paid to her futile attempts to convince him that she watched what she ate. And she was dimly aware that she didn’t want him thinking the worst of her.
‘Anyway,’ he said bracingly, ‘You’re not overweight. You’re curvy.’
Her face broke into a smile of delight and she laughed that infectious laugh of hers. ‘Funny, that’s exactly what I keep telling myself!’
Rafael looked briefly at her and had a moment of utter madness—a moment when he wanted to touch her, feel her body under the unflattering clothes and find out for himself how curvy she really was, how heavy and succulent those abundant breasts of hers truly were.
He turned away abruptly. ‘Fascinating though this is, I’m going to have to leave you. I have work to do.’
‘It’s Sunday.’
‘Try telling that to the rest of the world.’ He headed to the stairs while Cristina followed him, unsure whether she would see him again and already telling herself that that was fine. Thoughtful though he had been in sorting her out the evening before, and sexy though he was in a way that sent her entire body into overdrive, there was too much latent aggression inside him, and he was a workaholic. Cristina could respect that fierce work ethic, but she had never found it a particularly attractive trait in a man. The few boyfriends she had had in the past had been kind, unassuming free spirits who, like her, had preferred the great outdoors to the deadly indoors.
That said, she couldn’t help but feel a sharp wrench as he opened her front door and turned towards her.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said. ‘Of course, I shall send your mother a thank-you note, but if you speak to her please tell her that it was so kind of her to invite me and that I had a marvellous time. I think she’s coming down some time next month when my mother comes over to visit.’
She paused for him perhaps to mention bumping into her again, but, deflatingly, he said nothing. He just tilted his head politely to one side, hearing her out, and she wondered whether her rambling gene had kicked in again. ‘And don’t work so hard.’ She smiled. ‘Ever so often you should go to the park and have a walk. It’s lovely, even in winter.’ She very nearly tacked on a lengthy account of what she did when she went to the park—the interesting people she saw, the feeling of peace she got when she sat on a bench and watched the ducks bustling and going about their daily business—but held herself back in the nick of time.
‘Thanks for the advice,’ Rafael said gravely. ‘I’ll give it some thought when my working day ends at nine.’
‘Now you’re laughing at me.’
‘Perish the thought.’
He wasn’t sure how she had managed it, or maybe it had done him good just escaping London for a night, but he was perfectly relaxed by the time he made it to his own place in Chelsea.
Unlike Cristina, he occupied by London standards an enormous penthouse suite that spanned the top two floors of a redbrick mansion not a million miles away from where she lived. Like hers, his was impeccably decorated, and with a minimalism that left little room for individual touches. Just the way Rafael liked it. No family photos adorned the surfaces, no mementoes of holidays taken, no random books lying dog-eared on tables waiting to be picked up and explored. Instead, the living area was dominated by two sprawling, cream leather sofas, between which was a thick, cream rug with a barely visible abstract pattern and which had cost the earth.
The paintings on the walls were likewise abstract, splashes of colour which were demanding rather than soothing. Likewise, they too had cost the earth.
He dumped his case on the ground, poured himself a glass of water and immediately went to check his answer machine. Nine messages, eight of which he would deal with later. The ninth…
Rafael played it back with a frown of annoyance.
Delilah. A damned stupid name he had thought at the time, but he had been prepared to overlook that because she was exquisitely beautiful. Very tall, very leggy and with a serenely angelic face that cleverly hid the personality of a shrew.
Theirs had been one of the few relationships which he had allowed to drift, largely because he had been out of the country so much at the time that a face-to-face confrontation had never been engineered, and Rafael had not sought one out. Delilah was prone to hysterics, and if there was one thing that he couldn’t stand it was a hysterical woman.
Now, after nearly four months, she was back on the scene. His mother’s words slammed back at him—different mistresses every week…running away from a past he never wanted to revisit…living life in a vacuum…
He leaned back on the sofa, closed his eyes and thought that maybe, just maybe, it really was time to think about settling down.
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