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If she hadn’t been gazing straight at him, she wouldn’t have noticed the flicker in his gaze, but she did notice.
‘Really?’ She didn’t move. ‘What makes you happy, then?’
‘This is an irrelevant conversation.’
‘No, it’s not. Unless you’re not telling me the truth.’
He looked away, stubbing out his cigar in the ashtray, then taking a last sip of his whisky. ‘You’d better start talking about something interesting,princesa, otherwise I have other things to be doing.’
‘You’re not happy,’ she said, watching his face and making a guess, amazed at her own audacity for questioning him. She shouldn’t step outside the box of demure princess and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop. ‘And you don’t want to talk about it.’
He pushed his chair back, rising to his feet. ‘I think that’s enough for one night.’
She didn’t move, the need to keep pushing him, dig beneath the surface of him and find the fire that burned in his heart too intense. It was there, she knew it, she only had to keep digging. ‘What are you afraid of?’ She threw the question at him like a stone and then, because she somehow always went too far, she added, ‘Rafael.’
He’d already turned to the door, ready to leave, but the sound of his name made him stop. And for a second she thought he’d stride out without a word.
But he didn’t.
He turned back to her, so fast she barely had time to take a breath before he was right in front of her, leaning his hands on the desk, bare inches away, those silver eyes so close she could see the striations of charcoal running through them.
‘No,princesa,’ he said, his voice not so casual now, but edged with a slight roughness. ‘These kinds of topics are off limits, do you understand?’
Her heart was beating so loudly she could hardly hear him. He was so close. All she needed to do was to lean forward slightly and her mouth would brush his. ‘What topics?’ she asked hoarsely, unable to look away.
‘Anything to do with our private lives.’
‘But what if I want to? What if I—?’
‘Then I will not come to see you any more.’
He meant it, she could hear the flat note in his voice, the hint of steel.
‘You don’t mind me...arguing with you, though? Or disagreeing with you?’
Again, that flicker in his gaze and this time it was accompanied by a slight relaxing of that hard, implacable mouth. ‘That, I do not mind. In fact...’ He paused and for a second the whole world faded away, just simply ceased to exist. There was nothing else in it, but the burning intensity of his eyes. A molten, burning silver. ‘I like it.’
A second later, he’d pushed himself away and was gone, leaving her sitting alone in the study, staring at the door he’d disappeared through, her heart fluttering around like a butterfly trapped in a net.
Everything felt darker and colder when he wasn’t here. Everything dull and muted.
She was right, though, wasn’t she? Therewasfire in him and it burned so bright. And now she’d seen it, she was going to make it her mission to make it blaze every single time....
And she had. He was never reserved and cold with her after that night and she couldn’t let him be anyway. She’d flung challenge after challenge at him, letting him blaze and blazing along with him.
But he’d never shouted when he got passionate about an argument. He’d get up and pace and sometimes those silver eyes of his would get molten, but he was nothing like Carlos.
‘I know I am not my father.’ Again in that dangerously mild tone.
‘Then why do you pretend that nothing touches you?’
‘You think I’m pretending?’
She almost laughed. ‘You think you’re not?’
‘Lia, I don’t see—’
‘What happened with your mother, Rafael?’ She cut him off, suddenly knowing that if she didn’t crack that icy exterior of his now she never would. That he’d be closed off to her for ever and she couldn’t bear that, not for his sake and not for hers. ‘And don’t lie to me about how it doesn’t matter. If it really didn’t matter, you would have just answered the question.’
