eyes.
‘What makes you think I was not serious?’ he countered. His voice lowered a husky octave as he leaned into her and observed softly, ‘You are a very desirable woman.’
Tongue-tied and blushing, she looked away, unable to come up with a smart remark to diffuse the fizz of sexual tension.
Did she want to diffuse it?
A thoughtful expression drifted across his lean predatory features as Rafael watched her plunge into a state of delicious blushing confusion. Rather than exploiting her sexuality, she seemed shocked by any reference to it.
‘I think maybe I will have some more to eat.’ Not looking at him, Maggie picked up her plate.
As she hurried across the grass towards the long trestle table loaded with food she bit her lip to repress a groan. So much for the new improved sexy me—I must have looked like a scared rabbit! What must he think of me?
Unable to stop herself, she glanced back over her shoulder and it became clear he wasn’t thinking of her at all. Her place had been taken by a pretty woman in a low-cut blouse who as Maggie watched threw back her head and laughed, her uninhibited spontaneity a striking contrast to Maggie’s own stilted self-consciousness.
She felt a stab of something that was obviously not jealousy but was nonetheless unpleasant. It was strange. She was not normally so self-conscious; it was just something about Rafael… Something? Who was she kidding? It was everything about Rafael!
The fact was she had never been attracted to a man this way in her life before. It wasn’t just the fact he was incredibly handsome, which he was, it was more…his earthy sensuality… She shook her head, frustrated by her inability to analyse what it was about him.
Maybe it was not possible to analyse; maybe she just had to accept that looking at his mouth made her ache.
One minute she was thinking about his carnal perfect mouth and the things she was shocked to realise she would have liked him to do to her with it and the next she was running.
Later, when she tried to work out the exact sequence of events they remained a confused jumble. In each reconstruction her shocking, shameful thoughts somehow mixed up with the sense of panic and urgency that she reacted to instinctively.
She was never even sure why she had glanced towards a pile of recently sawn timber—perhaps movement caught her eye? She actually looked away, barely registering it as her attention drifted to the children playing a hundred yards or so away.
Then a low rumble just audible above the sounds of merriment made her turn her head again. She froze, paralysed with horror as she saw the stack of felled trees begin to move… Like a house of cards they slipped, fell and began to roll down the steep incline.
Straight towards the group of playing children.
The plate slipped from her fingers. She was told later she yelled—that was what caught the attention of the others who set off in her wake—but she had no memory of that. She just remembered running, praying and the sound of her laboured breathing loud in her ears as she raced towards the children.
By the time she reached them the older ones, alerted by cries, had already started moving, running out of the path of the approaching danger. Some were crying, but the sound was lost in the general pandemonium.
Maggie bent and scooped up two of the smaller children sprinting to the safety of higher ground before depositing them in the arms of women standing, shocked, watching, and she went back, passing men running in the opposite direction with children in their arms.
One child remained, a solemn-eyed little boy who raised his arms to Maggie when she reached him, hefting him into her arms. She turned, pressed his face into her shoulder and tried to run; her legs felt leaden. They worked painfully slowly as she fought against the inertia, struggling to suck air into her oxygen-starved lungs.
She could hear the danger approaching but didn’t dare look… Convinced she wasn’t going to make it with her last ounce of strength she flung the little boy at a young man who was running out to meet them.
She saw him safe and closed her eyes as the adrenaline rush in her bloodstream dipped dramatically. She tried to run felt her legs give and cried out. Safety was tantalisingly near but she couldn’t… Her face scrunched into a teeth-clenched mask of determination as she tried to push herself forward.
Then something hit her. For a brief moment she thought it was the loose timber, then she realised the solidity was warm and male—it was Rafael. She stopped fighting as he carried her from danger.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE impetus of Rafael’s sprint carried them both past the crowd of cheering villagers and to the brink of the grassy slope beyond. He dug his heels in but the momentum he had built up was too great to resist and they went over the top, Maggie still in his arms.
As they landed at the bottom the breath left her body in a painful whoosh as she sank into the mercifully soft ground. For a moment she couldn’t breathe or speak…but euphoria made her want to explode. She was alive—that was a big, a massive, plus considering the way things had been looking seconds earlier. A little detail like speech loss was fine, bruises were fine, Rafael on top of her was…
Her chaotic thoughts slowed from a breathless gallop to a slow canter. Rafael was on top of her!
He was breathing like a marathon runner. She was underneath him, a position that if she was honest she had been imagining pretty much from the second she saw him.
She felt fingers frame her chin and heard a deep voice harsh with concern ask, ‘Are you all right, Maggie? Can you hear me?’
‘Of course I can hear you. I’m not deaf.’ She opened her eyes, his face suspended above her was very close.
His heavy-lidded eyes blazed, the heat in them pinning her as surely as his body; the bones of his face stood out in stark prominence beneath his gleaming golden skin.
She got breathless and it had nothing to do with his weight pinning her down—well, only partly. The veneer of cultured civilisation and urbane charm was totally stripped away, revealing the essence of the raw masculinity beneath.
Without a word or taking his eyes from her, he bent his head and fitted his mouth to hers, kissing her hard, then without a word he rolled off her.
‘You went back?’
She turned her head in response to the stark incredulity in his voice. Rafael lay on his back, one arm curved above his head, staring at the sky. She could see his chest rising and falling in sync with his laboured inhalations.
She decided that if he could pretend the kiss hadn’t happened, so could she. She could definitely ignore the fact her lips tingled and his taste was in her mouth, a piece of cake!
‘I think you saved my life, thank you.’ Twice, if anyone was counting.
She expected him to mention the fact. He didn’t.
‘I don’t want your thanks.’
She lay there on the floor as he got to his feet in one lithe athletic bound. He dragged the hair back from his brow before extending a hand.
After
