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After the evening when he’d found her with Simon and walked out, she’d heard nothing from him for nearly two aching, unhappy weeks.
Then she’d gone to an opening night party for a friend from drama school in her first West End role, and Diaz, to her amazement, had been the first person she saw as she entered the room.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, her heart jolting painfully as he reached her side.
‘I got a journalist friend to speak to your PR company,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘They said you’d be here, so I wangled an invitation.’
She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier just to telephone me?’
‘I tried that,’ he said grimly. ‘And I spoke to your flatmate who was doing her ongoing impression of a watering can. Something told me you might not get my message, so I decided to find a different way to make contact with you.’
Rhianna hesitated. ‘Donna’s not living with me,’ she said. ‘She comes round to see me because she’s not—very happy.’
Not happy? She’s totally hysterical most of the time, still threatening to harm herself. Sometimes I dare not let her be by herself…
‘You amaze me,’ he said. ‘God preserve me from ever being in the vicinity when she’s totally miserable.’
I wish I could tell you about it, she thought passionately. I wish I could go into your arms and unload the whole, horrible sordid mess and ask you to deal with it, because it’s getting beyond me.
Yet I can’t—I dare not. For Carrie’s sake. Because even if you didn’t half-kill Simon, you’d certainly do everything possible to stop the wedding, which would break her heart.
And it’s still just possible that something can be saved from the wreckage, if I can just persuade Donna that Simon really isn’t coming back. That even if the baby doesn’t wreck her career, being a single mother in a chancy profession like acting isn’t a sensible option. And besides, as she’s said herself through floods of tears, it would destroy her mother.
Simon doesn’t deserve Carrie, but maybe marriage will change him. Who am I to say that it won’t? Maybe this thing with Donna has given him the scare he so badly needs, and he really will behave himself from now on?
I have to try and believe that, anyway.
She looked away from Diaz’s intent gaze, afraid he would read the uncertainty and trouble in her eyes. ‘Did you have something in particular that you wanted to say to me?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I need to apologise for my total overreaction the other night. I have no excuse except that Simon Rawlins has never been my favourite person.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Frankly, I find it hard to trust him.’
Her heart skipped a beat. Oh, God, if you knew. If you only knew…
She said in a low voice, ‘Perhaps trusting isn’t that big a deal where you’re concerned?’
‘I’d deny that,’ he returned, unfazed. ‘And so, I think, would the majority of my loyal and devoted staff around the world.’ He paused. ‘On the other hand they’d also tell you I don’t cope well with being thwarted, although I appreciate that’s no excuse for behaving like a bear with a sore head.’
She studied his waistcoat buttons with minute attention. ‘Is that what you were? Thwarted?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes lingering on her mouth. ‘As you know perfectly well, my sweet, so don’t play games.’
She shook her head. ‘I—I don’t think I know very much about you at all.’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘with your co-operation, I’m hoping to change all that.’
She looked back at him then, her eyes wide and candid. ‘Do you think that’s wise—given past history?’
‘I wasn’t considering wisdom,’ he said. ‘I had sheer necessity in mind. I thought you felt that too.’ He allowed her an instant to digest that, then added more roughly, ‘I’m not pretending it’s going to be easy, Rhianna, but we’d be crazy not to try.’
‘Or die in the attempt?’ She tried to smile.
‘I’d much prefer to live,’ he said quietly. ‘And with you.’ He paused, glancing round. ‘But there are a lot of people who also want to talk to you looking daggers at me, so don’t answer me now. But soon—please.’
He reached for her hand and kissed it, his lips grazing the softness of her palm, making her whole body shiver.
She wanted to say, ‘Take me with you. Take me—now.’ But he was already turning away, and she could see an influential director bearing purposefully down on her, so realised she must wait for the glimpse of paradise that Diaz had offered her. The dream of joy, secretly nurtured for so long, and now astonishingly, incredibly, within her reach once more.
