with no trace of irony…talk about double standards! ‘You invited me, but let me guess—it’s not the same thing. God, I haven’t actually been missing anything, have I? Simon probably did me a favour.’ Now there was a novel thought. ‘Men are a total disappointment!’ she concluded heavily.
Rafael, struggling to follow the angry diatribe, picked up on one word. ‘Who is Simon?’
He took a swallow of the brandy that appeared to have no effect on him, but Maggie, conscious that she was being uncharacteristically indiscreet, wondered if the effect could be passed on to her like a sympathetic pregnancy.
She was a sympathetic drunk; the frivolous imagery made her smile.
‘Simon is my…was my fiancé.’
A look of utter astonishment crossed his face. ‘You were engaged?’
Maggie lifted her chin. ‘Why shouldn’t I be engaged?’ she demanded in a dangerous voice. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked, banging her chest. ‘Just what’s wrong with me?’ Her voice stalled on a quivering note of self pity.
‘Nothing is wrong with you.’
Maggie glared at his rigid blank face and snarled, ‘Once more with feeling! I actually prefer you when you’re incredibly rude. Mouthing polite platitudes you clearly don’t believe. It’s just so not you!’
‘I am not rude.’
The denial made Maggie roll her eyes. ‘No, you probably call it not caring what people think. Well, newsflash, buster, it’s the same thing!’ she informed him, tacking on seamlessly, ‘I think I will have that drink.’ Buster…? She really had to cut down on her intake of gangster movies.
‘Is that such a good idea?’ he asked, wondering about the man who had let her go. Clearly not very bright, that went without saying, but what had attracted Maggie to this loser and did he still have all his limbs intact?
She might look like Angelina, but Angelina’s daughter had definitely missed out on the statuesque calm gene; she was a real firebrand and bolshy with it, he thought, unable to repress the flicker of admiration.
Ignoring him, Maggie walked across to the bureau and picked up the glass. Surprised by the weight of the antique lead crystal, she weighed it in her hand before she lifted it in a silent toast. Rafael watched one brow raised, as fifty-year-old vintage brandy vanished down her throat on one gulp.
‘That must have hurt.’
Maggie lifted a hand to her throat, feeling the burn all the way down to her stomach. ‘It still is,’ she admitted, covering her mouth politely as she coughed.
Rafael found himself laughing. He went from being furious with her to enchanted. She really was delicious and not like any woman he had ever encountered. It was as if the less she tried to please him, the more he was fascinated.
‘Do they actually let you out without a keeper?’
‘Time off for good, possibly angelic behaviour. You know what my mistake was?’ The burn, she realised, had become a glow settling warmly in the pit of her stomach.
‘I know I will probably regret asking this, but what was your mistake, Maggie Ward?’
‘I thought I could become another person just like that.’ She snapped her fingers to illustrate her point. ‘But you can’t… I should have started with a motorbike or a tattoo…with you I was…’ She watched him shake his head in utter confusion but didn’t try to explain—he’d never understand. ‘You’ve got to keep it real and know your limits.’
Rafael, to whom real was fast becoming a dim and distant memory, took the half-full glass from her hand. The scary part was she was still well under the legal limit. ‘And I am not real?’
‘You’re a mistake,’ she admitted. ‘Jumping in the deep end. I wanted to prove to Simon… Millie, my mum…no, myself…’ She looked shocked by the admission and sat down abruptly. ‘I really don’t know what I was or am doing…a lot of things have been going on in my life just lately.’ And he really wants to know this, Maggie, she admonished herself.
‘Sometimes the past is better left undisturbed.’ He could see how delving into a background, searching for roots, might make a person question their life.
Maggie lifted her eyes, a little bemused by the intensity of his fixed regard.
Did he think she had a past? She almost wished she did have. Either way, she wasn’t about to admit she was actually a blank boring page, especially when it came to men and sex.
God, I don’t want to die a virgin.
She tried to think of a suitably enigmatic response and blurted, ‘But doesn’t the past make us what we are?’ His past had to be littered with glamorous, beautiful women.
‘I like to look forward, not back.’ And when he looked back on tonight, would it be with regret?
Regret that he had resisted the temptation that was driving him slowly out of his mind? Or regret because he had ignored the nagging voice of his conscience?
Did he want her so much because she was out of bounds? he speculated. And why was she out of bounds? What had changed between first seeing her and now? They were two consenting adults—why should they not enjoy each other?
‘What were you thinking when I came in? You looked very deep in thought.’
‘Isn’t that looking backwards?’
‘Touché!’
Her eyes slid of their own volition to the sensual curve of his sculpted lips.
Simon had never made her feel attractive.
The way Rafael had looked at her when they’d met, she had felt more aware of her femininity than Simon had made her feel in four years.
‘You have a very impressive home.’ He was a very impressive man.
‘Are you changing the subject?’
‘Yes.’
He released a laugh. Maggie tilted her head back as he got to his feet, and shuffled to the far end of the sofa as he sat down beside her.
‘Are you feeling better?’
‘Better, but a bit…’ Her voice died to a whisper when he reached across and trailed a finger down her cheek. ‘Near-death experiences will do that.’
She felt intense relief mingled with troubling regret when his hand fell away. ‘I just keep thinking what if I hadn’t met you tonight?’
Was she wondering about the confrontation with her birth mother? For the first time he considered today from Maggie’s point of view.
She might have dreaded the meeting. It might have taken her weeks to work herself up to the moment and, perhaps not fully committed, still wondering if she was doing the right thing, she had stepped back.
Was she regretting it now?
