‘A silly answer … Nooo …’
‘No what?’
‘Nope. I’ve searched through my memory bank and I can’t recall anybody ever telling me that something I’ve said is silly.’
‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘Perish the thought!’ He ordered them both coffee and then sat back, relaxed, to hear where she would go from here. Surprisingly, they had managed to consume between them the better part of two bottles of very fine white wine indeed. Italian, naturally.
‘It’s just that you pretty much know everything about me. I’ve told you about my family, my sisters, my schooling, my flower shop. But you haven’t told me anything about yourself. I know you work hard and do something clever in business, but what else?’
Rafael thought of the never-ending hours of work he put in running companies that stretched across the world, and was amused to have it all reduced to doing ‘something clever in business’.
‘Went to school, did economics, physics and psychology at university, left with a first-class degree …’
‘You did psychology? Frankie wanted to do psychology at university, but dad told her that it was a soft option so she did history instead. As it turned out, she never actually used her degree cos she got married and had children. I guess you find it useful in business, though—you can interview people and know exactly what they’re really thinking.’
‘Psychology, Cristina,’ Rafael said dryly, ‘As opposed to mind-reading.’ He fell silent for a few seconds and then made a decision. ‘And, yes, I guess it is useful in business. Knowing how people tend to think gives you a headstart on figuring out their moves, which can come in handy when you’re sitting round a table trying to hammer something out. Aside from that, it’s been less effective than you might think.’
‘What do you mean?’ She was hardly aware that she had finished her coffee and was watching him intently, sensing that he was on the brink of a revelation of some kind. Was she holding her breath? She forced herself to breathe evenly because this was really no big deal. He was probably on the brink of disclosing something really trivial, like he hated cooking or didn’t know how to use his washing machine, or had cried when his pet rabbit had died when he was a kid.
‘I was married once …’ Rafael gave her a crooked smile. He had decided to embark on this topic because his marriage was no secret, and sooner or later she would find out about Helen from his mother. He wanted to set the record straight from the start. However, now that the words had left his mouth, he discovered that confiding was a talent he lacked, never having put it to any use.
‘You don’t have to go into any details,’ Cristina said hurriedly, partly because she could sense his difficulty in talking about it and partly because, in this little fantasy world she was busily spinning for herself, hearing about a woman who could turn out to have been the love of his life was not what she wanted. ‘I mean,’ she continued quickly, ‘I know men aren’t very good at expressing their feelings …’ She had read that somewhere and in her limited experience it was certainly true. ‘Well, obviously some men are,’ she ploughed on for the sake of accuracy.
Rafael experienced one of those moments of slight disorientation that conversing with her seemed to generate.
‘Some men can be very sensitive.’ She frowned earnestly. ‘Of course.’
‘Of course,’ he agreed blandly, once more back in control. ‘Men who cry in front of sad movies and think that knitting shouldn’t be a sexist thing.’
This time it was Cristina’s turn to laugh, which drew a smile from Rafael.
‘I got married to a woman called Helen when I was … Well, put it this way, young enough to be fooled into thinking that it was love.’
‘And it wasn’t?’ Cristina asked hopefully.
‘It was a catastrophe.’ This was the real version of events and one he had told no one, not even his mother. This was the version of events which he had had no intention of telling her, but somehow his brain had failed to transmit that message to his mouth—and here he was, recounting a story that was older than time, but that still filled him with sour bile whenever he thought about it. Which was seldom.
He would keep it brief, he decided. ‘We met at university,’ he said in a clipped, impersonal voice. ‘At one of those clubs where too much beer gets drunk and everyone rolls back to halls of residence way too late, stopping for a curry on the way back.’
Cristina tried to imagine a wild and reckless Rafael, drunk and eating a curry, and found that she couldn’t.
‘Helen was there. Unlike everyone else, she was stone-cold sober, just standing a little apart from her group, looking around her.’ Rafael remembered that look. It had been cool and detached, as if she’d been examining the crowd and had possibly found it wanting, and it was that look that had drawn his attention. The look and her amazing beauty: hair platinum-blonde, body tall and languid, eyes of a most incredible green. He had wanted her the minute he had laid eyes on her and, even at the age of twenty, had known that he would have her.
He heard himself explaining that moment to his rapt audience, the moment he had felt something way beyond anything he had ever felt before. Had continued feeling it, like a man in a trance, even when little snippets of information had emerged that should have had the alarm-bells ringing.
‘She was older than me, as it turned out,’ he said dispassionately. ‘A little something she kept to herself, and the fact is I probably would never have been the wiser if I hadn’t come across her passport buried in one of her drawers. Nine years older, to be precise. Nor was she a university student. She actually worked at a department store in the city.’ He shook his head, and although he couldn’t detect the bitterness in his own voice Cristina had no trouble in hearing it, and her tender heart reached out to him.
‘We married as soon as I was out of university, by which time she naturally was well aware of the extent of my personal fortune. My ex-wife,’ he said heavily, ‘Was instrumental in showing me the truth behind the saying that all that glitters is not gold. It wasn’t long before I realised that she was long on good looks, but pretty short on fidelity.’
‘How awful for you,’ Cristina said softly, which reminded Rafael that he was in the process of pouring his heart out, a self-indulgent exercise for which he had no taste. But she made a good listener, and it felt oddly liberating to talk to her.
‘To cut a long story short …’ He signalled for the bill and briefly scanned it before handing over his credit card. ‘It wasn’t long before she began casting her net elsewhere, while continuing to enjoy the sort of lavish lifestyle she must have been quietly searching out all her life. She was involved in a fatal car crash in America, and only I am aware of the fact that she wasn’t the driver of the car. I believe he was the ski instructor she had met the year before.’
‘That’s just awful,’ Cristina said softly and, far from being irritated by a clichéd response, Rafael was touched by the depth of feeling in her voice.
‘That’s just … life. So, now you have been treated to a slice of my past, it’s time for us to head home. You have work tomorrow and I have a do later tonight which, I might add, I am already late for.’ He stood up, surprised at the speed with which the evening had progressed.
‘Won’t they be a little put out? It’s after nine!’
‘It’s not the sort of affair that requires strict adherence to time,’ Rafael said, thinking without vanity that he would be welcomed whatever time he decided to appear because they had more need of him than he had of them. ‘But …’ Yet another uncharacteristic decision. ‘You are right. The thought of walking around an art gallery and trying to look interested in splashes of random colour on a canvas might be a bit of a struggle at this hour.’ He quickly made a couple of calls, and by the time he had clicked off his mobile his appearance at the gallery had been cancelled.
It was beginning to rain outside, an icy rain that spiked their faces like thin needles. Against this penetrating cold
Cristina’s coat was defenceless and she was glad to step into a taxi and sit back, eyes closed as she rehashed in her mind her extraordinary afternoon and evening. The football coaching had started off with such lack of promise, and had ended in her sharing a meal with a man to whom she was—and she didn’t mind admitting it—strangely and intoxicatingly attracted. A man who was attracted to her!
He had confided in her. Had that been a turning point for him?
‘You’re not going to fall asleep on me, are you?’ Rafael asked as he heard her try to stifle a yawn.
‘Sorry.’ She shifted in her seat and looked at him drowsily. ‘Must be all that wine after running around coaching. I feel exhausted.’
Rafael started to say something and then noticed that her eyelids were drooping. It dawned on him that she was nodding off in his company. Was this what they meant by sending someone to sleep?
By the time the taxi was outside her apartment, she was leaning against him, breathing evenly, sweetly asleep. Her hair smelled fresh and clean. He gently nudged her, and Cristina woke with a little start and straightened up, apologising profusely for falling asleep.
Her eyes were still drowsy. She looked like a little rumpled puppy.
‘I’ll see you in, and before you tell me that I don’t need to I know I don’t. But I will anyway.’
‘Am I that predictable?’ she asked, waking up more fully as she stepped out into the rain.
‘No,’ he drawled slowly. ‘Predictable isn’t a word that could be used to describe you.’
It was only when they were in the lift that Cristina, fully alert now, became aware of the atmosphere between them. Something had changed, although she couldn’t precisely say what. They both knew something about each other that was unique to them. She knew about a slice of his past which he had shared with no one else, and he knew that she was a virgin, and this intimacy seemed to have altered something. Altered it in a thrilling and very charged way. She kept her eyes studiously averted in the lift, but every nerve in her body was aware of him standing next to her, his hair damp from the rain, his hands thrust into the pockets of his trench coat.
The lift doors purred open and, like a bolt from the blue, Cristina realised what had been lying at the back of her mind ever since she had set eyes on Rafael, ever since he had come to her rescue at his mother’s party.
For reasons quite beyond her, he had awakened something in her, a sexual side that had been in hiding, waiting for the right moment. Even though he wasn’t the right man, he still did things to her, made her feel alive, sent all her senses on red-hot alert.
And she couldn’t help but think that he felt something for her as well. Everything pointed in that direction because, really and truly, why would he pretend an attraction that wasn’t there? What would be the point?
Never in her wildest imagination had she ever thought that he might really find her sexy, but it seemed that he did—and the realisation was as powerful as a drug, firing her blood, making her giddy with excitement.
Her hands were trembling as she inserted the key into her door and let them both in to her apartment.
This time she didn’t, as she might normally have, turn to him with a polite, friendly smile, thank him for the lovely meal and wait for him to leave as she stood sentinel by her front door. This time, she just half turned and asked him whether he might care for a cup of coffee.
She shrugged off her coat, hung it over the banister and without giving him time to frame an answer headed up the narrow stairs, her heart beating so loudly that she swore that, had there been complete silence, she would have heard it over the patter of the rain outside.
As it was, she could hear him following up the stairs, and when he was standing framed in the doorway of the small kitchen she was already fetching two mugs down from the cupboard.
He had disposed of his trench coat and of the beige cashmere jumper and had rolled the sleeves of his shirt to the elbows.
‘I know.’ She thought her voice sounded jumpy and she cleared her throat. ‘It’s really warm in the flat. I can’t bear to be cold inside, so the heating’s always turned up.’ She gave a nervous little giggle. ‘I can’t imagine what I’m doing for the global warming situation. You know, you see these adverts on telly: carbon footprints … should wash clothes at thirty degrees instead of forty …’ She was talking too much. She blushed and stared down in a fixated fashion at the coffee which she was now spooning into the mugs.
In the silence, her eyes skittered across to him. He hadn’t moved from his position by the door, although he was now leaning against the door frame and smiling at her.
‘Would you believe me if I told you that I’d never met anyone like you before?’ he asked lazily.
‘Would you say that that’s a compliment?’
‘Isn’t it always a compliment to be told that you’re unique?’ he said, and for a few seconds Cristina thought that he hadn’t exactly answered her question, at least not in a very satisfactory way. But her thoughts scattered at his expressive, glinting smile. It transfixed her and brought all coherent thought skidding to an abrupt stop.
Rafael walked towards her and rescued the kettle from her shaking hands, then he poured boiling water into the mugs.
‘There you go again,’ he murmured softly. ‘Acting like a cat on a hot tin roof. Are you nervous because I flirted with you over dinner?’
Cristina, lost in the depths of those fabulous blue eyes, shook her head dumbly. It was impossible to think straight when she was looking at him, when he was looking at her, like that. It was as if time had stood still, and in that moment everything seemed heightened: every sense, every noise, the faintest flutter of her heart.
Her hand reached up and she soundlessly stroked the side of his face, tracing the harsh, beautiful contour of his cheekbone. And then, standing on tiptoe, her eyes closing as she neared him, she softly covered his mouth with hers.
CHAPTER FIVE
RAFAEL didn’t know whether it was the hesitancy of the gesture or the implication behind it, but the result was explosive. One minute he was coolly playing with the notion that this woman, unexpectedly, might very well be the one who made sense when it came to settling down … and the next minute his body was reacting to a simple touch as if she were the first woman to have laid hands on him.
He didn’t stop to question his reaction.
Coffee was forgotten as he returned that tentative kiss with one of his own. He curled his fingers into her hair, tilting her head back so that he could plunder her sweet, eager mouth with his tongue, until her body curved against his. He could almost feel her heartbeat, and when eventually they surfaced for oxygen he held her back, breathing thickly,
‘Are you sure you want this?’ he questioned unevenly. Never before had he asked a woman whether she wanted to sleep with him. In that game called love—or rather, as far as he was concerned, lust—the rules were perfectly understood. It had always been a ritual, a courtship routine, the only difference being that the routine had never led to permanence.
How ironic that he should now give this woman the chance to back out when she was the chosen one.
He would also not be making the inevitable speech about not getting involved, about enjoyment without strings. He was filled with a strange sense of liberation. Also, the realisation that his mother had been right, that he had reached an age to settle down—and he counted himself fortunate that he was mature enough to view the situation in a cool-headed manner, to work out the most appropriate partner, thereby eliminating the possibility of failure. It was comforting to know that he could rationalise a relationship in the same way that he could rationalise a spreadsheet.
He wished that he had had that knowledge at his disposal all those years ago when he had leapt into marriage because of that non-existent, illusory and ludicrously overrated misconception called love. He wished that someone had told him then what he knew now, which was that there was no such thing as love. There was common sense, and that, ab
ove all else, was the lubrication that kept the wheels of a relationship turning.
Cristina looked at him with absolute conviction and nodded. She couldn’t help but be impressed by the fact that he hadn’t just taken what had been on offer, but had given her the opportunity to change her mind had she so wanted. How many men would have done that?
She half closed her eyes and this time, when his mouth touched hers, it was with devastating tenderness. She wrapped her arms around his neck and moaned very softly as he trailed kisses over her fluttering eyelids and damp cheeks before recapturing her mouth.
‘I think we should continue this in the bedroom, don’t you?’ he asked softly and Cristina sighed in wordless agreement.
Once there, she stared at him in open fascination as he began removing his clothes, and when he looked at her with wry amusement she blushed, but didn’t look away, and nor did he seem in the slightest bit bothered by her absorption.
Only when he was down to his boxer shorts did her nerves begin to kick in and she was overcome with sudden, horrendous shyness.
‘Don’t worry,’ Rafael murmured, oddly touched by the nervous, wary expression on her face. He walked slowly towards her, not wanting to frighten her. He was massively and unashamedly turned on, could feel his erection pushing up against the boxers, but he was going to take his time.
‘I’m not worried.’ Cristina chewed her lip, dragging her eyes away from that bulge, which was both a heady turn-on and a source of fear. ‘Okay, I am. Just a bit. I’m not … I don’t know …’
‘I’ll take care of you,’ Rafael said gently.
Cristina nodded gratefully, and continued staring at him, at his powerful, masculine beauty—the broad, brown shoulders, the narrow, tapering waist, the latent strength in his body that was visible every time he moved. There was something so graceful about him even though he was so impressively built. He was so much more experienced than she was, had had so many lovers. That was a little scary, as was the knowledge that all those lovers would have been as physically perfect as he himself was.
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