Читать книгу The Spaniard's Pleasure - Ким Лоренс, Маргарет Майо - Страница 14

FLEUR sat in an alcove off the waiting room feeling invisible. They had told her that the painkillers the doctor had insisted on prescribing would be up from the pharmacy directly. She glanced at the clock on the wall and saw she had been there for almost thirty minutes. Maybe they were taking the scenic route.

She looked around at the steady stream of humanity bustling past her all with a purpose, but none of their purposes involved helping her get out of here. Had they forgotten she was there?

Almost immediately she felt guilty for being so impatient. It wasn’t that she resented having to wait her turn, and the treatment she had received had been excellent, it was just the place made her want to crawl out of her skin.

Somehow she couldn’t imagine anyone forgetting Antonio Rochas was here. Her brow furrowed as she gave an exasperated sigh. For someone who had decided that she was going to blank him, his convoluted family problems and his wretched kiss from her mind totally, she had been thinking about him a lot.

Still, at least it stopped her thinking about the hospital smell. She picked up a newspaper someone had left on the seat beside her and began to skim through the pages, although she wasn’t actually able to concentrate on the stories.

The elderly woman opposite waved her stick to get Fleur’s attention. ‘What does my horoscope say, dear?’

Fleur smiled and turned to the appropriate page. ‘What star sign are you?’

‘Virgo.’

‘Me too,’ Fleur said. ‘Let’s see,’ she said, stabbing the appropriate column with a finger. ‘It says here that “an unexpected meeting will have life-changing consequences.”’ She stopped reading and heaved a sigh. Even the stars were conspiring against her, it would seem! Not that she believed that sort of stuff. A person made their own destiny irrespective of whether Jupiter was rising in Capricorn or whatever. All the same, that was spooky. ‘I don’t have my reading glasses with me—would you like the paper?’

At this rate, next I’ll be seeing him in the tea leaves!

The grey-haired figure smiled her gratitude as Fleur limped across. ‘So young to have problems with your eyesight,’ she said, accepting the folded newspaper.

‘It runs in the family,’ Fleur improvised shamelessly.

‘And such pretty eyes too.’

Did Antonio think her eyes were pretty?

‘Stop that, Fleur!’ she told herself severely.

‘Pardon, dear?’ the old lady said.

Fleur shook her head and limped back to her place and, with nothing much else to do, her thoughts drifted. Inevitably they drifted in the direction of a tall dark Spaniard. She had no doubt that the fact she had walked, or rather limped, into the place at his side had a lot to do with her being attended to so swiftly.

Just as she was considering the shallowness in human nature that made people respond to a famous face that way the nurse who had attended to her while her leg was sutured walked past.

‘Still here?’ she said looking sympathetic.

Fleur nodded.

‘I was wondering,’ she began tentatively, ‘do you know how Tamara Rochas…’ She stopped and gave a rueful grimace. ‘Sorry, I expect you can’t discuss patients with nonrelatives.’ And as a completely disinterested party I ought not to be asking.

‘Well, you’re not exactly a stranger, are you?’ The girl smiled.

Fleur, not quite sure how to respond, shrugged and said cautiously, ‘Not exactly.’

‘If you like,’ offered the cheerful nurse, ‘I’ll show you to her room. It’s on my way to the canteen.’

‘I’m supposed to wait here for my painkillers,’ Fleur said, thinking, This is not something I should even be considering.

‘And wait you will. The computers were down for two hours this morning and they’re still catching up on the backlog. And to make matters worse Pharmacy has half its staff off with the flu thing. It’ll probably take them another half-hour at least to get your prescription sorted.’

Having been part, albeit an incidental part, of the rescue it would be nice to see for herself that the victim was all right.

Rationalisation, said the snide voice in her head.

Fleur tilted her chin and said, ‘You’re really kind.’ If Antonio was there…well, that had nothing whatever to do with her decision.

‘Family friend, are you?’ the inquisitive nurse asked as she pressed the lift button for the third floor.

The query brought home to Fleur just how inappropriate her actions were. She might know a little more concerning the details of Antonios’ Rochas’s strained relationship with his daughter, but the bottom line was she was a stranger.

A stranger the patient’s father had kissed.

Fleur chose her words with care, extremely aware that this was the perfect opportunity to smother any foolish rumours before they started circulating.

‘Just a neighbour. I hardly know him.’ What, she wondered, would be the consequences if she were to claim a closer relationship? Mention the fact that her lips were still tingling from his kiss.

‘Sure you are.’

Fleur didn’t respond to the girl’s conspiratorial wink.

‘No, really,’ she said firmly.

The nurse’s face dropped. ‘Really? We thought maybe you and he were…?’

Fleur adopted a droll expression. ‘Yes, that’s really likely, isn’t it?’

The girl’s glance slid over Fleur in her borrowed clothes. ‘We can dream, can’t we?’ The other girl sighed.

Feeling rather deflated that it had been so depressingly easy to convince the nurse that the notion of her and Antonio being an item was ludicrous, she leaned against the wall of the lift and thought, Dream about being Antonio’s lover? Not a good idea.

‘Fifth door on the left—3B,’ supplied her guide with a smile before the lift door closed.

Fleur counted the doors off and then knocked twice. When there was no response, she tentatively pushed the door open and found herself inside a small hallway.

Fleur was relieved the nurses’ station to her left was unoccupied. The moment she opened the door she had realised that this was not a good idea. The man was going to think she was stalking him.

And I’m not…?

She hesitated a fatal moment too long. If she hadn’t she would not have heard the voices. One was high and young, one deep. One more backwards step and she’d have been free.

You still are free, she told herself.

So why then was she walking towards that voice as though someone had tugged the other end of a string and was reeling her in?

Of the four rooms that opened off the area, two appeared unoccupied. One door was open.

From where she stood to one side of the doorway she could see the hospital bed, but its occupant could not see her. As she hesitated a tall figure who had been out of view came to stand beside the bed. He put his hands flat on the edge and bent towards the figure who held an oxygen mask in her hand.

‘You should not upset yourself.’ Antonio took the mask from her fingers and placed it to her face.

His daughter looked almost as pale as the pillows she was propped up against.

Tamara snatched the mask away. ‘Don’t try and pretend you care about me, or that my mother meant anything to you,’ she sneered. ‘What was she—a one-night stand?’

‘I do not do one-night stands.’

Antonio was conscious that he had made the same angry assertion only a couple of weeks earlier. On that occasion it had been in response to his sister’s taunt that he was in no position to discuss relationships because he’d never had one, only a series of one-night stands.

His angry disclaimer had cut no ice with Sophia. He was used to his volatile sister’s cutting ripostes, but this one had stuck in his mind.

‘Your one-night stands may last six months, a year, even, but, believe me, Antonio, they’re not relationships. A relationship requires that you give something of yourself and you don’t even know how.’

‘So did you love her?’

There was a silence.

Antonio watched Tamara’s thin frame stiffen as though anticipating a blow.

An image formed in Antonio’s head: flawless skin, full lips painted red, and eyes that could radiate an innocence their owner had not possessed. It was a lovely face. A face inextricably linked with deceit and humiliation. The deceit had been hers, the humiliation his. And when you were nineteen and in love humiliation could be pretty devastating.

Falling in love with Miranda had been a life-shaping experience for Antonio. She had taught him an important lesson. You could allow your passions to rule you or you could rule them.

Antonio had made his choice.

Where his emotions were concerned he had taught himself to step back, to be objective. Having the women in his life complain that he gave nothing of himself seemed infinitely preferable to Antonio than the alternative.

But there was now a female in his life whom he could not step back from—one he could not be objective about.

He knew exactly what he had to say.

‘I was very much in love with your mother.’

The girl studied his face suspiciously. ‘You were…?’

‘I was, and I can honestly say I have never loved a woman since.’ Loving required trust and Antonio had no intention of trusting a woman again.

For no reason at all he found himself thinking about Fleur, those big, innocent eyes, and he felt tender feelings stir.

Then he thought about her mouth and was instantly locked into a steamy fantasy.

It was only when an attractive nurse in a crisp white uniform bustled in and said something he didn’t hear that Antonio managed to drag his thoughts away from the erotic images dancing in his mind.

Fleur hadn’t stuck around to see how the girl responded to his confession.

As she limped down the corridor her emotions were in turmoil. Antonio the man with the playboy reputation, she could deal with…sort of. Antonio the man who had only ever loved one woman, and lost her…now that was a very different prospect.

She hated this shift of feelings that was taking place inside her. But then maybe, she mused darkly, she was only getting what she deserved. Eavesdropping was a contemptible thing.

She had decided to despise Antonio Rochas before she’d even met him. Now she was presented with the possibility that underneath the cynicism and macho posturing there was a man capable of deep feeling. A one-woman man…

Did he compare all women with the one he had lost…?

Had he been thinking about his tragic lost love when he’d kissed her? Then, recalling the glazed heat in his glittering eyes, she decided not. It seemed unlikely that his brain had been involved at all during that brief passionate exchange!

And as her own brain had flat-lined the moment he had touched her, Fleur didn’t feel she was in a position to sneer.

Two nurses were emerging from the room next door when Fleur limped past, they looked startled to see her. Fleur just smiled and tried to look as though she were somewhere she was meant to be, which undoubtedly she wasn’t.

The helpful nurse had been wrong. She didn’t have to wait thirty minutes—it was nearly an hour before she received her painkillers. With time on her hands her imagination went into overdrive.

Had they argued over something trivial? Had both been too proud and stubborn to be the first one to say they were wrong?

She supposed that she was never going to know the real story.

Antonio stayed for a while after Tamara had fallen asleep. Sometimes she seemed so adult, but in repose, the defiance and belligerence absent from her face, his daughter looked like the child she actually was.

Her vulnerability touched him, aroused a fierce protectiveness in him.

Was this the way fathers felt? He wouldn’t know because the blonde had been right—there was more to fatherhood than matching DNA.

It suddenly hit him all the things he had missed. What had she been like as a baby, a toddler…? He would never know. The sense of loss hit him with a force so strong that it felt like a blade sliding between his ribs.

He felt a volatile mixture of emotions as he looked at this child who was a part of him. He suddenly realised the enormity of having the responsibility for another life. He found himself admiring single parents who raised their children alone.

Fleur had made it through the glass turnstile exit of Casualty when she saw Antonio.

He looked so alone.

He was standing, his hands dug deep in his pockets, his back set to the wind. He wasn’t looking in her direction and even if he had been she wasn’t sure he would have noticed her. His expression in profile suggested he was a man with a lot on his mind. Vulnerable…mentally she deleted the word that flashed into her head.

Do not even think about feeling sorry for him, she lectured herself sternly. If ever there was a man who could look after himself, it was Antonio Rochas.

Just walk past, Fleur…walk past and keep walking.

It was sound advice.

She nearly made it, very nearly. She had almost readied the rank of taxis when her conscience proved stronger than her instincts for self-preservation.

‘You’re an idiot, Fleur,’ she muttered to herself as she hurried back up the rain-slick path.

She stopped just a little out of his line of vision and studied him, trying to figure out what it was, beside the obvious, which made her react to him differently from the way she ever had to any other man.

It defied logic.

‘You’re still here…?’

Antonio turned his head and levered his broad shoulders from the wall. ‘I came out here for some fresh air while I waited.’

‘For what?’

‘You.’

‘Why?’

‘When I arrive with a lady I like to see that she gets safely to her destination.’

‘How sweet and gallant.’ She lifted her eyes to his and sketched a smile. ‘Though less sweet and gallant when you take into account your bed is usually her destination. So I suppose you have a vested interest in making sure she gets there.’

Antonio released a startled hissing gasp through his clenched teeth. Then to her dismay grinned. His blue eyes danced with mockery as he asked, ‘Is that where you are expecting to end up…?’

Wondering when she was going to stop blurting out the first thing that came into her head, Fleur willed her fiery cheeks to stop burning.

‘I would prefer to spend the night in this place—’ she tipped her head in the direction of the big building behind them ‘—and you know how much I love hospitals.’

Antonio didn’t dispute her angry claim. ‘They tell me they are letting you go home?’ His grin faded as his glance dropped to her leg.

She nodded, relieved that he had dropped the subject of his bed, then stiffened. ‘They should not have been telling you anything.’

Irritatingly her annoyance seemed to amuse him. ‘I promise they did not reveal any medical details. I don’t even know if you had stitches?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘And a tetanus shot. You were right.’

‘I usually am.’

‘Infallible and modest.’ He would have been even smugger if he had heard the doctor tell her that a fraction deeper and a tendon would have been severed.

Her comment drew a grin from him, this time it seemed more tired than sardonic.

‘Do you have to come back to the clinic?’

‘No, they topped up my tetanus cover and gave me an antibiotic jab.’ She shook the paper bag in her hand. ‘Painkillers.’ Which she did need; now the local had worn off her leg was aching with a vengeance. ‘And I can go back to my GP to have them taken out. So I’m sorted. How’s Tamara?’

Antonio visibly tensed at the name. ‘They’re keeping her in overnight,’ he said abruptly.

‘But she’s…’

‘They say she’ll be fine, but—’ his eyes swept across her upturned features and a disturbing expression slid into his eyes ‘—you already know that, don’t you?’

Fleur stiffened and looked up at him warily through her lashes. ‘I do…?’ Overplaying the innocence big time, mocked the voice in her head.

‘The nurses mentioned our visitor,’ Antonio revealed, stretching one arm above his head and rotating first one shoulder and then the other to relieve the knots of tension in his spine and shoulders.

A distracted expression slid across Fleur’s face as she imagined the things going on under his shirt…Things like taut muscle rippling beneath satiny golden skin. A hoarse sound escaped her throat as she lowered her eyes and grunted. ‘Why do you automatically assume that was me?’

‘The interesting limp, blond hair and golden eyes were clues,’ he revealed drily.

Her eyes flew upwards. ‘They did not notice what colour my eyes were!’ she scoffed.

‘No, but I did.’

His eyes locked onto hers and as she registered the explicitly sensual gleam Fleur’s stomach took a diving lurch. ‘I thought I’d look in,’ she admitted, tugging at the neckline of her borrowed top.

One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘But changed your mind?’

‘I got as far as the door, but…’

‘You saw me,’ he inserted drily. ‘Were you worried I would kiss you again?’

Hoped. The colour in her cheeks perceptibly heightened. Fleur shrugged while fighting to contain her growing panic. ‘Not really. I thought I was quite safe from your unwanted attentions in front of your daughter.’

‘Unwanted…?’

She squared her jaw. ‘You think I enjoy being mauled by strange men?’

‘I can’t speak in general, but if we’re talking specifics—’

Fleur, who didn’t want to talk specifically or any other way about that kiss in the car, cut across him with a high-pitched, ‘I just didn’t want to intrude.’

The muscles around his mouth quivered as his lips compressed into a hard line. ‘An intrusion might have been welcome.’

‘Well, it’s good that there was no real harm.’ At least not to Tamara. Fleur was less sure that she could claim the same, and she wasn’t thinking about her leg! ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

‘They said there’s not much point—they gave her something to help her sleep—but I will anyway,’ he said, flexing his shoulders once more before shoving his hands back into his pockets.

‘Then you couldn’t take me home, could you?’ she pointed out. ‘Unless your talents include the ability to be in two places at once.’

‘The idea was I take you home and then come back.’

Get in a car with him again…It would be like an alcoholic getting a job in a distillery! Accepting you have a problem is the first step, Fleur, she told herself. And, oh, boy, do I have a problem!

‘There’s absolutely no need, and anyway you wouldn’t want to risk Tamara waking up and you not being there.’

‘I seriously doubt if seeing my face when she wakes up would speed her recovery. But then you already know that too, don’t you? You’ll have such a lot to tell your friends.’

‘I’m not a gossip and I didn’t ask to be a witness to your private family arguments,’ she reminded him, stung by the suggestion she couldn’t wait to rush out to share his secrets with the world. Why exactly had he shared them with her? ‘And, frankly, I’ve got enough problems of my own without sharing yours.’

‘You didn’t ask to be kissed either, but you enjoyed that.’ His eyes skimmed over her face and his voice dropped a husky octave as he added a husky, ‘So did I.’ His long lashes swept upwards from the angle of his chiselled cheekbones as his blue eyes meshed with hers.

‘You sound surprised,’ she observed huskily.

His brows lifted as he looked struck by her remark. ‘I suppose I was,’ he admitted.

‘Because I look like someone who doesn’t know how to kiss.’

This spiky comment drew a laugh from Antonio. The uninhibited and extremely attractive sound made several people look curiously in their direction. It made Fleur’s hopelessly receptive stomach muscles quiver frantically.

‘With that mouth…’ The last traces of laughter faded from his face as his glance came to rest on the lush outline. ‘You could not fail to be a good kisser. That mouth,’ he said, staring at it hard, ‘was made for kissing.’

Not surprisingly Fleur, who was standing there with her feet nailed to the floor with dark waves of sheer longing lapping around her ankles, couldn’t think of a suitably glib retort.

The perplexed pucker that pleated his forehead deepened. ‘No, it was my reaction that surprised me,’ he admitted, still staring at her mouth.

I really wish he wouldn’t.

‘The last time I made love in a car I was in my teens.’

‘Knowledge I could have lived without.’ But not for the reason her caustic tone suggested.

In her head she could see female hands sliding under his shirt and along the smooth golden skin of his strong, supple back just the way she had wanted her to.

‘Around you my control is…not good,’ he revealed with admirable understatement. Around her he had less control than a kid deluged by the first rush of male hormones.

‘And we did not make love!’ That had only happened in her head and, though her mind was pretty messed up, she could still differentiate between what was real and what was a figment of her feverish imagination. Just!

‘That had very little to do with good judgement. If that car hadn’t sounded its horn…’

‘What car?’ she said without thinking.

Antonio tilted his dark head fractionally, as if acknowledging a compliment. ‘I’m flattered.’

And so pleased with himself that she wanted to kick him. ‘Oh, that car…’

‘Yes, that car.’

His indulgent tone set her teeth on edge. ‘Right, well, I should be getting home. I have to pick up Sandy.’

‘Don’t bother. I’ll drop him over in the morning.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘I want to.’

His tone was far more forceful and emphatic than the subject warranted. Now if he’d been saying, I want you…

Trying to act as if she weren’t shaking feverishly and her body hadn’t been engulfed by a flash of heat, Fleur gave a shrug that suggested she didn’t care one way or the other and began to walk away.

She had gone a few yards when she looked back over her shoulder. ‘You’re really not that good a kisser, you know.’

‘You are.’

If he’d smiled it would have passed as a joke, but he didn’t smile.

Hunching her shoulders, Fleur almost ran down the path, oblivious to the pain in her leg. Clearly he was a man who had to have the last word…The alternative was, well, actually, the alternative was plain ridiculous.