closed as she rehashed in her mind her extraordinary afternoon and evening. The football coaching had started off with such lack of promise, and had ended in her sharing a meal with a man to whom she was—and she didn’t mind admitting it—strangely and intoxicatingly attracted. A man who was attracted to her!
He had confided in her. Had that been a turning point for him?
‘You’re not going to fall asleep on me, are you?’ Rafael asked as he heard her try to stifle a yawn.
‘Sorry.’ She shifted in her seat and looked at him drowsily. ‘Must be all that wine after running around coaching. I feel exhausted.’
Rafael started to say something and then noticed that her eyelids were drooping. It dawned on him that she was nodding off in his company. Was this what they meant by sending someone to sleep?
By the time the taxi was outside her apartment, she was leaning against him, breathing evenly, sweetly asleep. Her hair smelled fresh and clean. He gently nudged her, and Cristina woke with a little start and straightened up, apologising profusely for falling asleep.
Her eyes were still drowsy. She looked like a little rumpled puppy.
‘I’ll see you in, and before you tell me that I don’t need to I know I don’t. But I will anyway.’
‘Am I that predictable?’ she asked, waking up more fully as she stepped out into the rain.
‘No,’ he drawled slowly. ‘Predictable isn’t a word that could be used to describe you.’
It was only when they were in the lift that Cristina, fully alert now, became aware of the atmosphere between them. Something had changed, although she couldn’t precisely say what. They both knew something about each other that was unique to them. She knew about a slice of his past which he had shared with no one else, and he knew that she was a virgin, and this intimacy seemed to have altered something. Altered it in a thrilling and very charged way. She kept her eyes studiously averted in the lift, but every nerve in her body was aware of him standing next to her, his hair damp from the rain, his hands thrust into the pockets of his trench coat.
The lift doors purred open and, like a bolt from the blue, Cristina realised what had been lying at the back of her mind ever since she had set eyes on Rafael, ever since he had come to her rescue at his mother’s party.
For reasons quite beyond her, he had awakened something in her, a sexual side that had been in hiding, waiting for the right moment. Even though he wasn’t the right man, he still did things to her, made her feel alive, sent all her senses on red-hot alert.
And she couldn’t help but think that he felt something for her as well. Everything pointed in that direction because, really and truly, why would he pretend an attraction that wasn’t there? What would be the point?
Never in her wildest imagination had she ever thought that he might really find her sexy, but it seemed that he did—and the realisation was as powerful as a drug, firing her blood, making her giddy with excitement.
Her hands were trembling as she inserted the key into her door and let them both in to her apartment.
This time she didn’t, as she might normally have, turn to him with a polite, friendly smile, thank him for the lovely meal and wait for him to leave as she stood sentinel by her front door. This time, she just half turned and asked him whether he might care for a cup of coffee.
She shrugged off her coat, hung it over the banister and without giving him time to frame an answer headed up the narrow stairs, her heart beating so loudly that she swore that, had there been complete silence, she would have heard it over the patter of the rain outside.
As it was, she could hear him following up the stairs, and when he was standing framed in the doorway of the small kitchen she was already fetching two mugs down from the cupboard.
He had disposed of his trench coat and of the beige cashmere jumper and had rolled the sleeves of his shirt to the elbows.
‘I know.’ She thought her voice sounded jumpy and she cleared her throat. ‘It’s really warm in the flat. I can’t bear to be cold inside, so the heating’s always turned up.’ She gave a nervous little giggle. ‘I can’t imagine what I’m doing for the global warming situation. You know, you see these adverts on telly: carbon footprints … should wash clothes at thirty degrees instead of forty …’ She was talking too much. She blushed and stared down in a fixated fashion at the coffee which she was now spooning into the mugs.
In the silence, her eyes skittered across to him. He hadn’t moved from his position by the door, although he was now leaning against the door frame and smiling at her.
‘Would you believe me if I told you that I’d never met anyone like you before?’ he asked lazily.
‘Would you say that that’s a compliment?’
‘Isn’t it always a compliment to be told that you’re unique?’ he said, and for a few seconds Cristina thought that he hadn’t exactly answered her question, at least not in a very satisfactory way. But her thoughts scattered at his expressive, glinting smile. It transfixed her and brought all coherent thought skidding to an abrupt stop.
Rafael walked towards her and rescued the kettle from her shaking hands, then he poured boiling water into the mugs.
‘There you go again,’ he murmured softly. ‘Acting like a cat on a hot tin roof. Are you nervous because I flirted with you over dinner?’
Cristina, lost in the depths of those fabulous blue eyes, shook her head dumbly. It was impossible to think straight when she was looking at him, when he was looking at her, like that. It was as if time had stood still, and in that moment everything seemed heightened: every sense, every noise, the faintest flutter of her heart.
Her hand reached up and she soundlessly stroked the side of his face, tracing the harsh, beautiful contour of his cheekbone. And then, standing on tiptoe, her eyes closing as she neared him, she softly covered his mouth with hers.
CHAPTER FIVE
RAFAEL didn’t know whether it was the hesitancy of the gesture or the implication behind it, but the result was explosive. One minute he was coolly playing with the notion that this woman, unexpectedly, might very well be the one who made sense when it came to settling down … and the next minute his body was reacting to a simple touch as if she were the first woman to have laid hands on him.
He didn’t stop to question his reaction.
Coffee was forgotten as he returned that tentative kiss with one of his own. He curled his fingers into her hair, tilting her head back so that he could plunder her sweet, eager mouth with his tongue, until her body curved against his. He could almost feel her heartbeat, and when eventually they surfaced for oxygen he held her back, breathing thickly,
‘Are you sure you want this?’ he questioned unevenly. Never before had he asked a woman whether she wanted to sleep with him. In that game called love—or rather, as far as he was concerned, lust—the rules were perfectly understood. It had always been a ritual, a courtship routine, the only difference being that the routine had never led to permanence.
How ironic that he should now give this woman the chance to back out when she was the chosen one.
He would also not be making
