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‘I haven’t been there yet,’ she said.
It was the most expensive in the hotel, which was why she’d been avoiding it. A frown furrowed her brow. She would have to make it clear to Rafael that when they ate she would be paying her own share.
They had to walk a little way along a torch-lit pathway across the gardens to the restaurant, which was set apart from the main body of the hotel. The restaurant opened to its own private garden-level terrace, with a view out over the sea beyond the lawn, framed by palm trees. They took their places and perused the menu. Every gourmet item looked tempting to Celeste, and with a sense of sudden freedom she gave her order.
Rafael quirked an eyebrow. ‘I suspect the sauce that comes with that has cream in it,’ he warned.
‘I don’t care!’ she answered defiantly. ‘Every day of my working life I have to calorie-count! But I’m on holiday now—and that includes my diet, too!’
He smiled. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. Inside, he felt another spurt of satisfaction.
He took extreme care, throughout the evening, to keep her in that zone. His tone was always light, with humour lurking in his eyes, a smile at his lips. Using every skill at his command, he strove to draw her out and yet keep the conversation sufficiently impersonal—things any two people together might chat about—so as not to scare her off yet again. He started by talking about the hotel and the amenities of the resort, about which she knew more than him, which made it good for getting her to talk more.
‘Do you dive?’ he asked at one point.
She shook her head.
‘Then perhaps snorkelling would do? Will you come out some time? The hotel will provide the equipment, I know. And,’ he went on, ‘how are you on the sea? Apparently there’s a bay around the headland where dolphins gather—we can take a catamaran to see them.’
Celeste’s face lit. ‘Oh, yes—I haven’t done that yet and I want to!’
‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘What else shall we do?’
Skilfully, he steered the conversation along, and as the courses passed he could see her finding it easier and easier to talk to him. In the same mood of calorific defiance that had made her order fish with a buttery sauce, she did not object when he refilled her wine glass.
By the time the waiter placed their coffee in front of them there was an air about her that he’d never seen—an air that was almost...well, carefree. That was the best word Rafael could think of.
Gladness filled him. And a sense of well-being. This was the right thing to have done—to have flown nine thousand miles to find her—to try one last time to persuade her to put behind her the ghosts from the past, to forget whatever it was that men like Karl Reiner had forced upon her. Whatever the ugly episode that had scarred her in the past—perhaps one such as she had saved the young model Louise from—he knew for certain it hadn’t been one she had voluntarily engaged in. Others might choose to do so—and now his mind darkened, naming no names, but knowing well who he had in mind!—but not Celeste. Never Celeste!
He lifted his coffee cup, letting his eyes rest on her. His breath caught, as it did every time he looked at her anew. Now, with the night all around them, Celeste’s so-beautiful face was underlit by the candles on the table, casting her features into luminous sculpture.
How beautiful she is! How much she moves me!
She picked up her own coffee cup, and as she did so her eyes met his.
Met and held.
Emotion washed through Celeste. Warm, vital...
In the flickering candlelight Rafael’s face took on the planes of a dramatic chiaroscuro. Her pulse thickened—quickened.
How right it seems to be here now! How right to sit here, with Rafael, in this place, at this time! To gaze at him and let him gaze at me, to feel the warm, strong current flow between us...
