‘You couldn’t have stopped her, Raul. She was a grown woman.’
‘She was twenty-one!
‘Old enough to know her own mind. And her own heart!’
She had been twenty-one when she’d met him. She’d known her own heart then—known that she wanted to stay with this man for the rest of her life. Until reality had stripped the rose-coloured spectacles from her eyes.
‘Her heart …’ Raul’s scornful laugh dismissed the claim. ‘She didn’t love him—she couldn’t have done.’
‘And why not?’
This time Alannah was the one to take a step forward, defiance driving her close to Raul’s powerful form in a way that in any other mood she would have avoided at all costs.
‘Why couldn’t she have loved Chris? Why is that so hard to believe? Or is it just that you don’t think that any member of my family is lovable? That because I walked out on you then no Redfern is worth bothering with? Don’t take your own bitterness out on—’
‘Bitterness!’
Raul’s laugh this time was pure cynicism, so harsh it made her flinch back as he tossed it right into her face.
‘Don’t kid yourself, querida! There’s no bitterness—that’s not what I feel. The truth is that I feel nothing—nothing at all. Except perhaps a trace of relief that you refused my offer of marriage when you did. I dread to think what my life would be like now if you’d accepted—a living hell, I should imagine.’
‘Then we’ve both cause to be grateful it never happened!’
Alannah flung the words at him, putting the bite of conviction into each syllable.
‘But you can’t blame my behaviour on Chris! He is—he was,’ she amended painfully, faltering as the black memories hit home, ‘a very different person. And he adored Lori. He would never have hurt her—not …’
Another tidal wave of memory crashed over her head, killing the words on her tongue, drying her throat painfully. And the terrible glitter in Raul’s dark eyes told her that he had noticed and even as she began to feel the fear, to dread what was coming, he pounced with lethal perception.
‘Not?’ he echoed viciously. ‘Not what, querida? Your brother would never have hurt Lorena, not …?’
He let the sentence trail off, obviously expecting her to complete it. But Alannah couldn’t find the words, or the strength to use them.
‘Tell me.’
It was a tone that had in it all the command, all the arrogance of the generations of aristocrats who had made up the Marcín dynasty. It was the voice of a man who was used to being obeyed and expected nothing less right now. And Alannah felt her legs start to tremble at the sound of it, her knees threatening to give way beneath her.
‘Raul—please …’ she tried but he swept the words aside with a savagely imperious gesture.
‘Tell me!’ he ordered. ‘And tell me the truth—all of it; I shall know if you lie.’
She’d no doubt about that, Alannah acknowledged privately. She wouldn’t dare to lie to him, fearing the consequences if she did and he found out. His ability to read the truth in her face came close to being psychic and she was afraid of what he would see in her eyes if she met his. But how could she say …?
‘He was driving!’
The words echoed her thoughts so closely that for a dreadful moment she thought she had spoken them out loud. But then to her horror she realised that it was even worse. Raul had seen in her expression the words she couldn’t bring herself to say and now he spat them out in savage fury, his eyes pure ice, his expression dark with disgust.
‘Your brother was driving the car that crashed, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?’ he demanded again, with brutal emphasis when she flinched away from answering him.
‘Yes …’
It was just a whisper, a thin thread of sound. But, hearing it, Raul flung up his arms in a gesture that expressed the violence of his thoughts more than any words could ever manage. Spinning away from her, he paced the width of the living room back and forth, back and forth, making Alannah think fearfully of a caged, ferocious tiger, one that was too big and too powerful to be confined in the small space of her tiny apartment.
‘Raul …’ she tried but he ignored her, flicking off her trembling use of his name with a brusque shake of his head.
‘He wouldn’t hurt her,’ he muttered, low and dangerous. ‘Oh, no, he wouldn’t hurt her—wouldn’t harm a hair on her head—he just killed her!’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘CHRIS didn’t kill her!’
Alannah struggled to control her voice, to stop if from shaking so much that her words were incomprehensible.
‘He wouldn’t—’
‘Was he drunk?’
‘No—it wasn’t like that.’
Suddenly aware of the way that she was holding out her hands to Raul, seeming to implore him to listen, Alannah dropped them again hastily, pushing her fingers into the pockets of her jeans to hide the way they shook with nerves.
‘Then what was it like?’
At least he had stopped the restless pacing. He had come to a halt but over on the opposite side of the room, well away from her as his molten copper eyes blazed into hers. The physical distance between them might be small in reality, but in Alannah’s mind it had suddenly opened up like some huge, unbridgeable chasm, stretching wide and deep to separate them totally.
‘It was an accident—a lorry driver lost control and veered right across, knocking them into the central reservation—no one’s fault—just …’
‘Just an accident.’ Raul’s tone put a spin of total disbelief on the words. ‘But it wasn’t an accident that Lori was here in the first place, was it? That was because you and your brother worked on her. She would never have gone against my wishes …’
‘Gone against your wishes!’
Alannah secretly felt that it was relief that he had moved on to another topic, giving her something to attack him with rather than just taking the accusations she couldn’t refute, that put a new confidence into her voice, though she wished it didn’t sound quite so shrill, so hard and belligerent.
‘Do you really think that you had the right to impose your wishes on her? That you could interfere in her life and tell her what to do? Dictating to her …’
‘I wanted to make sure she never met up with you again. You or any member of your family.’
‘And why? Because I wasn’t stupid enough to accept your cold-blooded proposal of marriage—does that make me unfit to even associate with any member of your family? I loved Lori.’
‘And so you encouraged her to come here and visit—to meet up with your brother—and now because of that she’s dead.’
‘They’re both dead,’ Alannah managed flatly, exhaustion draining all the emotion from her voice. ‘I lost my brother too.’
‘He took my sister with him.’
Raul sounded as if he was choking over the words; as if his throat was closing up around them.
Abruptly he wheeled away from her, his face set and hard as he headed for the door.
‘Raul …’
Instinctive concern dragged his name from her lips.
‘Where—where are you going?’
‘Out.’