CHAPTER SIX
RAUL tossed the last of his clothing into the case that lay open on the bed and then brought the lid down on it with a bang. Fastening the zip with a rough, wrenching movement, he pulled it off the bed, carried it through into the adjoining sitting room and deposited it beside the door, ready for the hotel porter to come and collect it. Another hour, and he would be out of here.
And it couldn’t happen soon enough. He’d known from the start that this trip to England was going to be hell on earth, but the truth was that he had never imagined how hellish it could be. Accepting the appalling news of Lori’s death, getting through the formalities and arranging for her funeral had been terrible enough. But then there had been the added twist of torture that had come in the meeting with Alannah, the discovery that it had been her brother who had …
‘No …’
He aimed a vicious kick at the side of the suitcase as his mind shied away from thinking of the crash that had killed his sister. The passage of four days since the news had broken had done nothing to blunt the sharply jagged edges of that pain and the news he had received just that afternoon had only stirred up all the sorrow even more.
Rubbing the palms of his hands fiercely across his face, over his aching, burning eyes, Raul could only wish that he could wipe away the memory of the past few days as he did so. He had thought that it couldn’t get any worse, but fate had had one last little trick in store, one further twist of the knife that made the loss of his sister even more unbearable to think of.
But if he didn’t think of Lorena then there was only one path his thoughts went down and that was one that was no more comfortable than the first.
The image of Alannah Redfern’s lissom body, her stunning face and the clear, emerald-green of those almond-shaped eyes was always ready to slide into his mind if he let his guard down. It was there in his memory during the day, distracting him from work, heating his blood and making him hard and hungry in the space of one heavy beat of his heart.
He could still feel the brutal kick of disgust that had landed on his senses with the realisation of just why she had kissed him, why she had responded to him so eagerly, so—for a moment at least, he had actually believed—sweetly. Disillusionment had set in fast and the rage that had replaced it had been coldly savage. If he had thought that he hated her before, then it had been nothing to the way he felt now. He had had to get out of her flat before his rage had got the better of him. And since then his fury had been directed at himself and the way that he couldn’t forget.
At night the same images of her kept him from sleep, and when he did eventually doze off then the vision of her softly yielding naked body opening under his turned his dreams into burningly erotic fantasies, so real that he could have sworn that she was actually there. Waking in the dark to tangled sheets, with his own skin slick with sweat, the memory of the taste of her mouth still on his tongue, the scent of her flesh in his nostrils was a sensual torment that had him pacing the floor in the middle of the night, or raiding the mini-bar for something strong enough to give him a chance at sleep.
It never worked and after two long, wakeful nights and two cold, sorrow-filled days he felt like a bad-tempered dog, snarling inwardly and ready to bite.
The final straw had been when he had discovered that his mobile phone was missing. He hadn’t even noticed that it was not in his possession until his father had contacted him in his hotel room, desperate to know what was going on. Since then he had turned the room upside down, emptied every drawer, checked in every pocket and still not found it. It was only as he was packing to return home that he had realised where it must be.
He had had the phone in his hand in Alannah’s flat. He’d spoken to Carlos, saying he would be down in a moment and.
A string of savage expletives escaped his lips and he raked his hands viciously through his hair as he remembered switching off the phone and dropping it—he thought—back into his jacket pocket. He had been concentrating so hard on reining in his temper that he must have must have missed the pocket and let it fall, unnoticed, onto the cushions of the chair where he’d been sitting. And he had walked out of her flat in such a fury that he hadn’t noticed that he’d left it. He could almost picture it now, down in the crack between the cushions, silent and unseen.
Damn it to hell, he would have to send Carlos round to pick it up.
He was heading for the phone on the desk when the knock came at the door. The porter, come for his bag. ‘Momento!’
Checking in his pocket that he had cash for a tip, he strode to the door, opened it and stared in blank bemusement at the person outside.
The person who had just filled his thoughts with unwanted sensual memories.
The person he had tried so damned hard to forget and failed so miserably at it.
‘Alannah!’
It was as if he had summoned her up. As if simply by thinking of her he had somehow brought her here, to stand in the corridor. As if she had walked out of his dreams and into reality.
And the reality was much better than the dream.
Her hair was loose and tumbled softly about her face, the pale skin was totally untouched by makeup except for some mascara that darkened her fine lashes and a slick of gloss over her lips that made her look as if she had just run her tongue along them, moistening them slightly. She was dressed in a soft pale green dress, one with a skirt that swirled around her slender calves, with the innumerable small buttons fastening the front. It made his mouth dry just to see them. When the thought of the sensual delight of setting himself to opening each and every one of those pearly discs slid into his head he clamped down on it hard, fighting against the risk of it reducing him to the state of some tongue-tied adolescent whose raging hormones could not be brought under control.
‘I brought you this …’
Her tone was stiff and her eyes didn’t quite meet his, their mossy-green gaze focused somewhere over his shoulder as if she was looking at someone else there. She lifted her hand, holding it out flat. In the centre of her palm lay the missing mobile phone.
‘You left it in my flat.’
‘Gracias.’
His own voice was rough and husky, as if it had come from a very sore throat, and even in his own ears it sounded brusque and dismissive. The small movement had stirred the air, bringing the scent of her body to him, and the combination of clean, feminine skin combined with a delicate, softly floral scent assailed his senses like a physical attack. He almost snatched the phone from her, knowing that the feel of her hand, the warmth of her flesh against his fingertips would be like setting a match to paper-dry tinder, threatening to send him up in flames in a heartbeat.
‘I found it down the side of the chair. You must have dropped it there when …’
A wash of colour flooded up into her cheeks as her voice trailed off and he knew that like him she was remembering just why the phone had been left on the chair in the first place.
‘I was wondering where it was.’
Was it only in his own ears or did he really sound so appallingly stiff and stilted? He didn’t seem to be able to make his mouth work normally. It was as if his tongue had suddenly become stiff and swollen in his mouth.
Or perhaps it was because of the way that his eyes were fixed on the soft, peachy fullness of her mouth. Remembering the feel of it against his, the taste of her on his lips. The way that she had kissed him and the heated response of her body. The heated, deliberately calculated response.
‘I’d just decided that it must be in your flat and I was about to send Carlos round to fetch it.’
‘Well, now you have it back.’
Alannah’s response was low and strangely flat. She was back to being the washed-out creature he had first seen in the hospital room on the day he had arrived in England. There was little trace of the seductive