He stepped back, holding the door wider open.
‘I’m sorry—won’t you come in?’
The look she gave him was another reproof to his conscience. And the brief flash of her green eyes only made her face look even more pale and drawn, emphasising the shadows under her eyes.
‘You look as if you’re about to drop. Come in and sit down for a moment.’
‘I don’t think …’
He thought that he was being perfectly polite, that he had even added a touch of concern, but from the expression on her face he might just as well have suggested that he slit her throat right here and now. He felt his jaw tighten, his mouth compressing.
‘I am capable of being perfectly civilized …’
When she still hesitated, he gave up, flinging up his hands in exasperation and striding back into the room, leaving the door open behind him. Let her make her own decision.
‘Thank you.’
To his amazement she had actually followed him, stepping over the threshold of the door like a wary cat moving into alien territory. And, watching her, he knew that he had lied.
He might have said that he was capable of being civilised; he would even have been prepared to swear to it if necessary. But civilised was not what this woman made him feel. Just the soft sound of her voice made his pulse leap with thoughts of a huge bed, soft pillows, clean sheets and Alannah, warm and welcoming, beside him. The scent of her skin made hunger clutch, hard and hot, low down in his body, so that, turning again, to see her behind him, it was all that he could do to force his mouth into some sort of a smile.
‘I’ll get Carlos to take you back. It’s the least I can do—to say thank you. Why don’t you sit down?’
He waved a hand towards the big leather-covered settee that stood in the middle of the large sitting room and Alannah’s eyes followed the gesture but she silently shook her head and stayed right where she was.
‘Isn’t this the point at which I should offer you a coffee?’ he asked and to his surprise saw the stiffness of her face suddenly crumble and a real, genuine smile broke through the careful restraint she’d imposed.
‘If you did, do you think that we’d get to drink it? We don’t seem to have had much luck so far.’
Did she know what it did to him to see her eyes light up like that, if only for a moment? To see that lush mouth curve in warmth in a way that it so seldom did when he was around? He might tell himself that he hated this woman—detested the way she’d treated him, and now loathed her entire family for the destruction her brother had wreaked on his—but the truth was much more complicated. He just couldn’t get her out of his mind. He was addicted to her and the way he had been feeling the past couple of days was comparable to withdrawal symptoms.
He had needed his ‘fix’ of Alannah and his symptoms had started to subside as soon as she had appeared at his door. He knew what would really cure him of them and that was to give in to the demands his addicted body was making that he took her in his arms, kissed her—took her to bed.
Or would that only make the sexual craving so much worse for having given in to it and actually experiencing, rather than imagining, the pleasure he knew was just waiting for him in her gorgeous body?
‘OK, no coffee.’
But she wasn’t looking at him any more. Her attention had been caught by the sight of the packed suitcase standing beside the now closed door and she was staring at it as if it held some special fascination for her.
‘You’re leaving.’
‘In about an hour.’
Alannah didn’t know how she felt about that. She was shocked and confused by the sudden stab of pain that shot through her at the sight of the case. Was it the thought of him leaving that brought such distress? That if she hadn’t come here today, just now, then she would have missed him? He would have packed and left—and she would never have known. Did she really care?
Oh, who was she kidding? She cared. She had always cared. She might have tried to stop loving him, had spent two long years praying that the feelings would go away, but all he had to do was to walk back into her life and she was lost all over again. Wasn’t that why she was here, now, when she had told herself—told him—that she never wanted to see him again?
Oh, yes, so much that she had jumped at the chance that having to return his damn phone to him would bring. Raul, on the other hand, had been ‘about to send Carlos round to fetch it’. Just as he was going to get Carlos to drive her back home. It had been the phone he had wanted; not any chance to see her again. Instead, he had packed and was on his way, going back to Spain, going out of her life, without a word. If she had any sense, she would get out of here now.
If she had really had any sense then she wouldn’t even have come into the room at his invitation.
She didn’t really know quite why she had accepted that invitation. She’d known that walking into the room was like walking into the lion’s den—almost putting her head into the beast’s jaws and asking him to bite it off. But there had been something in his face that had made it impossible to do what was sensible. He’d looked tired, lost, lonely—strangely vulnerable. She’d known she should just turn and walk away but she just couldn’t do it.
But now she was forced to wonder if she had just been imagining things. Had she only seen in his face what she had wanted to see and deceived herself to what was really there?
‘There’s nothing to stay for now. Everything’s been done …’
Alannah was thankful that Raul’s attention was on his phone. He’d switched it on and was checking the missed-calls register, so he didn’t see the way her face changed in reaction to that dismissive ‘nothing to stay for’. She had a welcome moment to catch herself up, push the foolish weakness aside, and even managed to inject some much needed lightness into her tone when she asked, ‘Have you missed anything important?’
‘Most from my father.’ Raul was still scrolling through the numbers. ‘He wants minute-by-minute reports of everything.’
‘It must be very hard for him.’
Alannah’s voice was low as she thought of the desperate state her mother was in, unable to believe that her beloved son was gone for good. She hadn’t eaten a thing since the accident and only that morning Helena had declared that she had nothing to live for, that she could see no reason to go on.
‘He’s lost his daughter.’
‘He’s lost more than that.’
Something had put a new harshness into Raul’s voice and his sudden stillness alerted her to the fact that he had stopped messing with his phone and his dark head had lifted, bronze eyes looking straight at her.
Cold bronze eyes looking straight at her.
‘What is it?’
‘You don’t know?’ The way he said it made it clear that he believed she was just pretending. ‘Know what?’
She had to have been fooling herself when she’d thought that he was looking vulnerable—had she actually used the word lost? There was nothing in the least bit lost about him now and his face was set in such harsh lines that there was no way at all she could spot any chink in his personal armour. He was angry, he was cold, he was totally closed off against her and she had no idea why. The man who had invited her in, the man she had glimpsed so briefly when he had