‘Are you talking from personal experience?’ Karen enquired drily.
Gordon stiffened. ‘No, actually I’m not, but—’
‘Gordon Frinton…Karen Chalmers,’ Sarah introduced hastily as Gordon’s fingers flexed with annoyance against her back. The fireworks of a personality clash were in the air.
Karen cast Gordon a glowing smile. ‘Sarah has mentioned you, but when I saw you I wasn’t at all sure that you could be Gordon,’ she said, typically cryptic, as she rested a determined hand on his sleeve. ‘While you go and lock your cashmere in my closet, Sarah, Gordon and I will—’
Gordon turned back to Sarah. ‘Let me take your coat.’
‘Don’t be silly, Gordon,’ Karen interposed sweetly. ‘I have to show you where the drinks are stashed. You can’t be in two places at once.’
Gordon was carted off whether he liked it or not. His innate good manners forbade further protest but the squared set of his shoulders spoke for him. The luminous amethyst eyes that dominated Sarah’s triangular face sparkled with humour. Poor Gordon. The more aloof he was, the more outrageous Karen would be. She had already told Karen that Gordon was no more than a casual friend but Karen wanted to check him out for herself.
Having disposed of her coat, Sarah scanned the spacious lowlit lounge, relieved that the room wasn’t as crowded as the hall crush had suggested. It was a very long time since she had been at a party. Indeed if it would not have been outright rudeness to refuse yet another of Karen’s invitations, Sarah would not have been here at all. She was more at ease with small groups of friends than she was amid a sea of strangers.
There was a brief lull in the music and a throaty burst of male laughter splintered through the covering buzz of conversation. Sarah’s head jerked round on a chord of recognition too instinctive even to be questioned. In appalled stasis, she froze, her pupils dilated by shock.
A tall, black-haired male with boldly cast sun-bronzed features stood in stark silhouette against the backdrop of floor-deep uncurtained windows. As he sank fluidly down on to the arm of a cream leather couch, he was the confident focus of a gathering crowd.
A woman pushed past Sarah to gain entry to the room. ‘Good lord, isn’t that…?’
The roaring in her eardrums drowned out the rest of the sentence. She could not believe at first, did not want to believe that he was real. But Rafael was breathtaking and unforgettable. Successfully blocking him from her every waking thought had not prevented his lithe dark image from regularly haunting her dreams.
Absorbed faces surrounded him. Lean golden hands sketched vivid word pictures in the air. His raw vibrance struck her like an electrical charge. Against that intensely physical aura of his, other men simply paled into the woodwork. Wherever Rafael went, women followed him with their eyes. They did it openly or covertly or even unconsciously. None of them was immune to the storm-force potency of his personality. Or that white lightning sexuality that could illuminate the darkest room…burning, blatant and blinding. God had beamed benevolently on Rafael’s birth but, even without that striking, hard-boned physical beauty, Rafael would have exerted a magnetic draw for her sex. He held court with the uninhibited ease of a natural extrovert.
Without warning, his chiselled profile spun in her direction. His piercing eyes narrowed, homed in on her with laserbeam velocity. Eyes tawny…hypnotic…compelling. Before she swung away on a high of mindless panic, she registered the loss of animation that stilled his dark, strong face. On wobbly legs that threatened to buckle beneath her, she pushed a driven passage back through the hall and down to the sanctuary of Karen’s bedroom.
Her stomach was heaving. She fled into the adjoining bathroom and retched painfully and miserably on an empty stomach. As she gasped for breath in the stricken aftermath, it occurred to her that she had to be the only woman alive capable of reacting to Rafael with nausea and recoil.
Oh, you’re so brave, so brave, Sarah. If she had known he would be here, wild horses wouldn’t have dragged her out tonight. That wasn’t cowardice, she reasoned weakly. You didn’t forget that amount of pain, not if you lived to be a thousand, you didn’t. But in five years she had changed so much; she wasn’t the same person, she was a completely different woman. Are you? an inner voice gibed. He’s out there ringed by fascinated, lusting females and envious, admiring males…and you are hiding in a bathroom. Dear heaven, had nothing changed after all?
A flush of shame covered her drawn cheeks. She returned to the bedroom. Backbone and pride had resurfaced, although neither was the equivalent of a burning Olympic flame. Dear lord, what was he doing here? But why shouldn’t he be here? Karen had countless friends and acquaintances. There was hardly anybody who was somebody on the social scene whom Karen didn’t know. However, Rafael didn’t live in London, he lived abroad. Like a lush, tropical plant of the jungle variety, he thrived only in hot, sunny climates.
Her fingertips pressed to her throbbing temples. He would leave. He had seen her. Of course he would leave. Even Rafael would not have the insolent detachment to stay on. Had he been reminded that he had two children he had never seen? Never even tried to see? Trembling, she forced herself to check her appearance in the mirror. Amazingly, the sleek wings of her cornsilk hair were still smoothly looped to the back of her small head. Her strappy whisper-green dress skimmed slender curves as delicately drawn as a porcelain figurine’s. Her agonised vulnerabilty was etched in her eyes alone.
A derisive echo from the past swam out of her subconscious. ‘You’re the pretty little doll, the fair princess they chose to elevate and create with their money. Dolls don’t live and breathe, querida. And neither do you.’
She was torn afresh by the agony of that rejection. A doll in an elaborate costume kept sterile within plastic casing. Perfect to look at, lifeless to touch. When her life was smashed to smithereens by the man she loved, that was how Sarah had seen herself.
The door opened, startling her.
‘So this is where you’ve got to. Here I am throwing the party of the year and you’re in hiding. Thank God,’ Karen pronounced in her off-beat style, shutting the door behind her. ‘I’ve dealt with Gordon for you. I stuck him behind the bar in the kitchen, pulled off his bow-tie in case someone takes him for an official barman, and I’ve advised him to have a few while he’s serving. He’s so nicely brought up that he’ll be there all night if you don’t decide to rescue him!’
Sarah faced her friend, pale but composed. ‘I wouldn’t care to bet on that if I were you,’ she quipped.
Karen peered at her. ‘Are you feeling OK? You’re as white as Gordon’s shirtfront.’
‘I had a bit of a headache. I took some tablets.’ As Sarah told the lie, she went pink.
‘Knowing your talent for understatement as per casual friends, you’ve probably got a migraine coming on. Lie down, for goodness’ sake,’ Karen commanded bossily, pulling up a chair and settling herself down. ‘I want to hear all about Gordon.’
‘Honestly, I’m fine.’ Sarah sat down on the foot of the bed. ‘Should you be leaving your party?’
‘I’ve Gordon on the bar, big brother looking out for drunks and kid sister minding the music,’ Karen confided. ‘The food is all cold and laid out in the dining-room. As a hostess, I am superfluous.’
‘You’re certainly well organised.’
‘Gordon,’ Karen repeated impatiently. ‘You’ve been holding out on me. Who? Where? How? I would have had to pin him to the wall and throw knives to get the details out of him! Even then, it might just have been name, rank and number. Still, he looks exactly what protective Mummy and Daddy Southcott would prescribe for an unattached daughter.’
Rafael would be gone when she returned to the party. Bolstered by the conviction, Sarah’s rigid spine relaxed slightly. ‘He’s a banker.’
‘I