But there was no way she could turn round now and tell him. What was she to do? Get back in the car and say—‘Hang on, I’ve got something to tell you’? Or say it baldly and bluntly standing here like this, leaning in at the door, where the driver and possibly anyone passing by might also be able to hear.
She couldn’t do that to him. Not even to Señor Heartless Raul Marcín. In these circumstances she owed him a bit more than that.
And so she drew on all her strength, took a deep, calming breath, and bent down to lean in at the car door again.
‘We don’t have to leave it like this, do we? Would you like to come inside—for coffee?’
She knew the form of her words was a mistake even as they left her tongue but she only knew how bad an error she had made when she heard them fall into the silence of the night, sounding horribly light considering the impetus behind them. She felt even worse when she saw the way that Raul’s face changed, his eyes narrowing in his shadowed face, his mouth thinning out to just a hard, cold line.
‘Coffee?’ he said, making the word sound like a curse, as if the drink was a totally alien substance to him.
‘Well, you never got a drink in the hospital.’ she managed jerkily, seeing no change in that distant expression, no lightening of the darkness of his eyes.
He was going to refuse; she knew it in her heart. He was just a second away from lifting a hand to dismiss her, snapping an order at Carlos to drive on, before pulling the door shut right in her face. And if he did that then she had no way of getting in touch with him again. After all, that was why she had been waiting at the hospital in the first place.
‘Please …’ she said hastily. ‘It needn’t be for long. I just want to thank you.’
‘No thanks are necessary.’
But then just for a moment he hesitated, looked deep into her eyes. And the narrow-eyed assessment in his gaze made her flinch back away from it as if from some dangerous, poison-tipped arrow. Just what was going through that cold, calculating mind of his?
Then abruptly he leaned forward in his seat, directing some terse command in Spanish to the driver, who glanced at him once, briefly, then nodded.
‘What …?’ Alannah began then froze as she saw one strong, tanned hand move to unclip his seat belt and toss it aside.
‘Half an hour,’ he said curtly, flicking a glance at the slim gold watch on his wrist, and then away again. ‘Be here at nine,’ he told Carlos, the emphatic use of English deliberate, Alannah felt, to get the point home to her. ‘And don’t be late.’
Could he make it any plainer that he had little time to spare for her, and that he wanted to be away from here as quickly as possible? Alannah asked herself. But at least he was coming. Once they were alone in her flat, in privacy, she would tell him what she had to say as quickly as possible. At least then, with what she felt was her duty done, she would be able to relax.
And Raul would go out of her life again and leave her in peace.
Which was what she wanted most in all the world, she told herself, refusing to let her mind even acknowledge the way that the words suddenly had a disturbingly hollow ring inside her head.
For now, she had enough to cope with just considering what was ahead of her and the prospect of facing the apocalyptic storm that would erupt when Raul knew the truth.
If she could get through the next thirty minutes then her life would be her own again.
CHAPTER THREE
THIRTY minutes and he was out of here, Raul told himself as the lift that was taking them to Alannah’s flat sped upwards towards the fifth floor. Less than thirty. He had told Carlos to be back exactly thirty minutes after he had left the car and already more than a couple of those had passed.
Not enough in Raul’s opinion. The sooner he got this—whatever this was—over and done with and was on his way again, the better.
The truth was that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing here at all. If he had any sense he would have stayed in the car and ignored Alannah’s invitation but tonight it seemed that all sense had deserted him, left behind in the headlong rush from Spain after the first phone call alerting him to the news of the accident.
At first he’d thought that the car had come to a halt just in time to stop him from doing something very stupid. The temptation to kiss Alannah, to feel the softness of her lips, taste the intimate flavour of her mouth, had almost overcome him. Another couple of seconds and he would have been lost in the sensual temptation of that upturned face, the soft swell of her lips, the sweet scent of her skin so close to him in the back of the car. So the feel of the vehicle drawing to a halt and Carlos’s announcement that they had arrived had come at just the right moment.
But then she’d turned on her way out of the car and looked back inside. Already the steady downpour of the rain had soaked into her hair, making it hang around her face in dripping strands, and drawing attention once more to how pale she was, how huge and dark her eyes appeared above the almost colourless cheeks. He remembered how slender she’d felt in his arms, how fragile, and when she’d suddenly offered him coffee he had found that the instant refusal that had risen to his lips had shrivelled there, unspoken, in the face of the look in those big green eyes.
In that moment he’d thought he understood just why she had asked him to come in with her. He felt he knew just what was in her mind because the same dark feeling, the same dread of being alone with his thoughts was the one that shadowed his own existence.
Because what was waiting for him when he got to the hotel? An empty, soulless room. A mini-bar that in the mood he was in would be far too tempting—but raiding it would not be in the least bit sensible. And he still wasn’t sure that he should leave Alannah on her own. She had calmed down since that emotional breakdown back at the hospital, but she was still barely holding herself together. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in the tremor of her voice. And knowing the dark, dragging ache of loss that was always there, he could imagine how she was feeling in spite of her obvious efforts to cover it up.
And so he had gone with her, determined to see her to her flat, to drink that damn cup of coffee. He would delay—for her and for himself—the moment of being alone, the time when the darkness closed around him all over again, hold it back for just thirty minutes, and then leave again. It would still be waiting for him when he came out. Nothing in the world could change that.
‘You still live in the same apartment?’
Courtesy insisted that he say something. It was either that or stare at her in stony silence all the way up to her flat.
‘The same building.’ Alannah was clearly making as much effort as him to make conversation. ‘The same floor, in fact. But not the same flat.’
Her tone was low, coolly distant and withdrawn. It was the voice of a stranger, someone he did not know. There was not a trace in it of the ardent, passionate girl he had once known or even of the sweet innocent he had first met. The sweet innocent he had believed she was when they had first met, he corrected himself harshly. He had only seen what he wanted to see and had been pretty quickly disillusioned.
At twenty-one, and fresh from university, she had just been looking for a holiday fling. Mission accomplished, she had moved on to someone else.
‘A bigger flat became vacant last year, so I grabbed at it.’
‘Room for two.’
‘What?’
A puzzled frown drew her arched brows together.
‘Your new man,’ Raul explained. ‘I assume you wanted to move in together.’
‘Oh—no, nothing like that.’
A wave of her hand dismissed the man in her life of as little importance as he had been.
‘I