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.
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