And he still hadn’t dressed. He was sitting up in bed, the quilt loosely draped over his lower half, leaving his upper half exposed and not even partially hidden by his computer, which he had thoughtfully shoved to the side in expectation of the tray on his lap.
Feeling like room service, Sophie sourly placed the tray on the chest of drawers and, ignoring his questions, rummaged in one of the drawers until she came up with a tee shirt, a dark green tee shirt with an expensive logo on the front pocket, which she tossed over at him.
‘You wouldn’t want to compound your cold with third-degree burns from spilling hot coffee on yourself, would you?’ she asked sweetly. Rafe grinned and obediently stuck on the tee shirt.
‘Better?’
‘Here’s your order.’ Sophie placed the tray squarely on his lap and stood back while he made appreciative noises under his breath.
‘Smells good. I can spot a domestic goddess a mile off.’ He dug into his food with an enthusiasm that pointed to some very hungry germs. Sophie wondered whether he was as ill as he was making out and came to the conclusion that, like most men, he was just making a mountain out of a molehill. It was more understandable considering he had no real recognition of the average virus, having never been visited by one.
‘Sit down,’ he commanded, concentrating on his eggs and toast. ‘You’re making me uncomfortable standing there with your arms folded.’
‘Oh, I was just trying to conform to my sergeant-major image,’ Sophie informed him. She could have kicked herself for the little outburst which, rather than sounding coldly sarcastic as intended, emerged as a petulant, childish complaint. ‘Patricia was worried about you,’ she carried on. ‘Would you like me to telephone her just to let her know that you’re all right?’
‘If I was all right, I would be at work,’ Rafe said irritably. ‘That tasted great. You can cook my eggs any time you want.’
Sophie went to recover the tray, waiting as he removed his coffee-cup. ‘Thanks, but I’ll pass on that offer.’
For some reason Rafe felt unaccountably annoyed with the remark. As annoyed as he felt watching her as she busied herself trying to juggle the tray in one hand and hang onto her bag with the other.
‘For God’s sake, sit down, will you? I doubt taking a few minutes out of your carefully planned day is going to hurt!’
Sophie was so startled at the sharpness of the demand that she actually obeyed him. She sat. On the bed next to him, tray on her lap, handbag at her feet.
‘Okay, so it might not be part of the master plan to have found yourself here, but, now that you have, why don’t you accept the situation and make the most of it? After all,’ he added slyly, ‘you find me a captive audience.’
‘All right.’ She felt him shift his legs slightly under the quilt and licked her lips. ‘Here’s a question: why did you ask me to come over? I mean, why me? If you wanted someone to fetch you some cold capsules and cook you breakfast, wouldn’t the obvious option have been Angela? I mean, how is she going to feel, knowing that I’m here with you? Or you could have asked Patricia to come over with the documents…’
‘I suppose I could have asked Patricia to come over, but, no…that would not have worked.’ He folded his arms behind his head. ‘We have amicable but rigid lines established between us. She would have been highly uncomfortable being here, in my house, seeing me as an invalid…’
‘Oh, good grief. Anyone would think you were suffering from something serious! What about Angela, then?’
The lazy smile dropped off his face immediately and he frowned. ‘Oh, no. That wouldn’t have worked at all.’
‘Why?’ Sophie could think of nothing nicer than being taken care of by your partner, knowing that every solicitous action came from love and affection and a real desire to help. Her face softened.
‘For the same reason your eyes seem to have misted over,’ Rafe said dryly. ‘Angela would have liked nothing better than to swan around my house, sticking on a housewife hat and patting my fevered brow. Her cooking skills might have been open to question, but she would have relished the prospect of having a go.’
‘And you wouldn’t have wanted to encourage that.’
‘Very sharp of you, my dear Watson. Besides, her secretarial skills are atrocious and I want you to do some letters for me…’
Which took them until lunchtime. By which point, he had at least moved operations back down to the sitting room and had clothed himself in something a little less alarming than a bathrobe. The letters, optimistically promised to take no longer than an hour, at the tops, turned into corrections to several reports, interrupted by phone calls that Rafe insisted on taking despite complaints about a sore throat.
At one, as the phone rang yet again Sophie held up her hand and stopped him from picking up the receiver.
‘Leave it to me,’ she said. At this rate, she would be lucky to leave by nightfall, and she had to. Not only did she have her own work to do, including reporting back to her company on how her assignment was coming along, but she was uneasily aware that she was enjoying being in his company. This was a side to him she hadn’t glimpsed before, with an edge of vulnerability that was endearing.
Sophie didn’t want endearing. Endearing might make successful copy, but it did nothing for her equilibrium.
She had expected another wretched client, none of whom seemed able to survive without making contact with the big boss himself, and had worked out a strategy for making sure that the phone call was terminated before it could generate another spate of letters. Instead, she heard the distinctive voice of Claudia Loro.
As luck would have it, Claudia recognised her voice instantly and with a silent groan of dismay she could tell, from that initial, fractional pause, that the older woman was wondering what her friend’s daughter was doing in Rafe’s house.
And, Claudia being Claudia, she made no attempt to beat about the bush. She asked directly and with interest. And waited for an answer.
‘I’m…’ Sophie looked desperately over to Rafe and mouthed: It’s your mother. His returning grin did nothing for her growing sense of frustration. ‘I’m…just here…doing my job…’
‘In his house? How very thorough of you, darling!’
‘No! I mean… I did go to work this morning, as usual, but Rafe isn’t awfully well at the moment and…’
‘You decided to go and take care of him!’ Claudia sounded delighted. ‘I take it it’s nothing serious or I would have heard. Probably just a common cold. You know men, though—such babies.’
Sophie looked across at Rafe and smirked. ‘Yes, he’s really such a baby,’ she agreed wholeheartedly. ‘Moaning and pleading for painkillers every two minutes.’
‘But it was sweet of you to rush to his bedside.’ Claudia’s voice was thoughtful.
‘Oh, I didn’t rush! In fact, I was ordered to come across. Rafe wanted some documents…’
‘Oh, really? I would have thought that any decent courier service would have been able to deliver—not that the personal touch isn’t much better, my dear. It is! And I expect he’s had you cooking for him as well…?’
‘Not cooking as such, no. Just some scrambled egg, but actually I was about to leave when you called. How’s Mum? Tell her I’m sorry I haven’t called for a few days, if you see her, and I promise I’ll be in touch later tonight. Shall I put you onto your son? He apparently has a sore throat, although he doesn’t seem to have lost use of his voice.’ She handed the phone to Rafe and remained standing, hoping that he would simply wave her away while he continued chatting to his mother on the telephone. He didn’t. He obviously saw no need for privacy when it came to talking to his mother, and she could understand why, since most of the talking seemed to be done by her. Rafe responded largely in monosyllables. An avid eavesdropper would have been unable to glean a thing from the grunting, noncommittal nature of his responses. For all she could tell, he could have been conducting a conversation with someone in a foreign language.
�
��I must go,’ Sophie said as soon as he was off the phone. ‘Is there anything else you want me to fetch for you before I leave?’
‘Have you noticed how mothers have a unique ability to inspire guilt?’ Rafe looked at her in wry amusement and Sophie was distracted enough to return his amusement.
‘Always,’ she agreed. She was already feeling guilty at her own negligence in phoning her mother and predicting her mother’s remarks, or pointed lack of them, when she did get round to calling later. Her mother always adopted a casual approach, proclaiming abhorrence for these children who left home only to feel a duty to clock in at prearranged times during the week, but it wasn’t hard for Sophie to hear the anxiety whenever she missed a couple of days. It was oddly endearing.
‘Apparently my responsibility was to telephone the very second the thought occurred to me that I might be going down with something.’
‘I’m surprised Claudia didn’t offer to come down and look after you.’
‘Oh, she did, but I told her that I was in good hands…’
‘You didn’t!’ No, of course he hadn’t, she would have heard him. She’d been right there in the room! He hadn’t said anything as provocative as that.
‘Don’t tell me you find another implied insult in that remark,’ Rafe said mildly. Of course she didn’t. It was simply the unspoken, and for her probably unconscious, nebulous recognition that his mother would be adept at drawing conclusions where none should be drawn. He himself had had no difficulty in spotting Claudia’s rapid assessment of Sophie being in his house, looking after him, a man who had never asked any woman to look after him in his life before.
He would normally have been angry at the assumption, but…
Rafe looked lazily at Sophie from under half-closed eyes. She was frowning slightly. He had fast become accustomed to that small frown. It usually heralded one of her outspoken outbursts, as though contemplating the passage of her thoughts was just a formality before her mouth said precisely what it wanted to.
He hadn’t expected it to happen, but happen it had. She had moved from being an irritation to an itch that he felt compelled to scratch.
‘My mother has invited us to the Cornwall flat for the weekend,’ Rafe drawled into the growing silence. ‘Apparently your mother will be there as well, along with two other bridge-playing cronies. She seems to think some bracing coastal air will do me good…and on behalf of both of us, I’ve accepted.’
CHAPTER SIX
THIS was a nightmare idea.
Sophie stared into the mirror at her reflection, in no mood to appreciate the dramatic scenery outside, shrouded though it was in darkness at nine-thirty on a Friday evening.
Against her better judgement and caught like a worm on a hook, she had allowed herself to be persuaded into going down to Cornwall thanks to the joint efforts of her mother, who had skirted softly but meaningfully around the bald truth that she missed seeing her daughter, Claudia, who had simply declared it to be a splendid idea and allowed no room for manoeuvre, and Rafe, who for reasons unknown seemed to follow his mother’s unlikely line of thought.
And now here she was.
Pleading things to do, she had managed to wriggle out of the drive down with Rafe, taking the train instead, but there had been no opportunity to wriggle anywhere once she had arrived.
She had been greeted like the prodigal son by her mother and Claudia and even the two old biddies, both of whom she knew from the village. Rafe, who seemed to have recovered doubly fortified after his brush with the common cold, watched from an amused distance, but she was all too aware of him standing there, hands shoved into his pockets, leaning indolently against the wall.
In the presence of Claudia and her mother, she had felt like the teenager she had once been, horribly aware of Rafe with his dangerous masculine sex appeal, sensitive to every word uttered in that deep, velvety voice. The conversation over dinner had been light-hearted and easy, but she had still been aware of him, sitting next to her, passing her the vegetables, his fingers accidentally brushing hers every so often, his thigh only inches away from hers so that she felt compelled to squeeze her legs shut just in case… And there was no Work Talk to cover up the cracks in her composure. Her mother and Grace had dutifully spent a few minutes showing an interest in how the assignment was going, but then they expected both her and Rafe to simply enjoy the weekend for what it was, and that entailed not mentioning work at all. Rafe appeared to have no problem with that. In fact, it would have been a job to spot the ruthless workaholic beneath the casual, relaxed charmer. She, on the other hand, was left miserably wondering where her easygoing personality had gone.
When the four ladies had retired for coffee and bridge, she had felt a physical release of tension that she could escape up to her bedroom and ponder the horrifying realisation that she was stupidly, dangerously attracted to Rafael Loro.
How she had managed to kid herself otherwise was beyond her comprehension.
Shouldn’t it have made perfect sense from the very beginning? The way he made her nervous? The way her eyes flicked across at him whenever she imagined he wasn’t looking? The way she felt energised and alive in his company even when she was arguing with him and telling herself that she really, truly disliked him?
The way, she thought now, her body had felt when she had seen him wearing only his bathrobe? As if it had been on fire.
And, as if all that weren’t bad enough, she had had to contend with the thinly veiled looks of conspiracy that had darted between Claudia and her mother. Thinly veiled, smug looks of conspiracy.
She had had her bath and ostensibly retired for the night over an hour ago, pleading exhaustion with the handy additional excuse of maybe coming down with something to add substance to her excuse.
Now, on the spur of the moment, she decided to pay Rafe a little visit. If she had noticed those looks, then he most certainly would have as well. And the thought of having him think that their parents were somehow trying to push them together made her cringe in horror. What if he thought that she was somehow behind it? Had maybe confided an attraction to him to her mother in some girlish chat down the telephone, had encouraged them to think that they could somehow manoeuvre him into an unlikely romance? After all, hadn’t she been the girl who had once looked at him with adoring sheep’s eyes?
Starting from point A, her mind travelled to point Z with remorseless speed. Along the way it picked up sufficient sickening scenarios to have her hands trembling with urgency as she flung on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt and made her way down to the sitting room, which was where he would be, leaving the kitchen free for the four women to play their bridge.
She knew the layout of the house from memory, even though it had been years since she had last visited it. When her father had been alive, in fact, which would have made her just barely into her teens at the time. It was one of those charming little whitewashed cottages, halfway up a narrow street that tumbled down towards the harbour. Deceptively small on the outside, but with a honeycomb of rooms, a fair few of which had splendid views across the sea.
She knew to avoid the kitchen, although she could hear the sounds of laughter and chatting that always accompanied Claudia’s bridge parties. Serious playing of cards was almost a sin as far as she was concerned. Bids were made in between general gossip and jokes, and rubbers won over an interminable array of snacks and glasses of wine or cups of tea, depending on the time of day.
Despite the ancient appearance of the cottage, there was no shortage of modernisation inside, including comprehensive central heating, which was turned on to the fullest. She could, she knew, have comfortably walked around barefoot on the wooden floors, but had chosen to slip on her bedroom slippers.
Thus, her feet made very little sound as she headed directly towards the sitting room. Like all the other rooms in the house, it was small but exquisite. Claudia had impeccable taste and had lavished the utmost care in decorating the cottage. As investments went, it had been a brilliant
buy all those years ago before Cornwall had become popular with the rich and the beautiful.
It was just a shame that it never received the level of use it should have. She doubted Rafe ever visited or, if he did, it would only have been under duress.
She paused by the door to the sitting room and looked, for a few unseen seconds, at the object of her thoughts.
Rafe was sitting in front of the fire, his profile to her, long legs stretched out, head flung back and eyes closed. Sophie’s system went into sudden freefall and she had to breathe deeply to steady herself, then she knocked lightly and walked in, not giving herself time to chicken out and scuttle back up to the safety of her bedroom.
He opened his eyes and half turned towards her.
How was it possible for a man to look so sexy in such ordinary clothes? He was just wearing a pair of old, faded grey chinos and an ancient rugby shirt that was probably a legacy from his rugby-playing university days, but he still managed to be a knockout.
‘I thought you had retired for the night?’ he drawled, not shifting, just watching with hooded eyes as she moved to sit on the other chair by the fire. ‘Seduced by the glamour of a cup of hot chocolate and a good book?’
Sophie blushed. ‘I just thought it might be tactful to leave you to get on with some work, and I could hardly stay in the kitchen and have my hot chocolate.’
‘As you can see, I haven’t exactly been getting very much done.’ He reached forward and tossed a couple of logs into the open fire, which was beginning to die. Immediately, there was a comforting sizzle and it regained strength, bringing a sudden blast of heat into the room. Rafe shoved up the sleeves of his rugby shirt and relaxed back into the deep chair. ‘Do you think having one day off work has set me down the wrong road?’ he asked with lazy interest. What he didn’t tell her was that it felt damned good to take some time out, some unexpected time out. A first, for him. He was beginning to think that there hadn’t been too many firsts in his life recently. Everything always according to plan, every angle of his life utterly in control, even his women.
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