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‘Holy Moses! I’ve a head like a sieve!’ Karen gasped, comic dismay widening her eyes. ‘I forgot about my celebrity guest. What are we doing in here? One of the models I worked with in Italy simply walked in with him as cool as you please. Rafael Alejandro! Here! In my humble home. Can you believe that?’
Deception didn’t come naturally to Sarah. ‘Alejandro…the painter?’
‘Dear God, is there another one around? He’s only one of the most famous artists alive!’ Karen stressed. ‘Considering that most of them have to drop dead to achieve recognition, we are talking here about fame as in serious fame, fame with a capital F!’
‘I believe he’s a remarkably talented artist.’ Even to her own ears, Sarah sounded wooden.
‘Believe me, when you look at him his skill with a paintbrush is about the last thing on your mind.’ Karen was dry, annoyed by Sarah’s refusal to be impressed. ‘Newsprint doesn’t do him justice.’
‘The gossip columns do.’
Karen dropped her offended stare and grinned. ‘Sarah, my innocent, when you get an incredibly beautiful man the wild reputation goes with the territory. “Mad, bad and dangerous to know” may not be you but you haven’t seen him yet. The guy is pure fantasy. I swear my hormones went into a feeding frenzy on the doorstep!’
As Sarah stood up, her conscience twanged. Sarah would be upset when she found that the rare bird had flown in her absence. ‘More you than Gordon?’
‘No. I like to appreciate but I’ve no ambition to touch…well, at least not in my sane mind,’ Karen confided with her usual devotion to the absolute truth. ‘I prefer my men less…what do they call it in Spain? Muy hombre? A volatile artistic genius would be much too unpredictable for me.’
In actuality, Rafael was not unpredictable, Sarah reflected helplessly. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted. He had a tongue like a whip and a convoluted, brilliant mind that thought round corners into the dark, secret places other people sensibly left alone.
‘Anyway, he’s reputed to be fantastically clever as well,’ Karen rattled on. ‘I’m not running myself down but I’m no Einstein and you just couldn’t be in control with a guy like that. It’s fatuous but people will talk about this party forever simply because he’s here.’ Karen pulled open the door to find Gordon raising a hand to knock on it. Half amused, half irritated, she said, ‘I underestimated you. Have you got a homing device planted on her?’
Gordon smiled and looked through her simultaneously. Karen flushed and muttered something about food in the oven.
‘Sorry, was I ages? We got caught up,’ Sarah said lightly.
‘I got taken over,’ Gordon shared wryly. ‘You were right. She’s not at all like you. She’s like a great overgrown schoolgirl.’
‘She’s a lovely person and there’s not an ounce of malice in her.’
Reluctantly he smiled. ‘Can you imagine the havoc she’d wreak if there were? Her brain is two steps behind her conversation.’
‘I wonder why she thought you were cute.’
‘Cute?’ His nostrils flared fastidiously.
‘A compliment you do not deserve.’
Unexpectedly he laughed, his pugnacious aspect vanishing. ‘I think of fluffy toys as cute but I was out of order. Let’s grab a seat,’ he suggested.
Gordon being Gordon there was no need to grab or even to search. He guided her between a low table and sofa, stowing her down in one corner. Ten seconds later he reappeared with two drinks he had evidently stashed somewhere near by in readiness. Gordon was always well organised. Meeting the level scrutiny she had been self-consciously evading, Sarah smiled. For once, Karen had made a mistake. Purely platonic friendship was perfectly possible between sensible people.
Her wandering gaze suddenly jolted to a halt. Shock reverberated through her in sickening waves and her fingers curled into her evening bag like white-knuckled talons, bracing for attack.
Rafael was lounging on the matching sofa on the other side of the low table. Her throat closed over. Every long lean line of his magnificent body emanated unnatural relaxation. There was a reckless violence in the dark, glittering stare that entrapped hers across the divide. Her ability to breathe was suffocated at source.
‘The punch has the kick of a mule,’ Gordon told her warningly.
Half of it went down Sarah’s convulsed throat in one go. Rafael had switched his attention back to the sinuous redhead curled under his arm. Cerise-painted fingertips were idly tracing the taut inner seam of the faded denim encasing one long, muscular thigh. Those caressing fingers exercised a sick fascination over Sarah. She could not take her eyes off them.
Gordon was talking to her and she couldn’t hear him. In desperation she turned towards him, only to be nailed again by Rafael’s steel-bright stare. Unforgivably he had been watching her watching him. She felt like an animal caught cruelly in the jaws of a trap with the hunter standing over her, making no attempt to administer a clean kill. She had the terrifying sensation that Rafael was seeing her naked and defenceless. Her muscles were so clenched that she physically hurt. For a crazed moment she was so wildly out of control that she almost ran for cover again.
Karen’s voice exploded in her ear. ‘Why aren’t you circulating?’
Karen wasn’t real. Gordon wasn’t real. The only reality was Rafael, even when Karen was blocking her view. He had not needed to speak to brutally intimate his savage contempt for her as a woman. He only had to sit there letting that tramp practically make love to him in public! She read the message like the banner he intended it to be and she felt ill, cornered.
‘Por dios, this world is truly a small place.’ Sarah’s head jerked up, a row of spectral toothmarks biting into her jangled nerves, her pallor pronounced.
Rafael had moved. He stood over her now, casting a long dark shadow before he crouched down in front of her with a natural athlete’s grace. So close, so unexpected was it that it took every atom of will-power she possessed not to rear back. Somewhere Karen was loudly proclaiming an introduction.
‘Sarah and I know each other.’ He said it to her, nobody else, his tiger’s eyes a golden threat on her white immobility.
‘You know each other?’ Karen positively squealed, hanging over the back of the sofa. ‘Where from?’
A smile slashed Rafael’s expressive mouth. A long brown forefinger skated over Sarah’s fiercely clenched hands, a mountain cat taking a first playful swipe at a trapped prey, frozen with fear. ‘Where from?’ he prompted silky soft. ‘Am I so easily, so quickly forgotten?’
Only desperation came to her rescue. ‘Paris, wasn’t it?’ she managed tautly.
‘When I was still starving in my garret, although not alone,’ he mocked, velvety smooth, smiling again as her trembling fingers snaked jerkily back out of reach. ‘I believe I was part of the Francophile experience.’ Slowly he sprang upright again, still ignoring Gordon. ‘Es verdad?’
‘Boy, have you got some explaining to do!’ Karen snapped painfully close to her eardrum as he walked away. ‘Give me an inch, Gordon, there’s a love. This is girl-talk, utterly beneath your notice. Sarah, you couldn’t possibly have forgotten him!’
‘To think that I once believed that the Spanish were a uniquely courteous race,’ Gordon drawled. ‘Shall we sample supper?’
Karen cut in on him, ‘Sarah, tell me—’
‘You don’t need a public address system, do you?’ Gordon detached Sarah’s numbed arm from Karen’s over-enthusiastic grip. They were a hair’s breadth from fighting over her, Sarah realised on the brink of hysteria. Rafael’s behaviour had shocked her into dumb stupidity. She couldn’t have made small talk to save her life.
‘Paris,’ said Karen and suddenly she burst out laughing. ‘Of course! He was one of Margo’s and you never did tell tales.’
Karen had herded them both into the dining-room. She was chatting nineteen to the dozen now, glad to have solved the mystery so easily. ‘We all thought it was a scream when Sarah’s parents let her go and stay in Paris with Margo. Easter in Upper Sixth, wasn’t it?’
Gordon passed out plates. ‘Margo?’ he prompted obediently.
Sarah parted bone-dry lips. ‘Margo Carruthers. Her father had an engineering business in Paris.’
‘Sarah used to sleep in French class,’ Karen took up impatiently. ‘And her parents put French on a level with flower arranging and good carriage.’
‘I went to Paris to improve my French.’ Sarah had to fight to keep her voice level on the unnecessary explanation.
