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Raul’s tone was so calm, so unemotional that Alannah blinked in confusion to hear it. Was it possible—was he actually going to be reasonable about this? She could read nothing in his shuttered face, his hooded eyes hiding every last trace of what he was feeling from her.
‘And you want me to leave my sister here … and you think that coming on to me is the way to soften me up to give you what you want?’
‘Coming on?’Alannah gasped in shocked disbelief. ‘But I didn’t—I wasn’t! How could you think that?’
The sound of a loud buzzing noise intruded into her stunned protest, making her start in shock and stare round dazedly, looking for the source of the sound.
Raul, however, reacted immediately, pulling one hand free and snatching his mobile phone from his jacket pocket. Sitting on one arm of the settee, he thumbed it on and spoke sharply into it.
‘Sí? Carlos …’
Carlos. Of course.
Alannah tensed sharply as she realised just who was at the other end of the phone. A swift glance at the clock on the wall confirmed her suspicions. The thirty minutes Raul had stipulated were up—just—and almost exactly to the second his driver had arrived to collect him as he had been instructed.
So would Raul leave now, as he had originally planned? Her heart lurched sickeningly at the thought, the tension in her body growing worse. Did she want him to go or to stay? She had no way she could answer that, even to herself.
‘Momento …’ Raul said into the phone, then, still holding it to his ear, he glanced across into Alannah’s outraged face. For a moment he simply watched her consideringly, eyes narrowed in cold assessment, and with a curt, sharp nod of dark satisfaction he turned his attention back to the phone.
‘Yes,’ he said sharply, using English deliberately, she was sure, so that she had no option but to understand what he was saying. ‘Yes, I’m done here—more than ready to leave. I’ll be down in a minute.’
He was going. He was leaving, and nothing was going to stop him; his tone, his expression, the cold gleam in his eyes made that only too plain. He was leaving and. That was as far as she got. She didn’t have time even to finish the thought before Raul snapped off his phone and, still with his eyes fixed on her face, dropped it back in the direction of his jacket pocket. Then slowly, silently, holding her wide-eyed gaze with his own, he stood up and smoothed down his trousers, brushed a speck of something—a purely imaginary speck of something, Alannah was sure—from the front of his jacket.
‘My chauffeur is waiting,’ he said and Alannah actually gasped out loud because it was as if the ice in his voice had been physically real, hitting her brutally in the face as he spoke. ‘And it’s more than time I left.’
‘But …’ Alannah tried, knowing she couldn’t let him go without an answer, though in her heart she knew what it was going to be, something that was confirmed by the look that flashed from those dark golden eyes.
‘The answer is no, Miss Redfern …’
She recoiled sharply, flinching away from the stiff formality of his use of her name.
‘There is no way that I will leave my sister here to be buried alongside the man who killed her.’
‘But he didn’t …’ Alannah tried again but Raul ignored her interjection, talking over it as if it had never happened.
‘My family and yours should never have had any contact—we should have stayed at the opposite ends of the earth.’
‘Why? Because my ordinary family just aren’t good enough to mix with the likes of the high and mighty Marquez Marcín dynasty?’
Alannah no longer cared what she was saying or how she sounded. She only wanted to lash out, hurt him as she was hurting. Make him bleed as she felt that she was bleeding to death inside. She no longer knew or cared if it was for herself or her brother—or for poor little Lorena that her heart was breaking. Only that she had to scream out the agony or break down completely.
‘Well, let me tell you that I wish to God we’d never met. That it was the worst thing that ever happened to me—the worst day of my life—when you walked into it.’
If she thought that by lashing out she’d get through to him, make him react, then she was bitterly disappointed. Where she’d expected anger there was simply coldness, where she would have thought there would be emotion there was a frozen stillness, a terrible quiet in which he looked down his long, straight nose at her, his mouth twisting in vicious contempt.
‘Then the feeling is entirely mutual,’ he tossed at her. ‘I can assure you that I feel exactly the same. I wish to hell that I had never met you—never set eyes on you …’
‘Never …’
Twice Alannah tried to add to the single word. But both times she opened her mouth and had to close it again hastily because nothing came out. Raul just watched her, hands clenched into fists and pressed tight against his narrow hips.
‘Wished you’d never met me,’ she finally got out. ‘Then why would you have wanted to marry me?’
Oh, why couldn’t she stop? Why did she have to keep stabbing at him, pushing him to come back at her with something even worse?
Which of course he did.
‘You know why. I needed an heir.’
Well, she’d always known that. She’d just never expected him to come right out and say it so bluntly.
She’d hesitated a moment too long and those sharp golden eyes had caught the faint flicker of unease in her face, the way she had recoiled from his words.
‘Oh, come on, Alannah,’ he mocked cruelly. ‘You surely didn’t think I was going to say that I loved you? You can’t have wanted that?’
This time she had no trouble finding the words, or the strength of voice to throw them at him.
‘You’re damn right I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t have wanted any such thing from you—it would disgust me—repel me—and besides, I doubt very much that you know what love is. It’s certainly not a feeling that you’ve ever experienced for any woman, even one you once asked to marry you.’
‘I’d have to agree with you there.’ Raul drew himself up and inclined his head in a cold, controlled acknowledgement of her accusation. ‘Love is a very unreliable foundation on which to base one’s choice of bride.’
‘No, you put more emphasis on the fact that no other man has ever slept with her than any such untrustworthy feelings.’
‘Well, that didn’t last long, did it?’ Raul mocked. ‘As soon as I asked to marry you, you realised that you weren’t made for monogamy and set out to make up for what you’d been missing.’
‘But the one thing I didn’t miss was you!’
With her head defiantly high in the air, she stalked past him and out into the tiny hallway, flinging open the door with a wild gesture that had it banging into the opposite wall.
‘And now I’d prefer it if you left. Your chauffeur is waiting and you wouldn’t want to keep him hanging around. And this time I’d be grateful if you stayed away—for good.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Raul headed for the door with an alacrity that would have been positively insulting if she had had enough left in her heart to feel a further insult.
‘I’m not likely to want to come back. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever want to see you or any member of your family ever again.’
‘Well, that suits me,’ Alannah tossed after him as he strode out the door. ‘Believe me, if I was forced to see you again then I’d know that I was very definitely in that hell you mentioned.’
She slammed the door shut after his retreating form, hearing the sound echo throughout her flat as she sank back against the wall, her whole body shaking with the after-effects of the emotional storm that had had her in its grip.
CHAPTER SIX
RAUL tossed the last of his clothing into the case that lay open on the bed and then brought the lid down on it with a bang. Fastening the zip with a rough, wrenching movement, he pulled it off the bed, carried it through into the adjoining sitting room and deposited it beside the door, ready for the hotel porter to come and collect it. Another hour, and he would be out of here.
And it couldn’t happen soon enough. He’d known from the start that this trip to England was going to be hell on earth, but the truth was that he had never imagined how hellish it could be. Accepting the appalling news of Lori’s death, getting through the formalities and arranging for her funeral had been terrible enough. But then there had been the added twist of torture that had come in the meeting with Alannah, the discovery that it had been her brother who had …
‘No …’
He aimed a vicious kick at the side of the suitcase as his mind shied away from thinking of the crash that had killed his sister. The passage of four days since the news had broken had done nothing to blunt the sharply jagged edges of that pain and the news he had received just that afternoon had only stirred up all the sorrow even more.
Rubbing the palms of his hands fiercely across his face, over his aching, burning eyes, Raul could only wish that he could wipe away the memory of the past few days as he did so. He had thought that it couldn’t get any worse, but fate had had one last little trick in store, one further twist of the knife that made the loss of his sister even more unbearable to think of.
But if he didn’t think of Lorena then there was only one path his thoughts went down and that was one that was no more comfortable than the first.
The image of Alannah Redfern’s lissom body, her stunning face and the clear, emerald-green of those almond-shaped eyes was always ready to slide into his mind if he let his guard down. It was there in his memory during the day, distracting him from work, heating his blood and making him hard and hungry in the space of one heavy beat of his heart.
He could still feel the brutal kick of disgust that had landed on his senses with the realisation of just why she had kissed him, why she had responded to him so eagerly, so—for a moment at least, he had actually believed—sweetly. Disillusionment had set in fast and the rage that had replaced it had been coldly savage. If he had thought that he hated her before, then it had been nothing to the way he felt now. He had had to get out of her flat before his rage had got the better of him. And since then his fury had been directed at himself and the way that he couldn’t forget.
At night the same images of her kept him from sleep, and when he did eventually doze off then the vision of her softly yielding naked body opening under his turned his dreams into burningly erotic fantasies, so real that he could have sworn that she was actually there. Waking in the dark to tangled sheets, with his own skin slick with sweat, the memory of the taste of her mouth still on his tongue, the scent of her flesh in his nostrils was a sensual torment that had him pacing the floor in the middle of the night, or raiding the mini-bar for something strong enough to give him a chance at sleep.
It never worked and after two long, wakeful nights and two cold, sorrow-filled days he felt like a bad-tempered dog, snarling inwardly and ready to bite.
The final straw had been when he had discovered that his mobile phone was missing. He hadn’t even noticed that it was not in his possession until his father had contacted him in his hotel room, desperate to know what was going on. Since then he had turned the room upside down, emptied every drawer, checked in every pocket and still not found it. It was only as he was packing to return home that he had realised where it must be.
He had had the phone in his hand in Alannah’s flat. He’d spoken to Carlos, saying he would be down in a moment and.
A string of savage expletives escaped his lips and he raked his hands viciously through his hair as he remembered switching off the phone and dropping it—he thought—back into his jacket pocket. He had been concentrating so hard on reining in his temper that he must have must have missed the pocket and let it fall, unnoticed, onto the cushions of the chair where he’d been sitting. And he had walked out of her flat in such a fury that he hadn’t noticed that he’d left it. He could almost picture it now, down in the crack between the cushions, silent and unseen.
Damn it to hell, he would have to send Carlos round to pick it up.
He was heading for the phone on the desk when the knock came at the door. The porter, come for his bag. ‘Momento!’
Checking in his pocket that he had cash for a tip, he strode to the door, opened it and stared in blank bemusement at the person outside.
The person who had just filled his thoughts with unwanted sensual memories.
The person he had tried so damned hard to forget and failed so miserably at it.
‘Alannah!’
It was as if he had summoned her up. As if simply by thinking of her he had somehow brought her here, to stand in the corridor. As if she had walked out of his dreams and into reality.
And the reality was much better than the dream.
Her hair was loose and tumbled softly about her face, the pale skin was totally untouched by makeup except for some mascara that darkened her fine lashes and a slick of gloss over her lips that made her look as if she had just run her tongue along them, moistening them slightly. She was dressed in a soft pale green dress, one with a skirt that swirled around her slender calves, with the innumerable small buttons fastening the front. It made his mouth dry just to see them. When the thought of the sensual delight of setting himself to opening each and every one of those pearly discs slid into his head he clamped down on it hard, fighting against the risk of it reducing him to the state of some tongue-tied adolescent whose raging hormones could not be brought under control.
‘I brought you this …’
Her tone was stiff and her eyes didn’t quite meet his, their mossy-green gaze focused somewhere over his shoulder as if she was looking at someone else there. She lifted her hand, holding it out flat. In the centre of her palm lay the missing mobile phone.
‘You left it in my flat.’
‘Gracias.’
His own voice was rough and husky, as if it had come from a very sore throat, and even in his own ears it sounded brusque and dismissive. The small movement had stirred the air, bringing the scent of her body to him, and the combination of clean, feminine skin combined with a delicate, softly floral scent assailed his senses like a physical attack. He almost snatched the phone from her, knowing that the feel of her hand, the warmth of her flesh against his fingertips would be like setting a match to paper-dry tinder, threatening to send him up in flames in a heartbeat.
‘I found it down the side of the chair. You must have dropped it there when …’
A wash of colour flooded up into her cheeks as her voice trailed off and he knew that like him she was remembering just why the phone had been left on the chair in the first place.
‘I was wondering where it was.’
Was it only in his own ears or did he really sound so appallingly stiff and stilted? He didn’t seem to be able to make his mouth work normally. It was as if his tongue had suddenly become stiff and swollen in his mouth.
Or perhaps it was because of the way that his eyes were fixed on the soft, peachy fullness of her mouth. Remembering the feel of it against his, the taste of her on his lips. The way that she had kissed him and the heated response of her body. The heated, deliberately calculated response.
‘I’d just decided that it must be in your flat and I was about to send Carlos round to fetch it.’
‘Well, now you have it back.’
Alannah’s response was low and strangely flat. She was back to being the washed-out creature he had first seen in the hospital room on the day he had arrived in England. There was little trace of the seductive siren he had kissed; even less of the hissing, spitting vixen who had thrown him out of her flat in no uncertain terms. He was shocked to find that it was the vixen he missed most.
Raul’s conscience gave an uncomfortable twist so that he could almost hear his late mother demanding just where were his manners? Hadn’t she taught him better than this? It was ridiculous having this stiff-voiced conversation with him in the open doorway and her standing outside in the corridor. Even though this was a private suite, at any moment someone could come past—a member of the hotel staff, the porter coming for his case.
He stepped back, holding the door wider open.
‘I’m sorry—won’t you come in?’
The look she gave him was another reproof to his conscience. And the brief flash of her green eyes only made her face look even more pale and drawn, emphasising the shadows under her eyes.
‘You look as if you’re about to drop. Come in and sit down for a moment.’
‘I don’t think …’
He thought that he was being perfectly polite, that he had even added a touch of concern, but from the expression on her face he might just as well have suggested that he slit her throat right here and now. He felt his jaw tighten, his mouth compressing.
‘I am capable of being perfectly civilized …’
When she still hesitated, he gave up, flinging up his hands in exasperation and striding back into the room, leaving the door open behind him. Let her make her own decision.
‘Thank you.’
To his amazement she had actually followed him, stepping over the threshold of the door like a wary cat moving into alien territory. And, watching her, he knew that he had lied.
He might have said that he was capable of being civilised; he would even have been prepared to swear to it if necessary. But civilised was not what this woman made him feel. Just the soft sound of her voice made his pulse leap with thoughts of a huge bed, soft pillows, clean sheets and Alannah, warm and welcoming, beside him. The scent of her skin made hunger clutch, hard and hot, low down in his body, so that, turning again, to see her behind him, it was all that he could do to force his mouth into some sort of a smile.
‘I’ll get Carlos to take you back. It’s the least I can do—to say thank you. Why don’t you sit down?’
He waved a hand towards the big leather-covered settee that stood in the middle of the large sitting room and Alannah’s eyes followed the gesture but she silently shook her head and stayed right where she was.
‘Isn’t this the point at which I should offer you a coffee?’ he asked and to his surprise saw the stiffness of her face suddenly crumble and a real, genuine smile broke through the careful restraint she’d imposed.
‘If you did, do you think that we’d get to drink it? We don’t seem to have had much luck so far.’
Did she know what it did to him to see her eyes light up like that, if only for a moment? To see that lush mouth curve in warmth in a way that it so seldom did when he was around? He might tell himself that he hated this woman—detested the way she’d treated him, and now loathed her entire family for the destruction her brother had wreaked on his—but the truth was much more complicated. He just couldn’t get her out of his mind. He was addicted to her and the way he had been feeling the past couple of days was comparable to withdrawal symptoms.
He had needed his ‘fix’ of Alannah and his symptoms had started to subside as soon as she had appeared at his door. He knew what would really cure him of them and that was to give in to the demands his addicted body was making that he took her in his arms, kissed her—took her to bed.
