by Kim Lawrence
Tess’s throat had closed up with emotion. Natalia’s dry eyes, the bleak acceptance in her voice, was more affecting than floods of tears could ever have been.
The helplessness she was feeling, she realised, was something that Danilo must feel every day, only magnified by a thousand.
* * *
The limo that took them from the airport continued the style of travelling, which, if she was honest, Tess could easily become accustomed to. Not that she would have the opportunity. In a few weeks she would be making the same journey, but on her bargain, no-frills flight. The time she had spent with the Raphaels a dim and distant memory. It was disturbing how she had become involved in the family’s life during such a short period of time, but she knew that the intimacy was an illusion, that it would be a mistake to forget that she was just the hired help.
Tess enjoyed the car journey a lot less than the plane partly because during the flight she had not seen Danilo, who had been closeted away working, but there was no escaping his sheer overpowering physicality in the enclosed space. There was no escaping; the accidental brush of his knee against hers was enough to send a rush of charged hormonal heat through her body. She had never experienced anything like this before!
It seemed unlikely that a man with his experience didn’t know what he did to her, which made those little things he kept doing, like staring at her mouth when they were talking, or standing too close, just plain cruel. It was equally possible that she didn’t even register on his radar as a woman. She wasn’t sure which scenario was preferable.
While the tension between herself and Danilo might not have existed outside her imagination, the tension between brother and sister was very real. Every glance and comment Natalia made was double-edged and loaded as she shot down in flames everything Danilo said. He must have noticed but he didn’t react to any of the jibes or snapped comments. Tess actually found her sympathies swinging his way until Nat suddenly looked at him, her eyes filled with tears, and whispered a broken, ‘Sorry!’
Danilo just squeezed his sister’s hand and smiled. ‘It’s fine.’
Tess had to look out of the window to hide the tears that she struggled to blink away, only looking back when the limo pulled to a halt.
‘We’re early. I thought we’d stop for tea first. This is your favourite?’
Nat looked out of the limo window at the hotel they had drawn up at. ‘Lovely.’ The girl’s attempt to inject some enthusiasm into her dead voice brought another lump of emotion to Tess’s throat.
She glanced at Danilo but the expression on his face told her nothing about what he was feeling.
An hour later, she stood in the ladies’ room running her hands under the cold-water tap. The tea-time treat had been agony, but then sitting around a table with two people who barely spoke was never going to be relaxing, especially if the silence played out to a background of nerve-stretching tension.
‘And you thought you had problems,’ she told her reflection in the mirror.
She didn’t want to think about her cringe-worthy efforts to fill the silences. To say she’d overcompensated was putting it mildly! She’d sounded like—the memory of the steady flow of bright chatter she’d maintained made her wince. By the end of the afternoon tea the sound of her own voice was grating on her, and none of her jollity had rubbed off on her companions.
Delaying the moment she had to go back, Tess lingered in the perfume-scented room for as long as possible, but there were only so many times a girl could reapply her lipstick.
‘Time to man up, Tess,’ she told herself sternly before squaring her shoulders and stepping out into the lobby.
When she had entered the space had been empty but it was now packed with people, some holding microphones, others cameras, all being aimed at an elegant figure who was fielding questions being thrown at her.
Tess stopped dead, experienced a mind-blanking rabbit-in-the-headlight moment, though fortunately she unfroze before anyone noticed her. The thought of the attention shifting her way made her shudder.
Danilo, who had been tapping his foot with impatience and contemplating invading the sanctuary of the ladies’ powder room, saw that Tess was overwhelmed by the crowd she encountered in the lobby. He watched her skirt round the very edges of it, doing her best not to look up or make any eye contact.
She was so intent, for some reason, on avoiding attention and the woman who was fielding questions like the pro she clearly was, that she didn’t register his presence until he touched her shoulder, at which point she jumped guiltily.
‘What took so long? Nat is in the car.’
‘Sorry, sorry... I...well, I’m here now.’ She stepped around him so that he was between her and the public interview, his body acting as an effective shield, and she stayed that way until they had safely exited the building.
In the car she sank into her seat with a sigh and closed her eyes, though she opened them again when Danilo, sitting opposite her, said casually, ‘Did you know that woman?’
‘What woman?’ Nat asked, looking from one to the other. ‘You mean, the one in the lobby...who was she?’
‘Beth Tracey. She’s running for mayor.’
Tess didn’t know why his knowledge surprised her. ‘She hasn’t actually confirmed that yet.’ Maybe that was what the media scrum had been about.
‘So you do know her?’ Danilo pushed.
‘Sort of...’ He elevated a brow and she revealed with a hiss of exasperation, ‘She’s my mother.’
For the first time since she’d met him she saw Danilo Raphael look shocked. She supposed that was a triumph of sorts but she was used to that reaction from strangers when they discovered her parentage.
‘You don’t have the same name.’
Tess forced a smile to respond to Nat’s observation. ‘She uses her maiden name.’
‘And how does your father feel about that?’
The question came from Danilo, so she turned her head to look at him. ‘He died when I was small. Mum raised me as a single parent.’
‘Your mum is famous...cool,’ Nat pronounced. ‘So don’t you get on?’
Well, at least her family dynamics were proving a distraction for Natalia, who obviously found the situation curious.
‘We get on fine. It’s just that we are not very alike—we live very separate lives. She is very busy. I am...’ She paused, thinking, a disappointment. ‘I’m very proud of her.’
‘I didn’t realise that you had family in London. If you’d like to stop over and fly back tomorrow...?’
Tess was surprised by the offer. ‘No, that’s fine. I doubt Mum could see me at this short a notice.’
‘You have to make an appointment to see your mum?’
You could see that in Nat’s world this was pretty freaky and the girl’s amazement made Tess wish she hadn’t been quite so literal in her response.
‘No, of course not,’ she said, laughing off the idea. ‘But she’s busy campaigning at the moment.’
‘And won’t you be called on to help?’
After fighting the urge to announce it was not anyone’s business, Tess gave a terse, tight-lipped response to Danilo’s continued probing. ‘Mum accepted that I’m not a political asset years ago and she has plenty of people happy to leaflet drop.’
* * *
They got to the Harley Street office a few minutes later. Tess waited in the ground-floor waiting room, which looked more like a drawing-room illustration from a glossy homes magazine, while brother and sister were escorted to the lift that took them up to the consulting rooms.
Tess refused the tea on offer, leafed through a few magazines but eventually, as the tension built, had to get up and walk around the room. If she felt like this she could only imagine what Nat was feeling right now, and Danilo. After half an hour of pacing she made herself sit down.
Her bottom had barely touched the seat when Danilo walked in so she sprang to her feet.
It was hard to read anything in Danilo’s e
xpression. ‘How—?’
‘Natalia had some questions for the doctor.’ It was the first time that his sister had asked for him to leave.
The expulsion had been a shock, and one he had not seen coming. For two years he had been the conduit between the medics and his sister; the rejection—and that was what it had felt like—had caught him on the raw. She was asserting her independence, he got that, he even had some sympathy with it, but the fact was he knew what questions to ask, he knew—’
Tess’s voice interrupted his brooding reverie.
‘What?’
Tess was relieved to hear him sound irritable, and even more relieved to see the blank look that had made her think the worst slide from his eyes. ‘I said, did it go well?’
He flashed her a sardonic look. ‘That depends on your definition of well, but it did not go badly. This was just the first consult. There will be more.’ He hesitated long enough to worry her again before adding, ‘I know you are scheduled to have a day off tomorrow and if you have plans that is fine, but would you mind spending some time with Nat? The days after one of these...it can be hard for her.’
And you, Tess thought, sensing the unacknowledged distress behind his closed expression and wondering if Danilo ever allowed himself a moment’s weakness. She fought down the urge to say something comforting, pretty sure it would be received with as much appreciation as a spontaneous hug would have been.
‘Of course I can.’ Tess did have plans but they involved Natalia.
He tipped his head, aware even at this moment of a hard throb of need as their glances connected. ‘I am grateful.’
She didn’t want his gratitude, but she wanted to see him smile, see him happy, see the lines of tension bracketing his mouth smooth out. The strength of these feelings shocked her and made her blurt out unthinkingly, ‘So, things are good right now?’ The words brought his sardonic gaze to her face. ‘I mean, not as bad as they could be? My mum always says you should live for the moment.’ She closed her eyes and muttered, ‘That sounded better in my head. I just meant—look, if you ever want to talk about—’
She was looking up at him, all earnest concern and ‘a pat on the head, a cup of tea will make you feel better.’ Something inside Danilo snapped. He didn’t deserve to feel better; maybe this was him being punished? Pity from this woman with that mouth, that body—the sort that a man could fall into and forget.
Tess’s eyes blinked wide when without warning his big hand curved around the back of her head, the movement almost casual as he drew her closer. Too startled to react, Tess registered the driven gleam in his heavy-lidded eyes as he lowered his head until his mouth was a whisper away from hers, their foreheads almost touching.
She held her breath, the languid weakness that spread through her body infecting every cell. Time seemed to slow, though in retrospect when she thought of the incident she realised it only lasted moments before he pulled back.
Clearing her throat, Tess struggled to regain a semblance of composure, and tried to reboot her lust-battered brain. What was she meant to do? Pretend nothing had happened? Shrug away the moment? Probably the wisest option but nobody had ever accused her of being wise.
She lifted her chin. ‘So, what was that about?’
‘A lesson.’ For him as much as her, he decided, hugging his self-loathing tight as he reflected darkly on his supreme selfishness. His sister was facing a decision that could give her back her life or close off that possibility for ever. What sort of man could think about sex at a time like this?
The man he was.
Tess Jones might not know she needed protecting from him but Danilo did, and the simplest way to extinguish that sympathetic glow in her eyes was to open them. ‘I realise that you consider feelings your area of expertise, but men—’
‘Do not have feelings?’ she suggested, starting to feel angry.
‘They do not talk about them obsessively,’ he sneered.
‘So what do men do?’
‘To relieve stress? Speaking for myself I find that sex works, so unless you’re offering, cara...?’ he drawled.
Tess lowered her lashes as the carnal bluntness of his careless words sent an unexpected thrill of excitement through her. Shocked more by her response than his comment, she was trying to think of a suitable response when he continued.
‘You are very curious about our lives, but not so eager to share when it comes to your own family.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You couldn’t close down the subject of your mother fast enough.’
‘That’s—’
‘None of my business?’
Tess flushed but was spared responding when Nat appeared.
‘How—?’
Nat shook her head. ‘Not now, Danilo, can we just go home...please?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
AFTER DRIVING HIS car from the helipad where he’d left it that morning, Danilo changed his mind and took a detour when he heard the distant sounds of activity coming from the direction of the indoor arena.
Change your mind? mocked the voice in his head. Wasn’t this always where you were going since you started imagining Tess in a pair of riding breeches?
She’d caught up with him just before he’d driven off to the helipad that morning; her hair had still been wet from the shower and even though she had yelled her request from twenty feet away he had imagined he could smell the scent of her shampoo.
Twenty feet was pretty much the distance she had kept from him since the previous week’s trip to London. It helped but not enough. Logic didn’t enter into it so he had stopped trying to work out why, despite the fact her position in the household put her off limits. He wanted her on such a fundamental level.
Pushing away the image of her face as he walked, he slung his discarded jacket over his shoulder. The day was turning out to be another warm one. He glanced at the slim silver-banded watch on his wrist as he headed towards the building.
It was early, but freed from the relentless round of meetings for the first time in what felt like weeks he could, he had reasoned, as easily work at home this afternoon, which he would have explained to anyone who asked, not that they had. He was the boss—or, as his father would have said, the buck stopped with him.
‘When that day comes, Danilo, for you to step into my shoes—’ at the time he had wanted to be a fighter pilot or a rock star ‘—you’ll understand that leadership can be lonely. You won’t always know the answers, but—’
‘You do.’
‘Sometimes, to be a successful leader, acting as if you know what you’re doing is as important as actually knowing, but follow your instincts, Danilo, and you won’t go far wrong.’
At the time he’d been unable to get his head around the idea of his father not being omnipotent and actually winging it. As for instincts, he hadn’t been very sure he had any, at least not the sort his father had been talking about.
He succeeded in pushing away the lingering echo of his father’s voice but the sadness remained. That time his father had spoken of had come a lot sooner than either of them had expected, and Danilo hadn’t stepped into his shoes but been propelled by tragic events. Others within the financial empire his father had presided over had worried about how the financial world would react to this transition, which had in the end been seamless.
At the time, Danilo’s focus had been elsewhere. If anything the time he had spent learning his new role had actually felt more like relaxation, a form of escapism, something he could actually control while the thing that really mattered to him, his sister, he had no control over. All he could do was sit beside her hospital bed and now it seemed as though she didn’t even want him there. The memories of a few days earlier were still fresh in his mind. His feelings of rejection were confusingly mangled with pride.
Nat had come to him the next morning and the first words out of her mouth were, ‘I wasn’t punishing you!’
Which made him pretty sure that she was. N
othing she said made it any clearer what he’d done but he reasoned he probably deserved punishment, if not for the mysterious sin he had committed recently, then for the very real and unforgivable piece of selfishness that had put her in the chair.
She had gone on to relay pretty much word for word what the doctor had said. There were no surprises and Nat seemed to have asked all the right questions. When he’d commented on it she’d smiled.
‘I had a good teacher.’
He nodded pleasantly to one of the young grooms who looked surprised when he saw Danilo. His father would have remembered the man’s name, he realised, thinking that despite the fact the financial world, which had waited for him to fail, had now decided he had filled his father’s shoes more than adequately, Danilo knew better.
The moment he walked into the covered arena he saw her. The sight of her standing there dissolved the last shreds of any self-deception, leaving shock ricocheting around uncomfortably in his head.
He hadn’t accidentally ended up in the place he knew Tess would be. Fine, accepted...now move on. He could have wasted hours trying to analyse a feeling that he couldn’t put a name to, he could have let himself believe this woman had touched something inside him that no woman ever had, but that would have been an indulgence because there was no mystery involved. This was obviously about sex, or a lack of it; this was about the iron self-control he brought into play in his personal life failing him; this was about her being the most sensual, provocative creature he had ever encountered.
He wasn’t happy about this situation, but pretending it didn’t exist or making her feel uncomfortable to be in the same room as him provided no sort of solution, any more than applying a sticking plaster to a severed artery would prevent a victim bleeding out.
The question was what would?
There was a simple solution: he’d brought her here, an action he now privately likened to inviting an unexploded bomb into his home...his life, so he could send her away.
So obvious, so why wasn’t he doing it?