by Julia James
The show was over, the applause was dying away and guests were heading off for the buffet supper awaiting them in the dining room across the entrance hall.
Rafael got to his feet. There was a sense of purpose about him. The models would be mingling with the guests again and he wanted to find her—stake his claim before anyone else could be as drawn to her pale, haunting beauty as he was.
But as his eyes searched the crowded dining room it came to him that she simply was not there. The other models were—but not the one he wanted to see. He frowned. So where was she? He crossed the hallway back into the salon, where the runway was being dismantled by workmen. Still no sign of her.
He saw that a glass door to the side was open, and slipped through on impulse. He found himself out on a terrace and walked down it to the end. Turning the corner, he saw gardens stretching out before him. Steps swept down to the level of the lawns.
A figure had paused at the edge. A female figure, her evening gown pale in the dim light, craning her neck upwards. But she wasn’t looking back at the mansion. She was looking up at the night sky.
Rafael’s dark eyes glinted in the starlight and he started to walk down the steps towards her.
* * *
Celeste was gazing upwards, rapt. It was a glorious starry night! In London stars were, at best, dim and hazy. But here in the countryside they were bright and vivid, the mighty sweep of the Milky Way clear in the heavens. So unimaginably distant...
Once she had wanted only to be taken up amongst them, leaving the earth far, far behind...
‘The ancient Chinese believed that the Milky Way was the source of the Yellow River.’
The voice came from behind her.
Celeste swirled round. There was little light, but she did not need light to tell her who this was. It was the man who had been looking at her as she’d walked along the runway. The man who had made her aware of him as no man ever had...
He was heading towards her. She could not see his features, only his height, his strolling elegance as he came to stand beside her. She heard the deep, accented timbre of his voice as he spoke again. Felt her nerve-endings start to send messages to her she did not want to feel!
‘They have a legend,’ he went on, ‘that says two lovers were cruelly parted by their parents and placed on either side of the Milky Way—the galactic river. We see them as stars, forever gazing at each other.’
He was looking at her as he spoke. Taking in her frozen stance, the sudden tension in her face. She looked, he thought, as if she was going to bolt—a reaction he found unusual in a woman. Long experience had taught him that women welcomed his attentions.
Madeline certainly had.
But she is not Madeline.
And that was what he wanted, he reminded himself. For her to be utterly different. So it was good that she was reacting as she was, wasn’t it? But whatever the reason for her radiating wariness on all frequencies he wanted to dispel it.
‘It’s incredible, isn’t it?’ he said, keeping his tone conversational. ‘To think of the vast distances of the heavens. Our galaxy is just one of billions, each with billions of stars.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Some of the stars we think of as stars are galaxies themselves. Andromeda is our closest, and it is...’ He searched the sky with his eyes.
‘It’s there,’ Celeste heard herself saying. ‘In the Andromeda constellation, between Pegasus and Cassiopeia. The galaxy is M31—Messier body thirty-one—but it’s not actually the closest galaxy to us, only to the Milky Way overall. It’s going to merge with the Milky Way eventually, and form a giant elliptical galaxy in a few billion years.’
She pointed jerkily upwards, mentally castigating herself for gabbling about galaxies and constellations, but other than marching away it had seemed the safest thing to do.
Though ‘safe’ was the very last thing she felt...
Her nerve-endings were firing in a way that she had never before experienced.
Rafael followed her gaze, then glanced across at her. Wanting to look at her. Wanting her to look at him. Wanting her to speak again.
He smiled appreciatively. ‘You’re very knowledgeable,’ he remarked.
‘I like stars,’ she answered, in the same abrupt, jerky manner. ‘They’re very far away.’
Even as she spoke she started. Why did I say that? Why am I standing here talking to him—letting him talk to me?
And why was the deep, accented timbre of his voice reaching into her? Disturbing her...firing all her nerves at high pitch...
‘Is that a commendation?’ he asked dryly.
‘Yes,’ she answered.
As if she’d realised it was a strange thing to say, he saw her give a tiny shake of her head. As she did so, he saw her change. She dipped her head, tightened her grip on her skirts. Getting a grip, belatedly, on the situation. A situation she was going to terminate right now. Because she did not let situations like this arise.
But there’s never been a situation like this...no man has ever made me react like this!
Which made it all the more imperative that she get away from him—right now! Stop this before it started.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I must go back inside.’
Her voice had changed, too. It was clipped now, and quite impersonal.
Distant.
‘Permit me to escort you.’ Rafael’s voice was smooth.
She did not hesitate. ‘Thank you—no.’
Her tone was decisive, and before his eyes she turned and walked back up the steps. He looked after her.
From chatting about stars to cutting him dead—all in under a minute.
No, nothing like Madeline at all...
* * *
Celeste gained the salon and walked rapidly across it. Her heart-rate was up, and it was not because of her rapid ascent of the exterior steps. What on earth had she just gone and done? Standing there with that man, talking about astronomy! She’d gone out to the gardens for two reasons—to take advantage of the clear night sky and to delay having to mix socially. Because over supper she would inevitably see that man again.
The man who had come in search of her.
Because of course that was what he’d been doing! She wasn’t an idiot—no one struck up a conversation about galaxies with a lone female if they weren’t trying to chat her up! Then, to make her heart-rate race even more, a mortifying thought struck her. Had he thought she was standing out there stargazing in order to deliberately invite him to talk to her?
She felt her cheeks flush. Well, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter either way. Because from now on she was going to avoid him totally until she could decently get away back to Oxford and the hotel room she’d booked. Staying well out of London and away from Karl Reiner for as long as possible.
But she didn’t want to think about the repulsive Karl Reiner. And she didn’t want to think about the man who had set her nerve-endings firing, elevated her heart-rate. A man who did not repel her.
Who attracted her—
No! A little twist of bitterness clenched inside her. What did it matter if, however inexplicably, he attracted her? It didn’t matter! It couldn’t matter.
It could never matter...
A dull, familiar stab jabbed at her.
I am what my past has made me and nothing can change that—nothing!
And men—all men—could be nothing of her present now.
Face set, she gained the dining room, forcing herself to take a breath—to assume the appearance, if nothing else, of calm. She made her way to one of the buffet tables around the edge, glad to see Zoe, a fellow model, there. They helped themselves to some undressed salad and a slice of chicken each.
‘So,’ said Zoe invitingly as they started to eat their meagre portions, ‘what are you going to do abou
t the guy who couldn’t take his eyes off you? Has he made a move on you already?’
Celeste tensed. ‘No,’ she lied, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Shame,’ said the other girl. ‘I’d go for him. Looks and dosh! Rafael Sanguardo. South American. He’s a zillionaire investor. Used to hang out with that glitzy redhead on the Top Ten Rich Women list—Madeline Walters. Hotshot and hot totty! She made a fortune for herself and headed for the States to make another pile of dough. Of course...’ she threw a sly glance at Celeste ‘...you’ve got Karl Reiner panting around after you, haven’t you? Now he’s through with Monique Silva. Mind you,’ she added, ‘I know which man I’d rather have in bed beside me! Señor Tall, Dark and Very Handsome Sanguardo! Creepy Karl wouldn’t get a look-in!’ She drew breath. ‘Well, I’d better network. Plenty of useful contacts out there—and loads of loaded guys! And standing here by all this food is torture. See you!’
She sauntered off, leaving Celeste to her supper and her thoughts.
Rafael Sanguardo...
The name glided through her head. She’d never heard of him, but from the way Zoe had talked about him it sounded as if he was on the ‘Mr Available and Rich’ list that a lot of models made it their business to know about. She speared a sliver of chicken with decided resolve. Rafael Sanguardo was none of her business, and he would stay that way.
‘May I help you to something more from the buffet?’
The deep, faintly accented voice addressing her was familiar.
And very unwelcome.
She turned. It was Rafael Sanguardo.
Celeste felt herself tense automatically. But not just because he was the one person here she wanted to avoid. For the first time she was seeing him in full light, rather than dim glimpses. And everything she’d glimpsed about him was overwhelmingly reinforced. He was, just as Zoe had flippantly called him, Mr Tall, Dark and Very Handsome! But it was not smooth, playboy-style looks that he possessed. His face was lean, with a tough-looking jawline, high cheekbones and a strong nose. But it wasn’t those features that held her. It was the eyes.
They were dark—incredibly dark—with a hawkish look to them, and they were resting on her with an expression in them that instantly made her breathless.
How? How is this happening? she thought with a hollowing of her stomach. It never happened! Men could look her over and she’d be immune to it! Immune the way she had to be. But this man—somehow—was having this extraordinary effect on her, and she didn’t know why.
All she knew, with a surge of intense self-preserving urgency, was that she had to stop it happening. Had to stop looking at him—stop looking at the way his long, lean body, darkly clad in what she knew must be a hand-tailored tuxedo, easily topped six feet, the way his DJ moulded his shoulders. His gleaming white dress shirt performed the same office for his torso, telling her that his physique was as honed as the planes of his face.
He was addressing her again, in that deep, accented voice that did things to her she did not want it to do! What had he just said? She had to reply—say something, anything—then walk away! Food—he asked you about food! Do you want any? That was it.
With effort, she found a brief reply. ‘Thank you, but this is enough,’ she managed to say.
An eyebrow quirked over the incredibly dark eyes that looked as if they were hewn from some ancient, volcanic rock. Basalt, she thought, or obsidian...darker than slate.
‘It doesn’t look enough for a sparrow,’ he murmured. The dark eyes glanced at her. ‘Fortunately you don’t appear to have the starved, size-zero look about you that so many models have.’
Celeste could hear condemnation of excessive thinness in his voice. ‘Models have to be thin!’ she was stung into retorting. She was not objecting to his criticism of size-zero models, but to the way his eyes had washed over her. The effect that slow wash had had on her...
‘It’s shamefully perverse for women in the developed world to ape those who go hungry from necessity, not fashion!’ he returned sharply.
She took a breath, making herself answer honestly. ‘You are right,’ she admitted.
For a moment she let her eyes meet his in acknowledgement of the truth of what he had just said. It was a mistake. For one endless moment she had the strangest sensation that she was drowning—drowning in a deep, fathomless ocean. Then, with an effort, she pulled her gaze away. Found that she was trembling with the effort.
‘I’m sorry—that was very blunt of me,’ she heard him respond. ‘Though it is a pity that you will not try some of these richer foods.’ He indicated the lavish spread in front of them.
Celeste glanced at them, and then back at the man who was so disturbing her. ‘They do look delicious,’ she allowed. ‘But I mustn’t.’
‘You won’t be tempted?’ he said.
There was a trace of humour now in his accented voice. A trace that did yet more disturbing things to her. As did the glint in his eyes that told her it was more than food he wanted her to be tempted by.
She gave a decisive shake of her head. Time to stop this—right now.
‘No,’ she replied. Her voice was polite, but firm. She put down her now empty plate. Looked back at him. Made herself look at him but not react to him. Made herself say in a polite, social voice, using just the sort of tone she might use to anyone at all, ‘Do please excuse me, but I have to circulate and show off this dress.’
She gave a smile—brief, polite, perfunctory. But this time she did not meet his eyes. Instead, she turned away, tall and graceful, and threaded her way into the throng.
Behind her, Rafael watched her disappear. Her second disappearing act of the evening.
Why? Why does she run from me?
That was the question uppermost in his mind—except for his overwhelming consciousness that in this second all too brief encounter his interest in her had not diminished, but intensified.
There is something about her that is drawing me to her—something powerful, irresistible, overwhelming.
Something that was sending a pulse through him. Something that was engendered by that extraordinary pale, pure beauty she possessed—the turn of her head, the flawless translucence of her alabaster skin, the perfect features of her face, delicate and exquisitely cut, the clear, luminous grey-blue of her eyes.
He knew with absolute certainty that he had felt something when she had turned that gaze on him, fully meeting his own—it was a gaze whose very brevity had told him that whatever the cause of her insistence on walking away from him, which she had now exhibited twice—it was not because she was irresponsive to him.
It is the same for her as it is for me! I know it. The stillness, the betraying dilation of her pupils, the sudden intake of breath, the collision of her eyes with mine—acknowledges, confirms her reaction to me—
It had told him all he needed to know...
Whatever had made her walk away, it was not because she was immune to him. So why had she? An unwelcome explanation intruded. Was it because she was already involved elsewhere? A burning urge to find out consumed him. Yet he did not even know her name.
He inhaled sharply, pulling himself together. It would be easy enough to find out everything he needed to know about her. She was a model, she worked for an agency, and that meant the information was out there. And if the answer was the one he realised he wanted it to be more with every passing moment, then he would set out to woo her—woo her and win her.
His imagination raced ahead, vivid and eager.
In his mind’s eye he saw himself gazing into her eyes, clasping her hand, drawing her towards him, taking her slender, pliant body into his arms and lowering his mouth to her tremulous, tender lips, tasting their sweetness, seeking the nectar within, feeling her respond to his embrace, her body contouring against his with soft sensuousness, glowing with honeyed desire as her breasts pe
aked against him...
But imagination was not enough! He wanted the reality.
The reality of her pale, pure beauty, which was calling to him with a subtly compelling, insistent power that was impossible to deny.
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU WANT MORE money to renew your contract. That’s it, isn’t it?’ Karl Reiner’s voice grated.
Celeste kept her expression fixed. Karl Reiner had demanded her presence at a dinner in a West End hotel hosted by a fashion magazine keen on retaining its share of the lavish Reiner Visage advertising budget. Since she was still—just—under contract, it had been impossible for her to decline.
She deeply wished she had. Wished she could just walk off the way she had when Rafael Sanguardo had made a move on her at the charity event the previous weekend.
Not, she found herself thinking, that anyone in their right mind would put Karl Reiner and Rafael Sanguardo in the same class. The difference was total. Karl’s stocky stature and slack belly were the complete opposite of Rafael Sanguardo’s tall, lean, honed physique—just as Karl’s pouched, close-set eyes were a million miles from the dark, hawkish eyes that had rested so disturbingly on her. And Karl’s receding dyed hair, swept back into a ponytail that he mistakenly seemed to think made him look creative and bohemian, had nothing of the feathered sable of the South American’s.
Yet again Celeste felt the disquieting quickening of her pulse as an image of Rafael Sanguardo took shape in her mind. It had been doing so repeatedly ever since the weekend. She had tried desperately hard to put him out of her mind but it had been impossible—just impossible! She could bewail it all she liked, try as hard as she could, but it was no good. That encounter, however brief, had imprinted itself on her. Why, she did not know—could not understand. Could not understand why her habitual immunity to men was failing her so pitiably when it came to Rafael Sanguardo.
But if she couldn’t understand it at least she could do her determined best to ignore it. Suppress it and crush it out of her consciousness—out of her life. There was no point—none whatsoever!—in thinking about him.
