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‘If you hadn’t conned her into giving you my number she wouldn’t know anything about it!’ Celeste bit back.
‘What’s done is done,’ Rafael replied, unconcerned. ‘What sort of theatre do you like? Drama? Musicals? Opera? Tragedy...comedy...kitchen sink—is that the right expression in English?’
Celeste shut her eyes. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘I explained to you—I don’t do this. I just...don’t, and you have to accept it. Please. It isn’t...personal.’
She had to make herself speak. Her throat was narrowing and it was painful. More painful than it should be.
There was silence for a moment. Then Rafael spoke. The lightly teasing tone was gone. In its place was a quiet resolve. ‘I’ll give you time, Celeste, all the time you need. But I won’t give you for ever. Take care of yourself for now.’ Then he rang off.
She stared at the silent phone. Then slowly turned it off.
Her heart seemed to be thumping heavily in her chest.
* * *
Rafael kept himself busy. It made passing the time until he could get back in touch with Celeste easier. He wanted to give her the time he knew she needed, and didn’t want to spook her by being too pushy about how much he wanted to get to know her more, wanted to woo her.
He habitually worked at a punishing rate, clocking up long hours, but now he upped his schedule, taking in a gruelling round of meetings with his existing companies, and with the prospective recipients of his investments, and with financial institutions that might co-fund them as appropriate. Then he flew to New York and did a similar round, heading back to the UK via Barcelona before arriving in London.
The time away had done nothing to lessen his resolve. In the non-stop schedule of meetings and socialising he’d undertaken, Celeste’s image had hung perpetually in his mind. And more than her image. It was as if he could still taste the sweetness of her lips, feel the soft silk of her skin, the delicate structure of her cheekbones and jaw.
When, on the return flight, he chanced to be sitting next to a female passenger perusing a fashion magazine, his eyes dropped to one of the adverts for Blonde Visage. Celeste—in all her pale, pure, ethereal beauty! His breath caught and stilled, his eyes devouring her.
How hauntingly beautiful she was! And yet... His eyes shadowed. There was a hauntedness about her, too.
What happened to her in that long-ago trauma that has set her on this isolated course she steers?
Whatever it was—whether or not it was akin to the fate she had saved the young and naive Louise from—he would release her from its haunting! Because the promise of release was there—he had tasted it on her lips, in the sweetness of her mouth.
I can free her from it! I can take her to the place she should be free to go to fulfil the desire that flares between us! I can lead her back from her lonely world, lead her at my side—so she no longer has to be apart, no longer has to keep the world at bay.
Back in London he phoned her, leaving a message on her landline. He heard nothing, and the following morning he tried her mobile number. It went to voicemail. He instructed his PA to send flowers. But at the end of the day she told him the florist had been unable to deliver, and that the occupant of the ground-floor flat had told them she was away.
By noon the next day, courtesy of a call to a harassed-sounding individual at the agency he knew represented Celeste, Rafael knew exactly where she was. Not just away, but abroad. A glamorous shoot on a glamorous tropical island. It had been arranged at short notice, and it was about as far away from England as you could fly.
He leant back in his leather executive chair and stretched his legs under his desk, looking out into the middle distance. Turbulent emotion speared through him. He had thought—hoped!—that his kiss would tell her more than words ever could just what could be between them if only she would let him take her to the place he longed to take her—to the intimacy he knew would light them both. But yet again she had fled from him. Yet again she had disappeared—
