The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

by Julia James

  ‘Such beautiful hair you’ve got,’ she said, ‘like silk...’

  Her voice was a caress. Her touch soft.

  Yet Celeste felt her skin crawl.

  She stepped back. An instinctive movement of recoil.

  ‘Whatever the purpose of your visit, Ms Walters,’ she said, forcing herself to a composure she was far from feeling, ‘you had better leave now.’

  ‘My thoughts entirely.’

  The deep, cold voice from the doorway made both heads turn. Rafael stepped into his study.

  ‘Get out, Madeline,’ he said.

  He said it with an air of complete indifference, as if she were nothing more than a passing nuisance. Celeste saw her deep-set eyes flash with anger at such dismissal. Then a different expression filled them. She moved towards Rafael, who was standing motionless in the doorway, every line of his body showing tension.

  ‘Why, Rafe, darling, you’re looking dreadfully stressed out!’ Madeline advanced purringly. ‘Why don’t you let me give you a massage? You know,’ she said huskily, ‘just how...relaxed...I could always make you with a massage.’

  She was baiting him. It was obvious to Celeste. And just as obvious was Rafael’s stone-faced lack of reaction. Madeline must have seen it, too, for she tilted her head of fiery auburn hair and found a new line of attack.

  ‘No? Then maybe your lovely blushing nun here would welcome it? She looks very tense to me.’ Her eyes moved across to Celeste, who stood as expressionless as if she were walking down a catwalk, then back to Rafael, equally blank-faced. ‘So, what do you say, hmm?’ she asked tauntingly. ‘You could always just sit back and watch if you’re too puritan to join us...’ She laughed mockingly.

  Rafael only stepped back out of the doorway, holding the door open for her pointedly. Madeline’s eyes flashed fire again.

  ‘No wonder you’re stuck with Little Miss Pure here!’ she bit out. ‘Tell me, do you just sit chastely side by side, holding hands, and sigh at each other?’ Her face twisted. ‘God, Rafe, what a bore you are. To think I wasted time on you!’

  ‘Out, Madeline’ was all the response she got, in a tone that did not hide its note of impatience.

  Celeste saw her snap, her temper flaring openly. Before she could stop her, the other woman had snatched up the blue evening bag from Rafael’s desk and was pushing past her to the door.

  ‘I’ll take a souvenir with me, I think!’ she exclaimed, and then, as she gained the large hallway, she halted and turned back. ‘In fact...’ She turned, and her eyes were gleaming with an expression of satisfaction. ‘I’ll even do you a favour—and your precious Lucien Fevre! I’ll take this bag with me tomorrow night to the state reception at the White House! That should be good enough publicity for you! I might even get the senator to buy me some more of them! I could make the damn things fashionable all across Washington, if you like! Is that sufficient atonement?’

  Celeste’s eyes flew to Rafael. His stone-faced expression was gone.

  ‘Senator?’ His eyes pinioned Madeline.

  She gave that laugh again, the satisfaction in her eyes blatant. ‘You are out of touch, aren’t you, Rafe? Too busy mooning over your pet nun! Yes,’ she said, preeningly, ‘Senator Roxburgh and I are most definitely an item now. And, since he’s so likely to get picked as running mate in the next presidential election, you could, if you ask me nicely, soon be on the Capitol Hill guest list. I’ll be the Second Lady in the land.’

  She turned to go again, having shot her bow and saved her pride, Celeste could see. But Rafael’s voice stayed her.

  ‘Are you serious, Madeline?’ His voice was different.

  She whirled round, animation in her face. She was delighted.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she purred. ‘And the senator is so very, very devoted to me! Widowed, you know... It’s so sad. And you know how expensive political campaigning is over here in the States—I’m so keen to help him on that front! Once we’re married, of course!’

  Rafael’s hand brushed aside her preening.

  ‘Then you’re quite mad,’ he said.

  There was a bluntness in his voice that made Celeste stare at him. His attention was focussed only and entirely on Madeline.

  ‘You will never,’ he said to her, ‘get away with it.’ He took a step forward. There was an edge audible in his voice as he spoke. ‘Madeline, drop him now. While you can.’

  She was looking at him. Her face was different now, Celeste could see.

  ‘You don’t really think,’ Madeline said slowly, ‘that anything you put out about me will look like anything other than thwarted jealousy and open malice? You’ll make a laughing stock of yourself!’

  Rafael’s eyes speared her. ‘And you, Madeline, will get yourself crucified by the American press!’ His expression changed. ‘For God’s sake, get real! Do you really think you won’t get found out? If Roxburgh gets selected, the press will go through everything about you—absolutely and totally everything! And once you’re on TV and campaigning, memories will be jogged, I promise you! Someone, somewhere, will recognise you, make the connection—and then they will cash in with the biggest political sex scandal they’ve ever found!’

  Madeline had gone white, Celeste could see. White with fury.

  ‘Don’t you dare threaten me!’

  ‘I’m not threatening you. I’m warning you!’ he shot back. ‘And if you imagine I’d say a word about it you’re even more insane. Insane to think I would want to be caught in any sordid backwash!’

  Madeline was twisting Lucien’s bag in her hands, crushing it with the force of them. Her face working.

  ‘I will get what I want—because I always do! I always do! Nothing’s stopped me in my life—and it won’t now! If I want to be Mrs Edward Roxburgh, wife of the next damn Vice President, I shall!’

  Rafael took a breath. Hard and scissoring. His eyes were like bullets.

  ‘Madeline,’ he said, incising each word, ‘you might be the world’s most...liberated...woman, and you might be worth close to a billion dollars now...but you can never, never be the wife of the Vice President of the USA. Because there will never be a Vice President whose wife...’ he took another breath, then said it ‘...once worked as a prostitute.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THERE WAS SILENCE—complete silence. Then into the silence came the sound of the sapphire clutch falling on the floor. Madeline had dropped it.

  Rafael watched her turn, slowly, back to the front door. Saw her walk out of it. Saw her walk down the carpeted corridor to the elevators. Then he crossed to the door and closed it quietly. He turned back to Celeste.

  She looked like a ghost.

  Regret hit him—regret that she had heard what he had just said. Regret flooded through him that she’d had to endure Madeline at all.

  He came up to her as she stood, as motionless as a statue. ‘I am so, so sorry,’ he said, looking her in the eyes. ‘I am so sorry that you had to be subjected to that—to any of that!’

  ‘She’s still got keys to this apartment.’

  Celeste heard her voice speaking. It didn’t seem to be saying the most important thing, but it was saying the thing that seemed to be in her head right now. Keeping out everything else. Everything that had to be kept out.

  Rafael swore, then simply said, ‘The locks will be changed today.’ He took another breath, steadying himself. ‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘And you look like you do, too.’

  She didn’t answer, just went to pick up the discarded bag, smoothing it out. She put it on a side table and then, since Rafael was looking at her with such concern on his face that it hurt, she nodded. She followed him through into the kitchen. He got out a bottle of malt whisky and downed a shot in one. She ran some water and started to sip it.

  ‘You’re in shock,’ Rafael said. ‘I can s
ee you are. Look, come and sit down. I need to talk to you.’

  He ran himself a glass of water as well, and they both went through into the lounge.

  Rafael threw himself onto his usual place on the sofa and looked at Celeste. ‘Please—sit down before you fall down.’

  Carefully she lowered herself down at the other end of the sofa, her fingers curled around the cold water glass. She looked at Rafael. His face was shadowed, but not from the light outside. From the darkness within. Then, abruptly, he started to speak.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know all through our affair, our relationship.’ His voice hardened. ‘And I wish to God I’d never found out. Except,’ he said, and now his voice had the dryness of the desert in it, ‘that it was Madeline herself who told me.’

  He stared ahead for a moment, seeing nothing but the past, then spoke again.

  ‘She’d been drinking, so maybe that made her rash—but then, Madeline always has had a reckless streak in her. It’s the one she uses, gambles with, to make her fortunes. And, of course...’ his voice changed again ‘...she doesn’t see it as rashness. To her, it’s simply no big deal.’

  He turned to look at Celeste again.

  ‘It came out of a conversation we were having—just after-dinner chat at her flat, nothing more drastic than that. We were talking about economics and the conditions required for economic growth in general, such as a financial system that can create reliable and relatively low-cost credit, and so on. And, on an individual basis, we talked about capital formation. That,’ he explained, ‘is the formal name for accumulating sufficient surplus wealth, or capital, to use for investment. We started talking about how we’d both dealt with the problem ourselves. It’s a real problem for budding entrepreneurs without pre-existing assets to serve as security for a loan.’

  He paused, then went on.

  ‘I said I’d built up my initial investment capital by working through university, living as frugally as I could. Then, when I graduated, I worked eighteen-hour days, non-stop, for over three years, doing the kind of work that paid a premium because it was so noxious or back-breaking or in godawful places...’ He paused again, and then went on. ‘When I’d finished telling her, Madeline laughed.’

  He looked at Celeste.

  ‘She laughed and said that what I’d endured made her glad she was a woman in business. Because she possessed a natural asset that gave her an ROT—Return on Time—that was orders of magnitude greater than anything I’d had to do to accumulate my capital for investment.’ He took a breath. ‘In six months, she boasted, she’d made three times as much as I had in three years of slaving non-stop. And the work, she told me, had been the most enjoyable she’d ever had. She’d even, at one point, considered making it her main line of business. Brothels, as she pointed out, are never loss-makers...’

  He took a gulp of water, and then another, and another, draining the glass as though it might wash him out. Then he looked back at Celeste. There was no expression on her face still.

  He got to his feet.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘More sorry than I can say that you ever got touched by any of this! Let alone found out about Madeline!’ His face tightened. ‘I wish I’d had the damn self-control not to blurt it out in front of you, but it just came right out because she’s being so incredibly blind to the risk she’s running! What I warned her about is inevitable! When the electioneering starts, and the global TV coverage heats up, some former client or fellow call girl will recognise her—and will sell the story to the media!’

  He took a breath, his face grim.

  ‘If she doesn’t find a graceful way to break up with Roxburgh I’ll have no choice but to warn him myself, for his own sake, because it will finish his career otherwise. I don’t want to—God knows I don’t!’ His eyes hardened. ‘Madeline knew perfectly well when she told me about her past that I wouldn’t publicise her method of capital formation! But where she miscalculated, of course—’ and now his expression changed yet again, becoming for the first time clearer, as if a weight had stopped crushing down on him ‘—was in thinking that I would share her tolerance towards her method.’

  He looked at Celeste again.

  ‘I left her flat that evening—walked out on her. My decision to end our affair, and for that reason...annoyed...her. She did her best to get me back...’

  Into his head sprang the image of Madeline, stretched naked and voluptuous on his bed, taunting him not to desire her any more...refusing to accept his rejection of her...of what she had done...what she was...

  He spoke again, willing Celeste to believe him. ‘I hope with all my heart you can believe that there is no power on earth that could ever, ever induce me to tolerate her again! I wouldn’t touch Madeline with surgical gloves on!’ he spelt out. His voice iced. ‘Or any woman like her!’

  She could hear the contempt in his voice, the disgust. The total revulsion.

  She pulled her eyes away, her gaze going towards the wide windows that opened out to the terrace beyond. She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped.

  Rafael’s cell phone was ringing. With a curse, he glanced at the number, then answered it.

  ‘No, I haven’t forgotten. I’ll be there.’ He disconnected, reached out a hand to Celeste.

  ‘I am really gutted to do this, but I’ve got to go,’ he told her. ‘That was my PA, reminding me I have to be downtown in half an hour. I’d get out of the meeting if I could, but this guy is flying out to SF this evening.’

  He bent to drop a kiss on Celeste’s head. She was still looking like a ghost, and he hated to leave her like this, but in a way, although the scene with Madeline had been ugly in the extreme, surely it must have convinced her that Madeline Walters was out of his life for ever.

  ‘Are you going to be OK?’ he asked, concerned. Celeste nodded, and he spoke reassuringly. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, but it probably won’t be till about seven. Let’s have a really easy night in—I think we both deserve it!’

  He smiled encouragingly, squeezing her nerveless hand again.

  ‘And, please, don’t waste another single thought on Madeline. She isn’t worth it. She isn’t worth anything—no woman like her is.’ He glanced at his watch and swore. ‘Damn—I have to go.’

  He crossed to the door. Looked back at her. Felt emotion pour through him.

  Thank God I’ve got Celeste! Thank God she is in my life—thank God!

  How much she meant to him! How very, very much...

  I never want to lose her...

  Then, tearing himself away, he left the apartment.

  Behind him, on the sofa, Celeste went on sitting. Inside, knives with the sharpest blades were slicing her into pieces.

  * * *

  Though his meeting had gone well, Rafael had spent it itching for it to be over. He wanted to get shot of work, shot of his office and back to Celeste. He’d texted her when he’d got downtown—something warm and reassuring—but hadn’t heard back. Now, as he finished running through his agenda for the following day, prior to finally getting out of his office to head home, he checked his mobile again.

  His head lifted—there was a text from Celeste. He clicked it open. As he read, his spirits nosedived. He read it twice through, but it was still the same.

  She’d texted to tell him that her London agency had phoned and wanted her back urgently for an upcoming job she felt she could not turn down. She was booked on a flight out of JFK and en route to the airport.

  Disbelievingly, Rafael stared at the words. Then, as if a blow had fallen, he took the full impact of her message. She was gone. Gone—just like that.

  He felt winded, as if he’d been punched.

  How could she just pick up and go like that? How could she?

  Could she still be upset about Madeline, even after h
e’d assured her that there was nothing more between them—that all he felt for her was revulsion?

  Urgency filled him. He had to go after Celeste right away!

  I have to go to her—do whatever it takes to convince her that Madeline is nothing to me!

  He called her number. He had to speak to her. But her phone went to voicemail. A crippling sense of déjà vu hit him.

  His calls going to voicemail, answer machine...

  Her abrupt disappearing acts...

  The punch to his stomach came again.

  With a razoring breath, he seized his laptop and minutes later had booked an evening flight to Heathrow, then he headed down to the pavement to his waiting car. ‘JFK,’ he instructed tersely, and got his phone out again, retrying Celeste’s number, then texting her his flight details.

  Then, as if the devil were driving him, he sat back, staring out with bottled frustration at the rush-hour traffic jamming the roadways out of Manhattan.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE LOW HUM of the jet engines vibrated through the fuselage as Celeste reclined in her seat. Outside the night was dark mid-Atlantic. She was trying not to think, trying not to feel—trying not to be conscious at all. Willing herself to sleep. But sleep would not come.

  By the time the plane landed she was living up to its reputation as the red-eye. She looked haggard, she knew, and if she really had got an assignment she would have needed a ton of make-up to disguise the fact. But she wasn’t going to a job—that had been her excuse for leaving New York.

  Leaving Rafael.

  No—she mustn’t think that. Mustn’t say it. Mustn’t allow it into her head. She must block it totally, completely. Because if she didn’t—

  Claws tearing at her, talons ripping her, knives slicing her—shredding her to pieces, into bloodied rags of flesh.

  She bit her lip, trying to stifle the pain. Forced herself to keep functioning even if she felt as if she was a walking corpse. A corpse coming through Immigration, walking out into the arrivals area. But not in Heathrow, nor any UK airport. The first plane leaving when she’d got to JFK the afternoon before had been for Frankfurt, and that was where she’d landed. And it was just as well. The unanswered—unanswerable—texts piling up on her mobile told her exactly what Rafael was doing.