Rafael's Love-Child

‘Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that.’ Dr Greene smiled. ‘Mr Cordoba has it all in hand.’

‘Just what are you up to now?’

Rafael had barely had time to get through the door into her room that evening before Serena rounded on him, flinging the furious question into his face.

‘Up to? My dear Miss Martin, precisely what are you talking about?’

‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about!’

Serena faced him defiantly across the room, black coffee-coloured eyes flashing fire, her chin up, every inch of her slender body stiff with rejection of his high-handed way of behaving. He hadn’t brought Tonio with him this time, she noted gratefully, knowing that the little boy would distract her from the questions she had to ask.

‘And I’m not your “dear Miss Martin”! I’m not your “dear” anything! You can’t just move in and take over my life.’

‘And how—exactly—am I supposed to be doing that?’

The coolly drawled question incensed her, as did the slow, indolently assessing way those brilliant eyes swept over her, narrowing slightly as they considered the oatmeal-coloured loose trousers and cream tee shirt she was wearing. The insolent sensuality of the survey made her heart kick against her ribs, her breathing catch for a second.

‘The clothes suit you well.’

‘Don’t change the subject!’ Serena exploded, bitterly conscious of the fact that if it had not been for Rafael she would have had nothing to wear, or at least something far less expensive and stylish.

‘This is my life we’re talking about. And you can’t take people’s lives and assess them as if they were some sheet of figures you’ve been handed to check through. You can’t just add up the income and the outgoings, take away the number you first thought of, decide if it’s worth the investment you were planning on, and then draw a nice neat line under everything—done—finished—sorted out!’

Rafael’s laughter had a disturbing edge to it, one that took his response to a point a long, long way from true amusement and turned it into something that sent a trickle of icy apprehension sliding down her spine.

‘Who the devil thought to name you Serena with a temper like that?’ he murmured sardonically, moving to throw his long body down into the easy chair that stood beside the window. ‘But then I suppose I should have expected it from…’

‘From what?’ Serena demanded when he let the sentence trail off unfinished, his eye apparently caught by something in the street outside. ‘You should have expected it from whom?’

She regretted the angry emphasis she had put on the last word as Rafael’s proud head snapped round again, his beautiful eyes no longer warm with any degree of amusement but cold and sharp as if carved from golden ice.

‘From someone with your hair colouring,’ he told her curtly. ‘Fiery hair, fiery temper—isn’t that true?’

‘I—’ Serena began indignantly, but, meeting a flashing warning glance that made her toes curl in fearful response, she hastily gulped down the irritable protest, forcing herself to begin again.

‘Believe it or not, I’m not usually like this. As a matter of fact, I’m usually pretty equable. Oh, don’t you dare look at me like that!’ she flung at him when the twist of his mouth, a tilt of his head questioned her assertion without words.

‘I rest my case,’ he murmured with silky cynicism.

‘If you must know, you make me lose my temper! You drive me to it.’

‘And why is that, do you think?’

‘Why…?’

Totally at a loss, Serena could only shake her head. Why did he affect her in this way? Why was her mental equilibrium so precariously balanced whenever he was around that just a look, a word, a gesture was enough to throw it out completely?

She had never thought of herself as an emotionally volatile person, flying off the handle at the slightest provocation, yet somehow when she was with Rafael she became as uncontrolled as a weathercock, swinging this way and that in response to his passing mood.

‘Because you have to be the most provoking man I’ve ever come across. And the way you’ve behaved is a decidedly excessive reaction simply because I was hurt in your car.’

‘I was brought up always to meet my responsibilities.’

Like Tonio. The thought flashed into Serena’s mind in a moment. Rafael had never explained just what had happened to the baby’s mother, but it was patently clear that he had no intention of being an absentee father. Or had he just moved in on the poor woman, as he was now doing with Serena herself, taking control, taking over, no matter what anyone else wanted?

‘There’s meeting responsibilities and there’s trampling other people underfoot!’

Rafael’s exaggeratedly patient sigh brought her up short, painfully aware of the way it warned her that his grip on his temper was loosening rapidly.

‘Are you going to rant at me like this for the rest of the evening?’ he enquired in a voice laced with acid. ‘Or do you ever intend to enlighten me as to just what is bugging you?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? The thing that’s “bugging” me—’ Serena matched his satire word for word ‘—is that you think you can just make plans for my future and I’ll fall in with them as soon as you snap your fingers. So when were you going to tell me? Today? Tomorrow? When it suited you? Or were you just going to present me with a fait accompli and say, This, and this, and this is what’s going to happen. If you don’t like it—tough!?’

The fact that Rafael didn’t honour her outburst with a reply, but simply continued to regard her stonily, brilliant eyes carefully blanked off, told her all she needed to know. When he looked down his aristocratic nose at her like that, she felt like some out-of-control two-year-old indulging in a petulant tantrum in front of a decidedly bored and critical parent. And that feeling only incensed her more, driving her to rush on without waiting for him to answer.

‘That was it, wasn’t it? I wasn’t going to get a choice. So, tell me, what exactly did you have in mind for my future?’

‘I thought you could come and live with me.’

‘What?’

Unable to believe she had heard right, Serena shook her head disbelievingly.

‘Live with you! No way!’

‘And what else do you propose to do?’ he came back at her swiftly, abandoning his indolent pose and pushing himself to his feet in one easy, lithe movement. ‘You have no money, nowhere to live, no way of supporting yourself…’

‘Do you think I’m not aware of that?’

The fact that only a short time before she had detailed exactly those points to herself did nothing to ease her edgy state of mind. If anything, it made her feel worse.

‘So you had some alternative to suggest?’

The Spanish Inquisitor was back, with a vengeance. Uneasily Serena took a step or two backwards, edging away from his imposing height, the sheer physical force of his presence.

His movement had brought a wave of scent to her nostrils. The clean, crisp tang of some light cologne he wore, and underneath it the deeper, muskier, more intensely personal scent of his body. A perfume that brought all her senses onto red alert, making her head swim, hazing her thoughts.

‘Not yet,’ she hedged warily.

‘Then what is wrong with coming to live with me until you decide what you want to do?’

‘You know what’s wrong with it!’

‘Enlighten me.’

It seemed that the more her temper grew, the more impassive and withdrawn Rafael became, until she felt as if she was banging her fists hard against an unyielding brick wall in a vain attempt to get through to him.

‘I know what you want—what you’re thinking!’

‘Oh, so now you’re a mind-reader. So tell me, Señorita Martin, just what it is that you believe I want from you?’

‘I—you…’ she floundered, unable to find a way to put her thoughts into words.

He must know what she meant. He had to!

Wasn’t he aware of what was between them? Couldn’t he feel it, sense it in the air around them, like the heavy, lowering build-up in the atmosphere just before a violent electrical storm? That the storm hadn’t broken yet was more by luck than good management.

Away from the restricting confines of her present surroundings, it could be a different story entirely. Just the thought of moving into his house made all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up, her skin prickle with tension.

‘Are you going to say what you mean?’ Rafael demanded sharply. ‘Or are you going to stand there all day, throwing out veiled hints because you don’t have the nerve to be honest?’

Not have the nerve! Serena thought indignantly. Right, he’d asked for it.

‘I think you have strong sexual feelings for me!’

There! It was out now, and no matter what she did she couldn’t wish it back. Emboldened by his silence, by the fact that nothing had blown up in her face, she rushed on.

‘Th-that you want me in your bed. I can see it in your eyes, in the way that you look at me when you think I’m not looking. Sometimes I can hear it in your voice too. And don’t tell me I’m imagining things because…’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Rafael inserted silkily, taking her breath away. ‘Why should I deny something that must be obvious to anyone who looks at me? I’d be all sorts of a fool even to try.’

His voice had deepened, dropping a couple of octaves, becoming huskily sensual so that it coiled round her like warm, perfumed smoke.

‘I don’t want to try.’

She hadn’t seen him move, but suddenly he was close, so close. His awesome height and strength was intimidating, making her breath catch in her throat. If she wanted to, she could reach out and touch him, feel that warm velvet skin beneath her fingertips, slide her fingers through the black silk of his hair.

If she wanted to! Serena almost laughed aloud at the thought.

Oh, she wanted to! She wanted it so much that it was like a pain in her heart. But she didn’t dare. Some inner sixth sense warned her that if she gave in to the yearning, the need that clenched in her stomach, coiled round her body, then the repercussions of that simple act would be cataclysmic. It would be a case of light the blue touchpaper and stand well back. And when the smoke and debris of the resulting explosion cleared there would be nothing left that she recognised, no trace of the world she had known, the life she had lived.

‘You’re a very beautiful woman, Serena Martin. So beautiful that you twist my guts into knots, make me ache to possess you. From the moment I saw you I had one thought in my mind…’

‘One th-thought?’ Serena could only echo his words, her mind refusing to function so that she could form any of her own.

‘In the instant that I saw you there, in that hospital bed, I knew I could never rest until I’d held you, kissed you like this…’

Rafael suited actions to the words, reaching out and folding his arms around her, gathering her close. And she went into his embrace like a sleepwalker, feeling as if this had been meant, as if it had been ordained from the moment she had been born. She had no thought of resistance, of asking why. She only knew that this was how it had to be.

So when that arrogant dark head lowered, she automatically raised hers to meet it, her mouth already softening for his kiss.

But when that kiss came, it had nothing of gentleness. Instead it was as fierce and demanding as the touch of a flame, searing over her skin, scorching her senses, taking, plundering right to the depths of her soul. A raw, shaken cry was driven from her as she swayed on her feet, her arms reaching up to clasp around his neck, slender fingers digging into the powerful muscles that corded his shoulders, clinging on for support.

The whole of her mind was a red, heated haze, burning away all trace of coherent thought under a blazing inferno of sensation. Every inch of her skin seemed to be suffused with the stinging pins and needles of heightened awareness, yearning for his touch, and deep down, at the most feminine centre of her body, a pulsing hunger made her stir restlessly against the hard power of his lean frame.

On a groan of hunger Rafael brought his hands up to fasten on her hips, bronzed fingers stroking the curving line of her waist, the softness of her buttocks, pressing her closer against him. There was no escaping the heated, swollen pressure that indicated the power of the passion that gripped him, the hungry need for her body that he couldn’t conceal.

Wild, crazy images filled her mind. Images of walking, step by step, backwards towards the bed, taking this man with her. Of tumbling down onto the peach-coloured bedspread, imprisoned under the heavy, glorious weight of him. Of his hands following the example of her own and tugging at her clothing, impatiently pushing aside the unwanted garments that came between his touch and her naked flesh. Of…

But there her imagination failed, short-circuited by the sheer mind-blowing reality of her fantasy made fact.

Rafael’s strong, tanned fingers had pushed the cream tee shirt away from the waistband of her trousers and were insinuating themselves underneath the fine cotton, scorching her skin where they touched, drawing heated erotic circles as they moved slowly, inexorably upwards. And the reality was so much better than anything her imagination had invented

Better, and more pleasurable, and more arousing. Reality made her heart race out of control, her skin sting with excitement, as his touch slid over her narrow ribcage to close over the slight curves of her breasts, cupping and supporting their warm weight.

‘Rafael…’ His name was a choked cry, smothered under the pressure of yet another, even more demanding kiss.

Answering the hunger that suffused her, she pushed her hands up between their bodies, pulling roughly, urgently on the buttons that fastened his shirt, yanking them apart in her impatience to be able to touch him in return. The feel of his hot flesh drew a deep, ragged sigh of satisfaction from her, a sigh that blended into a little gasp of pleasure as his hands moved against her breast again. That gasp became a moan as the warm, hard pads of his thumbs unerringly found the sensitive points of her nipples and set up a slow, circular motion that made every nerve waken into screaming need.

She was oblivious to the fact that the door was still partially open, to the sound of movement in the corridor outside. The warmth of the sun coming through the window at her back was just another sensual delight in a bombardment of such pleasures that made her head spin out of control. It wasn’t until a voice spoke, just beyond the door, that any sense of reality impinged on her at all.

‘…I believe Mr Cordoba’s in there right now.’

At the sound of his name, Rafael snapped up his dark head sharply, his stance that of a disturbed predator, every muscle taut, his breathing ragged and uneven, listening intently. Only when the owner of the voice moved away down the corridor did he shake off the wary mood, looking down into Serena’s dazed brown eyes with a twist to his mouth that was half-rueful, half-amused.

‘This is neither the time nor the place for this,’ he told her, releasing her from the seductive imprisonment of his hold and stepping back a couple of paces, smoothing down the ruffled tee shirt as he did so.

From being the ardent, demanding caress of a lover, his touch was now all distance and matter of factly businesslike, the contrast between the two moods so sharp that it drew a cry of protest from her.

‘Rafael…’ she began, but he shook his head to silence her, raking both hands through the dark disarray of his hair to smooth down the disorder her clutching fingers had created.

‘Not here, not now,’ he insisted, with a cold precision that fell onto her heated skin like drops of ice, shattering the glowing mood of moments before. ‘Not ever, if I am wise.’

‘Not…’ Serena choked on the words, unable to believe what she had heard. What had he said? Why had he said it?

Her aroused body still sang in excited expectation, the heightened rate of her pulse still sending the blood speeding through her veins. But slowly, unwillingly, a terrible sense of let-down was creeping over her, cooling the warmth of her skin, making her ache in frustration for the delights she had known and that were now denied her. She felt as if she had been reaching for the stars, only to have them snatched away from her with brutal cruelty.

‘N-not now?’

She couldn’t say the other phrase she thought she had heard. Couldn’t make her tongue form the words ‘not ever’.

‘Miss Martin—Serena…’

In the blink of an eye, it seemed, Rafael had himself once more completely under control. His appearance was near perfect again, his hair smooth, his shirt fastened, his tie restored to order around the tanned column of his throat. And it seemed that in those moments he had also erased every trace of all that had happened between them as easily as he had wiped away the faint trace of lipstick that had transferred itself from her mouth to his.

‘Forgive me. That should never have happened. I apologise for my actions.’

The stiff formality of his words, his stance, stabbed at her harshly. There was a nasty, bitter taste in her mouth and her stomach roiled queasily. How could he take something that had been so—so special, so wonderful, and turn it into a monstrous mistake, all in the space of a moment?

‘There’s no need to apologise…’

Her tone matched his in its stiffness, in the distance she deliberately put between them. Unconsciously, she mirrored his actions of moments before, straightening her clothes, stroking down her hair.

‘I wasn’t exactly forced. I was well aware of what was happening.’

‘Serena!’

His use of her name was a sound of pure exasperation.

‘You have no memory of the past year. Anything could have happened in that time. Until you know what there was in those twelve months, who you were with, you can’t make any decision about the future.’

‘Who I was with—do you know something?’

She watched in something close to despair as his face closed up, heavy lids hooding the brilliant eyes, hiding his thoughts from her.

‘If you did, you wouldn’t say anything, right?’ she continued despondently. ‘Don’t tell me—doctor’s orders.’

‘I had no right to touch you.’

‘And if I wanted to give you that right?’

She knew the answer before the question had even left her lips, anticipated the unyielding shake of his head that took away the last grain of hope she had left.

‘There can be nothing between us while your memories remain elusive.’ Cold and inflexible, his words had the force of a slashing steel blade. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘Then you—you won’t want me to come and live with you?’

‘On the contrary. I still think my original plan is for the best.’

‘Your—your original plan? But if you don’t want me…’

The look he turned on her was pure scorn, blazing over her skin with the force of a laser beam.

‘Madre de Dios! You believed that was the reason I invited you to my home?’

He was pure Spaniard now. Tall and arrogant as any matador, head held high, strong jaw set, his handsome features forming a mask of cold anger, furiously rejecting the implications behind her question. She had insulted him, Serena reflected miserably. Insulted and appalled him and although he hadn’t actually moved away from her she knew that he had mentally taken several major steps away from her.

‘I’m sorry…’ she began miserably, but he brushed aside her interjection with the brusque flick of his hand she had seen him use before.

‘That was not it at all. I was thinking of Tonio…’

‘Tonio!’ Serena almost choked on the word. ‘What has Tonio to do with this?’

‘Everything,’ Rafael snapped. ‘I am a businessman, Serena. I have interests in England, Spain—all over Europe. I work long hours—I could be called away at any time to deal with some crisis. Tonio is just a baby. He needs love and care, someone who can be there with him…’

At last Serena saw the direction in which his thoughts were heading.

‘Someone like me.’

A swift, curt inclination of his head acknowledged the accuracy of her guess.

‘You want me to be some sort of nanny…’

Her voice shook on the words, but whether in laughter or distress she had no idea. She felt perilously close to both, hot tears burning in her eyes so that she blinked hard, determined not to let them fall.

This was what he had meant all along. How could she have been so foolishly naïve? She had thought that he was attracted to her, that he hadn’t been able to resist her. She had believed that he had invited her to stay with him because he wanted to get to know her better. Instead, he had considered the problem—hers and his—quite coldly and come up with a purely pragmatic solution.

She needed a home. Rafael could provide one. He needed someone to care for his child and he had decided that that was a service she could offer in return for her board and lodging. The idea of his wanting her in any other way had had nothing to do with it.

‘But I don’t know anything about looking after a baby!’

‘You will learn.’

Once again her objections were dismissed peremptorily.

‘And I saw the look on your face when I brought him in here. I have no intention of leaving him with some woman for whom this is a job and nothing more. I want someone who would put him first always.’

Someone who didn’t have a life, Serena reflected bitterly, linking the fingers of both hands together and staring down at them in order to hide the expression in her eyes from him. She had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to. He knew that, and had used it ruthlessly against her. He might have couched it in terms of offering her a job, helping her, but he knew only too well that he held all the cards in his hands.

But then she thought of Tonio, of his big, unblinking eyes, and the way his tiny hand had closed around her finger, and her heart clenched on a wave of emotion.

The baby was Rafael’s trump card. He must have seen her face when she had looked down at him, the tenderness she hadn’t been able to disguise. In the first moment she had seen him something deep and primitive had tugged at her heart. There was no way she could turn her back on the motherless infant, and Rafael knew that.

‘You need a home, a place to live while you convalesce and regain your strength, and Tonio needs a nanny. You can live in my home; there is more than enough room for everyone. I have a housekeeper who will serve as a chaperon if you should feel the need of one. I will pay you a decent wage. It’s an arrangement that will suit us all.’

‘It seems very fair.’

It was a perfectly sensible arrangement, Serena told herself drearily. And perhaps, if he had suggested it yesterday, she might have seen it as the answer to all her problems. If he had suggested it before he had taken her in his arms. Before he had kissed her in a way that had changed their relationship for ever.

But he had held her. He had kissed her. And as a result of the dreams she had allowed herself to indulge in, just for a moment, what he now offered her could only ever be second best.

‘Then you agree?’

Did she have any choice?

‘Serena?’ Rafael prompted hardly. ‘I need an answer.’

And there was really only one she could give him. Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded.

‘I agree.’

It was obviously the response he had expected. The swift, brusque nod of his dark head told her he had never anticipated anything else. Pushing back the cuff of his crisp white shirt, he consulted the slim watch that he wore on his wrist, gold against the bronze of his skin.

‘I have to go now,’ he said, brisk and businesslike once more, the matter settled to his satisfaction, his mind already moving on to other things. ‘But I’ll be back in the morning. Dr Greene says that she expects to discharge you then, so I will collect you as soon as she has made the final decision… Around ten-thirty, then?’