by Lynne Graham
'I felt the barrier... I told myself I was crazy... I just couldn't believe it!' Rafael vented unsteadily.
'I don't know what you're talking about '
'Stop it, Georgie,' Rafael grated rawly. 'You were a virgin!'
'Will you stop saying that?'
'Admit it.'
'OK—big deal, I. don't think—you were the first, so go and notch your bloody bedpost!' Georgie shrieked back, a boiling tide of embarrassing moisture dammed up behind her eyelids.
'Dios.. .but how is it possible?' Rafael demanded with a groan.
'Just leave me alone!'
Without warning, he pulled her into his arms. She could feel the raw tension still sizzling through him. She was as rigid as a mannequin in his embrace. Seemingly impervious to that lack of encouragement, he released his breath in a hiss. 'Forgive me... can you ever forgive me for what I have done?' he muttered unevenly. 'But to make such a sacrifice to prove to me how wrong I have been... How can I ever make that up to you?'
Cursing the reality that Rafael always cornered he; when she was least capable of self-defence, Georgie was attempting to fight through the absolute turmoil of her own confusion. But that final incredible statement pierced the tumult and froze her. Rafael actually believed that she had made him a gift of her inexperience simply to prove that he had been wrong about her promiscuity all along. It was the most nauseating suggestion Georgie had ever heard.
'Well, you don't need to make it up to me, because I wasn't trying to prove anything! Your opinion of me, Rafael, is absolutely immaterial to my peace of mind.'
'You cannot mean that,' Rafael said with flat disbelief. Georgie fought out of his temporarily loosened hold and grabbed the sheet round her. 'I'm sorry, I do mean it. Such an idea never once occurred to me,' she snapped, thoroughly fed up that he just wouldn't take the hint and leave her alone with the tumultuous mess of emotion that was sloshing around inside her.
'Not that,' he stressed. 'You cannot mean that my opinion means nothing to you after what we have just shared.' 'Wasn't exactly a communion of souls, was it?'
Georgie heard herself say snidely. 'We had sex '
'We made love '
'We screwed,' Georgie broke in, determined to have the last word.
'Don't talk like that!' Outraged golden eyes raked over her.
'Oh, is that one of those expressions which you're allowed to use and I'm not? Tough,' Georgie muttered tightly, pleating the sheet between her fingers, recognising that she was hopelessly engulfed in bitterness. 'I really can't understand why you're going on like this about something so trivial.'
Long fingers curved round her arms, dragging her round to face him. 'After all that has happened between us, how could it possibly be trivial?' he demanded savagely.
'Not many women go to the grave virgins. For heaven's sake, I'm twenty-three and I just thought it was time.”
“Well, to be honest, I didn't think at all,' Georgie adjusted with essential honesty. 'But if I had realised there was going to be a heavy post-mortem, I wouldn't have bothered, I can tell you that!'
'You're upset, embarrassed... I am spoiling everything,' he breathed starkly.
'You generally do when you open your mouth. I ought to be used to it by now.'
'My conscience... it is eating me alive,' he confessed tightly, reaching for one of her tightly clenched hands and smoothing out the small fingers. 'I have hurt you so much. You tried to defend yourself four years ago and I wouldn't listen to you. Why won't you look at me? Why won't you speak?'
'I'll probably be a bit more slick the next time I have a one-night stand,' Georgie bit out acidly, but she could hear the tremor in her own voice, the thickness of tears she was holding back. She snatched her hand back.
'There won't be a next time.'
No, he was right there. Nothing like learning the hard way, Georgie! Do you ever learn any other way? The last thing she needed was Rafael's guilt. It made her want to scream and claw at him. She had her pride, like anyone else, but it seemed to her that he was set on depriving her of even that. The past was past. She had no desire to reopen that particular Pandora's box.
Or the even more recent past. All that shameless rolling about and moaning she had done for his benefit—well, that was so far in the past that it was pre-civilisation as far as she was concerned. The worst mistake of her life. He treated her like dirt beneath his aristocratic feet and she rewarded him by falling into bed with him. A single tear rolled down her cheekbone, stinging her tender skin on its passage.
'Querida...please...please don't cry,' Rafael groaned. 'Anything you want, anything it takes, I will make it up to you...'
'A flight to La Paz.' Escape. That was all that was on Georgie's mind.
'That isn't what you really want,' Rafael assured her with harsh emphasis.
And that was the last straw. Georgie looked at him, her facial muscles stiff with pure rage. 'How the hell would you know what / want?'
He slung her a thwarted look, raw with a kind of incredulous frustration, and sprang off the bed to stride into the bathroom.
Georgie flopped back down again. 'Good riddance,' she muttered out loud.
Then she rolled over and buried her convulsing face furiously into the tumbled pillows. Why wouldn't he just leave her alone? Didn't he have his own bathroom? She reined the sobs back, wouldn't cry, wouldn't have cried if he'd held her upside-down over abonfire and tortured her. Making an outsize fool of herself once in one day was enough.
This was the end of something that had started four years ago—no, six years ago, when she had first laid -yes on Rafael Rodriguez Berganza. A terrifying obsession which had grown out of a teenage infatuation. It was finished now. The act of sex had finished it forever. But what a shame it was that she had to sacrifice her friendship with Maria Cristina on the same funeral pyre. For she would have no other choice. The last connection had to be severed. There would be no more letters bearing continuous little snippets of information about Rafael... Sometimes Rafael's sister had written so much about him that Georgie had wondered if her friend's own life was so empty that she had nothing better to vrite about. On the face of it, what possible interest could Georgie have been supposed to have in Rafael's travels, his speeches and his business interests, with never an indiscreet word about the women in his life?
But those letters, she appreciated, had kept Rafael alive inside her mind and her memory. Well, she needed to go on with her life and leave him behind her where he belonged, and she couldn't possibly do that and still stay in touch with Maria Cristina! Her throat thickened with renewed bitterness.
In the midst of her turmoil, Georgie was scooped without warning off the bed. 'What are you doing?'
'I ran a bath for you.'
'Why?' Georgie demanded baldly.
'Because it would appear to be about the only thing I can currently do that might be right,' Rafael delivered shortly, whipped off the sheet which had been wrapped round her and slid her into the warm water before she knew what was happening to her.
In silence, Georgie hugged her knees, dead centre of the splendid marble bath, her tumbled head downbent as she stared blindly down into the water.
'As God is my witness, I will kill him,' Rafael intoned with a murderous quietness that was somehow explosive in the charged silence.
'Kill who?' she mumbled without much interest, too caught up in her own stark sense of failure and inadequacy.
'Nobody important,' Rafael murmured smoothly.
'I want to go home,' she said tightly.
'I thought you wanted to see Maria Cristina and...and George.'
Astonishment held her taut and then drifted away again. Nothing like a rousing dose of guilt for the Latin conscience, she reflected. 'No.'
'No?' Rafael repeated, his disbelief at the careless denial palpable.
'No,' she said again.
'Why? No, forget I asked...' Rafael urged in abrupt retreat.
Later she didn't know how long she had sat
there before she mechanically washed and then dried herself, and padded back to the bedroom. The sheet had been changed. Her cheeks burned. Marvellous, now everybody would know! Well, that was it. She wasn't budging out of this bedroom until he had that flight arranged! Donning a nightdress with shaking hands, Georgie got back into bed, great rolling breakers of misery submerging her.
Now—now, why didn't she bring it out and face it? Just when had she fallen in love with Rafael? Six years ago, four years ago or just yesterday? Did the timing really matter? He had turned away from her after slaking his lust. Then, she had suspected herself but, by the time he got around to suggesting the life of a kept woman in Paris, suspicion had become painful fact. That had been the final humiliation. To love a man who had caused her this much pain was insanity.
Pride, self-interest and intelligence ruled against loving a complete bastard. But the fact of the matter was that she did love him, could still hate him with unvarnished energy and passion when he hurt or angered her, but underneath all that was the love and this truly paralysing longing to be loved back. It terrified her. What had he ever done to be worthy of her love? Nothing, not a single damned thing!
She fell asleep and was wakened by a tiny sound. Startled, she sat up, saw Rafael standing over her and visibly flinched, her natural colour draining away.
'I brought you up some dinner... you were asleep at lunch time,' he proffered tautly.
Georgie was stunned. Rafael with a tray. As unnatural a sight as Rafael up to his elbows in a sink full of dishes.
He looked a little rough too, a blue shadow darkening his strong jawline, harsh lines of strain between his arrogant nose and hard mouth. His tie was loose at his brown throat, a couple of buttons on his shirt undone, revealing a whorl of black, curling hair.
She dragged her uncertain eyes from him. 'Thanks, she said woodenly.
He strolled round to the foot of the brass bed and closed his brown hands round the top rail. 'I explained to Teresa that you had been taken ill... and ' he hesitated '—I changed the bed,' he added in a strained
undertone.
He had changed the bed. What the heck was going on here? Why was he behaving in this weird way? She, was willing to bet that Rafael had never changed a bed in his life before. Of course, he was hiding the evidence. She suddenly wished she were a corpse. Now, that would have given him a real challenge to get his teeth into, the sort of challenge he really deserved. She just bet she was on a flight home tomorrow.
'We need to talk,' he drawled, when it became painfully obvious that Georgie was not about to break the silence.
'No.' She didn't even lift her head.
'Then I will talk and you will listen.'
'You could have nothing to say that I could possibly want to hear.'
A lean hand abruptly slashed through the air in a raking gesture of raw impatience. 'I make no excuses for my behaviour over the past forty-eight hours. I must have been out of my mind,' he admitted in a driven un -dertone. 'I abandoned every principle. I behaved dis-honourably. I went off the rails for the very first time-in my life and it has been a sobering experience. I deeply regret everything which has happened between us.'
Georgie's appetite had vanished. She surveyed the exquisitely arranged meal through swimming eyes. She was suffering from this truly appalling urge to leap out of bed and put her arms round him. Lord, but she had it bad! Here he was practically on his knees and she didn't even have the gumption to feel any sense of vindicated satisfaction. He had insulted her, threatened her, de-prived her of her freedom, and now he was saying sorry in the only way he could. And since humility came about as naturally to Rafael as walking on water would come to her, she knew exactly what this approach had to be costing him in terms of pride.
'Fine. Apology accepted,' she said with forced lightness.
"That is very generous of you.' It suddenly occurred to her that, in giving way to her shell-shocked emotions earlier, she had been childishly self-indulgent. They had made love, a development she now saw as inevitable. And Rafael had not swept her off to bed without her enthusiastic encouragement. She forced her head up, dealing him a glance from beneath thick copper lashes, and shrugged a narrow shoulder. Least said, soonest mended,' she dismissed, quoting her ate grandmother.
Lustrous dark eyes rested on her with incisive intensity. 'You are taking this very well!' I'll be out of here tomorrow. 'Why not?' Georgie contrived another shrug, even managed a faint smile, and felt immensely proud of herself until she realised that she was finding it incredibly hard to drag her gaze from his darkly handsome features. Memory roamed relentlessly back a few hours and a surge of heat dampened her skin, interfered with her breathing and sent her heartbeat into shameless acceleration. In bed, he was her every fantasy fulfilled, and the instant that thought came to her she drowned in self-loathing.
'Bueno.' Rafael expelled his breath in a hiss. Tension sizzled from his stance in palpable waves. From the foot of the bed he watched her, his magnificent physique visibly taut. His hard jawline clenched, a tiny pulse tugging at the corner of his unsmiling mouth.
The silence smouldered. Georgie fingered a prawn off her starter and munched defiantly at it, her cheeks still hot as hellfire from her last thought.
'Then allow me the very great honour of asking you to become my wife,' Rafael breathed, with an abruptness that brutally shattered the tense silence.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Halfway to success in pursuit of a second luscious prawn, Georgie stilled and looked up, met shimmering golden eyes fiercely pinned to her. She tried and failed to swallow. Her wide violet gaze clung to him in rampant disbelief.
'I'm an angel now,' she whispered in shock.
'Que?' Rafael stared darkly back at her.
'You're not serious?' Georgie framed weakly.
'I have already spoken to Father Tomas.'
Georgie bunked rapidly at the calm announcement. 'You've what!'
'Or if you would prefer I could contact an English minister I am acquainted with in La Paz.'
Numbly, Georgie shook her head. Rafael gazed steadily back at her, impervious, it seemed, to her disbelief. She drew in a slow, shaky breath, her heart thumping noisily in her eardrums. 'I just don't believe I'm hearing this... You don't want to marry me!'
'Had I had more faith in you four years ago, we would already have been man and wife,' Rafael drawled in a tone of finality.
'But that's got nothing to do with now.'
'Georgie...I want to marry you.'
Georgie dragged unwillingly fascinated eyes from his forceful gaze and sighed heavily. 'When you said we were from different cultures, you weren't joking. I suppose you think you have to marry me because—well—because we slept together.'
'I want the right to share that bed with you every night,' Rafael murmured softly.
Her skin warmed. She didn't question the overwhelmingly strong attraction between them but she sincerely doubted that in any other circumstances it would have prompted Rafael to offer marriage after making love to her. He was feeling guilty. Rafael, who prided himself on his principles, his sense of honour and his excellent judgement, had just weathered the discovery that he was human after all. Not perfect, not without flaw...and both his manner and his appearance told her just how savaging that revelation had been.
So here he was now, offering the only reparation he could. Marriage. He would marry her because he had slept with her. He would marry her because he had been her first lover. And. perhaps he would also marry her because he had already told her that that had been his intent four years ago. Not for any other reasons. Not because any romanticised view of her lingered from the past. No such illusions could remain after what Rafael had believed about her for so long. But, regardless of all that, Rafael would force himself to make the ultimate sacrifice. He believed that he owed her that wedding-ring. For a split-second she felt so corrosively bitter that it physically hurt to breathe.
'We're just not su
ited,' Georgie muttered. 'But I do appreciate the thought.' It was a lie. Suddenly she hated him for his precious code of honour and decency, light-years away from the values of the more liberated society in which she had been raised. Such a proposal was no compliment. 'Thanks, but no thanks.'
'It wasn't just a thought,' Rafael rebutted tautly.
'No, I expect it took a lot of macho courage for you to ask a woman you don't like and don't respect to become your wife,' Georgie responded, equally tautly.
'But the point is, I don't want to marry you anyway, so it wasn't necessary.'
'That is not how I regard you now.' His retort was level.' I made a very grave error of judgement four years ago '
A knife-edged laugh was torn from Georgie. 'An error of judgement!' she repeated helplessly, and looked heavenward, unable to escape the recollection of how badly she had been hurt by the fall-out.
A dark rise of blood had accentuated his high cheek bones, but he held her evasive gaze unflinchingly. 'Think of it from my point of view '
'Your point of view?' she gasped incredulously.
'I knew that Steve did not look on you as a sister. I was aware that he was sexually attracted to you '
Georgie threw her head back, her disgust unhidden. 'Are you still trying to twist the facts? That night, when Steve suddenly grabbed me and kissed me, he had had too much to drink. He was upset because he had had a row with his girlfriend. It was just one of those stupid, crazy things that people do sometimes on impulse and it meant nothing!'
Rafael dealt her a slashing glance. 'You only see what you want to see, Georgie...'
'And what's that supposed to mean?'
His expressive mouth flattened into a compressed white line. 'Steve,' he breathed tautly. 'You still love him as a brother, as a member of your family?'
Georgie frowned, unable to understand his need to state the obvious. 'Naturally, we're close. Why wouldn't we be?' she demanded.
Rafael was very still, his dark features oddly tense and austere as he studied her. There was a long pause. Then he shrugged a shoulder with a grim air of finality. 'When I saw you in his arms, how do you think I felt?'