to jelly, trembling violently now that the adrenalin had gone and reaction had set in.
The car screeched to a stop and a man got out and strode towards her, saying something in Spanish. She weakly lifted her head and the light of the street-lamp fell on her face and showed her his—they recognised each other in that instant. He was the man she had seen swimming that morning.
‘Are you OK? Did he hurt you?’ he asked in a deep, husky voice, his grey eyes moving over her in search of some visible sign of injury.
She shook her head, feeling even more like fainting. Why did it have to be him who came along just at this moment? It seemed less like a coincidence than a punishment. He was the last man she wanted to see right now.
‘He wanted my handbag,’ she whispered.
‘Did he get it?’ His English was very good, but she heard the faint note of a foreign accent. Presumably he was Spanish. He was certainly very dark, with olive skin and black hair which was glossy and very thick.
He was very casually dressed, in cream linen trousers and a chocolate-brown shirt, worn without a tie, the collar open at the throat to give her a glimpse of the bronzed skin she had stared at that morning when he’d climbed out of the pool. The very memory of that moment sent a wave of heat through her whole body. From a distance she had found him devastating—at such close proximity he had an even deeper impact on her.
‘No,’ she said unsteadily, showing him her handbag which she still clutched in one hand. Then she broke out in a voice that shook, ‘He had a knife!’
She still couldn’t believe it. It would be a long time before she got over the shock of seeing the knife shining in the lamplight. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before; she had always led a rather quiet, peaceful existence; violence was something she had only read about in newspapers. She had never imagined it happening to her.
‘I saw it. As I was driving towards you I saw the knife he held and I thought he was trying to kill you—you’re sure you aren’t hurt?’
She was wearing a little black jacket over a white dress printed with lilacs. He reached out to touch her shoulders and arms lightly, his fingertips gliding over the material of the jacket in exploration.
She quivered helplessly, shaken to her depths by what she instantly felt—his fingertips left a trail of fire on her skin through the layers of material under them.
‘No, I…I’m not…He didn’t hurt me.’ she stammered.
‘You’re cold,’ he said, his frown even deeper. ‘That’s shock. Come and sit in my car. I’ll call the police.’
She urgently said, ‘No, please don’t—I don’t want to spend hours talking to policemen; he didn’t get anything, or hurt me, so…I couldn’t even describe him; he was wearing a helmet that made it impossible to see his face; he looked like a spaceman.’
His face tightened in disapproval. ‘You ought to tell the police about it—he’s dangerous; he might use that knife on someone else and they might not be as lucky as you were.’
She knew he was absolutely right; it was what she would have said herself to anyone who had been attacked like that. How different a situation looked when it was you, yourself, who was experiencing it. Her common sense and reason told her one thing, she felt another.
Sighing, she said, ‘Well…could you ask if I could talk to them tomorrow? I really don’t feel up to it tonight.’
He stared down at her, his face still hard. ‘Very well, I’ll get in touch, explain what happened; I shall have to give evidence too, because I witnessed the attack. I’ll ask if you can talk to them tomorrow. Come along, I’ll drive you back to the hotel.’
She resisted the hand that tried to lead her away. ‘I’m with a group from the hotel—they’re in that bar; they’ll come out looking for me any minute.’
He shrugged her refusal away coolly. ‘I’ll go in and speak to the guide—it’s Ramon tonight, isn’t it?’
Startled, she nodded. ‘Yes.’ How had he known that? Had he been on this tour himself? Or did he work at the hotel?
He had such a marvellous tan—he must surely live here to have got so brown at this time of year. That tan was not the product of a week or two in Spain. It spoke of months of exposure to the sun.
‘Sit in my car and I’ll have a word with him, then I’ll drive you back.’
Bianca was so shaken by what had happened that she didn’t argue, although in other circumstances she might have done. She was too independent and used to running her own life and taking care of herself and her children to enjoy being ordered around by some strange man. But tonight she was quite relieved to be able to let him take charge; she let him lead her to his car and slide her into the front passenger seat.
He left the door open, but instead of going straight into the bar he went round to the back of his car and was back a moment later with a warm woollen tartan car rug which he gently wrapped around her.
‘It gets quite cold at night at this time of year,’ he said as she looked up, startled, her blue eyes wide, the pupils dilated as she felt his hands moving over her. ‘And you’re probably still in shock. Just sit here and rest. It will only take me a minute to find Ramón and explain.’
He closed the car door and she watched him walk rapidly over to the bar; the light from it spilled out around him as he opened the door and went in, his black hair gleaming and his face in sharp profile, his nose long and straight, his mouth a ruthless slash, his jawline determined.
Not a man you would want to argue with, and few people probably ever dared—which accounted for his cool assumption that she would obey him.
That could get annoying! she thought wryly, her mouth twisting. If she weren’t feeling so weak at the knees just now she would probably have resented being ordered around like that.
Or did she start feeling weak-kneed the minute she saw him get out of this car?
The idea made her tense and hurriedly shut her eyes as if that would make it easy to forget what she had just thought. It didn’t, of course. She couldn’t ignore the truth. Closer, and fully dressed, he was even more devastating than he had seemed at a distance, almost naked. She couldn’t understand why he was having such an intense effect on her. When he’d wrapped this rug around her his hands had touched her and she had felt her body throb with sensations she was afraid to remember. Her face ran with hot colour, her mouth went dry.
With a pang she thought of Rob, and felt an instant stab of guilt. It was shameful to be feeling this way about some other man, a stranger she had only seen for the first time today. What’s the matter with you? she asked herself. You have been on your own now for three years and you’ve met plenty of men during that time, some of them pretty good-looking—what’s so different about this one? You’re acting like a teenager with a first crush.
I wish I were a teenager! she thought. Well, maybe not a teenager—but I wish I were twenty again. I don’t want to be forty.
Was that what it was all about? Was she desperately looking for some way to stop time? To go back to her youth?
She pulled the rug closer, glad of the warmth. She was still shivering,
