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‘Where the hell have you been?’ Raul thundered at her accusingly.
‘In bed...sleeping,’ Polly mumbled in bewilderment. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Raul roared back in apparent disbelief.
The staff were now all slowly rolling back like a quiet tide in the direction of the stairs. Raul strode past her into the bedroom, shooting the rumpled bed a speaking glance of seeming amazement.
‘Lesson three on being a proper wife.’ Polly whispered her prepared opening sentence before she could lose her nerve. ‘Never let the sun go down on a row.’
‘It’s rising...the sun,’ Raul informed her half under his breath and, bending down, he scooped her unresisting body up into his arms, crossed the room and settled her back on the bed.
Frowning, not following that oddly strained if true remark, as the dawn light was indeed already burnishing the night sky, Polly gazed uncertainly up at him. ‘What was going on out there?’
Dark colour flared over his superb cheekbones and his wide, sensual mouth hardened. ‘You weren’t where you were
supposed to be. I thought you’d bolted again.’
‘B-bolted where?’ Polly asked, with some difficulty squashing the incautious giggle trying to break free of her taut throat.
‘How do I know? There’s two helicopters out there, a whole collection of cars, a stable full of horses! If you wanted to bolt, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge to find the means,’ Raul informed her grimly as he stood over her, six foot plus of dark, menacing authority. ‘My bed was the last place I expected to find you!’
So he hadn’t even looked. He had jumped to conclusions. He had checked the bedroom she should have been in and immediately raised the alarm. Although she was deeply embarrassed by that candid admission that he hadn’t dreamt she would have the nerve to take up residence in his bed, she was also rather relieved to register that Raul was not omnipotent. He could not yet forecast her every move. But she turned her head away from the light, fearful that he would see too much in her expressive face.
‘Do you want me to go?’ she asked with studied casualness.
‘No...I can recognise an olive tree when I’m handed one.’
‘You mean an olive branch,’ she contradicted gently.
‘No, when you put on silk, scent, mascara and lipstick for my benefit, and arrange yourself like a little bridal sacrifice in my bed...’ Raul murmured almost roughly as he stared down at her, brilliant eyes reflecting only the light in his darkly handsome features ‘...it’s definitely not just a branch, it’s a whole tree...in fact, it might well be the equivalent of an orchard.’ He thrust impatient fingers through his disordered hair and shook his head ruefully. ‘Dios mío...what am I talking about?’
Standing there, talking like that, he seemed disturbingly different. He was still regarding her with a piercing, narrow-eyed intensity that didn’t seem to be making him any more comfortable than it was making her. In fact, he looked pretty pale beneath his healthy bronze skin. As Polly was already achingly self-conscious about lying there in his bed, his reactions were increasing her anxiety level. Here she was, offering an invitation to the best of her ability, but maybe he no longer even wanted that invitation!
The tense silence seemed to scream in her ears.
‘You must’ve been out riding for a long time...’ she commented, desperate to break that nerve-straining quiet.
‘I went some distance. I called in with...with a neighbour.’ His stubborn jawline clenched, handsome mouth compressing, strong face suddenly shadowing as he strode towards the bathroom. ‘I’m filthy. I need a shower.’
Pink-cheeked now, Polly studied him the same way a crossword addict without talent studies the crème de la crème of challenges, desperate for a hint of true inspiration. He stepped out of view, and she listened then to the strangely intimate sounds of a man undressing: the thud of his boots hitting the tiled floor, the snap as he presumably undid the waistband of his jodhpurs...
Oh, dear heaven, if Raul no longer even wanted her to share his bed, how did she get out of this situation without losing face?
‘Maybe I should go back to my room,’ Polly practically whispered.
Sudden silence fell.
Bare-chested and barefoot, Raul appeared in the doorway, all rampant virility with rumpled hair and the jodhpurs which had an indecently faithful fit to his long, lean thighs undone at his waist. ‘Whatever you feel most comfortable doing.’
On receipt of that refusal to state an opinion either way—which from a male of Raul’s domineering temperament was particularly hard to take—Polly blinked in bemused chagrin.
‘But you can sleep here just as easily,’ Raul pointed out with a careless shrug.
‘Fine...’ Polly managed to splutter, turning over on her side to glower with stinging eyes at the dawn filling the sky with such vibrant colour. The unfeeling louse didn’t want an orchard of olive branches. Her so sophisticated, sexy and immensely self-assured husband was trying to let her down gently. And now she was stuck, because if she jumped out of bed and fled she was going to look really stupid and pathetic! And, furthermore, Raul would then work out for himself that her olive branch had been rather more emotionally motivated than she’d chosen to admit.
She listened to the shower switching off and grimaced. The lights went out The mattress gave at the other side of the bed.
‘If you sleep any closer to the edge, you might fall out,’ Raul remarked lazily.
