‘No,’ he muttered, so disconcerted by the sizzle that shot through his blood at the contact that for a second he had no idea about anything.
‘I knew it would turn out too good to be true.’
She sighed, slid her hand from his and Rafael ignored the odd dart of regret to focus instead on the way her shoulders were slumping. ‘What would?’ he asked, detecting an air of defeat about her and for some reason not liking it.
‘Coming to stay. Gaby said it would be fine.’
That captured his attention. ‘You know Gaby?’
She nodded and gave him another wobbly little smile. ‘I do. And she said she’d clear it with you, but she didn’t, did she?’
That would teach him to issue an open invitation to his sisters to use the place whenever they felt like it. Rafael thought of the barrage of phone calls and emails that his sister had bombarded him with and which he’d disregarded, and frowned at the niggling stab of guilt. ‘No.’
‘I thought not.’ She sighed again and seemed to deflate just that little bit more.
He watched it happen and to his intense irritation his chest tightened. There was a vulnerability about Nicky that plucked at the highly inconvenient and usually extremely well-hidden protective streak he possessed. Which was nuts, of course, because presumably the kind of woman to wallop him over the head as she had wasn’t in the least bit vulnerable. Or in need of protection.
Nevertheless, right now she looked crushed, as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and Rafael found he couldn’t get the words out to tell her to leave, however much he wanted to. Besides, if she was a friend of his sister’s and he threw her out, he’d never hear the end of it.
He sighed and inwardly cursed. ‘Look, it’s late,’ he said, deciding that he was way too tired for this kind of mental gymnastics and as it was pushing midnight he could hardly turf her out now anyway. ‘Let’s discuss this in the morning.’
‘OK,’ she said, with a weariness that made him want to do something insane like haul her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. ‘Thanks... And goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ he muttered, then turned on his heel and strode off down the corridor, thinking with each step that the night had been anything but good so far, and what with the traces of arousal and heat still whipping around inside him and the apparent disintegration of his brain it didn’t look as if it were going to get any better.
* * *
Well, this was all just typical of the crappy way her life had been going lately, wasn’t it? thought Nicky glumly, watching Rafael stop to pick up the suitcase he must have dumped at the top of the stairs earlier and then disappear round the corner.
Why would her stay at the cortijo be turning out as she’d hoped when nothing had done recently?
Feeling utterly drained by the events of the last half an hour on top of those of the past six months, she shut the door, retrieved Don Quijote from the floor and padded over to the bed. Setting the book on the bedside table, she slipped beneath the sheets and switched off the light.
How had things gone so badly wrong? she wondered for the billionth time as she stared into the darkness and felt the relentless heaviness descend.
Six months ago she’d been unstoppable. So full of energy and verve and enthusiasm, and fiercely determined not to let what had happened in the Middle East defeat her. She’d snapped up every assignment she’d been offered and had thrown herself into each one as if it were her last. She’d travelled and worked every minute she had, pausing only to hook up with the scorchingly hot journalist with whom she’d been having a sizzling fling.
Everything had been going marvellously, exactly as she’d planned, and she’d enjoyed every minute of it. She’d taken some of the finest photographs of her career and had some of the best sex of her life, and she’d congratulated herself on beating any potential demons she could so easily have had.
See, she’d told herself on an all-time high as she collected an award for one of her pictures and smiled down at the man she was sleeping with. All those colleagues who’d muttered things about PTSD had been wrong. Apart from the occasional nightmare and a slight problem with crowds, she hadn’t had any other symptoms. And besides, she wasn’t an idiot, so as a precaution she’d embarked on a course of counselling and therapy, which had encouraged her to make sense of what had happened, and get over it. As indeed she had, and the full-to-the-brim life she’d been leading, the work she’d been doing and the award she’d won, were all proof of it.
For months she’d told herself that she was absolutely fine, and for months she’d blithely believed it.
Until one day a few weeks ago when she turned out to be not so fine. That horrible morning she’d woken up feeling as if she were being crushed by some invisible weight. Despite the bright Parisian sunshine pouring in through the slats in the blind and the thousand and one things she had to do, she just hadn’t been able to get herself out of bed.
She’d assured herself at the time that she was simply having a bad day, but since then things had got steadily worse. The bad days had begun to occur more frequently, gradually outnumbering the good until pretty much every day was a bad day. The energy and verve and the self-confidence she’d always taken for granted had drained away, leaving her feeling increasingly anxious, and to her distress she’d found herself refusing work she’d previously have jumped at.
Bewildered by that, she’d stopped picking up her phone and had started ignoring emails. And not just those from colleagues and employers. When staying in touch with friends and family had begun to require too much energy she’d stopped doing that too.
She’d given up eating properly and had started sleeping terribly. When she did eventually manage to drop off the nightmares had come back, but now with far greater frequency than before, leaving her wide awake in the middle of the night, weak and sweating and shaking.
Her previously very healthy libido had faltered, withered and then died out altogether, as, inevitably, had the fling.
Barely going out, hardly speaking to anyone, and with so much time on her hands to sit and dwell, Nicky had ended up questioning practically every decision she’d ever made over the years. She’d begun to doubt her abilities, her ideals and her motivation, and as a result cynicism and a bone-deep weariness had invaded her.
Down and down she’d spiralled until she’d been riddled with nerve-snapping tension, utter desolation, crippling frustration, and the dizzyingly frightening feeling that she might never be able to haul herself out of the slump she tumbled into.
Burnout, Gaby had diagnosed over a bottle of wine a week ago when Nicky had finally hit rock bottom, although what made her such an expert she had no idea. Gaby, who was currently feng shui-ing the mansion of a businessman in Bahrain, was an on-and-off interior designer—more off than on—and wouldn’t know burnout if it came up and slapped her in the face.
Nevertheless, as she’d sliced through Nicky’s symptoms, and then relentlessly gone on about the importance of balance and rest and looking at things piece by tiny piece, Nicky had decided that perhaps Gaby might have had a point, which was why when her friend had come up with a plan she’d so readily and gratefully agreed.
Go to Spain, Gaby had
