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That was the closest thing to a promising suggestion he had made in two weeks. She looked at him hopefully but it was very obvious as the smile slid away that he was not thinking along the same lines.
‘Do you know why I came here tonight?’
‘Abuela embarrassed you into coming. It’s all right,’ he dismissed wryly. ‘I am not angry about it.’
He was anything but pleased about it though and she hid a smile. ‘I intended to tell you that I was…well, that I was agreeable to…’ Already she was losing the thread, suddenly plunged into tongue-tied inadequacy at the fear that he very possibly might not want the assurances she planned to give.
‘Agreeable to what?’
‘To having a normal marriage…to trying again. I only needed some time to think the idea over.’ It wasn’t quite coming out with the flavour she had intended.
‘So you thought it over. That was very sensible of you,’ he conceded flatly, unappreciative of the news. ‘But then that is you. It is not me. You would not want to be guilty of haste or enthusiasm but then it is obvious that you do not feel this is necessary. What did I pass on?’
Sarah was studying him bemusedly. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘While you were for two weeks weighing up whether or not you would stay? Surely I entered these pros and cons somewhere?’ Golden eyes were pinned to her with restrained fury. ‘Two weeks, it takes you. It didn’t take me twenty-four hours to make the same decision!’
Sarah swallowed hard, unable to understand why on earth he should be angry. ‘But as you pointed out a minute ago, I am not you. If you must know, it never occurred to me that I had the choice of not staying unless I planned to return to England without Gilly and Ben.’
He stared at her, a blaze of emotion in his brilliant eyes. ‘Leave them out of this!’
Sarah belatedly grasped what had infuriated him and she wasn’t surrendering, no way was she! He didn’t like the idea that she might be staying solely for the twins’ benefit. On the other hand, he hadn’t balked at dragging her all the way to Spain and keeping her yoked to the same humiliating belief. ‘You weighed heavily in the pros and cons.’
‘I do not want to be weighed like a sack of grain,’ he flashed back at her rawly. ‘I do not weigh you.’
Sarah could see a roaring attack of artistic temperament threatening on the horizon and as she absorbed the driven tension tautening his lean, powerful length, she registered, finally understood on a surge of disbelief that what she felt for him was of such overwhelming importance that he was painfully and unmistakably bracing himself for words that would hurt, words that would wound. Her heart turned over inside her breast and did a double back-flip for good measure. Suddenly she felt incredibly generous.
‘Why do you think I’m wearing this stupid dress? I came here to—er—seduce you,’ she confided tensely.
‘Que?’ he muttered, shaken by the announcement.
‘I thought a drink might help. I hadn’t quite thought out ways and means and when it comes down to it I’m really not that sure what I’m supposed to do,’ she admitted curtly, a stricken look in her eyes.
Rafael was breathing shallowly, rather like someone who had raced up a hill expecting to find a spectacularly rewarding view only to find it blocked at the very last minute. ‘You want to go to bed with me,’ he translated fiercely. ‘As if I was just anybody?’
Sarah was stunned, momentarily quite bemused by this disconcerting response. But as the full force of his derision hit her, it was absolutely the last straw. Anger and pain roared through her in a blaze as she leapt upright. ‘Right now, just anybody sounds a lot more tempting!’ she told him furiously. ‘How can you be so blind? I wouldn’t dream of going to bed with you if I didn’t love you! I wouldn’t do it to keep you and I wouldn’t do it even to keep the children. It takes more than a couple of glasses of wine to make me forget my principles. It takes you, and if you think I’m pleased about that, you’re crazy!’
CHAPTER TEN
‘THAT’S a hell of a way to tell me that you love me,’ Rafael breathed hoarsely.
Maddeningly aware that instead of slapping him down hard she had inexplicably strayed into doing exactly the opposite by betraying herself, Sarah was, if anything, even more furious than she had been a moment earlier. ‘You had your chance and you blew it!’ she told him wrathfully. ‘And don’t you ever dare to refer to this again. As far as I’m concerned, tonight never happened!’
‘But why should we want to forget it?’ A brilliant smile had transformed his dark features. ‘After all, I am also in love with you.’
‘I suppose it just sneaked up on you a second ago!’
‘Por dios, querida—I love you!’ he declared fiercely.
‘I suppose that’s why you’ve been sleeping down here, treating me like a piece of furniture or something…’ Her throat was closing over, clogged with tears and bitterness and a whole host of other emotions, a desperate desire to believe in him, rigorously thrust by fear to the very bottom of the pile.
‘Or someone whom I cannot be near ever without wanting to touch,’ he completed softly. ‘You said you didn’t want me.’
‘I thought you were in love with someone else.’
‘Who is this someone else?’
‘How should I know?’ It was an embarrassed wail. ‘When I asked you what would happen if you did fall in love, you looked sort of…well, you looked like you were hiding something.’
‘Of course I was hiding something! How do you think it felt for you to ask such a question as if it didn’t matter a damn to you?’ he demanded. ‘It hurt because I loved you. Sarah,’ he said her name achingly as though he savoured every syllable individually and her lower limbs went weak but she fought off the sensation in panic.
‘I want to believe you, but—’
‘No but.’ A forefinger rested reprovingly against her tremulous lips. ‘I am willing to spend the rest of my life proving it beyond a doubt. In England, I told you that the very first night I knew what I would do. I knew I still loved you and I didn’t want to admit it.’ He was winding a set of very determined arms round her and wonderful floaty feelings were interfering drastically with her concentration. ‘But all I could think about was this man with his hands on you.’
‘What about that creature pawing you at the party?’ Sarah gasped, not so easily silenced.
‘I am not in the habit of being pawed in public.’ A dark flush had settled on his cheekbones. ‘Now, it sounds very childish but I was not sorry that you should see that another woman should find me attractive. It was pride, it was–’
‘Disgusting,’ Sarah supplied pitilessly but she was reassured.
Disorientatingly, he grinned down at her. ‘Your feelings showed and I couldn’t understand why it should bother you. It made me think, it made me follow you home—’
‘You followed Gordon’s car?’
‘I didn’t think about what I was doing and your reactions to me were very confusing,’ he murmured tautly. ‘And then Gilly came in and after that, for me it is just a blank that evening. I don’t even remember what I said. I was devastated.’
Sarah was discovering that the Armani sweater was worn next to bare skin. Her hands had crept beneath the welt to smooth covetously over warm, hair-roughened flesh. Satisfyingly, he shuddered against her. His fingers suddenly meshed into her silky hair, jerking her head back so that his mouth could possess hers with a voracious hunger and unleashed restraint that threatened to knock her off her feet. Breathing hard, he released her bruised lips and muttered something fiercely apologetic in Spanish.
‘Twice, we have made love,’ he groaned. ‘And twice, I have lost control and behaved like an uncivilised brute. This time, it won’t be like that.’
‘You lost control? I thought you were experimenting.’
He swept her up in his arms with a grin. ‘I thought you were experimenting with me. I nearly took you in the hall, I was so incredibly excited.’ He frowned, tensed. ‘This is crude?’
‘Wonderful,’ she whispered in urgent contradiction against his cheek. ‘Say it again. You can be as uncivilised as you like.’
He deposited her on a single bed in a bare, almost monastic little room. He smoothed her rucked skirt very carefully down over her slim thighs. ‘This cocktail I mixed has gone straight to your head. I do not think I should share this bed with you tonight.’
‘Why not?’ Snatched cruelly from her haze of wonderfully wanton anticipation, she clutched a handful of his sweater to keep him beside her.
