by Kim Lawrence
‘Well, money was a bit tight when I was a kid.’
‘You have a big family?’
Nell shook her head, aware that Raul was listening, no doubt sifting the information to see if there was any little detail he could use to manipulate her.
‘I was an only child.’
‘And I’m sure your parents are very proud of you.’
‘They died just when I was in my first year at art college,’ Nell, left with little choice, explained with the same quiet composure that had made people comment at the time of the accident ‘how well Nell was coping.’ Inside Nell hadn’t been coping at all, but her tears had been kept for when she was alone.
Aria Carreras was not similarly inhibited when it came to showing emotion in public. Nell watched as her lovely eyes filled with tears.
‘Then you’re all alone!’ she exclaimed.
‘I have lots of good friends,’ Nell, who instinctively shied away from pity, assured the older woman brightly.
‘But friends aren’t the same as family, are they, Raul?’
‘No,’ he agreed blandly. ‘You can walk away from them.’
His mother laughed. ‘Take no notice of him, Nell. Raul has a very strong sense of family. When his father became ill he put aside his own ambitions to run the family businesses and since his death he has been a rock.’
There was curiosity in Nell’s eyes as she turned her head to look at the tall figure with the proud, arrogant profile. Her smooth brow puckered. It had never occurred to her that he had ever wanted anything but what he had—power, and lots of it. He seemed so comfortable with it, was it actually possible he had ever had other ambitions?
‘Of course, if Javier had stayed the burden would not have been so immense.’ His mother sighed sadly. ‘But that was not to be. He and your father were so alike, that was the problem, Raul. Neither would give an inch.’
Her comment raised a possibility that Nell had previously not considered. Did Raul resent the brother who had left him alone to carry the mantle of power? Or was he glad to be the only heir to the crown with his elder brother gone?
‘Did you lose your husband a long time ago?’ she asked quietly.
The older woman looked startled. ‘He died the day after Javier; I thought you knew.’
Nell caught her breath. ‘I’m so awfully sorry, I didn’t realise.’ The poor woman. Nell could not begin to imagine how terrible it must have been to bury your son and husband within days of one another. Raul’s protective attitude to his mother was perfectly understandable under the circumstances.
‘I don’t suppose there is any reason you should. Unlike with Javier, it was not a shock.’ She gave a tremulous little sigh. ‘Apparently there is frequently no warning for people suffering from Javier’s heart condition, so tragic the victims are often even younger than he was…’
‘So I understand.’ Nell looked up and found Raul’s eyes on her face. The intensity of his regard was unnerving.
‘With my husband,’ his widow continued sadly, ‘it was quite different; we had been expecting it for some time. Eduardo could have lived for many more years, Nell,’ she revealed, ‘if he had made a few minor adjustments to his life, but that wasn’t his way. He lived life on his terms.’ She sighed. ‘I had to accept that.’
‘My father,’ Raul explained in a grim manner that suggested he did not share his mother’s philosophical attitude on the subject, ‘was a pigheaded, selfish idiot, who never made an adjustment in his life.’
Aria laid a hand on her son’s arm. ‘Exactly,’ she said quietly. ‘So you are in no way to blame; the doctors said so.’
Nell saw some indefinable but strong emotion flare in Raul’s eyes before he gently removed his mother’s hand.
‘I know. The heart attack could have occurred at any moment, but the fact remains that I told my father his son had died and that he was a stubborn old fool, and he promptly suffered a massive and fatal heart attack. If I had not been so brutal…?’ His broad shoulders lifted.
Nell looked at his grim, strong face and knew that that was a question that would hang over his head for the rest of his life. It was so massively unfair! She felt a wave of tenderness that was frightening in its depth and intensity.
‘Well, that’s a ridiculous attitude to have!’ She coloured uncomfortably as her impetuous exclamation turned her into the focus of attention.
‘Nell frequently finds me ridiculous,’ Raul explained drily to his mother. He turned back to Nell, his expression sardonic. ‘I am as always indebted for your input,’ he added politely, at his driest.
Nell’s eyes flared. The defiant gesture brought a glimmer of admiration to Raul’s eyes.
‘Actually, when you come right down to it,’ she mused, ‘all that hair-shirt stuff is actually pretty self-indulgent. Well, I think it is, anyhow.’
‘And you are right.’
Nell didn’t hear Aria’s warm intervention as a sudden aspect of this situation occurred to her. She hardly dared seek confirmation of her suspicions.
‘Javier’s condition…’ Her eyes darted fearfully to Raul’s face; a furrow appeared between his brows as he read the total panic in her darkened eyes. ‘I read up on it on the net after…’ she began in a flat monotone. She swallowed as her throat closed over and ran her tongue over her dry lips ‘It c…can run in families…?’ The icy fear that gripped her was physical in its intensity.
Her eyes moved back to Raul so vital, so alive…imagining there could be a silent killer—wasn’t that how the medical text had described it?—waiting to steal his life? It was something she could not bring herself to contemplate.
Aria nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘There must be something!’ Nell blurted out. ‘I mean, medical science…’
‘My dear child,’ Aria cried in a horrified voice. ‘I insisted after the doctors explained the situation that Raul and Javier’s children have all the tests. The children got the all-clear. And so did you, didn’t you, Raul?’
Nell blinked. ‘Then he’s not going to…’ The lean face before her suddenly blurred and the distant roar in her ears got louder.
CHAPTER NINE
‘TAKE some deep breaths.’
Nell, with her head pressed between her knees, did as the rough voice instructed. When she struggled against the hand on the back of her neck it immediately lifted. She smoothed back her hair as she straightened up, deeply mortified at making such a spectacle of herself.
How on earth was she going to explain away her dramatic overreaction to them when she couldn’t explain it to herself?
‘Sorry about that, I…’
‘There is no need to apologise. I remember how I felt when I realised there was a possibility I would lose both my sons,’ Aria recalled with a shudder.
But you’re his mother, Nell felt like saying, you’re meant to feel like that. I, on the other hand, have no excuse. I am nothing to Raul and he is nothing to me…
‘It’s the end of a pretty stressful day.’ Even to her own ears this sounded pretty lame. ‘And I lost my job.’ She finally worked up the courage to look at Raul and discovered his piercing stare was every bit as suspicious as she had feared.
‘How awful for you, but Raul has a great many people working for him—I’m sure he could find a place for someone as obviously talented as you are if you don’t want to move in here.’ She regarded her son with confident anticipation.
‘No, I couldn’t,’ Raul responded, not bothering to sugar-coat his refusal. ‘In fact the idea is frankly appalling,’ he declared bluntly.
An angry spark appeared in Nell’s eyes. ‘Well, there’s no need to be rude, and just for the record I wouldn’t work for you if you paid me!’
‘I won’t be.’
‘Actually,’ Aria mused, her gentle voice cutting through the heated exchange, ‘you could be right. Working with someone you are close to is often very difficult. I should know, I started out as your father’s secretary.’
‘But we’re not close!’ Nell protested uneasily.
‘If you say so,’ Aria agreed with a worrying knowing twinkle in her eyes. ‘You know, I’m feeling rather tired. I just might go to bed; you know, I think I might sleep now,’ she confided, pressing a maternal kiss on her son’s lean cheek. ‘Now don’t get up. You two enjoy your supper.’
Nell, an expression of dawning dismay in her eyes, watched the elegant figure remove herself. ‘She doesn’t think we’re…? Does she?’
‘My mother is a hopeless romantic and more than capable of tuning out the real world when it suits her. It would seem it suits her to think you and I are romantically linked.’
‘This is all your fault!’ Nell wailed, turning reproachful eyes on his amused face—it did her ego no end of good to know he found the idea of them being romantically involved a joke. Obviously the only place Raul wanted to get intimate was in the bedroom!
‘And you figure that out how, exactly?’
‘You brought me here,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘And you gave that extraordinary performance of concern at the thought of my imminent demise.’
Nell looked at him in miserable stricken silence, then he laughed. In the blink of an eye Nell’s embarrassed unease transformed into white-hot wrath. Nothing could justify making a joke of such a subject.
‘It wasn’t a performance!’ she yelled.
‘I’m touched,’ he contended unconvincingly in a tone that set Nell’s teeth on edge. She scanned his handsome face with a look of loathing.
‘I was concerned for your mother,’ she spelt out, having almost convinced herself by this point that what she was saying was true. Well, she couldn’t really care about such a cold, sarcastic rat, could she? ‘She’s a lovely person who has been through enough. As far as I’m concerned there are several million people I’d shed a tear over before you. In fact I wouldn’t care if you dropped dead at my feet!’ her reckless tongue led her to tastelessly and untruthfully declare.
‘In that case you’ll be pleased to know that I…’
Nell saw Raul’s chin whip upwards as a guarded expression stole across his face.
‘What will I be pleased to know?’ Her astonished gaze identified the streaks of darker colour across the crest of his high cheekbones, which on anybody else she would have had no hesitation in identifying as a blush.
‘Nothing.’
A sudden unbelievable explanation for his odd behaviour presented itself—so odd and off the wall that she instantly dismissed it. Then as she scanned his face with more closely she gave a gasp.
‘Oh, my God!’ she croaked, looking at him with horrified disbelief. ‘You didn’t take them, did you? You didn’t take the tests after Javier died. You lied to your mother,’ she accused hoarsely.
His lean features settled into an expression of chilly hauteur. ‘What I did or did not do is none of your concern.’
This declaration tantamount to an admission drew a strained laugh from her pale lips. ‘How could you be so stupid?’ she demanded. ‘You expect me to pretend I don’t know!’ she cried hoarsely.
‘You know nothing.’
She found his air of detachment totally mystifying. ‘Don’t you want to know?’ If it were her, Nell was sure she would.
Raul, his expression one of seething frustration, flung up his hands in an expressive gesture. ‘If I knew, what difference would it make? Tell me that.’ Her silence lengthened and he gave vent to a dry laugh.
‘Well…well, you could be careful.’
‘Careful…? Madre mìa!’ Eyes as hot as coal raked her face. ‘You mean I could stop doing half the things that make my life worth living! I could sit around and wait to drop dead and break out in a cold sweat every time I imagine I feel a twinge. I will not let this thing rule my life.’
‘Listen, Raul, you can’t bury your head in the sand. There might be nothing wrong with you.’
‘In which case tests are irrelevant.’
His skewed logic made her stare. How could an intelligent man talk this way? ‘Except for peace of mind,’ she suggested.
‘My mind is perfectly peaceful,’ he ground out from between clenched white teeth.
‘What about when you marry and have children—surely your wife has a right to know if her husband…’
‘Isn’t likely to live to see them grow up?’ he slotted in without expression. ‘There will be no wife and no children. The Carreras name will live on through Antonio and Katerina.’
‘I thought you were many things, but a coward wasn’t one of them,’ she admitted.
Raul’s taut profile clenched even tighter as he drew a deep breath. ‘I do not wish to discuss this with you, and you will not mention this to my mother.’
‘What do you take me for?’ she gasped.
‘Also you will not encourage my mother to take you to Spain.’
Nell blinked. ‘Me?’ She released an incredulous laugh.
Raul, who had pushed his fingers through his thick dark hair and risen to his feet in a fluid motion that made her indiscriminate stomach muscles quiver in appreciation, ignored her acid interjection totally.
‘You can’t go to Spain with my mother. You will not encourage her in this.’ Having reached the far end of the room, he turned abruptly and pinned her with a penetrating stare. ‘Is that understood?’
This arrogant pronouncement made Nell, who had been about to say they finally were in agreement over something, bite her tongue. ‘This is probably just me…’ she flashed him an apologetic smile of biblically insincere proportions ‘…but I was under the impression you’d brought me here for the express purpose of getting me to do just that. You really do take the cake; you set me up and then you throw a wobbler because things are going the way you planned. You planned,’ she tacked on in a voice that trembled with anger.
‘I am not throwing a “wobbler,”’ he bit back. ‘And I did not plan for you to go to Spain with my mother. I want you here.’
‘What’s the difference where I am, so long as I’m doing what you want?’
‘I want you here,’ he repeated with even more bullish emphasis. ‘Where I can keep an eye on you.’ Where I can touch, smell and see you.
Nell’s eyes widened in disbelief—he really was incredible. ‘In case I suddenly get the urge to make off with the family silver, you mean.’
‘Do not be stupid.’
His dismissive contempt made Nell see red, or maybe, she mused vaguely, that was the headache that had been steadily getting worse all evening. She fixed her eyes on her trembling fingers twisted together on the table-top before getting to her feet. A throb of pain in her temple made Nell grimace and grab hold of the back of the chair to steady herself.
‘What is wrong? Are you ill?’
Nell lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the glare of the light. ‘I have a headache,’ she admitted faintly.
‘I have never seen anyone look like that with a headache,’ Raul observed harshly after he examined the contours of her white face.
‘It might be a migraine.’
‘Might be or is?’
‘Is,’ she admitted.
He rolled his eyes. ‘Why on earth didn’t you say so sooner? I will call a doctor.’
‘Please don’t fuss. I don’t need a doctor, just a dark quiet room and…’ She released an anguished moan as an extra sharp stab of pain lanced through her skull. She felt so wretched she didn’t protest as he scooped her up into his arms. She was vaguely conscious of him quietly issuing instructions in Spanish to someone as they went upstairs. She was grateful everyone was speaking quietly.
Her gratitude proved to be premature. ‘What are you doing with her?’ a voice that hurt Nell’s throbbing head demanded shrilly.
‘Lower your voice, Katerina.’
‘Kate, I’ve got a migraine.’ Nell tried to smile to reassure the girl. Opening her eyes hurt. ‘Go back to bed.’ She closed her eyes again, feeling too wretched to worry about whether she did.
‘I can manage now, thank you,’ she said as Raul deposited her on the bed.
He frowned doubtfully. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Definitely. I just need sleep. Please go away!’ she begged.
She expected him to argue, mainly because that was what he did, so when she opened her eyes again a little while later and found herself alone she was surprised. Under the circumstances it was perverse to feel deserted.
Half an hour later Raul knocked on the door and when there was no reply he entered. The room was illuminated by a single soft lamp, and it was empty. The pyjamas he had asked the maid to bring were lying across the empty rumpled bed. There was a trail of garments leading to the bathroom door.
Cursing softly under his breath, he followed the trail. The door of the bathroom was ajar. Nell was sitting on the edge of the bath wearing nothing but a bra and pants. Her hands were in the washbasin; her fingertips trailed in the water gurgling from the open tap.
He dropped down on his knees beside her. ‘Nell?’
Her heavy, dark-rimmed eyes opened; he was relieved when recognition supplanted the initial lack of acknowledgement in the shadowed depths.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Ringing an ambulance, I think.’ He touched her arm; it felt like ice. Her skin had a marble-like pallor and perspiration stood out across her forehead and beaded her upper lip.
‘Don’t be such a drama queen. I look much worse than I feel. Actually feel much better now I’ve been sick.’ At least he hadn’t witnessed her throwing up. ‘That’s the way it works. I was just having a little rest here before I went back to bed.’
‘How did you plan on getting there…on your hands and knees?’ He picked up a face cloth and, after running it under the warm water, applied it to her face and neck.
‘That’s nice,’ she admitted, leaning her head back against the support of the hand he had placed at the back of her neck. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this.’