скачать книгу бесплатно
‘I’m fine.’
As if to prove it she tossed back the damp strands of her hair and shrugged out of her jacket, dropping it on a nearby chair before heading across the room to where a door stood open into the kitchen.
‘And I should make you that coffee.’
Raul’s dismissal in his native Spanish was terse and to the point. There was a tension about her slender body that reminded him of a suspicion that had flashed through his mind in the moment she had first invited him in. She was edgy and uneasy, her mood communicating that there was more to this than met the eye. She didn’t really think that he believed she had brought him up here for coffee?
Just coffee wouldn’t put the ragged edge to her voice, make some unreadable emotion darken her eyes.
But she was obviously going to ignore him as she turned and headed through the door into the kitchen.
‘Bathroom,’ he said sharply, making her stop so abruptly that it was almost as if she had been expecting him to speak.
But obviously not what he had said, he realised as she frowned faintly in some confusion.
‘Where is your bathroom?’ he repeated.
‘Oh—down the corridor …’ She pointed in the right direction. ‘First door on the left.’
It took him just moments to stride down the corridor, enter the bathroom and snatch up the towel that was hanging on a rail against the wall. With the soft white cotton dangling from his fingers, he was back in the kitchen while she was still filling the kettle at the tap.
‘Here …’
With one hand he removed the still dripping kettle from her grip and set it down on the worktop. With the other, he draped the towel over her head and began to gently blot the soaking strands of her hair.
Alannah froze. Every inch of her slim frame became stiff with tension and rejection.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded from under the towel.
‘I should have thought that was obvious. I’m drying your hair.’ ‘Then stop!’
It came from between gritted teeth, venom in every word. Enough to freeze his hands, still holding the towel.
‘I never asked you to do that—or anything like it. I said I was fine.’
‘You don’t look fine—’
‘I’m fine—so take your hands off me.’
‘Sure!’
Raul’s tone was clipped and hard. He dropped the towel on the floor and took a step backwards, hands coming up between them, bronzed fingers splayed wide in what looked like a defensive gesture.
But the expression in his eyes made a nonsense of any thought of defensiveness. There was nothing wary or unsure in the gaze that clashed with her. Instead a cold anger turned those burning bronze eyes translucent and challenge blazed out of them, defying her to take this further.
‘But in the terms of strict accuracy, my hands were never on you. So it seems that you, Alannah querida, are exaggerating just a little. More than a little.’
‘I’m …’ Alannah began but Raul ignored her attempt to protest, or apologise—she wasn’t quite sure which—and when he ploughed straight on, talking right over what she had been about to say, she found she was grateful that she hadn’t got so far as the apology.
‘If I had touched you then you might have something to complain about. Or if I’d kissed you …’
Alannah saw his intent in those devastating eyes, saw the way his head tilted, his gaze going to her partly open mouth.
‘You wouldn’t …’
She wanted to run—to get away—but even as the thought came into her mind she knew that he had got there first. Any chance of escape was cut off as one strong hand came down on the edge of the sink on either side of her body, enclosing her, trapping her and holding her unable to move.
He was so close—too close—and all the disturbing, worrying sensations that had sprung to life in the car now flared through her again but this time more sharply, more intensely, making her shift uncomfortably in the confined space of his imprisoning arms. But that only brought her up close against their warmth, their strength, and the hard, lean length of his body in front of her. Her heart was racing, sending blood pounding through her veins, and the sound of it was like thunder inside her head.
He was going to kiss her, she could be in no doubt at all about that. It was there in the smokiness of his gaze, the total stillness of his powerful body. He was going to kiss her and this time there would be no sudden stopping of the car, no announcement from Carlos to distract him from his purpose.
Nervously she slicked her tongue over dry lips, waited, watched as his handsome face came nearer.
And stared in disbelief as this time he was the one who called a halt, the slow movement stopping, his dark head moving in a gesture of denial.
‘I think not,’ he said harshly and spun on his heel, turning to march out of the door, leaving her staring blankly after him, wondering just what she had done to change his mind.
Was it some small reaction she couldn’t control? Had he seen something in her face? What—just what had stopped him, changing his mood and driving him away from her like that?
‘Raul …’
She tried for his name but the sound died in her mouth, shrivelling on her tongue. And she was only talking to his back, the long, straight line of his spine, the proud set of his dark head that was all she could see as he walked away from her. If he heard her at all then he made no sign.
And to Alannah’s shaken consternation that made her feel terrible, stunned and bewildered, shaking in reaction, and with her legs suddenly unsteady beneath her.
He might as well have kissed her; she was reacting as if he had. If he had actually wrenched her into his arms, plundered her mouth with his, ravaged her senses, he could not have made her feel any worse than she did now—or did she mean that she might actually have felt better? Shaking her head bemusedly, Alannah admitted to herself that she didn’t know. She only knew that she was trembling with reaction to just the closeness, the burn of the heat from his body along her senses. Her skin had prickled as if under assault from sensual pins and needles, her nerves twisting tight in anticipation of his kiss and then there had been the terrible sense of let-down when it hadn’t happened.
Let-down.
Even in her own thoughts, the word sounded wrong.
She had spent the last two years putting her time with Raul Marcín behind her, determined to forget about it, get him out of her life for good. She didn’t want to remember him, didn’t want to be with him, didn’t want him to have any part in her life, she told herself as she grabbed at the kettle again and shoved it fiercely under the tap. She could only feel thankful that Raul was no longer in the room to see the way that her jerky, clumsy movements betrayed her, giving away the unsettled way she was feeling, the conflict that was raging inside her.
‘Oh, no—no!’ The words slipped from Alannah’s lips, hidden under the rush of water as she turned on the tap to fill the kettle. ‘No—it can’t be this way!’
But she had loved him once and what was it that they said—that you never forgot your first love? She had adored him, fallen hopelessly, helplessly, irredeemably in love with him in the space of a heartbeat and she had put her own foolish, vulnerable, naïve and innocent heart into his hands and his keeping, only to have him crush it brutally, tearing it into pieces. But at the same time, in the way that long ago dinosaurs left their footprints etched into stone, so he had left his mark on her and her senses, her memories, had responded to his touch, his closeness at the most basic, most primitive level of awareness.
She made a terrible, a stupid mistake in the hospital when, weak and despairing, she had flung herself into his arms and sobbed out her misery on his shoulder. She’d allowed herself to know, just for a very short time, the dangerous, the forbidden comfort of having his arms around her, his strength supporting her, the lean power of his body close to hers. And doing that had weakened her defences, opened cracks in the armour she had built up around herself so that something about Raul could get through to her and stab at her cruelly, leaving her more vulnerable to him than she had been before.
So when he’d tried to dry her hair she’d reacted—overreacted—like a scalded wildcat, turning on him hissing and spitting, so that she had only herself to blame for his cold anger, the way he had walked out on her. And by being overly defensive she had given away too much of the vulnerability she was really feeling.
But not again, she determined as she slammed the lid onto the kettle before banging it down on the stove; never, ever again.
‘If that is for the damned coffee you seem so insistent on, then I have to say yet again that I really do not want one.’
Raul had appeared in the doorway again, big, dark and dangerous-looking, a disturbing scowl on his face.
‘Then what do you want?’
His broad shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug, but even though the gesture seemed to dismiss her question as irrelevant something new flared in the deep bronze pools of his eyes. Something that sent a shiver of apprehension skittering down her spine as she realised that her uneasiness had caught on his nerves and what she saw in his gaze was coldly burning suspicion.
‘You tell me—after all, you were the one who invited me in. And coffee was your excuse for doing so.’
‘It wasn’t an excuse …’
The knowledge of why she had really invited him into her flat, the worry that she still hadn’t dared to broach the subject, made her voice croak in a way that she knew sounded as if she had something to hide.
‘No?’ Raul questioned harshly. ‘Then why am I here? Because you will not convince me that coffee was uppermost in your mind.’
‘Not uppermost,’ Alannah conceded but then she saw the way that his head went back, his eyes narrowing, and her throat closed up sharply, preventing her from going any further.
‘Sí?’ Raul questioned sharply. ‘So if the coffee was not the most important thing—then what was? Tell me why I am here—why you invited me to your flat in the first place.’
Pushing a hand into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a slim black mobile phone and held it up between them.
‘And tell me the truth or I will call Carlos and tell him to come now …’
His thumb moved, hovered over the speed-dial button.
‘No—wait …’
She couldn’t let him go, not until she had told him the truth that he had demanded—the truth about Chris and the accident and. But how could she tell him without carefully leading up to it? She couldn’t just blurt it all out, throw it in his face without any lead-in or preparation. That was why she had made such a fuss about the coffee.
But where could she start? How could she tell him when she knew already just what his reaction would be?
She should start with Chris … but just the thought of the name of her adored younger brother made her mind freeze in pain, unable to frame a single word but Chris.
‘Alannah …’
She had waited too long, her thoughts preoccupied by her worries, and Raul was growing impatient, his use of her name a low growl of warning. As she forced herself to focus she saw his thumb move again, threatening to press the button.
‘No—please wait!’
To her intense relief he hesitated, stopped the movement, his thumb barely a centimetre above the surface of his phone. The bronze eyes he turned on her seemed to burn over her skin, searing away a fine layer and leaving her feeling raw and exposed, desperately apprehensive.
‘Then tell me.’
‘I will—I promise. But not here. Not like this. Why don’t we go and sit down? We’d be more comfortable in the living room.’
But comfortable for how long? She had to tell him now; had to get it out in the open or he would walk out before she managed it. But she didn’t dare to think of what would happen after she’d told him. Deep in the pit of her stomach all the nerves twisted into tight, cruel knots of trepidation until she felt that she might almost be sick.
‘I need to be comfortable for this?’
That note of suspicion had deepened, darkened, intensifying all her fears just to hear it.
‘It would be more—more civilised. Look, just give me a minute to get a drink, a glass of water—you might not want one but I do. And then I’ll—then we can talk.’
For an uncomfortable second she thought he was going to refuse. The cynical, sceptical glance he turned on her face made her stomach muscles tighten in apprehension. But then, just when she thought he wouldn’t, he inclined his dark head in agreement.
‘OK,’ he said as he turned and walked back into the living room. ‘I will wait—but only a minute. I am not a patient man and I want to know just what the hell is going on.’
Left behind, Alannah snatched up a glass and shoved it under the tap, splashing cold water into it until it spilled over, flooding down the sides and over her fingers. Wrenching off the tap with one hand, she lifted the drink to her mouth and took several long, thirsty gulps of the cool liquid then lifted it to her forehead, rolling the wet glass above her eyebrows in an effort to calm herself down, ease the tension that was already tight as a steel band around her skull.
She had to get a grip on herself. She had to go in there and talk to him as calmly as possible—tell him everything that had happened and then.
She winced inside as she anticipated Raul’s probable reaction, the dark thunderstorm that would probably break right over her head as soon as she finished speaking. But it had to be done—and soon too. Thirty minutes, he had said, and they had already used up more than half of those. If she didn’t hurry then Carlos would turn up again and she would be unable to say what she had to say in front of him.
Putting the glass down on the worktop, she drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
She was going to do this —now.
She was barely inside the other room when the sight that met her eyes drove all the breath from her body in a shocked rush. Raul was waiting for her, but it wasn’t just the sight of him standing there, big and dark and disturbingly formidable, feet planted firmly on the woven rug before the gas fire, that shook her world. It was the picture frame he held in his hand, head bent, hooded eyes intent on the image in the photograph it held.
And the look on his face twisted her heart in her chest. She knew that look and she knew exactly what it meant. But the real problem was that she knew that what she was about to say could only make things so much worse.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE photograph WAS the first thing that Raul had seen when he walked back into the room. Because with Alannah’s instruction in his head that he should sit down he’d been heading for one of the armchairs grouped around the small gas fire, and he was facing that way for the first time, towards the wall and the small round table that stood against it. The table was crammed with photographs, all in frames of different shapes and sizes, some wood, some polished silver, some old, like the picture of her grandmother he recognised from when he had known her before, and some obviously very recent.
It was one of these that had caught his attention.
And what he saw had the power to make him feel as if a brutal knife had just slashed open his heart, letting out all the pain and the loss he had been fighting to hold back ever since he had been dragged away from a business meeting by the worst phone call he had ever received in his life.
‘Lorena … Lori …’
The name escaped his lips on a whisper, the pain even of speaking it searing into his soul. His eyes blurred so badly that for a moment he thought—hoped—that he had been wrong and the subject of the photograph was not who he thought it was. But blinking hard as he snatched it up did nothing to help that feeling. In fact it only made it so much worse as it cleared his vision and made it agonisingly plain that he had not been wrong.
Lori’s beautiful, delighted face smiled up at him from behind the glass. Her grin was wide, her brown eyes sparkled, her dark hair was tossed by some unseen breeze. She looked totally happy, totally wonderful.
Totally alive.
His hands clenched tight on the picture frame, so tight that he almost felt that the light pine wood would shatter under the pressure of his fingers.
This was wrong—so wrong. Lori was so young. Too young. She was too young—had been too young. With a terrible lurch of his heart he adjusted the tense of his thoughts as he had had to do so many times in the past twenty-four hours. As he would have to do for the rest of his life—at least until he got used to it.
And he didn’t want to get used to it. Never!
How could his little sister—his precious, beautiful baby sister, the sister who had been put so carefully into his arms when she was less than a day old and had moved straight into his heart in an instant—be dead while he was still alive? It went against all the laws of nature that he had already had ten years more of life than she would ever know. That at twenty-one her life was already over—finished.
It didn’t bear thinking about. He couldn’t think about it … His numbed, bruised and battered brain just couldn’t take it in.
The photograph was almost invisible behind the burning haze in his eyes. He wanted to lift a hand to brush at them fiercely but somehow his grip wouldn’t loosen on the photograph he held. He couldn’t let go …
‘Raul …’
The voice was low, feminine, gentle … as gentle as the soft fingers that touched his hand, very lightly, very carefully.
‘Raul …’
