‘I found it down the side of the chair. You must have dropped it there when …’
A wash of colour flooded up into her cheeks as her voice trailed off and he knew that like him she was remembering just why the phone had been left on the chair in the first place.
‘I was wondering where it was.’
Was it only in his own ears or did he really sound so appallingly stiff and stilted? He didn’t seem to be able to make his mouth work normally. It was as if his tongue had suddenly become stiff and swollen in his mouth.
Or perhaps it was because of the way that his eyes were fixed on the soft, peachy fullness of her mouth. Remembering the feel of it against his, the taste of her on his lips. The way that she had kissed him and the heated response of her body. The heated, deliberately calculated response.
‘I’d just decided that it must be in your flat and I was about to send Carlos round to fetch it.’
‘Well, now you have it back.’
Alannah’s response was low and strangely flat. She was back to being the washed-out creature he had first seen in the hospital room on the day he had arrived in England. There was little trace of the seductive siren he had kissed; even less of the hissing, spitting vixen who had thrown him out of her flat in no uncertain terms. He was shocked to find that it was the vixen he missed most.
Raul’s conscience gave an uncomfortable twist so that he could almost hear his late mother demanding just where were his manners? Hadn’t she taught him better than this? It was ridiculous having this stiff-voiced conversation with him in the open doorway and her standing outside in the corridor. Even though this was a private suite, at any moment someone could come past—a member of the hotel staff, the porter coming for his case.
He stepped back, holding the door wider open.
‘I’m sorry—won’t you come in?’
The look she gave him was another reproof to his conscience. And the brief flash of her green eyes only made her face look even more pale and drawn, emphasising the shadows under her eyes.
‘You look as if you’re about to drop. Come in and sit down for a moment.’
‘I don’t think …’
He thought that he was being perfectly polite, that he had even added a touch of concern, but from the expression on her face he might just as well have suggested that he slit her throat right here and now. He felt his jaw tighten, his mouth compressing.
‘I am capable of being perfectly civilized …’
When she still hesitated, he gave up, flinging up his hands in exasperation and striding back into the room, leaving the door open behind him. Let her make her own decision.
‘Thank you.’
To his amazement she had actually followed him, stepping over the threshold of the door like a wary cat moving into alien territory. And, watching her, he knew that he had lied.
He might have said that he was capable of being civilised; he would even have been prepared to swear to it if necessary. But civilised was not what this woman made him feel. Just the soft sound of her voice made his pulse leap with thoughts of a huge bed, soft pillows, clean sheets and Alannah, warm and welcoming, beside him. The scent of her skin made hunger clutch, hard and hot, low down in his body, so that, turning again, to see her behind him, it was all that he could do to force his mouth into some sort of a smile.
‘I’ll get Carlos to take you back. It’s the least I can do—to say thank you. Why don’t you sit down?’
He waved a hand towards the big leather-covered settee that stood in the middle of the large sitting room and Alannah’s eyes followed the gesture but she silently shook her head and stayed right where she was.
‘Isn’t this the point at which I should offer you a coffee?’ he asked and to his surprise saw the stiffness of her face suddenly crumble and a real, genuine smile broke through the careful restraint she’d imposed.
‘If you did, do you think that we’d get to drink it? We don’t seem to have had much luck so far.’
Did she know what it did to him to see her eyes light up like that, if only for a moment? To see that lush mouth curve in warmth in a way that it so seldom did when he was around? He might tell himself that he hated this woman—detested the way she’d treated him, and now loathed her entire family for the destruction her brother had wreaked on his—but the truth was much more complicated. He just couldn’t get her out of his mind. He was addicted to her and the way he had been feeling the past couple of days was comparable to withdrawal symptoms.
He had needed his ‘fix’ of Alannah and his symptoms had started to subside as soon as she had appeared at his door. He knew what would really cure him of them and that was to give in to the demands his addicted body was making that he took her in his arms, kissed her—took her to bed.
Or would that only make the sexual craving so much worse for having given in to it and actually experiencing, rather than imagining, the pleasure he knew was just waiting for him in her gorgeous body?
‘OK, no coffee.’
But she wasn’t looking at him any more. Her attention had been caught by the sight of the packed suitcase standing beside the now closed door and she was staring at it as if it held some special fascination for her.
‘You’re leaving.’
‘In about an hour.’
Alannah didn’t know how she felt about that. She was shocked and confused by the sudden stab of pain that shot through her at the sight of the case. Was it the thought of him leaving that brought such distress? That if she hadn’t come here today, just now, then she would have missed him? He would have packed and left—and she would never have known. Did she really care?
Oh, who was she kidding? She cared. She had always cared. She might have tried to stop loving him, had spent two long years praying that the feelings would go away, but all he had to do was to walk back into her life and she was lost all over again. Wasn’t that why she was here, now, when she had told herself—told him—that she never wanted to see him again?
Oh, yes, so much that she had jumped at the chance that having to return his damn phone to him would bring. Raul, on the other hand, had been ‘about to send Carlos round to fetch it’. Just as he was going to get Carlos to drive her back home. It had been the phone he had wanted; not any chance to see her again. Instead, he had packed and was on his way, going back to Spain, going out of her life, without a word. If she had any sense, she would get out of here now.
If she had really had any sense then she wouldn’t even have come into the room at his invitation.
She didn’t really know quite why she had accepted that invitation. She’d known that walking into the room was like walking into the lion’s den—almost putting her head into the beast’s jaws and asking him to bite it off. But there had been something in his face that had made it impossible to do what was sensible. He’d looked tired, lost, lonely—strangely vulnerable. She’d known she should just turn and walk away but she just couldn’t do it.
But now she was forced to wonder if she had just been imagining things. Had she only seen in his face what she had wanted to see and deceived herself to what was really there?
‘There’s nothing to stay for now. Everything’s been done …’
Alannah was thankful that Raul’s attention was on his phone. He’d switched it on and was checking the missed-calls register, so he didn’t see the way her face changed in reaction to that dismissive ‘nothing to stay for’. She had a welcome moment to catch herself up, push the foolish weakness aside, and even managed to inject some much needed lightness into her tone when she asked, ‘Have you missed anything important?’
‘Most from my father.’ Raul was still scrolling through the numbers. ‘He wants minute-by-minute reports of everything.’
‘It must be very hard for him.’
Alannah’s voice was low as she thought of the desperate state her mother was in, unable to believe that her beloved son was gone for good. She hadn’t eaten a thing since the accident and only that morning Helena
had declared that she had nothing to live for, that she could see no reason to go on.
‘He’s lost his daughter.’
‘He’s lost more than that.’
Something had put a new harshness into Raul’s voice and his sudden stillness alerted her to the fact that he had stopped messing with his phone and his dark head had lifted, bronze eyes looking straight at her.
Cold bronze eyes looking straight at her.
‘What is it?’
‘You don’t know?’ The way he said it made it clear that he believed she was just pretending.
‘Know what?’
She had to have been fooling herself when she’d thought that he was looking vulnerable—had she actually used the word lost? There was nothing in the least bit lost about him now and his face was set in such harsh lines that there was no way at all she could spot any chink in his personal armour. He was angry, he was cold, he was totally closed off against her and she had no idea why. The man who had invited her in, the man she had glimpsed so briefly when he had actually joked about making her coffee, had disappeared completely and it was because she had seen him, even for such a short time, that she felt the loss like some brutal slash across her heart. Just for a moment she had seen the other Raul, the man she had thought he was. The man she had given her heart to, and now he was gone.
But had he ever truly existed? Was that man just a figment of her imagination and this one, this cold-eyed, bitter-mouthed, icily angry monster before her the real Raul? The one he had never let her see until it was too late.
‘Tell me,’ she said when he simply glared at her without speaking. ‘Raul, tell—’
‘So you’re claiming you didn’t know? That there was something your precious brother didn’t tell you? Some secret he didn’t share?’
‘There must have been or I wouldn’t be asking now. Raul—what are you talking about?’
‘The baby.’
The words came at her like bullets fired from a gun, hard and fast and meant to be lethal, as Raul slammed the phone down on the table without a care for any damage he might do to it.
‘Did you know about the baby?’
‘What baby? Whose baby? Are you saying…?’
She broke off sharply as realisation dawned, her hand going to her mouth in shock. Raul’s savage silent nod seemed to confirm her fears but still she had to say the words to make sure they were the truth.
‘Lo—Lori was pregnant?’
Again came that curt, cold nod that was somehow far more terrifying than if he had lost his temper and raged at her. The fearful control he was imposing on himself to remain so silent, so still after that one violent gesture with the phone spoke more eloquently of the way he was feeling than any words could possibly do.
‘But how…?’
A savage, burning glare from those molten eyes told her just how stupid he thought that question. And that was something she didn’t need telling. Of course she hadn’t needed to ask. There was only one person who could have fathered Lorena’s baby.
‘Chris … How far gone was she?’
‘Almost two months, they said.’
‘I didn’t know.’
Once more those dark eyes flashed in her direction, warning her that he didn’t believe her.
‘I didn’t know!’
There was a long, terrible silence. A silence that tugged and twisted painfully on Alannah’s nerves, and then at last, just when she had given up all hope of it, Raul slowly nodded.
‘No, I don’t think you did. You would have told me if you knew when—when you told me all the rest.’
‘Yes, I would.’ Alannah’s tone was soft. ‘And if it helps any, I think she was planning on telling you—or at least her father—very soon. They said they had a secret but that I’d have to wait to find out.’
She’d thought it was that they were going to get engaged. But perhaps they had planned on that too. The tears burned like acid at the backs of her eyes but surprisingly none of them fell. For the first time in days she felt as if she was all cried out, no tears possible to moisten her dry, aching eyes.
‘Though I suspect that my mother knew.’
Only now, looking back, did she see this as some further explanation of just why her mother had reacted so very badly to the news of Chris’s death. Now, at last, she understood the way that Helena had kept muttering about the way that her future had been taken from her as well as her son. At the time it had only made partial sense.
‘That would explain why she’s so very desolate about this. If she’s lost not just my brother but her dream of a grandchild too then it’s no wonder she’s so desperately low. Nothing seems to even get through to her. Which would be understandable if they told her before they left.’
‘While I have still to tell my father. I have to tell him how when your brother died he not only took my father’s daughter, my sister, with him but he also took the one thing my father wanted most in all the world: a grandchild to hold in his arms.’
The roughness of his voice told her just how hard he was going to find it.
On an impulse she headed for the mini-bar, found a small bottle of the cognac Raul favoured and tipped half of it into a glass. Without a word she held it out to Raul and watched as he tossed it back. The way that the lean bronze lines of his throat tightened as he swallowed made a small kick of response jerk in her stomach.
‘Gracias.’
Understanding was what had made her react in this way, and understanding was what kept her close. She knew what he was going through, having endured it herself. She knew what had put the shadows under his eyes, the grey tinge on his skin. And she knew how he must be dreading telling his father. Matias Marquez Marcín had come late to fatherhood. He had been forty when his son was born, ten years older when his second child, his daughter, Lorena, had come into the world. His health had taken a battering in the past few years and this latest sorrow must have hit him hard.
‘Is your father still unwell?’
Raul nodded slowly, the shadows in his eyes and his sombre expression revealing more than his deliberately controlled response.
‘He had another stroke just before Christmas. He looks so fragile that I fear a puff of wind would blow him away.’
‘There will be other grandchildren.’
‘Mine?’
The single word was raw with bitterness and the golden eyes burned with unspoken accusation. He didn’t say that the grandchildren he had hoped to give his father would have been the ones he’d planned on having with her, the only reason he had asked her to marry him, but he didn’t need to actually speak the words. They were there, in the atmosphere, like letters shaped in ice that came between them with their bitter memories of the past.
‘I doubt if I’ll marry—I suggested it once and decided it was not for me. I’ll not put my head in that noose again.’
The dark, sidelong glance he shot her told her that like her he was thinking of the marriage that had never been between them. Not for the first time she sent up a little prayer of thankfulness that she had never let him see that she knew the real reasons he had ever proposed to her.
‘My father knew that if he was to hope for heirs then he had to look to my sister. At least if he was to have grandchildren while he still had the strength to hold them. Even if I created children—would they come in time?’
‘I’ll pray they do.’
Without thinking she reached out a hand, rested it on Raul’s powerful forearm where the way that he had rolled up his shirtsleeve exposed the tanned skin, lightly dusted with black hair. His skin was warm and smooth under her touch and the feel of hard bone and muscle sent a sensation like an electrical shock running up from her fingertips and along every tingling nerve.
She saw him stiffen slightly, saw his dark eyes flick down to where her fingers rested on his arm and then back up to her face.
‘Alannah…’ he said, just once, soft and low, and he placed the cognac glass down on the table beside him
without ever taking his gaze from hers.
A sudden stillness seemed to freeze the air, paralysing her lungs so that her breathing seemed to stop, she even felt her heartbeat slow to a barely there thread of a pulse. It was as if the rest of the world had dissolved into a hazy mist all around her so that just herself and Raul were real, and everything else had ceased to exist.
Those beautiful eyes seemed to have lost all their burning ferocity and instead were deep pools of misty gold. And when he lifted his hand and put it over hers, pressing it down onto his arm, it seemed to happen in slow motion. So did the movement of his head as he lowered it, angling it so that his mouth was aimed for hers.
And Alannah responded without thought, lifting her own face towards his, her lips parting slightly, waiting for his kiss.
‘Alannah,’ he said again, the warmth of his breath kissing her mouth before he did.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN their lips met it was the gentleness that was totally unexpected. After the blazing passion of the night in her flat, this tenderness caught her up in a warm, swirling sea of sensation, almost seeming to draw out her soul with her breath.
Her head was swimming and her hands went up to clutch at his arms for support, and that was her first mistake. The feel of his strength underneath her seeking fingers was both a delight and a danger. A delight because she wanted to touch further, hold tighter, and a danger for exactly the same reasons. She should break away, should move fast, but her thoughts seemed to have slowed down along with her breathing, and she couldn’t get her brain to send the right instructions to her body. Instead it seemed to want to cling, to cuddle, to press closer to the hard, vital heat of the man …
And that was her second mistake.
Because as soon as she pressed closer it was as if the warmth from his body had spread along her own skin. It seeped into her blood, seeming to melt down her muscles, her bones. And when she swayed on her feet his arms came round her, enfolding her, holding her tight. She was as close as she had wanted to be, clinging as she wanted to be, but in the space of a shaken heartbeat even this close was not enough.
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