Kate Walker - One Night in Madrid

‘I brought you this …’

Her tone was stiff and her eyes didn’t quite meet his, their mossy-green gaze focused somewhere over his shoulder as if she was looking at someone else there. She lifted her hand, holding it out flat. In the centre of her palm lay the missing mobile phone.

‘You left it in my flat.’

‘Gracias.’

His own voice was rough and husky, as if it had come from a very sore throat, and even in his own ears it sounded brusque and dismissive. The small movement had stirred the air, bringing the scent of her body to him, and the combination of clean, feminine skin combined with a delicate, softly floral scent assailed his senses like a physical attack. He almost snatched the phone from her, knowing that the feel of her hand, the warmth of her flesh against his fingertips would be like setting a match to paper-dry tinder, threatening to send him up in flames in a heartbeat.

‘I found it down the side of the chair. You must have dropped it there when …’

A wash of colour flooded up into her cheeks as her voice trailed off and he knew that like him she was remembering just why the phone had been left on the chair in the first place.

‘I was wondering where it was.’

Was it only in his own ears or did he really sound so appallingly stiff and stilted? He didn’t seem to be able to make his mouth work normally. It was as if his tongue had suddenly become stiff and swollen in his mouth.

Or perhaps it was because of the way that his eyes were fixed on the soft, peachy fullness of her mouth. Remembering the feel of it against his, the taste of her on his lips. The way that she had kissed him and the heated response of her body. The heated, deliberately calculated response.

‘I’d just decided that it must be in your flat and I was about to send Carlos round to fetch it.’

‘Well, now you have it back.’

Alannah’s response was low and strangely flat. She was back to being the washed-out creature he had first seen in the hospital room on the day he had arrived in England. There was little trace of the seductive siren he had kissed; even less of the hissing, spitting vixen who had thrown him out of her flat in no uncertain terms. He was shocked to find that it was the vixen he missed most.

Raul’s conscience gave an uncomfortable twist so that he could almost hear his late mother demanding just where were his manners? Hadn’t she taught him better than this? It was ridiculous having this stiff-voiced conversation with him in the open doorway and her standing outside in the corridor. Even though this was a private suite, at any moment someone could come past—a member of the hotel staff, the porter coming for his case.

He stepped back, holding the door wider open.

‘I’m sorry—won’t you come in?’

The look she gave him was another reproof to his conscience. And the brief flash of her green eyes only made her face look even more pale and drawn, emphasising the shadows under her eyes.

‘You look as if you’re about to drop. Come in and sit down for a moment.’

‘I don’t think …’

He thought that he was being perfectly polite, that he had even added a touch of concern, but from the expression on her face he might just as well have suggested that he slit her throat right here and now. He felt his jaw tighten, his mouth compressing.

‘I am capable of being perfectly civilized …’

When she still hesitated, he gave up, flinging up his hands in exasperation and striding back into the room, leaving the door open behind him. Let her make her own decision.

‘Thank you.’

To his amazement she had actually followed him, stepping over the threshold of the door like a wary cat moving into alien territory. And, watching her, he knew that he had lied.

He might have said that he was capable of being civilised; he would even have been prepared to swear to it if necessary. But civilised was not what this woman made him feel. Just the soft sound of her voice made his pulse leap with thoughts of a huge bed, soft pillows, clean sheets and Alannah, warm and welcoming, beside him. The scent of her skin made hunger clutch, hard and hot, low down in his body, so that, turning again, to see her behind him, it was all that he could do to force his mouth into some sort of a smile.

‘I’ll get Carlos to take you back. It’s the least I can do—to say thank you. Why don’t you sit down?’

He waved a hand towards the big leather-covered settee that stood in the middle of the large sitting room and Alannah’s eyes followed the gesture but she silently shook her head and stayed right where she was.

‘Isn’t this the point at which I should offer you a coffee?’ he asked and to his surprise saw the stiffness of her face suddenly crumble and a real, genuine smile broke through the careful restraint she’d imposed.

‘If you did, do you think that we’d get to drink it? We don’t seem to have had much luck so far.’

Did she know what it did to him to see her eyes light up like that, if only for a moment? To see that lush mouth curve in warmth in a way that it so seldom did when he was around? He might tell himself that he hated this woman—detested the way she’d treated him, and now loathed her entire family for the destruction her brother had wreaked on his—but the truth was much more complicated. He just couldn’t get her out of his mind. He was addicted to her and the way he had been feeling the past couple of days was comparable to withdrawal symptoms.

He had needed his ‘fix’ of Alannah and his symptoms had started to subside as soon as she had appeared at his door. He knew what would really cure him of them and that was to give in to the demands his addicted body was making that he took her in his arms, kissed her—took her to bed.

Or would that only make the sexual craving so much worse for having given in to it and actually experiencing, rather than imagining, the pleasure he knew was just waiting for him in her gorgeous body?

‘OK, no coffee.’

But she wasn’t looking at him any more. Her attention had been caught by the sight of the packed suitcase standing beside the now closed door and she was staring at it as if it held some special fascination for her.

‘You’re leaving.’

‘In about an hour.’

Alannah didn’t know how she felt about that. She was shocked and confused by the sudden stab of pain that shot through her at the sight of the case. Was it the thought of him leaving that brought such distress? That if she hadn’t come here today, just now, then she would have missed him? He would have packed and left—and she would never have known. Did she really care?

Oh, who was she kidding? She cared. She had always cared. She might have tried to stop loving him, had spent two long years praying that the feelings would go away, but all he had to do was to walk back into her life and she was lost all over again. Wasn’t that why she was here, now, when she had told herself—told him—that she never wanted to see him again?

Oh, yes, so much that she had jumped at the chance that having to return his damn phone to him would bring. Raul, on the other hand, had been ‘about to send Carlos round to fetch it’. Just as he was going to get Carlos to drive her back home. It had been the phone he had wanted; not any chance to see her again. Instead, he had packed and was on his way, going back to Spain, going out of her life, without a word. If she had any sense, she would get out of here now.

If she had really had any sense then she wouldn’t even have come into the room at his invitation.

She didn’t really know quite why she had accepted that invitation. She’d known that walking into the room was like walking into the lion’s den—almost putting her head into the beast’s jaws and asking him to bite it off. But there had been something in his face that had made it impossible to do what was sensible. He’d looked tired, lost, lonely—strangely vulnerable. She’d known she should just turn and walk away but she just couldn’t do it.