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‘Thank God,’ she murmured, letting out a shaky breath, which made her chest jiggle and his pulse spike. ‘Are you all right?’
How he managed it he had no idea but Rafael made himself drag his gaze up and look into her eyes. Eyes that were filled with worry, set in a face that was pale and, he thought, letting his gaze roam over it, perhaps a bit thinner than it ought to be.
There was nothing thin about her mouth, however, he decided, staring at it and going momentarily dizzy as a fresh burst of heat shot through him. Her mouth was wide and generous and very very appealing, especially what with the way she’d caught the edge of her lower lip between her teeth and was nibbling at it.
‘Ow,’ he muttered, forcing himself to remember the faint sting of the slap because the alternative was yanking her down and giving in to the temptation to nibble on that lip himself, which was so insanely inappropriate given the circumstances that he wondered if the blow to his head might not have done him a serious injury.
‘I’m sorry—again—but I thought you’d passed out.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, although actually nothing could be further from the truth, because now he was imagining that mouth moving over his, then pulling away and sliding over his skin, hot and wet and sizzling, and the throbbing in his head was breaking loose and rushing down his body with such speed and force that he had the horrible feeling that when it got to his groin he might do exactly as she’d feared and pass out.
He lifted his hand to his temple and touched it, as much to see if she’d drawn blood as to find out whether deliberately and brutally provoking pain might dampen the maddening heat.
‘Do you think you might be concussed? Should I get help?’
‘No, and no,’ he said irritably because while on the upside she hadn’t on the downside it didn’t.
‘Let me take a look.’
Before he could stop her she’d leaned down and reached across him and was now sifting her fingers through his hair. Her breasts brushed against his chest, then hovered perilously close to his mouth, and the heat churning through him exploded into an electrifying bolt of lust.
God, what the hell was this? he wondered, bewilderment ricocheting around his brain. Since when had he reacted so violently to a woman he’d barely met? And since when had he had to fight so hard to keep a grip on his supposedly rock-solid self-control?
‘Leave it,’ he snapped and wrapped his hand round her wrist to stop her going any further.
To his relief she went still, then frowned and, as he let her go, mercifully straightened and sat back. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’
Rafael hitched in a breath, briefly closed his eyes and ordered himself to get a grip before he embarrassed himself. ‘I’m sure.’
With what felt like superhuman effort he levered himself upright and set about engaging the self-control he’d never had such trouble with before. He drew his feet up to hide the very visible evidence of the effect she’d had on him, rested his elbows on his knees, and began to rub the kinks out of his neck with both hands. He let out a deep sigh. So much for peace, tranquillity and nice quiet solitude.
‘I really am sorry, you know,’ she said, her voice sounding rather small.
‘So you said.’
‘I thought you were a burglar.’
‘If I was, I wouldn’t be a very good one,’ he muttered, remembering the way he’d slammed the front door and thundered up the stairs in his haste to crash out and wipe the last week from his brain. ‘I wasn’t exactly subtle.’
‘Well, no,’ she admitted, ‘but at the time a cool, logical analysis of the situation wasn’t uppermost in my mind. I acted on instinct.’
And how he’d suffered for it. Her instincts were so dangerous they should come with a warning.
As should that body. Because she might have backed off but she was still far too close for his comfort. She was now kneeling beside him and sitting back on her heels and her smooth bare thighs were within stroking distance. At the thought of sliding his hands up her legs, his fingers itched and he dug them just that little bit harder into his neck.
‘The next time I come across a closed door,’ he said, setting his jaw and trying not to think about silky thighs and itching fingers, ‘I’ll knock.’
She nodded. ‘Probably a good idea.’
‘All I thought I was doing was simply switching off a light that had been left on by accident. Who knew helping the environment could be so lethal?’ He glanced at the book lying innocently on the floor behind her and frowned. ‘What the hell did you hit me with?’
‘Don Quijote,’ she said, wincing and going pink.
That would certainly account for the bruise he could feel swelling at his temple. ‘I always thought that book was utterly deadly,’ he said darkly, ‘but I never thought I’d ever mean literally.’
‘You were supposed to be in Madrid.’
At the faint accusatory tone of her voice his eyebrows shot up. ‘Are you suggesting that this,’ he said, breaking off from massaging his neck to indicate his head, ‘is somehow my fault?’
She frowned. ‘Well, no,’ she said, sounding a bit more contrite and biting on that damn lip again. ‘But if you’d been expected I imagine Ana would have warned me and then I’d have been listening out for you instead of attacking you.’ And then she lifted her chin and pulled her shoulders up and back, which did nothing to help his resolution to keep his eyes off her chest. ‘Were you expected?’
No, his decision to come down here had been uncharacteristically on the spur of the moment, and with hindsight that might have been a mistake, but that wasn’t the point. Rafael arched an eyebrow and threw her a look that had quelled many a thick-headed CEO. ‘I wasn’t aware I needed to be.’
‘No, of course you don’t,’ she said, flushing a bit deeper. ‘It’s your house. Sorry.’
And that was the third time tonight she appeared to be one step ahead of him, he thought with a stab of annoyance. In addition to taking him by surprise earlier, she apparently knew his name and that this was his house. Whereas he knew nothing about her apart from the fact that she was probably British, looked incredibly hot in her skimpy T-shirt and knickers and had skin and hair that felt like silk beneath his hands. The latter two of which, he reminded himself for the dozenth time, weren’t in the slightest bit relevant.
Giving himself a mental slap, Rafael pulled himself together. He’d had quite enough of being on the back foot for one evening. Quite enough of having his nice ordered life being thrown into increasing disarray. It was high time he asserted some kind of control over this particular situation at the very least, and focused on what was important.
‘You’re right,’ he said coolly as he fixed her with his most penetrating stare. ‘So perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me who you are and what you’re doing here.’
She blinked at him for a moment or two, then gave him a tentative smile. ‘Well, I’m Nicky.’
She said it as if it should have been obvious, and Rafael frowned. ‘Nicky?’
‘Sinclair.’
He racked his brains for a spark of recognition but came up with nothing. ‘Is that supposed to mean something?’
‘I was rather hoping so.’
‘It doesn’t.’ He was pretty sure he didn’t know any Nickys, Sinclair or otherwise, and equally sure he didn’t want to if they were anything like this one.
‘Oh.’
Her smile faded and something tugged at his chest. Rafael ignored it and concentrated on his original line of questioning. ‘And what are you doing in my house?’
‘I’m here on holiday.’
His eyebrows shot up. Since when had the cortijo been open to visitors other than his family? ‘On holiday?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Two days.’
‘And how long were you planning to stay?’
She shrugged then looked uneasy. ‘Well, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought.’
Hmm. He really ought to have made more of an effort to come down here over the last few months, tricky merger or no tricky merger. In the five years he’d had the place he’d generally managed to make it down once a month, but lately he’d been so tied up with work he’d had no option but to stay in Madrid. He’d received the usual weekly reports about the vineyard, of course, but heaven knew what had really been going on in his absence.
‘Are there any more of you?’
She looked at him warily. ‘No, just me.’
That was something to be grateful for, he supposed, shoving his hands through his hair before he remembered the bruise, and grimacing as a fresh arrow of pain scythed through him.
It shouldn’t be too hard to get rid of her. His plane was sitting at the airport a mere half an hour away and could take her anywhere she wanted to go at a moment’s notice. Within the hour he could be enjoying the solitude he’d been hankering after.
There was no question of her continuing her holiday, of course, because quite apart from the fact that the house wasn’t open to visitors—of either the paying or non-paying variety—none of his fantasies about escaping everything for a few days had featured a hot house guest with a penchant for violence.
Besides, he’d finally reached the end of his usually fairly long tether, and he’d had enough. Of everything. So he’d send Nicky on her way, wipe the bizarrely traumatic events of this evening from his memory, and set about relaxing.
But not while they were both still on the floor, he decided, getting painfully to his feet then holding out his hand to help her up.
‘You have absolutely no idea about any of this, do you?’ she said a little wistfully as she put her hand in his and stood up.
‘No,’ he muttered, so disconcerted by the sizzle that shot through his blood at the contact that for a second he had no idea about anything.
‘I knew it would turn out too good to be true.’
She sighed, slid her hand from his and Rafael ignored the odd dart of regret to focus instead on the way her shoulders were slumping. ‘What would?’ he asked, detecting an air of defeat about her and for some reason not liking it.
‘Coming to stay. Gaby said it would be fine.’
That captured his attention. ‘You know Gaby?’
She nodded and gave him another wobbly little smile. ‘I do. And she said she’d clear it with you, but she didn’t, did she?’
That would teach him to issue an open invitation to his sisters to use the place whenever they felt like it. Rafael thought of the barrage of phone calls and emails that his sister had bombarded him with and which he’d disregarded, and frowned at the niggling stab of guilt. ‘No.’
‘I thought not.’ She sighed again and seemed to deflate just that little bit more.
He watched it happen and to his intense irritation his chest tightened. There was a vulnerability about Nicky that plucked at the highly inconvenient and usually extremely well-hidden protective streak he possessed. Which was nuts, of course, because presumably the kind of woman to wallop him over the head as she had wasn’t in the least bit vulnerable. Or in need of protection.
Nevertheless, right now she looked crushed, as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and Rafael found he couldn’t get the words out to tell her to leave, however much he wanted to. Besides, if she was a friend of his sister’s and he threw her out, he’d never hear the end of it.
He sighed and inwardly cursed. ‘Look, it’s late,’ he said, deciding that he was way too tired for this kind of mental gymnastics and as it was pushing midnight he could hardly turf her out now anyway. ‘Let’s discuss this in the morning.’
‘OK,’ she said, with a weariness that made him want to do something insane like haul her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. ‘Thanks... And goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ he muttered, then turned on his heel and strode off down the corridor, thinking with each step that the night had been anything but good so far, and what with the traces of arousal and heat still whipping around inside him and the apparent disintegration of his brain it didn’t look as if it were going to get any better.
* * *
Well, this was all just typical of the crappy way her life had been going lately, wasn’t it? thought Nicky glumly, watching Rafael stop to pick up the suitcase he must have dumped at the top of the stairs earlier and then disappear round the corner.
Why would her stay at the cortijo be turning out as she’d hoped when nothing had done recently?
Feeling utterly drained by the events of the last half an hour on top of those of the past six months, she shut the door, retrieved Don Quijote from the floor and padded over to the bed. Setting the book on the bedside table, she slipped beneath the sheets and switched off the light.
How had things gone so badly wrong? she wondered for the billionth time as she stared into the darkness and felt the relentless heaviness descend.
Six months ago she’d been unstoppable. So full of energy and verve and enthusiasm, and fiercely determined not to let what had happened in the Middle East defeat her. She’d snapped up every assignment she’d been offered and had thrown herself into each one as if it were her last. She’d travelled and worked every minute she had, pausing only to hook up with the scorchingly hot journalist with whom she’d been having a sizzling fling.
Everything had been going marvellously, exactly as she’d planned, and she’d enjoyed every minute of it. She’d taken some of the finest photographs of her career and had some of the best sex of her life, and she’d congratulated herself on beating any potential demons she could so easily have had.
See, she’d told herself on an all-time high as she collected an award for one of her pictures and smiled down at the man she was sleeping with. All those colleagues who’d muttered things about PTSD had been wrong. Apart from the occasional nightmare and a slight problem with crowds, she hadn’t had any other symptoms. And besides, she wasn’t an idiot, so as a precaution she’d embarked on a course of counselling and therapy, which had encouraged her to make sense of what had happened, and get over it. As indeed she had, and the full-to-the-brim life she’d been leading, the work she’d been doing and the award she’d won, were all proof of it.
For months she’d told herself that she was absolutely fine, and for months she’d blithely believed it.
Until one day a few weeks ago when she turned out to be not so fine. That horrible morning she’d woken up feeling as if she were being crushed by some invisible weight. Despite the bright Parisian sunshine pouring in through the slats in the blind and the thousand and one things she had to do, she just hadn’t been able to get herself out of bed.
She’d assured herself at the time that she was simply having a bad day, but since then things had got steadily worse. The bad days had begun to occur more frequently, gradually outnumbering the good until pretty much every day was a bad day. The energy and verve and the self-confidence she’d always taken for granted had drained away, leaving her feeling increasingly anxious, and to her distress she’d found herself refusing work she’d previously have jumped at.
Bewildered by that, she’d stopped picking up her phone and had started ignoring emails. And not just those from colleagues and employers. When staying in touch with friends and family had begun to require too much energy she’d stopped doing that too.
She’d given up eating properly and had started sleeping terribly. When she did eventually manage to drop off the nightmares had come back, but now with far greater frequency than before, leaving her wide awake in the middle of the night, weak and sweating and shaking.
Her previously very healthy libido had faltered, withered and then died out altogether, as, inevitably, had the fling.
Barely going out, hardly speaking to anyone, and with so much time on her hands to sit and dwell, Nicky had ended up questioning practically every decision she’d ever made over the years. She’d begun to doubt her abilities, her ideals and her motivation, and as a result cynicism and a bone-deep weariness had invaded her.
Down and down she’d spiralled until she’d been riddled with nerve-snapping tension, utter desolation, crippling frustration, and the dizzyingly frightening feeling that she might never be able to haul herself out of the slump she tumbled into.
Burnout, Gaby had diagnosed over a bottle of wine a week ago when Nicky had finally hit rock bottom, although what made her such an expert she had no idea. Gaby, who was currently feng shui-ing the mansion of a businessman in Bahrain, was an on-and-off interior designer—more off than on—and wouldn’t know burnout if it came up and slapped her in the face.
Nevertheless, as she’d sliced through Nicky’s symptoms, and then relentlessly gone on about the importance of balance and rest and looking at things piece by tiny piece, Nicky had decided that perhaps Gaby might have had a point, which was why when her friend had come up with a plan she’d so readily and gratefully agreed.
Go to Spain, Gaby had said. Get away from it all. Take some time out and restore your equilibrium. Rest. Sunbathe. Get a tan. You can recuperate at my brother’s house. He’s never there so you can stay as long as you need. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll sort it all out.
At the time Gaby had made it sound so easy, and, as she hadn’t exactly had any ideas of her own, she’d booked a flight the following morning, buoyed up both by the thought of having something to focus on other than her own misery and at the heady feeling that finally she might be about to see the blurry flickering light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel.
And OK, in the two days she’d been here she hadn’t noticed much of a difference to her emotional state, but she knew she needed time at the very least.
Time it looked as if she wasn’t going to get, she thought now, her heart sinking once again as she sighed and punched her pillow into a more comfortable shape, because it was blindingly obvious that Gaby hadn’t managed to sort anything out, and it was equally blindingly obvious that, despite her friend’s breezy assurances to the contrary, she wasn’t welcome here.
Nicky closed her eyes and inwardly cringed as the image of Rafael’s handsome scowling face drifted into her head. Quite apart from the initial burglar/assault misunderstanding, throughout the whole subsequent conversation they’d had he’d been tense and on edge, and had looked so mightily hacked off that she’d got the impression that he really resented her being there. Which meant there was no way she could stay.
If she did—and that was assuming he didn’t chuck her out in the morning—she’d feel like the intruder, and she had quite enough on her plate already without adding guilt to her ever-increasing pile of problems.
So who knew whether the peace and tranquillity of the cortijo might have eventually worked their magic? Whether a couple of weeks of enforced rest and relaxation might not have been just what she needed? She wasn’t going to get the chance to find out because one thing she’d learned from years of working in hostile environments was never to hang around where you weren’t welcome.
Therefore no matter how depressing she found the idea, first thing in the morning she, her suitcase and her nifty little hire car would be off.
THREE
Despite his misgivings about any improvement to his night, he’d actually slept remarkably well, thought Rafael, smothering a yawn and setting the coffee pot on the stove.
When he’d eventually made it to his room after leaving Nicky, he’d downed a couple of painkillers and then taken an ice cold shower, which had respectively obliterated the pain throbbing in his head and the heat racing through his veins. He’d crashed into bed and had been asleep barely before his considerably less painful head had hit the pillow. Consequently he’d woken up in a much better mood.
Back in full possession of his self-control and all his faculties, he’d had ample opportunity to assess the events of the previous night and had come to the conclusion that he’d overreacted. Big time. He’d been tired and overwrought. In pain and on the defensive. All entirely unsurprising of course given the circumstances, but nevertheless he had overreacted.
For one thing, he told himself, lighting the gas ring beneath the pot and straightening, he doubted that Nicky, with her big blue eyes, tumbling dark curls and long slender semi-naked limbs, could be nearly as distracting as he’d imagined last night, and the cold light of day would soon prove it.
His reaction to her last night might have been startling, but it was nothing to get worked up about. Any red-blooded heterosexual man would have responded like that to a gorgeous near-naked woman practically draped over him. It would have been unusual if he hadn’t.
Nor were the oddly erotic images that had peppered his dreams anything to worry about either, because that was just his subconscious processing what had been an unexpected and surprisingly traumatic half an hour.
For another thing, last night he’d somehow managed to see Nicky as some kind of threat to his peace of mind, which was a sign of just how tired and at the end of his tether with women he’d become because the very idea was ridiculous. Since his divorce he’d made sure that no woman—apart from family members, and he couldn’t unfortunately do much about them—had ever had such an effect on him, and a woman he barely knew certainly posed no risk.
The second conclusion he’d come to was that there was no earthly reason Nicky couldn’t stay. Why they both couldn’t. The place was big enough, and however exhausted and fed up he was it wasn’t Nicky’s fault. Nor was it her fault that he’d ignored Gaby’s phone calls and emails and was therefore unprepared for a guest. And yes, she’d lamped him so hard it would have made a saint curse the heavens, but perhaps that was understandable in the circumstances.
Besides, he couldn’t get the image of her standing there enveloped by that air of defeat and desolation out of his head, and it had been niggling away at his brain all morning. For someone supposedly on holiday Nicky didn’t look very happy. And who holidayed by themselves anyway? Not even he did, and he valued his solitude highly.
Rafael poured some milk into a jug and stuck it in the microwave, then leaned back against the rough wood worktop and rubbed a hand along his jaw as he contemplated the contradiction.
He supposed Gaby might have been able to shed some light on the situation if he’d been able to get hold of her, but her phone had been off all three times he’d tried. And the emails and messages he’d eventually got round to checking had said nothing more than ‘call me’ with varying degrees of urgency.
But that didn’t matter. He didn’t need to speak to his sister to recognise that there was more to Nicky and her ‘holiday’ than met the eye. In fact, he’d repeatedly gone over the way she’d deflated right there in front of him and got the feeling that she was in some kind of trouble. And if that was the case, then despite the fact he had no interest in—and even less intention of finding out—what kind of trouble she might be in, he’d never forgive himself if he sent her on her way and something subsequently happened to her.
So she was going to have to stay.
Which was absolutely fine, he assured himself, hearing a strange rumbling making its way across the floor above and abandoning the coffee to go and investigate. He had plenty of things to be getting on with, and staying out of Nicky’s way while she got on with whatever she was planning to do would be simple enough.
And if he did still feel a lingering attraction towards her, well, he’d easily be able to handle that too. After what he’d had to contend with lately, suppressing tiny pangs of inconvenient desire would be a walk in the park. Especially now that he was well rested, firing on all cylinders, and most importantly, firmly back in control.