by Kim Lawrence
CHAPTER FIVE
NELL opened her eyes. ‘Hello,’ she said, stretching sleepily like a cat. One arm still curled above her head, she smiled.
Raul caught his breath at the sleepy invitation in the long-lashed china-blue eyes.
‘What are you doing?’
The shrill accusation in Katerina’s voice succeeded in severing Nell’s link with the dream world. She jerked upright, her eyes wide, her mouth half open, gasping for air like someone who had just been immersed in icy water.
‘I…I was dreaming…’ For a moment there—a dangerous moment—subconscious and conscious, dreams and reality had clashed.
‘Your eyes were open.’
Raul straightened up with far less haste. Without any sign of self-consciousness he began to button up his shirt. ‘Good morning, Katerina,’ he said to his niece.
‘What are you doing here?’ she snarled, bristling with suspicion. ‘And what,’ she added with a pointed glare in Nell’s direction that shrieked traitor, ‘are you doing with Nell?’ Her lip curled. ‘Like I need to ask…’
Ridiculously Nell felt guilty. ‘Your uncle stayed because by the time we’d finished there was no point in him going home and coming back,’ she explained, having no intention of responding to the youngster’s suspicions.
‘Finishing doing what?’
Raul’s eyes moved from Nell’s red face to Katerina’s defiant one.
‘Keep a civil tongue in your head.’ He delivered this instruction with blighting scorn. ‘You are in no position to comment on anyone else’s conduct after your behaviour, especially someone who has gone out of her way to help you.’
Nell saw the colour rise in Katerina’s face. Although the girl had too much pride to back down, she felt a sharp spasm of sympathy for her.
‘Kate didn’t mean anything…’ Her intervention was totally disregarded by the two combatants.
‘Wake your brother and we will leave. Miss Rose has been put to enough inconvenience on our behalf already.’ Nell watched him extract a mobile phone from his pocket and toss it towards the teenager who automatically caught it. His stony expression would have daunted anyone, let alone a young girl. ‘Ring your grandmother to tell her you are all right; the sedation the doctor gave her should have worn off by now.’
As if she doesn’t feel guilty enough already, Nell thought angrily.
Katerina looked at her uncle, her eyes filling with tears, before she turned and stomped back into the bedroom.
Nell dealt the tall, intimidating figure an exasperated frown. ‘Did you have to speak to her that way?’
Raul looked at her blankly. ‘What way?’
Nell clutched her hair in both hands and groaned. ‘My God, you really are no great loss to the world of diplomacy, are you? Couldn’t you try and be conciliatory?’ Silly question, Nell, she thought, allowing her eyes to travel the length of his tall, striking figure—conciliatory wasn’t even in his vocabulary.
‘She spoke to you with disrespect.’
Nell looked at him—no, he wasn’t being ironic. ‘For someone who can’t open his mouth without insulting me, that’s pretty farcical.’
Their eyes meshed and for what seemed like a long time to Nell he didn’t say anything. When he did his words were totally unexpected.
‘You smiled at me.’ His manner was atypically distracted and there was a faint accusatory note in his voice.
‘Is that a crime?’ She gave a provoked sigh. ‘Like I said, I was half asleep; I was dreaming.’
‘Was I in your dream?’ His low, husky drawl had an intimate quality.
Nell blinked to break the mesmeric hold of his eyes. ‘It was a dream, not a nightmare,’ she rasped huskily.
Her spikiness drew a wolfish grin from him.
Eyes still on his face, she pulled herself into a cross-legged position. ‘Listen,’ she began in a low, urgent voice. ‘I know you don’t think much of me or my advice, but go easy on Katerina. She’s a good girl, and she won’t abuse your trust if you do.’
For a moment he stared down expressionlessly into her earnest features. His lips formed a twisted smile. ‘You really care about them, don’t you?’
Before Nell had time to ask why he should find that so amazing a small figure emerged from the bedroom. And when he saw his uncle a visible sigh of relief ran through Antonio’s thin frame.
For Nell it was a very revealing moment. She realised that her impression the previous evening, gained from a few sleepy comments that Antonio had made, had been correct. Antonio was not unhappy with his new guardian; Antonio’s participation in this was about loyalty to his sister.
‘You’re here.’
‘I am.’
‘Are you going to take us home?’
‘Do you want me to?’ Raul squatted down to child height.
Antonio considered the question gravely. ‘I think we need someone to look after us. Kate thinks she can but she’s just a girl. I tried to tell her, but…’
Silently Raul held open his arms and the little boy ran into them. Nell felt her throat thicken emotionally as the child was enfolded in a tight embrace. Raul stood up holding the boy in his arms; he looked at Nell over the child’s dark head and saw the glimmer of tears in her china-blue eyes.
‘I think Katerina might miss you if you went away. What would you feel, Antonio, about going to a school closer to home for a while?’ He set the boy down on the floor and looked at him enquiringly.
‘Live with you, you mean…all the time?’
Raul nodded. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Kate…Kate!’ Her brother’s excited cries brought Katerina running into the room.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m not going away to school. I’m going to stay with you.’
‘Really?’ She looked suspiciously at her uncle who inclined his head fractionally in affirmation. There was a pause. ‘Thank you. I know you wouldn’t be doing this if Nell hadn’t made you,’ she revealed. ‘But thank you anyhow.’
Nell’s embarrassment was profound. ‘I couldn’t make your uncle do anything he didn’t want to,’ she corrected hastily.
She slid a sideways look at Raul’s austere profile to see how he was taking the news of being putty in her hands and was relieved to see the suggestion hadn’t sent him hurtling into outraged ‘nobody tells me what to do’ macho mode.
‘Miss Rose underestimates her powers of persuasion.’
This smooth observation startled her.
‘And if we both wanted the same thing…’ There was an inescapably sensual message in the slow sweep of his sloe-dark eyes as they moved up her body.
It took a couple of seconds for her to get his drift and when she did Nell blushed to the roots of her hair. She pointedly turned her back on Raul but, despite the symbolic gesture of dismissal, her traitorous body still hummed with the desire he had evoked just by looking.
God help me if he takes it into his head to do more than look!
She worried when she reviewed the events later that she might have seemed a bit too eager to get them out of the door, but hopefully the youngsters, on a promise of breakfast at the nearest fast-food outlet, hadn’t noticed.
If Raul himself had noticed it didn’t matter because she was going to make a point of not seeing him again.
CHAPTER SIX
THE representative from the local authority was sympathetic, but made it clear there would be no last-minute reprieve for the centre. The authority’s resources, he explained, were already stretched thin on the ground, and art therapy for children with physical and learning difficulties, while admirable, was considered in the present climate a luxury they could no longer afford.
The staff and parents who had come to the meeting to plead their case decided to go to the pub to drown their collective sorrows. Nell, who didn’t feel in the mood for company, or a smoke-filled bar, offered to stay behind to clear away the chairs and tea things.
While she worked her thoughts were fo
cused on the problem in hand. Not a person to give up easily, she refused to believe the situation was hopeless. Despite her natural optimism, when the last of the teacups was washed and the final chair stacked, she still hadn’t been visited by a blinding flash of inspiration. Maybe the others were right; maybe it was time to call it a day?
Feeling pretty disconsolate, she picked up her bag. It was then she noticed a few items from earlier that day that hadn’t been returned to the store cupboard. Her innately tidy nature made it impossible for her to leave them where they were.
Nell was reaching up, straining to replace a bundle of brushes to the top shelf where they were stored, when they were taken from her grasp and placed on the shelf.
She let out a startled yelp and spun around only to find herself face to chest with Raul Carreras.
A lean hand shot out to steady her as she stepped backwards straight into the sharp corner of a low shelf.
‘Are you hurt?’
Even when Nell had shrugged off his steadying hand the warm imprint remained. ‘No, I’m fine…fine,’ she babbled brightly through a miasma of pain. At least the stabbing pain in her thigh had halted the dragging sexual inertia, startling in its capacity to disconnect her brain from her body, that she had felt inexorably stealing over her in those few seconds of eye contact.
‘Did I startle you?’
Startled hardly covered the state of total chaos her nervous system had been plunged into. Nell pressed a hand to her throat as her eyes slid helplessly over the long, lean, powerful frame of the man who had occupied her thoughts more than was healthy during the last week. At times, his spending the night on her sofa had seemed like an invention of her overactive imagination.
This unreality went double for the night the evening news had splashed images of him all over her television screen. Images of him looking quite incredibly handsome at a sparkling film première, with the equally sparkling young female star of the film clinging to him like a second skin.
Raul’s hands had covered more flesh than the star’s outfit had! To be fair, Raul’s dark, dramatic looks had attracted just as much attention as the daring, and to Nell’s mind totally tasteless, designer dress his companion had almost been wearing.
The next day the tabloids had been filled with photos of the impossibly attractive couple along with endless speculation about a rumoured forthcoming engagement between the divorced actress and the wealthy financier.
Unlike the rest of the country’s adult population Nell had no interest whatsoever in Raul’s wedding plans. She didn’t care which designer would be entrusted to make the bride’s wedding dress and had no interest whatever in which celebrities might be on the guest list.
It had only been a very natural concern for what his impending nuptials might mean for Antonio and Katerina that had made her scour the tabloids for information. This concern was the reason that her own reaction to a suggested spring wedding had been less over the moon than the fashion editors’.
The pretty actress might be a mother-earth type, with maternal instincts coming out of her ears, but if she wasn’t she wouldn’t be exactly overjoyed having two children around. As for Raul, his girlfriend looked more than capable of making him forget his responsibilities.
Nell had tried very hard not to dwell on what methods the nubile young actress might employ to induce amnesia, or on whether she was quite so personally disinterested as she kept telling herself. Now, of course, with him standing there, she knew her latter doubt was more than justified!
Could any woman be disinterested in a man like this?
Today the tuxedo Raul had been wearing at the film première had been replaced by more casual gear, casual but not cheap. The leather jacket alone probably cost enough to keep Nell’s doomed charity project going until Christmas! Though, she admitted ruefully, he would have looked incredible in a brown paper bag, though perhaps not as sleekly dangerous as he did in black leather.
In the confined space she was acutely aware of the exclusive fragrance he wore, but more disturbing was the warm male scent that mingled with it. While she was getting a nose full of designer smell and pheromones he was no doubt being treated to the turpentine she had spilt earlier; perhaps that explained his sour expression.
‘Did you startle me?’ She tucked a strand of bright hair behind one ear, shook the rest of her shoulder-length mane back from her face and gave a dry laugh. ‘You could say that.’ Her expression hardened. ‘Of course you did. What did you expect, creeping up like that?’ she demanded tartly. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’ She clasped her hand to the region where her heart was trying to batter its way out of her ribcage.
Raul’s eyes followed her action; his mouth twisted sceptically. ‘I suspect your heart is tougher than that,’ he observed drily.
Serve him right if I dropped dead at his feet, she thought viciously. ‘So now you’re the medical expert, too?’
‘I did call out, but you didn’t hear me.’
She saw his eyes slide down the length of her jean-clad figure. Nell caught herself wishing that she had worn her new jeans, the hipsters that showed just a little bit of flat midriff, and was both shocked and ashamed. She liked to look nice, but she wasn’t into competing for male approval, considering it both demeaning and pathetic.
On a more practical level, when the male in question was Raul Carreras who dated models and A-list actresses it was also a waste of time. You could dress up a sparrow but at the end of the day it was still a sparrow—or so her gran had been fond of saying.
‘You couldn’t have called out very loud,’ she observed with a sniff. ‘How did you find me anyhow?’ she added, panic making her demand emerge aggressively.
‘How do you know I was looking for you?’ Raul countered, a mocking smile tugging at the corners of his mobile mouth as his dark eyes continued to scan her face—Raul was not one of those people who had a problem with eye contact, unfortunately.
‘Well, I can’t think of any other reason you’d be here.’ And, my goodness, I wish you weren’t!
The store room was actually pretty large and more than capable of accommodating two people, but when one of those people was Raul Carreras a barn would be too small. She made a conscious effort to slow her rapid inhalation. If she carried on hyperventilating she’d end up passing out—something she prided herself on never having done—or with her head in a brown paper bag!
Raul looked around the neatly stacked shelves of the store cupboard, his dark brows pleated. ‘What is this place?’
‘We store stuff here.’
‘We?’
‘I work for a charity that runs an art therapy course for children with learning difficulties.’
‘So this is charity work?’
‘Some people volunteer their services, but I’m a paid employee.’ Though paid very little, so little in fact that she was forced to supplement her income working in a convenience store, but she doubted the state of her finances would interest him.
‘And these children paint pictures?’
‘Amongst other things,’ she returned shortly. ‘I’ll spare you the details.’
‘When I require sparing I will tell you,’ he countered languidly. ‘And you enjoy this work?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she demanded belligerently, then, before he had an opportunity to reply, continued. ‘I suppose it seems flaky to you, but actually learning to express themselves through art and music can really help some of these children.’ The frustration she had been successfully keeping in check all evening spilled over. ‘But don’t worry,’ she added in a shaking voice, ‘we won’t be here long. Our grant has been withdrawn and by Christmas there won’t be enough money to keep it going.’
He was staring at her, and small wonder, she thought suddenly, deeply embarrassed by her emotional outburst.
‘You are upset about losing your job?’
A hissing sound of exasperation escaped through Nell’s clenched teeth. ‘You’ve totally missed the point,
haven’t you? Though I don’t know why I expected anything else from someone like you,’ she mumbled.
‘Then why don’t you tell me what the point is?’ he suggested. Despite his mild tone Nell found there was a disturbing quality to his scrutiny. ‘Preferably in words of one syllable that someone like me might understand.’
‘This may look like a scruffy tin hut to you but to the children that come here, and their parents…’ She broke off as tears began to seep from her eyes.
With a muttered curse she groped in her pocket for a tissue. The search produced a till receipt for her sandwich at lunchtime and a drawing that Tommy had done for her earlier that day. She knew she shouldn’t have favourites, but Tommy was special. She unfolded the portrait of herself in blue crayon.
Raul watched the quivering movement of her lower lip and inwardly groaned. He could deal with Nell Rose, manipulative man-eater with no scruples, but a Nell Rose who gave every appearance of being a crusading do-gooder with attitude was another thing!
Either the woman had weird tendencies or he had miscalculated. Who was he kidding? Of course he had miscalculated. He’d known that for the last week; he’d just been too stubborn to admit it.
Why?
Nell Rose being his brother’s mistress for financial gain was a situation he was more comfortable with than Nell Rose being his brother’s mistress because she loved him. This insight raised a lot more questions than it answered, and Raul, who was not into soul-searching, was in no mood to consider what they might be.
Having finally discovered a tissue tucked up her sleeve, Nell blew her nose defiantly.
‘Madre Mìa!’ He gave a heavy sigh of resignation and took a step towards the dejected figure with the pink-tipped nose. His attention fixed on the weeping girl, he didn’t notice the bare bulb that illuminated the store room until he walked straight into it. He let out a grunt of pain as the light swung upwards and hit the ceiling.
Nell heard a gentle popping sound in the second before the lights went out. An ink-black darkness enveloped them.
‘Don’t move.’
