‘I could have managed!’
Alannah’s tone told him that she had seen the abrupt movement and misinterpreted the reason for it.
‘I’m not always a wreck like this! I can usually cope—it’s just that tonight things—got on top of me.’
‘Believe me, I understand. But was there no one else who could have been there with you? Your mother perhaps?’
‘My mother is in a far worse state than I am.’
Her voice was low and she was staring out of the window, assuming an intense interest in the passing cars as she spoke.
‘It goes against everything in nature for a mother to hear of the death of her child and she has barely recovered from losing my father. She’s in pieces—can’t sleep … won’t eat.’
She shook her head, her mouth twisting, fighting, he knew, against more tears.
‘The only way she can cope is with the help of the sedatives the doctor prescribed. At least they knocked her out tonight. But she can’t manage anything practical. Everything that has to be done is up to me.’
There was a terrible, raw edge on that last sentence, one Raul recognised only too well. The memory of how she had looked in that hospital room, so lost and alone, with no one there to help her, no support, no company, sent a wave of cold anger running through him.
‘So where the hell was he?’
That brought her head up, shadowed eyes meeting his sharply.
‘Where was—who?’
‘The man in your life …’
The man she had left him for.
‘Your lover—your boyfriend—whatever you call him.’
‘Oh …’
Realisation dawned slowly on Alannah’s numbed brain. He was talking about the man she had claimed to be leaving him for. A man who had never existed and still didn’t. A man she had totally invented, and she had never met anyone with even half a chance of turning that claim into a reality. How could she have let a new man into her life when she had never fully recovered from the old one?
She’d tried. Since she’d found out just what he really wanted from her and been forced to recognise that her dreams of being loved and cherished to the end of her days were just that—dreams and delusions—she had tried to turn her life around and move on without the happy future with Raul Marcín in it.
But she hadn’t succeeded. The few dates she’d been on had been miserable failures, no man seemed to spark even a flicker of the interest and excitement Raul had been able to create just by existing. So just lately she had determined to concentrate on her career and put all thoughts of a romantic life out of her mind. She would have liked to put all thoughts of Raul out of her head too, but her older brother’s own new-found romance had made that impossible.
And now the tragic conclusion of that fledgling love affair had brought Raul himself back into her life. The slashing anguish of that thought made her flinch in pain. Would she ever be able to think of Chris again without this terrible rush of agony, the burn of tears?
‘Well, at least you’re not coming up with some excuse for him.’
Raul had misinterpreted the reason for her silence, thinking it was because of his question about her supposed new partner.
‘There’s no need for an excuse.’ She flung the words at him before she had time to think if they were wise or not.
‘No? If you were mine, I would not leave you to handle all this on your own. I would be at your side, every moment of the day.’
‘But I’m not yours, am I, Raul?’
And she never had been his, not truly his. Not in the way she had most wanted, most longed to be. Of course he had seen her as his. In his mind she had been his woman, his possession, to do with as he pleased. Because no thought of love had ever entered his mind, he had never considered that she might need more than the little he was prepared to offer her.
She couldn’t allow herself to think of how much it would mean to have a man like him, powerful, determined and so capable, by her side in these dark, desperate days. A man who would help her, support her. Whose strength would be used for her good, to ease her path as much as he could. There was no point in even letting herself dream of it. That man would never be Raul and he would never be there for her, her actions two years before had made sure of that. It was even more foolish, even more soul-destroying to allow the thought that perhaps as her husband he might have taken on that supporting role. But he would never have been the husband she had dreamed of having.
And the savage truth was that if she had married him then this weekend’s tragedy would never have happened and she would never have been in this desperate need of support from anyone.
‘And not everyone is a millionaire who can be where he wants to be for as long as he wants to be at the drop of a hat.’ Memory made her voice bitter. ‘Someone who doesn’t have to worry about taking time off work or leaving other commitments …’
The sudden sharp reminder by her conscience of just why Raul was here now, why he had had to drop everything and come to England had her choking off her words and swallowing them down in a rush. She was supposed to have told him the truth about what had happened. That was why she had been waiting for him at the hospital. She had been there to tell him; to make sure that he knew before he found out in any other way. She had to be the one who explained things to him.
But instead she had messed everything up. When she had tried to talk about Chris she had just broken down, gone to pieces, and everything that needed to be said had been left unspoken.
And she could hardly tell him now. Not here, in the darkness of the car, with his chauffeur in the driving seat and the glass panel between him and his passengers in the back partly open so that he would hear every word she said.
‘So he is at work, this new man of yours?’ She couldn’t answer that, not without lying, and so she hedged her bets, sticking instead to a round-about answer that she prayed would satisfy him without actually coming out with the truth. ‘New? It’s been two years.’ ‘So long … and yet you wear no ring.’ It was dropped softly, almost lightly into the silence and Alannah was surprised to find that her instinctive response was to clamp her right hand down on top of her left, pushing the ringless finger out of sight. She didn’t know why she reacted in that way, only that some note in Raul’s voice had suddenly made a sensation like the slither of something cold and nasty slide down her spine, so that she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘There’s no need for that.’
Again she dodged round a real answer. There was no need for a ring—but because there was no other man, new or not, in her life.
‘Oh, I see—so was that my mistake?’ ‘Mistake?’ Alannah blinked in confusion. Raul Marcín never admitted to mistakes.
‘My approach was too conventional? You should have said that you weren’t interested in marriage.’ ‘I wasn’t interested in marriage to you!’ How she wished it was as convincing as she made it sound. The bitter truth was that she had thought that her heart would burst with joy when he had proposed. It had simply never occurred to her innocent, naïve twenty-one-year-old self that this devastating, sexy man could actually want to marry her for any reason other than that he had been as head-over-heels in love with her as she was with him.
It had truly never occurred to her that a sophisticated man of the world like Raul might have other, more pragmatic reasons for wanting to marry her. Reasons for which her innocence, sexually at least, and her family background were much more important than any feelings she might have.
‘It really was just as well we split up when we did,’ she said hastily, as much to distract herself from her own foolish thoughts as to fill the awkward silence that had fallen between them. ‘After all, what is it they say about repenting at leisure?’
‘But that saying is usually preceded by the line “Marry in haste”,’ Raul drawled mockingly. ‘We never actually got that far.’
‘And for that we ought to be thankful. If we had got married, it would have been a disaster.’
<
br /> ‘You think so?’ A sceptical note on the question caught on a raw edge on her nerves.
‘Very definitely,’ she stated emphatically. ‘Don’t you agree?’
His sudden silence, his total stillness was unnerving.
Turning to him in confusion, she caught a look she couldn’t begin to interpret in his eyes, flashing on and off, on and off as the streetlights caught them and then moved on.
In spite of herself, her heart gave a sudden rough kick inside her chest, making her blood throb in her veins.
He would only have to move a couple of inches, she told herself hazily. He would only have to turn in his seat, just so, and he would be facing her, his head directly above hers. And with her face turned up towards him as it was, then he would just have to lower that proud dark head in order to crush her lips in the kiss he so obviously wanted to take from her. The kiss that the gleam in his eyes, the softening of the beautiful, hard mouth promised.
And the kiss she so wanted from him.
The realisation was like a blow landing on her ribcage, making her catch her breath in shock and confusion.
She wanted Raul to kiss her. Wanted it so much that it was like a scream in her head. But a scream of need that warred in the same instant with an equally desperate scream of denial and warning. This didn’t make any sort of sense. It was not only stupid, but it was also dangerous as hell. She should be running miles away from Raul, as far and as fast as she could. Not sitting here, imagining, waiting—yearning …
‘Raul …’ she said, trying desperately to make it sound like a warning, as offputting as possible. But she had so little control over her tongue that instead it came out on a sensual husk, enticing and provocative when she was trying for exactly the opposite.
‘Alannah …’ Raul murmured and his tone echoed hers almost exactly, the gravelly purr seeming to coil around her head like perfumed smoke until she felt as if her senses were swimming from just breathing in. And what breath she managed seemed to catch in her throat so that her lips parted on a small, faintly gasping sigh as she fought for control.
Those gleaming eyes were fixed on her and she saw the faint twitch of his mouth into a tiny smile before he sobered again. Staring intently at her partly open mouth. And she could only watch, frozen as his dark head tilted slightly to one side, lowered …
And stopped dead as the car drew in to the side of the road and pulled up, coming to a smooth halt right outside the main door to the building where her flat was. A comment from the driver—something on the lines of ‘We’re here’ in Spanish, Alannah presumed—broke into the taut, heated silence that gripped the two of them as the engine slowed, stilled …
And still Raul didn’t move. Still he kept his hooded gaze fixed on her lips, so fiercely intent that she could almost feel its burn along the delicate skin of her mouth, drying them, drying her throat until the sensation became totally unbearable and she had to slick her tongue over her lips to ease the parched discomfort there.
And almost groaned aloud—but whether in relief or disappointment she was unable to say—when she saw how the tiny, brief movement shattered the mesmeric mood. Raul’s head came up again, his eyes clashed with hers just for a moment, then glanced away again, looking out into the rain-swept street.
‘My stop, I think,’ Alannah managed, her voice coming and going on the words like a badly tuned radio. ‘This is where I get out.’
If she expected any response, she didn’t get one. Instead Raul leaned across her and pushed open the door, letting in a waft of cold, wet air as he did so, then sat back, obviously expecting her to take herself off, out of the car, and as speedily as possible if his closed, withdrawn expression was anything to go by.
‘Thank you for the lift.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He made it sound the exact opposite.
The abrupt change from fiercely intent sensuality to cold distance was so disconcerting that Alannah actually felt herself shaking, unable to quite get a grip on herself. She had been so sure … and yet now his mood was so totally different that she was forced to wonder if she had been imagining things, deluding herself completely.
She couldn’t get out fast enough, pushing awkwardly and inelegantly out of the car. It was only as she set foot on the pavement, buffeted uncomfortably by the force of the wind and the rain, her short jacket no protection against the inclement weather, that she suddenly remembered in a devastating rush just why she had met up with Raul at all. Why she had been at the hospital in the first place.
She had been there to tell him everything—the whole truth about the terrible accident that had claimed Chris’s life—and she hadn’t even begun to say anything. She had let the time in the car slide away from her, caught in her memories of the past, in anything and everything other than what she should have been thinking of.
What she should have told him.
What she still had to tell him.
She couldn’t let someone else break the truth to him; couldn’t let him find out in any other way. There was only one person who could tell him everything that had happened—and it was her duty to make sure he got the right story. It was the last thing she could do for her brother—the only way to preserve Chris’s memory.
But there was no way she could turn round now and tell him. What was she to do? Get back in the car and say—‘Hang on, I’ve got something to tell you’? Or say it baldly and bluntly standing here like this, leaning in at the door, where the driver and possibly anyone passing by might also be able to hear.
She couldn’t do that to him. Not even to Señor Heartless Raul Marcín. In these circumstances she owed him a bit more than that.
And so she drew on all her strength, took a deep, calming breath, and bent down to lean in at the car door again.
‘We don’t have to leave it like this, do we? Would you like to come inside—for coffee?’
She knew the form of her words was a mistake even as they left her tongue but she only knew how bad an error she had made when she heard them fall into the silence of the night, sounding horribly light considering the impetus behind them. She felt even worse when she saw the way that Raul’s face changed, his eyes narrowing in his shadowed face, his mouth thinning out to just a hard, cold line.
‘Coffee?’ he said, making the word sound like a curse, as if the drink was a totally alien substance to him.
‘Well, you never got a drink in the hospital…’ she managed jerkily, seeing no change in that distant expression, no lightening of the darkness of his eyes.
He was going to refuse; she knew it in her heart. He was just a second away from lifting a hand to dismiss her, snapping an order at Carlos to drive on, before pulling the door shut right in her face. And if he did that then she had no way of getting in touch with him again. After all, that was why she had been waiting at the hospital in the first place.
‘Please…’ she said hastily. ‘It needn’t be for long. I just want to thank you …’
‘No thanks are necessary.’
But then just for a moment he hesitated, looked deep into her eyes. And the narrow-eyed assessment in his gaze made her flinch back away from it as if from some dangerous, poison-tipped arrow. Just what was going through that cold, calculating mind of his?
Then abruptly he leaned forward in his seat, directing some terse command in Spanish to the driver, who glanced at him once, briefly, then nodded.
‘What…?’ Alannah began then froze as she saw one strong, tanned hand move to unclip his seat belt and toss it aside.
‘Half an hour,’ he said curtly, flicking a glance at the slim gold watch on his wrist, and then away again. ‘Be here at nine,’ he told Carlos, the emphatic use of English deliberate, Alannah felt, to get the point home to her. ‘And don’t be late.’
Could he make it any plainer that he had little time to spare for her, and that he wanted to be away from here as quickly as possible? Alannah asked herself. But at least he was coming. Once they were alone in her flat, in privac
y, she would tell him what she had to say as quickly as possible. At least then, with what she felt was her duty done, she would be able to relax.
And Raul would go out of her life again and leave her in peace.
Which was what she wanted most in all the world, she told herself, refusing to let her mind even acknowledge the way that the words suddenly had a disturbingly hollow ring inside her head.
For now, she had enough to cope with just considering what was ahead of her and the prospect of facing the apocalyptic storm that would erupt when Raul knew the truth.
If she could get through the next thirty minutes then her life would be her own again.
CHAPTER THREE
THIRTY minutes and he was out of here, Raul told himself as the lift that was taking them to Alannah’s flat sped upwards towards the fifth floor. Less than thirty. He had told Carlos to be back exactly thirty minutes after he had left the car and already more than a couple of those had passed.
Not enough in Raul’s opinion. The sooner he got this—whatever this was—over and done with and was on his way again, the better.
The truth was that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing here at all. If he had any sense he would have stayed in the car and ignored Alannah’s invitation but tonight it seemed that all sense had deserted him, left behind in the headlong rush from Spain after the first phone call alerting him to the news of the accident.
At first he’d thought that the car had come to a halt just in time to stop him from doing something very stupid. The temptation to kiss Alannah, to feel the softness of her lips, taste the intimate flavour of her mouth, had almost overcome him. Another couple of seconds and he would have been lost in the sensual temptation of that upturned face, the soft swell of her lips, the sweet scent of her skin so close to him in the back of the car. So the feel of the vehicle drawing to a halt and Carlos’s announcement that they had arrived had come at just the right moment.
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