to relax.
And Raul would go out of her life again and leave her in peace.
Which was what she wanted most in all the world, she told herself, refusing to let her mind even acknowledge the way that the words suddenly had a disturbingly hollow ring inside her head.
For now, she had enough to cope with just considering what was ahead of her and the prospect of facing the apocalyptic storm that would erupt when Raul knew the truth.
If she could get through the next thirty minutes then her life would be her own again.
CHAPTER THREE
THIRTY minutes and he was out of here, Raul told himself as the lift that was taking them to Alannah’s flat sped upwards towards the fifth floor. Less than thirty. He had told Carlos to be back exactly thirty minutes after he had left the car and already more than a couple of those had passed.
Not enough in Raul’s opinion. The sooner he got this—whatever this was—over and done with and was on his way again, the better.
The truth was that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing here at all. If he had any sense he would have stayed in the car and ignored Alannah’s invitation but tonight it seemed that all sense had deserted him, left behind in the headlong rush from Spain after the first phone call alerting him to the news of the accident.
At first he’d thought that the car had come to a halt just in time to stop him from doing something very stupid. The temptation to kiss Alannah, to feel the softness of her lips, taste the intimate flavour of her mouth, had almost overcome him. Another couple of seconds and he would have been lost in the sensual temptation of that upturned face, the soft swell of her lips, the sweet scent of her skin so close to him in the back of the car. So the feel of the vehicle drawing to a halt and Carlos’s announcement that they had arrived had come at just the right moment.
But then she’d turned on her way out of the car and looked back inside. Already the steady downpour of the rain had soaked into her hair, making it hang around her face in dripping strands, and drawing attention once more to how pale she was, how huge and dark her eyes appeared above the almost colourless cheeks. He remembered how slender she’d felt in his arms, how fragile, and when she’d suddenly offered him coffee he had found that the instant refusal that had risen to his lips had shrivelled there, unspoken, in the face of the look in those big green eyes.
In that moment he’d thought he understood just why she had asked him to come in with her. He felt he knew just what was in her mind because the same dark feeling, the same dread of being alone with his thoughts was the one that shadowed his own existence.
Because what was waiting for him when he got to the hotel? An empty, soulless room. A mini-bar that in the mood he was in would be far too tempting—but raiding it would not be in the least bit sensible. And he still wasn’t sure that he should leave Alannah on her own. She had calmed down since that emotional breakdown back at the hospital, but she was still barely holding herself together. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in the tremor of her voice. And knowing the dark, dragging ache of loss that was always there, he could imagine how she was feeling in spite of her obvious efforts to cover it up.
And so he had gone with her, determined to see her to her flat, to drink that damn cup of coffee. He would delay—for her and for himself—the moment of being alone, the time when the darkness closed around him all over again, hold it back for just thirty minutes, and then leave again. It would still be waiting for him when he came out. Nothing in the world could change that.
‘You still live in the same apartment?’
Courtesy insisted that he say something. It was either that or stare at her in stony silence all the way up to her flat.
‘The same building.’ Alannah was clearly making as much effort as him to make conversation. ‘The same floor, in fact. But not the same flat.’
Her tone was low, coolly distant and withdrawn. It was the voice of a stranger, someone he did not know. There was not a trace in it of the ardent, passionate girl he had once known or even of the sweet innocent he had first met. The sweet innocent he had believed she was when they had first met, he corrected himself harshly. He had only seen what he wanted to see and had been pretty quickly disillusioned.
At twenty-one, and fresh from university, she had just been looking for a holiday fling. Mission accomplished, she had moved on to someone else.
‘A bigger flat became vacant last year, so I grabbed at it.’
‘Room for two.’
‘What?’
A puzzled frown drew her arched brows together.
‘Your new man,’ Raul explained. ‘I assume you wanted to move in together.’
‘Oh—no, nothing like that.’
A wave of her hand dismissed the man in her life of as little importance as he had been.
‘I had a promotion at work and the flat came empty in the same month. I’d always wanted more space, so it seemed the perfect opportunity.’
The lift came to a halt as she spoke, metal door sliding open, and she walked out into the corridor.
‘That used to be where I lived …’
Another wave of her hand indicated a door to her left.
‘But now I’m down here …’
If she expected a response she didn’t get one, other than a quick, inarticulate sound that might have been agreement. From the moment that she had turned to walk away from him, Raul had found that his attention was momentarily distracted. Following Alannah down the blue-carpeted corridor towards the door of her apartment was a sensual experience strong enough to draw his attention completely. The fall of her red-gold hair mirrored the straight line of her back in contrast to the rounded curves of her hips. Long, slender legs in the tight-fitting jeans added to the delight.
He welcomed the sensations, the warmth that flooded his body. It was something to fill the black, empty spaces that seemed to have invaded his heart and his mind ever since he had answered the phone in the middle of the night and heard the news about Lorena’s accident. From that moment he felt as if he had been barely moving, speaking, functioning. Even the discovery of Alannah’s presence in the hospital room had hardly touched him.
Even when he had held her as she sobbed in his arms, he had felt as if his head was flooded with dark, icy water so that he couldn’t feel, couldn’t think. He had responded as he would do to any human being who was in pain and distress, and in the same way he had offered her a lift to her flat, taken her out to the car. Because it was the only thing that he could do.
But then there had come that moment in the car, in the darkness of the night, when, looking down into her upturned face as he saw it in the light of the street lamps as they flashed by, he had seen not just another human being but a woman. A living, breathing, beautiful woman.
And that was when he had first felt the stirring of something else, something warmer, something more like a feeling. Something that made him feel as if the black, icy water that filled his thoughts might actually be shot through with tiny rays of light, warming it faintly. But that was when the car had come to a halt, bringing him back to the reality of a cold, dark, wet night in England instead of the
