Kate Walker - One Night in Madrid

‘I’d have to agree with you there.’ Raul drew himself up and inclined his head in a cold, controlled acknowledgement of her accusation. ‘Love is a very unreliable foundation on which to base one’s choice of bride.’

‘No, you put more emphasis on the fact that no other man has ever slept with her than any such untrustworthy feelings.’

‘Well, that didn’t last long, did it?’ Raul mocked. ‘As soon as I asked to marry you, you realised that you weren’t made for monogamy and set out to make up for what you’d been missing.’

‘But the one thing I didn’t miss was you!’

With her head defiantly high in the air, she stalked past him and out into the tiny hallway, flinging open the door with a wild gesture that had it banging into the opposite wall.

‘And now I’d prefer it if you left. Your chauffeur is waiting and you wouldn’t want to keep him hanging around. And this time I’d be grateful if you stayed away—for good.’

‘Don’t worry.’

Raul headed for the door with an alacrity that would have been positively insulting if she had had enough left in her heart to feel a further insult.

‘I’m not likely to want to come back. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever want to see you or any member of your family ever again.’

‘Well, that suits me,’ Alannah tossed after him as he strode out the door. ‘Believe me, if I was forced to see you again then I’d know that I was very definitely in that hell you mentioned.’

She slammed the door shut after his retreating form, hearing the sound echo throughout her flat as she sank back against the wall, her whole body shaking with the after-effects of the emotional storm that had had her in its grip.

RAUL tossed the last of his clothing into the case that lay open on the bed and then brought the lid down on it with a bang. Fastening the zip with a rough, wrenching movement, he pulled it off the bed, carried it through into the adjoining sitting room and deposited it beside the door, ready for the hotel porter to come and collect it. Another hour, and he would be out of here.

And it couldn’t happen soon enough. He’d known from the start that this trip to England was going to be hell on earth, but the truth was that he had never imagined how hellish it could be. Accepting the appalling news of Lori’s death, getting through the formalities and arranging for her funeral had been terrible enough. But then there had been the added twist of torture that had come in the meeting with Alannah, the discovery that it had been her brother who had …

‘No …’

He aimed a vicious kick at the side of the suitcase as his mind shied away from thinking of the crash that had killed his sister. The passage of four days since the news had broken had done nothing to blunt the sharply jagged edges of that pain and the news he had received just that afternoon had only stirred up all the sorrow even more.

Rubbing the palms of his hands fiercely across his face, over his aching, burning eyes, Raul could only wish that he could wipe away the memory of the past few days as he did so. He had thought that it couldn’t get any worse, but fate had had one last little trick in store, one further twist of the knife that made the loss of his sister even more unbearable to think of.

But if he didn’t think of Lorena then there was only one path his thoughts went down and that was one that was no more comfortable than the first.

The image of Alannah Redfern’s lissom body, her stunning face and the clear, emerald-green of those almond-shaped eyes was always ready to slide into his mind if he let his guard down. It was there in his memory during the day, distracting him from work, heating his blood and making him hard and hungry in the space of one heavy beat of his heart.

He could still feel the brutal kick of disgust that had landed on his senses with the realisation of just why she had kissed him, why she had responded to him so eagerly, so—for a moment at least, he had actually believed—sweetly. Disillusionment had set in fast and the rage that had replaced it had been coldly savage. If he had thought that he hated her before, then it had been nothing to the way he felt now. He had had to get out of her flat before his rage had got the better of him. And since then his fury had been directed at himself and the way that he couldn’t forget.

At night the same images of her kept him from sleep, and when he did eventually doze off then the vision of her softly yielding naked body opening under his turned his dreams into burningly erotic fantasies, so real that he could have sworn that she was actually there. Waking in the dark to tangled sheets, with his own skin slick with sweat, the memory of the taste of her mouth still on his tongue, the scent of her flesh in his nostrils was a sensual torment that had him pacing the floor in the middle of the night, or raiding the mini-bar for something strong enough to give him a chance at sleep.

It never worked and after two long, wakeful nights and two cold, sorrow-filled days he felt like a bad-tempered dog, snarling inwardly and ready to bite.

The final straw had been when he had discovered that his mobile phone was missing. He hadn’t even noticed that it was not in his possession until his father had contacted him in his hotel room, desperate to know what was going on. Since then he had turned the room upside down, emptied every drawer, checked in every pocket and still not found it. It was only as he was packing to return home that he had realised where it must be.

He had had the phone in his hand in Alannah’s flat. He’d spoken to Carlos, saying he would be down in a moment and.

A string of savage expletives escaped his lips and he raked his hands viciously through his hair as he remembered switching off the phone and dropping it—he thought—back into his jacket pocket. He had been concentrating so hard on reining in his temper that he must have must have missed the pocket and let it fall, unnoticed, onto the cushions of the chair where he’d been sitting. And he had walked out of her flat in such a fury that he hadn’t noticed that he’d left it. He could almost picture it now, down in the crack between the cushions, silent and unseen.

Damn it to hell, he would have to send Carlos round to pick it up.

He was heading for the phone on the desk when the knock came at the door. The porter, come for his bag. ‘Momento!’

Checking in his pocket that he had cash for a tip, he strode to the door, opened it and stared in blank bemusement at the person outside.

The person who had just filled his thoughts with unwanted sensual memories.

The person he had tried so damned hard to forget and failed so miserably at it.

‘Alannah!’

It was as if he had summoned her up. As if simply by thinking of her he had somehow brought her here, to stand in the corridor. As if she had walked out of his dreams and into reality.

And the reality was much better than the dream.

Her hair was loose and tumbled softly about her face, the pale skin was totally untouched by makeup except for some mascara that darkened her fine lashes and a slick of gloss over her lips that made her look as if she had just run her tongue along them, moistening them slightly. She was dressed in a soft pale green dress, one with a skirt that swirled around her slender calves, with the innumerable small buttons fastening the front. It made his mouth dry just to see them. When the thought of the sensual delight of setting himself to opening each and every one of those pearly discs slid into his head he clamped down on it hard, fighting against the risk of it reducing him to the state of some tongue-tied adolescent whose raging hormones could not be brought under control.