beneath her.
He might as well have kissed her; she was reacting as if he had. If he had actually wrenched her into his arms, plundered her mouth with his, ravaged her senses, he could not have made her feel any worse than she did now—or did she mean that she might actually have felt better? Shaking her head bemusedly, Alannah admitted to herself that she didn’t know. She only knew that she was trembling with reaction to just the closeness, the burn of the heat from his body along her senses. Her skin had prickled as if under assault from sensual pins and needles, her nerves twisting tight in anticipation of his kiss and then there had been the terrible sense of let-down when it hadn’t happened.
Let-down.
Even in her own thoughts, the word sounded wrong.
She had spent the last two years putting her time with Raul Marcín behind her, determined to forget about it, get him out of her life for good. She didn’t want to remember him, didn’t want to be with him, didn’t want him to have any part in her life, she told herself as she grabbed at the kettle again and shoved it fiercely under the tap. She could only feel thankful that Raul was no longer in the room to see the way that her jerky, clumsy movements betrayed her, giving away the unsettled way she was feeling, the conflict that was raging inside her.
‘Oh, no—no!’ The words slipped from Alannah’s lips, hidden under the rush of water as she turned on the tap to fill the kettle. ‘No—it can’t be this way!’
But she had loved him once and what was it that they said—that you never forgot your first love? She had adored him, fallen hopelessly, helplessly, irredeemably in love with him in the space of a heartbeat and she had put her own foolish, vulnerable, naïve and innocent heart into his hands and his keeping, only to have him crush it brutally, tearing it into pieces. But at the same time, in the way that long ago dinosaurs left their footprints etched into stone, so he had left his mark on her and her senses, her memories, had responded to his touch, his closeness at the most basic, most primitive level of awareness.
She made a terrible, a stupid mistake in the hospital when, weak and despairing, she had flung herself into his arms and sobbed out her misery on his shoulder. She’d allowed herself to know, just for a very short time, the dangerous, the forbidden comfort of having his arms around her, his strength supporting her, the lean power of his body close to hers. And doing that had weakened her defences, opened cracks in the armour she had built up around herself so that something about Raul could get through to her and stab at her cruelly, leaving her more vulnerable to him than she had been before.
So when he’d tried to dry her hair she’d reacted—overreacted—like a scalded wildcat, turning on him hissing and spitting, so that she had only herself to blame for his cold anger, the way he had walked out on her. And by being overly defensive she had given away too much of the vulnerability she was really feeling.
But not again, she determined as she slammed the lid onto the kettle before banging it down on the stove; never, ever again.
‘If that is for the damned coffee you seem so insistent on, then I have to say yet again that I really do not want one.’
Raul had appeared in the doorway again, big, dark and dangerous-looking, a disturbing scowl on his face.
‘Then what do you want?’
His broad shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug, but even though the gesture seemed to dismiss her question as irrelevant something new flared in the deep bronze pools of his eyes. Something that sent a shiver of apprehension skittering down her spine as she realised that her uneasiness had caught on his nerves and what she saw in his gaze was coldly burning suspicion.
‘You tell me—after all, you were the one who invited me in. And coffee was your excuse for doing so.’
‘It wasn’t an excuse …’
The knowledge of why she had really invited him into her flat, the worry that she still hadn’t dared to broach the subject, made her voice croak in a way that she knew sounded as if she had something to hide.
‘No?’ Raul questioned harshly. ‘Then why am I here? Because you will not convince me that coffee was uppermost in your mind.’
‘Not uppermost,’ Alannah conceded but then she saw the way that his head went back, his eyes narrowing, and her throat closed up sharply, preventing her from going any further.
‘Sí?’ Raul questioned sharply. ‘So if the coffee was not the most important thing—then what was? Tell me why I am here—why you invited me to your flat in the first place.’
Pushing a hand into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a slim black mobile phone and held it up between them.
‘And tell me the truth or I will call Carlos and tell him to come now …’
His thumb moved, hovered over the speed-dial button.
‘No—wait …’
She couldn’t let him go, not until she had told him the truth that he had demanded—the truth about Chris and the accident and. But how could she tell him without carefully leading up to it? She couldn’t just blurt it all out, throw it in his face without any lead-in or preparation. That was why she had made such a fuss about the coffee.
But where could she start? How could she tell him when she knew already just what his reaction would be?
She should start with Chris … but just the thought of the name of her adored younger brother made her mind freeze in pain, unable to frame a single word but Chris.
‘Alannah …’
She had waited too long, her thoughts preoccupied by her worries, and Raul was growing impatient, his use of her name a low growl of warning. As she forced herself to focus she saw his thumb move again, threatening to press the button.
‘No—please wait!’
To her intense relief he hesitated, stopped the movement, his thumb barely a centimetre above the surface of his phone. The bronze eyes he turned on her seemed to burn over her skin, searing away a fine layer and leaving her feeling raw and exposed, desperately apprehensive.
‘Then tell me.’
‘I will—I promise. But not here. Not like this. Why don’t we go and sit down? We’d be more comfortable in the living room.’
But comfortable for how long? She had to tell him now; had to get it out in the open or he would walk out before she managed it. But she didn’t dare to think of what would happen after she’d told him. Deep in the pit of her stomach all the nerves twisted into tight, cruel knots of trepidation until she felt that she might almost be sick.
‘I need to be comfortable for this?’
That note of suspicion had deepened, darkened, intensifying all her fears just to hear it.
‘It would be more—more civilised. Look, just give me a minute to get a drink, a glass of water—you might not want one but I do. And then I’ll—then we can talk.’
For an uncomfortable second she thought he was going to refuse. The cynical, sceptical glance he turned on her face made her stomach muscles tighten in apprehension. But then, just when she thought he wouldn’t, he inclined his dark head in agreement.
‘OK,’
