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She lifted up her cup, took a mouthful of tea, breaking her gaze. Then she set down her cup again, looked at him once more. She swallowed, then spoke.
‘Modelling is a crowded profession. Often poorly paid. Only a few make it to the very top. I won’t be one of them, I know, but I’ve not done badly—for which I’m grateful,’ she allowed. ‘Anyway, it’s the only way I know of to make money—’
She stopped, and for a moment—just a moment—there was an emptiness in her gaze. As if she had been scoured hollow.
Then it was gone.
Yet in its aftermath there seemed to Rafael to be the residue of something lingering. Unsettling. He wanted to banish it.
He took another mouthful of his brandy, feeling its warmth filling him. ‘It seems to me you know about astronomy,’ he said.
He’d lightened his tone deliberately. Yet his attempt to lighten the atmosphere seemed to have failed. Her throat tensed; a shadow occluded her eyes. Memory oozed within her of the way she had first gazed desperately up at the heavens, wanting only to be part of them. Incorporeal. Free from her body...
Then she forced the memory from her. He’d obviously only made the remark as a conversational gambit—she must treat it as such.
‘Hard to make a living at that,’ she answered. ‘And I am the rankest amateur!’ she added lightly.
Rafael smiled across at her. ‘Yet your name is ideally suited for a career in astronomy, no?’ She looked blank, and he enlightened her. ‘Celeste—celestial?’ he said.
His eyes rested on her, drinking her in.
And that is her aura, too—celestial. As if the impurities and imperfections of the world below the stars are nothing to do with her! As if she moves through this world apart from everyone else, everything else, untouched by anything that seeks to stain her...
In his head he heard Karl Reiner’s sordid accusation. If ever there was a woman who was an unlikely target for such foul names it was this one!
She was looking at him, a slight expression of surprise in her clear grey-blue eyes. ‘Do you know, that’s never struck me?’ she said. ‘Celeste and celestial...’
His own smile deepened. Absently she noticed how it curved the lines around his mouth, made his basalt-black eyes lighten. Noticed even more the way it seemed to make her breath catch. Made her want to do nothing more than go on sitting here, beside him, being with him—
No! She mustn’t! It was pointless—useless! Talking to him about anything—anything at all—had no purpose! She was calmer now, recovered from that horrible scene out in the lobby, and so she must go—leave—go home to the life she had. A life that had no place for Rafael Sanguardo in it. No place for any kind of relationship with anyone.
She nerved herself to take her leave. To terminate this conversation that could go nowhere—nowhere at all! But he was speaking to her yet again, clearly intent on keeping her in conversation.
‘So what first got you interested in astronomy?’ Rafael asked.
Deliberately he kept his question casual—nothing more than the kind of enquiry anyone might make in social conversation. A safe topic under whose aegis to do what he most wanted to do—set her at her ease. Stop her tensing all the time. Make her comfortable talking with him. Make the most of the opportunity this evening had presented so that he could move on to inviting her out to dinner, and then from there to where he wanted to be—making love to her.
Her arms around me, clinging to me, her mouth opening to mine, my hands curving around the bare column of her back, her hair loosened, streaming like a silver banner across the pillows, her body warm and yielding to desire...
He felt the power of his own imagination, his own desire, kick through him. Surely she must feel it, too? Surely she must? Wasn’t she starting to thaw to him, little by little? Slowly—oh, so slowly—but it was starting to happen, he was sure of it.
