Lewis Caslyn for turning his back on her and walking into the ocean. Tell me now, Dina, will you
exchange what I hold out to you for what she has given with the cold and calculating heart of a woman bent on seeing you as unhappy in your marriage as she was in hers? Her husband died a strange death—did he fall or was he pushed?'
Raf rose to pour brandy into a pair of bowls, and Dina sat there and absorbed his words ... the terror in them, and the possible terrible truth. He came back to her and placed one of the stemmed bowls in her hand.
The Sun Tower Page 15
