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She paused. ‘So please don’t feel guilty that you didn’t make the earth move. After all, it was hardly likely under the circumstances. And now my curiosity’s been satisfied, at least, so I’ll know what to expect in future—what the possibilities could be. I’d much prefer to settle for that—for the time being.’
She shrugged gracefully. ‘Everything else can wait until I fall in love.’
There was a silence, then Diaz said expressionlessly, ‘How neat. How tidy.’
She looked away. ‘Maybe the events of the past few months make order and decency in my life seem strangely attractive.’ She added abruptly, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ It was his turn to shrug. ‘It’s your decision, and I can’t argue with that—much as I’d like to. Because I suspect that with you, Rhianna, those possibilities you mention could be endless.’
He paused. ‘But I hope at least you’ll allow me to kiss you goodbye when the time comes?’
‘Why not?’ She drank some more sangria, praying she’d never be obliged to touch it again as long as she lived, because it would always—always—bring this moment back.
The time I did the right thing, she thought, and felt myself die inside.
She added, ‘I know we probably won’t see each other again after this, but I’d like us to part friends. If we can.’
‘A nice thought,’ he said silkily. ‘But hardly feasible. Under the circumstances.’
He emptied his glass, pushed his chair back and rose. ‘Dinner will be early this evening, and I suggest you get some rest after it. You won’t get much sleep once we reach port.’
He hesitated, looking down at her. ‘And if you’re speaking from someone else’s script, you need more rehearsal. Because right now it doesn’t work. Not for me, and probably not for you either.’
He added flatly, ‘I’ll see you later,’ and walked away to the bridge.
Dinner was paella, produced by Enrique with a delighted flourish, and Rhianna smiled and said, ‘How wonderful,’ and ate her share, even asked for more—although every mouthful tasted like cardboard, and her stomach was twisted in knots anyway.
She’d expected it would be a quiet meal. That after her rejection of him Diaz would not have a great deal to say to her, but she was wrong. Clearly his male pride hadn’t been dented too badly, she told herself wryly, as he chatted lightly, amusingly, and above all impersonally, keeping the topics of conversation general, and making it easy for her to pick up a similar tone.
While in between, very carefully, ensuring that his attention was safely on his food, she watched him from under her lashes with passionate concentration, etching every line of his dark, mobile face into her consciousness, then closing it away in some secret compartment in her mind which she could unlock sometimes. Not every day, she promised herself. Just when the loneliness and the need became too much to bear.
‘Tell me something,’ he said suddenly, when the coffee had been placed on the table and Enrique had returned to the galley. ‘What made you choose acting as a career?’
‘It was something I’d always loved to do,’ Rhianna said, after a startled pause to register that they’d moved from impersonal to personal again. ‘But my aunt had different views, so I didn’t have much opportunity until I went back to London. There were evening drama classes at one of the education centres, and I went along.’
She shrugged. ‘My teacher thought I had something, and arranged for me to audition at stage school. I got a place, plus a bursary I never knew existed. And the people I was living with—the Jessops—were absolutely wonderful, and refused to take a penny from me while I was training.’
She bent her head. ‘I can’t help imagining sometimes how different my life would have been if they’d been allowed to foster me when my mother died. They wanted to, but Aunt Kezia insisted on taking me away. I never understood why, because she never wanted me or even liked me. She made that quite clear. And she inflicted me on a place where she knew I’d be unwelcome, when there was no actual need.’
She sighed. ‘I’ve never been able to figure it.’
He said quietly, ‘She was certainly a strange woman.’
‘Stranger than you know.’ Rhianna paused. ‘Apparently she used to take these really terrible, pointless photographs of people, as if she was deliberately catching them off-guard.’
His brows lifted. ‘What people?’
‘Your aunt and uncle,’ she said, adding reluctantly, ‘And your father. There are lots of your father.’ And your mother in a wheelchair, but I’m not mentioning that. Or the cheque. In fact I wish I’d said nothing about them at all.
