Читать книгу The Holiday Escapes Collection - Сандра Мартон - Страница 66

CHAPTER FIVE

‘IRISH?’ HE CHECKED, and Estelle hesitated for a moment before nodding.

She did not want to give any information to this man—did not even want to partake in conversation.

‘Yet your accent is English?’

‘My parents moved to England before I was born.’ She gave a tight swallow and hoped her stilted response would halt the conversation. It did not.

‘Where in England are they?’

‘They’re not,’ Estelle answered, terribly reluctant to reveal anything of herself.

Raúl did not push. Instead he moved the conversation on.

‘So, where did you and Gordon meet?’

‘We met at Dario’s.’ Estelle answered the question as Gordon had told her to, trying to tell herself he was just being polite, but every sense in her body seemed set to high alert. ‘It’s a bar—’

‘In Soho,’ Raúl broke in. ‘I have heard a lot about Dario’s.’

Beneath her make-up her cheeks were scalding.

‘Not that I have been,’ Raúl said. ‘As a male, I would perhaps be too young to get in there.’ His lips rose in a slight smile and he watched the colour flood darker in her neck and to her ears. ‘Maybe I should give it a try…’

He looked more closely at Estelle. She had eyes that were a very dark green and rounded cheeks—she really was astonishingly attractive. There was something rather sweet about her despite the clothes, despite the make-up, and there was an awkwardness that was as rare as it was refreshing. Raúl was not used to awkwardness in the women he dated.

‘So, we both find ourselves alone at a wedding…’

‘I’m not alone,’ Estelle said. ‘Gordon will be back soon.’ She did not want to ask, but she found herself doing just that as she glanced to the empty chair beside him. ‘How come…?’ Her voice faded out. There was no polite way to address it.

‘We broke up this morning.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Please don’t be.’ He thought for a moment before continuing. ‘Really to say we broke up is perhaps an exaggeration. To break something would mean you had to have something, and we were only going out for a few weeks.’

‘Even so…’ Still she attempted to be polite. ‘Break-ups are hard.’

‘I’ve never found them to be,’ Raúl said. ‘It’s the bit before that I struggle with.’

‘When it starts to go wrong?’

‘No,’ Raúl said. ‘When it starts to go right.’

His eyes were looking right into hers, his voice was deep and low, and his words interesting—because despite herself she did want to know more about this fascinating man. So much so that she found herself leaning in a little to hear.

‘When she starts asking what we are doing next weekend. When you hear her saying “Raúl said…” or “Raúl thinks…”’ He paused for a second. ‘I don’t like to be told what I’m thinking.’

‘I’m sure you don’t.’

‘Do you know what I’m thinking now?’

‘I wouldn’t presume to.’ She could hardly breathe, because she was surely thinking the same.

‘Would you like to dance?’

‘No, thank you,’ Estelle said, because it was far safer to stay seated than to self-combust in his arms. He was sinfully good-looking and, more worryingly, she had a sinking feeling as she realised he was pulling her in deeper with each measured word. ‘I’ll just wait here for Gordon.’

‘Of course,’ Raúl said. ‘Have you met the bride or groom?’

‘No.’ Estelle felt as if she were being interviewed. ‘You’re friends with the groom?’

‘I went to university with him.’

‘In Spain?’

‘No, here in Scotland.’

‘Oh!’ She wasn’t sure why, but that surprised her.

‘I was here for four years,’ Raúl said. ‘Then I moved back to Marbella. I still like to come here. Scotland is a very beautiful country.’

‘It is,’ Estelle said. ‘Well, from the little I’ve seen.’

‘It’s your first time?’

She nodded.

‘Have you ever been to Spain?’

‘Last year,’ Estelle said. ‘Though only for a few days. Then there was a family emergency and I had to go home.’

‘Raúl?’

He barely looked up as a woman came over. It was the same woman who had been moved from the table earlier.

‘I thought we could dance.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Raúl…’

‘Araminta.’ Now he turned and looked at her. ‘If I wanted to dance with you then I would have asked.’

Estelle blinked, because despite the velvet of his voice his words were brutal.

‘That was a bit harsh,’ Estelle said as Araminta stumbled off.

‘Far better to be harsh than to give mixed messages.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘So…’ Raúl chose his words carefully. ‘If taking care of Gordon is a full-time job, what do you do in your time off?’

‘My time off?’

‘When you’re not working.’

She didn’t frown this time. There was no mistake as to what he meant. Her green eyes flashed as she turned to him. ‘I don’t appreciate the implication.’

He was surprised by her challenge, liked that she met him head-on—it was rare that anyone did.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Sometimes my English is not so good…’

When it suited him.

Estelle took a deep breath, her hand still toying with the stem of her glass as she wondered how to play this, deciding she would do her best to be polite.

‘What work do you do?’ She looked at him. She had absolutely no idea about this man. ‘Are you in politics too?’

‘Please!’

He watched the slight reluctant smile on her lips.

‘I am a director for De La Fuente Holdings, which means I buy, improve or build, and then maybe I sell.’ Still he watched her. ‘Take this castle; if I owned it I would not have it exclusively as a wedding venue but also as a hotel. It is under-utilised. Mind you, it would need a lot of refurbishment. I have not shared a bathroom since my university days.’

She was far from impressed and tried not to show it. Raúl, of course, could not know that she was studying ancient architecture and that buildings were a passion of hers. The castle renovations she had seen were modest, the rooms cold and the bathrooms sparse—as it should be. The thought of this place being modernised and filled to capacity, no matter how tastefully, left her cold.

Unfortunately he didn’t.

Not once in her twenty-five years had Estelle even come close to the reaction she was having to Raúl.

If they were anywhere else she would get up and leave.

Or, she conceded, if they were anywhere else she would lean forward and accept his mouth.

‘So it’s your father’s business?’ Estelle asked, trying to find a fault in him—trying to tell herself that it was his father’s money that had eased his luxurious path to perfection.

‘No, it was my mother’s family business. My father bought into it when he married.’ He saw her tiny frown.

‘Sorry, you said De La Fuente, and I thought Fuente was your surname…’

For an occasional model who picked up men at Dario’s she was rather perceptive, Raúl thought. ‘In Spain it is different. You take your father’s surname first and then your mother’s…’

‘I didn’t know that.’ She tried to fathom it. ‘How does it work?’

‘My father is Antonio Sanchez. My mother was Gabriella De La Fuente.’

‘Was?’

‘She passed away in a car accident…’

Normally he could just say it. Every other time he revealed it he just glossed over it, moved swiftly on—tonight, with all he had learnt this morning, suddenly he could not.

Every man except Raúl had struggled in the summer heat with full Scottish regalia. Supremely fit, and used to the sun, Raúl had not even broken a sweat. But now, when the castle was cool, when a draught swirled around the floor, he broke into one—except his face drained of colour.

He tried to right himself, reached for water; he had trained his mind not to linger. Of course he had not quite mastered his mind at night, but even then he had trained himself to wake up before he shouted out.

‘Was it recent?’ Estelle saw him struggle briefly, knew surely better than anyone how he must feel—for she had lost her parents the same way. She watched as he drained a glass of water and then blinked when he turned and the suave Raúl returned.

‘Years ago,’ he dismissed. ‘When I was a child.’ He got back to their discussion, refusing to linger on a deeply buried past. ‘My actual name is Raúl Sanchez De La Fuente, but it gets a bit long during introductions.’

He smiled, and so too did Estelle.

‘I can imagine.’

‘But I don’t want to lose my mother’s name, and of course my father expects me to keep his.’

‘It’s nice that the woman’s name passes on.’

‘It doesn’t, though,’ Raúl said. ‘Well, it does for one generation—it is still weighted to the man.’ He saw her frown.

‘So, if you had a baby…?’

‘That’s never going to happen.’

‘But if you did?’

‘God forbid.’ He let out a small sigh. ‘I will try to explain.’

He was very patient.

He took the salt and pepper she had so nervously passed to him and, heads together, they sat at the table while he made her a small family tree.

‘What is your surname?’

‘Connolly.’

‘Okay, we have a baby and call her Jane…’

How he made her burn. Not at the baby part, but at the thought of the part to get to that.

‘Her name would be Jane Sanchez Connolly.’

‘I see.’

‘And when Jane marries…’ he lifted a hand and grabbed a fork as he plucked a name from the ether ‘…Harry Potter, her daughter…’ he added a spoon ‘…who shall also be called Jane, would be Jane Sanchez Potter. Connolly would be gone!’ He looked at her as she worked it out. ‘It is simple. At least the name part is simple. It is the fifty years of marriage that might prove hard.’ He glanced over to today’s happy couple. ‘I can’t imagine being tied down to another, and I certainly don’t believe in love.’

He always made that clear up-front.

‘How can you sit at a wedding and say that?’ Estelle challenged. ‘Did you not see the smile on Donald’s face when he saw his bride?’

‘Of course I did,’ Raúl said. ‘I recognised it well—it was the same smile he gave at the last wedding of his I attended.’

She laughed. There was no choice but to. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Completely,’ Raúl said.

Yet he was smiling, and when he did that she felt as if she should scrabble in her bag for sunglasses, because the force of his smile blinded her to all faults—and she was quite positive a man like Raúl had many.

‘You’re wrong, Raúl.’ She refused to play his cynical game. ‘My brother got married last year and he and his wife are deeply in love.’

‘A year.’ He gave a light shrug. ‘It is still the honeymoon phase.’

‘They’ve been through more in this year than most have been through in a lifetime.’ And she’d never meant to but she found herself opening up to him. ‘Andrew, my brother, was in an accident on their honeymoon—a jet ski…’

‘Serious?’

Estelle nodded. ‘He’s now in a wheelchair.’

‘That must take a lot of getting used to.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Is that the family emergency you had to fly home from your own holiday for?’

Estelle nodded. She didn’t tell him it had been a trip around churches. No doubt he assumed she’d been hauled out of a club to hear the news. ‘I raced home, and, really, since then things have been tough on them. Amanda was already pregnant when they got married…’

She didn’t know why she was telling him. Perhaps it was safer to talk than to dance. Maybe it was easier to talk about her brother and the truth than make up stories about Dario’s and seedy clubs in Soho. Or perhaps it was the black liquid eyes that invited conversation, the way he moved his chair a little closer so that he could hear.

‘Their daughter was born four months ago. The prospect of being a dad was the main thing that kept Andrew motivated during his rehabilitation. Just when we thought things were turning around…’

Raúl watched her green eyes fill with tears, saw her rapid blink as she tried to stem them.

‘She has a heart condition. They’re waiting till she’s a little bit bigger so they can operate.’

He watched pale hands go to her bag and Estelle took out a photo. He looked at her brother, Andrew, and his wife, and a small frail baby with a slight blue tinge to her skin, and he realised that they hadn’t been crocodile tears he had witnessed during the wedding ceremony. He looked back to Estelle.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Cecelia.’

Raúl looked at her as she gazed at the photo and he knew then the reason she was here with Gordon. ‘Your brother?’ Raúl asked, just to confirm things in his mind. ‘Does he work?’

‘No.’ Estelle shook her head. ‘He was self-employed. He…’ She put away the photo, dragged in a breath, could not stand to think of all the problems her brother faced.

Exactly at that moment Raúl lightened things.

‘My legs are cold.’

Estelle laughed, and as she did she blinked as a photographer’s camera flashed in her face.

‘Nice natural shot,’ the photographer said.

‘We’re not…’ Oh, what did it matter?

‘I need to move.’ He stood. ‘And Gordon asked that I take care of you.’ Raúl held out his hand to her. This dance was more important than she could ever know. This dance must ensure that tonight she was thinking only of him—that by the time he approached her with his suggestion it would not seem so unthinkable. But first he had to set the tone. First he had to make her aware that he knew the sort of business she was in. ‘Would you like to dance?’

Estelle didn’t really have a choice. Walking towards the dance floor, she had the futile hope that the band would break into something more frivolous than sensuous, but all hope was gone as his arms wrapped loosely around her.

‘You are nervous?’

‘No.’

‘I would have thought you would enjoy dancing, given that you two met at Dario’s.’

‘I do love to dance.’ Estelle forced a bright smile, remembered who she was supposed to be. ‘It’s just a bit early for me.’

‘And me,’ Raul said as he took her in his arms. ‘About now I would only just be getting ready to go out.’

She couldn’t read this man. Not in the least. He held her, he was skilled and graceful, but the eyes that looked down at her were not smiling.

‘Relax.’

She tried to—except he’d said it into her ear, causing the sensitive skin there to tingle.

‘Can I ask something?’

‘Of course,’ Estelle said, though she would rather he didn’t. She just wanted this duty dance to end.

‘What are you doing with Gordon?’

‘Excuse me?’ She could not believe he would ask that—could not think of anyone else who would be so direct. It was as if all pretence had gone—all tiny implications, all conversation left behind—and the truth was being revealed in his arms.

‘There is a huge age difference…’

‘That’s none of your business.’ She felt as if she was being attacked in broad daylight and everyone else was just carrying on, oblivious.

‘You are twenty, yes?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘He was ten years older than I am now when you were born.’

‘They’re just numbers.’

‘We both work in numbers.’

Estelle went to walk off mid-dance, but his grip merely tightened. ‘Of course…’ He held her so she could feel the lean outline of his body, inhale the terribly masculine scent of him. ‘You want him only for his money.’

‘You’re incredibly rude.’

‘I’m incredibly honest,’ Raúl corrected. ‘I am not criticizing—there is nothing wrong with that.’

‘Vete al infierno!’ Estelle said, grateful for a Spanish schoolfriend and lunchtimes being taught by her how to curse. She watched his mouth curve as she told him in his own language to go to hell. ‘Excuse me,’ Estelle said. ‘Sometimes my Spanish is not so good. What I mean to say is…’

He pressed a finger to her lips before she could tell him, in her own language and rather more crudely, exactly where he could go.

The contact with her mouth, the sensual pressure, the intimacy of the gesture, had the desired effect and silenced her.

‘One more dance,’ Raúl said. ‘Then I return you to Gordon.’ He removed his finger. ‘I’m sorry if you thought I was being rude—believe me, that was not my intention. Accept my apology, please.’

Estelle’s eyes narrowed in suspicious assessment. She was aware of the pulse in her lips from his mere touch. Logic told her to remove herself from this situation, yet the stir of first arousal won.

The music slowed and, ignoring brief resistance, he pulled her in tighter. If she thought he was judging her, she was right—only it was not harshly. Raúl admired a woman who could separate emotion from sex.

Raúl needed exactly such a woman if he were to see this through.

He did not think her cheap: on the contrary, he intended to pay her very well.

She should have gone then—back to the table, to be ignored by the other guests. Should have left this man at a safer point. But her naïve body was refusing to walk away; instead it was awakening in his arms.

He held her so that her head was resting on his chest. She could feel the soft velvet of his jacket on her cheek. But she was more aware of his hand resting lightly on the base of her spine.

A couple dancing, each in a world of their own.

Raúl’s motives were temporarily suspended. He enjoyed the soft weight that leant against him, the quiet of his mind as he focused only on her. The hand on her shoulder crept beneath her hair, his fingers lightly stroking the back of her neck, and again he wanted his mouth there, wanted to lift the raven curtain and taste her.

His fingers told her so—they stroked in a soft probing and they circled and teased as she swayed in time to the music. Estelle felt the stirring between them, and though her head denied what was happening her body shifted a little to allow for him. Her nipples hurt against his chest. His hand pressed her in just a little tighter as again he broke all boundaries. Again he voiced what perhaps others would not.

‘I always thought a sporran was for decorative purposes only…’

She could feel the heat of its fur against her stomach.

‘Yet it is the only thing keeping me decent.’

‘You’re so far from decent,’ Estelle rasped.

‘I know.’

They danced—not much, just swaying in time. Except she was on fire.

He could feel the heat of her skin on his fingers, could feel her breath so shallow that he wanted to lower his head and breathe into her mouth for her. He thought of her dark hair on his pillow, of her pink nipples in his mouth at the same time. He wanted her more than he had wanted any other, though Raúl was not comfortable with that thought.

This was business, Raúl reminded himself as motive returned. Tonight she would think of his lean, aroused body. When she was bedded by Gordon it would be his lithe body she ached for. He must now make sure of that. It was a business decision, and he made business decisions well.

His hand slid from beneath her hair down to the side of her ribs, to the bare skin there.

She ached. She ached for his hand to move, to cup her breast. And again he confirmed what was happening.

‘Soon I return you to Gordon,’ Raúl said, ‘but first you come to me.’

It was foreplay. So much so she felt that as if his fingers were inside her. So much so that she could feel, despite the sporran, the thick outline beneath his kilt. It was the most dangerous dance of her life. She wanted to turn. She wanted to run. Except her body wanted the feel of his arms. Her burning cheeks rested against purple velvet and she could hear the steady thud of his heart as hers tripped and galloped. No one around them had a clue about the fire in his arms.

He smelt exquisite, and his cheek near hers had her head wanting to turn, to seek the relief of his mouth. She did not know the range of la petit mort or that he was giving her a mere taste. Estelle was far too innocent to know that she was building up to doing exactly as instructed and coming to him.

Raúl knew exactly when he felt the tension in his arms slowly abate, felt her slip a little down his chest as for a brief moment she relaxed against him.

‘Thank you for the dance.’ Breathless, stunned, she went to step back.

But still he held her as he lifted her chin and offered his verdict. ‘You know, I would like to see you really cuss in Spanish.’

He let her go then, and Estelle headed to the safety of the ladies’ room and ran her wrists under the tap to cool them.

Careful, she told herself. Be careful here, Estelle.

There was a blaze of attraction more intense than any she had known. What Estelle did know, though, was that a man like Raúl would crush her in the palm of his hand.

She looked up into the mirror and took out her lipstick; she could not fathom what had just taken place—nor that she had allowed it.

That she had partaken in it.

And willingly at that.

‘There you are.’

Gordon smiled as she headed back to the table and she could not feel more guilty: she’d even failed as an escort.

‘I’m so sorry to have left you—some foreign minister wanted to speak urgently with me, but we couldn’t get him on the line and when we did…’ Gordon gave a weary smile. ‘He had no idea what he wanted to speak to me about. I’ve been going around in circles.’ Gordon drained his drink. ‘Let’s dance.’

It felt very different dancing with Gordon. They laughed and chatted as she tried not to think about the dance with Raúl.

Yes, she danced with Gordon—but it was the black eyes still on her that held her mind. Raúl sat at the table drinking whisky.

‘I think you’ve made quite an impression. Raúl can’t keep his eyes off you.’

She started in his arms. ‘It’s okay, Estelle.’ Gordon smiled. ‘I’m flattered—or rather my persona is. To have Raúl as competition is a compliment indeed.’

He kissed her cheek and she rested her head on his shoulder, and then her eyes fell to Raúl’s black eyes that still watched and there was heat in her body, and she tried to look away but she could not. She watched his mouth move in a slow smile till Gordon danced her so that Raúl was out of her line of vision. Then, a moment later, her eyes scanned the room for him and prayed that the dangerous part of her night was now over.

Raúl was gone.