by Kim Lawrence
Nell nodded, then realised that he couldn’t see her.
‘I wasn’t going to.’
‘I think the lights have fused.’ His voice was closer now, so close she could hear his breathing and feel the warmth that came from his body. If she stretched out her hand she would probably touch him, even accidentally collide with him. The thought of leaning in close to all that hard maleness sent a rush of heat sweeping through her body. She caught her breath.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine.’ Her reply emerged as a husky whisper.
The problem was the dark. There was something very dangerous about darkness. Fantasies fed on darkness: it freed up your imagination; it made you reckless, and it gave you a false sense of anonymity. It was easy to understand why people did things with the lights out that they wouldn’t dream of doing with them on.
‘Where is it, then?’ he asked as though they both hadn’t spent the last sixty seconds or so just breathing.
‘Where is what?’
‘The fuse-box.’
Nell told him and heard him move away. With him went the tension; it slid from her body leaving her limp. Carefully she felt her way out of the box-like room. The darkness in the main area of the warehouse was not as dense as it had been in the windowless store room.
Nell felt the solid wood of a workbench just as the lights went back on. She exhaled, deeply grateful that there were no embarrassing lapses in judgement for her to cringe about. It had been a close thing, though.
‘Why do you assume that I would think your work here is of no value?’ a soft voice at her elbow demanded.
Nell, who hadn’t heard his soft-footed approach, started. ‘Well, we don’t make any money. There is no profit margin.’ She turned her head and fixed him with a resentful glare. ‘That’s the way you measure things, isn’t it?’
‘I make money—that is what I do, and I see no reason to apologise for it.’
‘And trample over people in the process!’ she accused huskily.
The fine network of lines around his penetrating dark eyes deepened as they narrowed. ‘Would you care to cite a specific example of my callous behaviour? I try not to judge people by the job they do or the clothes they wear and the car they drive.’
This censure struck Nell as the height of hypocrisy. She drew herself to her full, unimpressive height and wished not for the first time that she had been granted an extra few inches. In her experience people were a lot less likely to be patronising if you were tall and leggy.
‘No, just on the person’s bed they supposedly share.’
His jaw tightened. ‘That was different.’
‘Wow! You can say that with a straight face—I’m impressed.’
He shrugged. ‘If I am guilty of prejudice, I am sorry.’
‘If!’
‘However,’ he continued, ignoring her sarcastic interjection, ‘it seems to me you are not without your own preconceptions. Making money automatically precludes me from the enjoyment of a piece of music?’ He picked up a guitar that was propped up against the wall and strummed a soft chord. ‘Or a fine painting, or even,’ he added, lifting his eyes from the instrument he held, ‘appreciating a person who has a vocation.’
‘Point taken,’ she grunted reluctantly. ‘And appreciation makes a nice change from contempt.’
Raul, apparently satisfied that he had made his point, placed the guitar back against the wall; a piece of plaster fell down as he did so. ‘This place is in an appalling condition,’ he observed, running his finger along the cracked window-pane with a fastidious frown. ‘That fuse-box is prehistoric.’
Nell immediately felt defensive at this attack on the old building.
‘And,’ he went on, ‘the security is non-existent. Anyone could have walked in.’
‘And you did; aren’t I the lucky one?’
Her flippant comment brought his disapproving attention zeroing in on her face. ‘This is not a laughing matter.’
For some reason he seemed determined to make a drama out of a simple lapse of memory—she had meant to lock the door after the others had left. Nell sighed, irritated by his preoccupation with security.
‘I was going to lock up when I left,’ she explained, jangling the bunch of keys she had clipped to her belt.
‘So you thought it perfectly reasonable to stay alone in an unlocked building. Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?’ he demanded.
‘I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss the security.’
‘No.’
Her feathery brows lifted. ‘Then…?’ she prompted.
‘You have not contacted Katerina and Antonio this week.’
‘Is that a question or are you monitoring their calls?’
He looked at her with exasperation. ‘Do you have to be confrontational?’ He ran a hand through his sleek dark hair. ‘I was simply wondering why you hadn’t contacted them.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I didn’t think my pleasure was of such importance to you.’
She met his dark, mocking eyes and gritted her teeth. ‘It’s not high on my list of priorities,’ she responded with a cool shrug.
Afraid the illicit excitement swirling though her veins might be visible in her eyes, she evinced great interest in an invisible speck on her jeans before meeting his eyes. Don’t let him see what he’s done to you, Nell, she told herself. Smile pinned on, she looked up. Her heart sank…Oh, God, he already knows!
‘Actually, I thought about what you said. Most of it was rubbish, but,’ she admitted, ‘I suppose you might have a point when you said me being in the background like a bad smell is constantly reminding them of the past. Maybe it would be better if I kept a low profile for a while.’
‘I do not recall likening you to a bad smell.’
‘You didn’t have to.’ She gave an indifferent smile to underline that his opinion was of the utmost indifference to her. ‘It’s obvious what you think of me and I don’t…’
‘I like the way you…’ The muscles in his sexily hollow cheeks clenched as he swallowed. ‘I have changed my mind. I think you should remain a part of Katerina and Antonio’s life. They need you.’
His volte-face made her suspect the worst. ‘Has something happened?’
‘Katerina did not come home last night, but that is not the reason for my change of heart.’ He watched her; an expression of alarm spread across Nell’s face.
‘Is she all right?’
‘Do not be alarmed. She is unharmed—for the moment,’ he added darkly.
Nell gave a relieved sigh and eased her bottom onto the edge of one of the tables. ‘Driving you crazy, is she? It doesn’t sound like Kate, the staying-out-all-night thing. Are you sure there were no crossed wires?’
‘Positive.’
‘Maybe she forgot the time. Didn’t you ring to find out what was happening?’ she puzzled.
‘We didn’t know where she was,’ he admitted bluntly. ‘I allowed her the freedom you suggested and this is the result of the new tolerant regime.’
‘Tolerant, not stupid!’ Nell exclaimed. ‘You can’t just chuck the rule book out with the bath water,’ she explained earnestly, mixing her clichés.
‘This may come as a shock to you, Miss Rose, but people are not in the habit of telling me I am stupid.’
‘Believe me,’ she breathed, ‘it shows.’
There was a silence and then to her total amazement he threw back his head and laughed. It was a warm, uninhibited and incredibly attractive sound.
His laughter died away but he continued to watch her with a quizzical expression. ‘I’m curious—do you think I would become a nicer, kinder, cuddlier, more politically correct person if I was insulted occasionally?’
The day anyone mentioned cuddly and Raul Carreras in the same breath was the day hungry wolves became old ladies’ favourite lap-dogs.
‘And deprive all your boot-lickers of job satisfaction?’ She gave a disingenuous sm
ile. ‘I wouldn’t be so cruel, but don’t worry if you need your ego pricking—children are good at that.’
‘So are you.’ He didn’t smile, but neither did he look annoyed. He looked…? Nell couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she knew the intensity he was radiating made her feel uneasy.
She shrugged. ‘It’s one of my only talents,’ she explained, trying to introduce a note of lightness.
‘What about your…was it painting or sculpture?’ he queried.
‘I painted.’
He was quick to pick up on her use of tense. ‘But you don’t now?’
‘Oh, I’m not good enough to make a living out of it. Javier made me see that.’
A frown forming on his lean features, Raul scanned her face with disapproval. ‘And he was the expert?’
‘Well, yes, he was.’
‘You seem very untroubled about your loss of a dream,’ he observed.
‘What do you know about my dreams?’ she charged, angered by his disapproving tone.
‘I know I feature in them upon occasion.’
The sly observation made Nell catch her breath.
With an air of languid interest Raul watched the hot, guilty colour flood her pale face. ‘The morning after the night I spent on your sofa?’
Nell gave a fractured sigh of relief. ‘I thought you’d…’ She stopped. Well, she could hardly tell him that he’d played a major role in all her dreams since and to her shame she wasn’t always asleep! ‘That was strictly a one-off.’ Nell could hear the bluster in her own voice and hoped like hell he couldn’t.
‘You never know when your subconscious is going to hijack you, or so I’ve found,’ he drawled.
Nell shot him a surprised look but found no evidence of the unusual note she had heard in his voice on his dark, lean features.
‘Don’t you think that it is a defeatist attitude to give up on your dream?’
His preoccupation with the subject of her lack of talent was beginning to irritate. ‘Determination is not a substitute for talent.’ Accepting that she didn’t have what it took had been one of the hardest things in her life. ‘It’s better to be realistic than waste a lot of time trying for something you’ll never achieve. I don’t want to be mediocre.’
His shrewd eyes searched her face. ‘Is that a direct quote?’ One dark brow arched.
Nell flushed. ‘Nobody puts words in my mouth.’
Her angry claim brought his dark eyes zeroing in on her wide, soft lips. The brooding expression in them sent her stomach into a lurching nosedive.
‘Don’t you think the public should be allowed to make their own mind up about what constitutes art? Haven’t many of the artists we now consider great been vilified by critics when they lived? If they had shown your spineless attitude the world would have been robbed of their legacy.’
Nell blinked at the vehemence in his quiet voice. ‘I am not an original. I am a dabbler like thousands of others. The world didn’t lose anything when I hung up my brushes.’
‘You don’t have to be an expert at something to get a lot of pleasure trying to do it better.’
The beginnings of a suspicion that they were no longer discussing art was just forming in her mind when Raul’s next words confirmed it.
‘I was pretty clueless at kissing once, but improving my technique provided me many hours of innocent pleasure.’
Nell ran the tip of her tongue along her dry lips, wanting, but unable, to tear her eyes from his dark face. ‘Innocent?’
Raul shrugged. ‘Well, these things are relative,’ he admitted huskily.
‘You can hardly compare painting to kissing.’
‘Both are an art form.’
‘I suppose you consider yourself some sort of expert?’
The febrile glitter in his eyes spelt danger. ‘Is that a challenge?’
She pressed a hand to her throat; she could feel the vibration of her pulse through her fingertips. ‘Most definitely n…not.’ Her attempt to sound firm and faintly amused by his response failed abysmally. ‘I’m quite willing to accept you are the world’s best kisser without a demonstration.’ Her amused laughter faded away in the face of his unblinking, expressionless stare. ‘You didn’t come here to kiss me,’ she protested.
A strange expression flickered into his dark eyes. ‘Didn’t I?’ He gave a twisted smile, which faded to a look of deadly intent. ‘Then if I didn’t I should have.’ The smile that formed on his lips nailed her feet to the floor. Her mind went blank as he advanced towards her. She just stood, her eyes wide, anticipation curling hot in the pit of her stomach.
Her face lifted to his even before he framed her face between his big hands. His jaw tightened, drawing the golden flesh tight over his incredible bone structure.
‘Sexual attraction is a curious thing, is it not?’ Lazily he skimmed the smooth surface of her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Nell closed her eyes tight. The contact made every nerve in her body quiver. In every individual cell she was aware and deeply excited by the virile strength of the man who stood beside her.
A sliver of savage satisfaction slid into Raul’s eyes as he felt her slender body tremble.
She made a last-ditch attempt to break the spell he was weaving. ‘This macho stuff leaves me cold,’ she claimed shakily.
He slid a burnished strand through his fingers and watched it slither free. The sight seemed to fascinate him. ‘I don’t think so.’ His deep, accented voice had a drugging, hypnotic quality.
He lowered his dark head until his face was on a level with hers. Holding her eyes, his traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his tongue. The compulsion to touch her own tongue to his was one she could no longer repress.
She felt a deep sigh shudder through his body as he wound his fingers into her hair, preventing her drawing back, only Nell felt no desire to pull back—she was hooked! Nothing in her life had prepared her for what she was feeling.
‘This feels…’
‘I know…’ A throaty sound of encouragement vibrated in his throat as their breaths mingled. He pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth. The teasing butterfly caresses continued. If this tentative probing, the advance-and-retreat technique, was meant to leave her wanting more, it worked—oh, it definitely worked!
Nell’s hands were balled into fists. She was shaking and her entire body convulsed with anticipation and longing by the time his tongue slid deeply between her parted lips. The searing kiss plunged her into a world of unimaginable delight; she responded with instincts she didn’t know she possessed with a hunger that seemed a match for the rampant demands of his skilful lips.
When they broke apart, Raul, with his hands on her shoulders, pushed her a little way from him and looked into her passion-glazed eyes.
‘Well, now I know.’
Nell blinked in a bemused fashion up at his fabulous face and wondered if he was going to do that again.
‘Know what…?’
‘I know what it feels like to kiss you. I know why Javier didn’t mind people sniggering behind his back.’
Nell flinched as though he had struck her and stepped back. Raul’s hand fell from her shoulders and he made no attempt to re-establish contact. So was that what it had been about—his curiosity, some nasty little experiment? Her chin went up. She would have died before she’d let him see how much he had hurt her.
‘And now I know how you kiss and, let me tell you, it wasn’t so very marvellous.’
‘Perhaps I should employ you on a permanent basis? To deflate my ego,’ he added.
She felt bereft and close to tears. ‘I suspect the novelty of someone telling you when you’re being impossibly arrogant would wear off pretty quickly,’ she responded with a dry laugh.
‘You consider me arrogant?’
‘I consider you something else, Mr Carreras,’ she replied, her body still shaken by intermittent tremors.
‘I think we should be on a first-name basis now, don’t you? Under the circumstances…’
‘Now, as much as I’m enjoying this frank exchange of views, do you think we could get back to why you tracked me down here?’
‘You are very businesslike.’
‘No, but I am hungry.’ Their eyes met and she flushed. ‘For food,’ she snapped angrily. Actually, food was a pretty good idea; she had skipped lunch and had a sickening headache, which she knew from painful experience would get worse if she didn’t eat something soon. ‘It is late,’ she reminded him, glancing pointedly at her watch. ‘And you still haven’t told me anything you couldn’t have over the phone.’
‘I could not have kissed you over the phone.’
‘I knew there was a reason I liked telephones. Now, shall we get down to business?’
‘Am I keeping you from a dinner date?’
‘Dressed like this?’ she responded, placing her hands on her slim, denim-covered hips. With a rueful smile on her lips, she looked up and found his eyes were fixed on the curves her actions had draw attention to. When the expression in those dark, glittering depths snuffed out her smile and sent her stomach muscles into spasm.
Time for a reality check—Raul had kissed her because she had dared to question his ability and he’d wanted to give her marks out of ten. He was like a male animal whose supremacy had been challenged. He was callous and shallow and she hated him.
The only problem was that her hate morphed into something far warmer when he touched her.
The kiss that had blown her mind had meant less than nothing to him. And that smouldering look was as much a reflex as a sneeze. Nell had learnt a long time ago that imagining women undressed was something your average male had about as much control over as sneezing. They were not wildly discriminating, you didn’t have to be fantastically sexy, which made her overreacting to a look in this way plain daft.
‘I have a microwave lasagne with my name on it.’
To Nell’s intense relief her gentle prod brought his eyes back to her face.
‘I have come to run an idea by you.’
She was so worried by her own heightened colour, it didn’t occur to Nell that his own darker skin tones were significantly deeper than normal. ‘Go ahead, then.’
‘Would you agree that Alex and Katerina like you, they trust you…?’