Julia James - The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

Hectically, her thoughts tumbled inside her head. She’d been eyed up often enough in her time as a model—and even though she didn’t like it she never let it affect her.

So why had this man’s regard so affected her? Why had it impacted on her in the few seconds she’d had to register it? What was so different about it? About him...?

As she neared the end of the runway she steeled herself for that dark, penetrating gaze—which didn’t come. As she glanced briefly in his direction she saw that his attention was on his mobile phone. He was tapping in a text, long legs extended, completely ignoring her.

Immediately she felt her tension drop. She turned, skilfully manoeuvring her skirts, and plunged back up the runway. So much for that! she thought, with a wry dart of self-mockery.

Had she turned her head again, however, she might have felt differently.

Rafael’s eyes had lifted from his phone and were settled, instead, on her retreating form. They went on watching until she disappeared. Then, and only then, did he resume his tapping.

He found, however, that his mind was not on his emails.

* * *

The show was over, the applause was dying away and guests were heading off for the buffet supper awaiting them in the dining room across the entrance hall.

Rafael got to his feet. There was a sense of purpose about him. The models would be mingling with the guests again and he wanted to find her—stake his claim before anyone else could be as drawn to her pale, haunting beauty as he was.

But as his eyes searched the crowded dining room it came to him that she simply was not there. The other models were—but not the one he wanted to see. He frowned. So where was she? He crossed the hallway back into the salon, where the runway was being dismantled by workmen. Still no sign of her.

He saw that a glass door to the side was open, and slipped through on impulse. He found himself out on a terrace and walked down it to the end. Turning the corner, he saw gardens stretching out before him. Steps swept down to the level of the lawns.

A figure had paused at the edge. A female figure, her evening gown pale in the dim light, craning her neck upwards. But she wasn’t looking back at the mansion. She was looking up at the night sky.

Rafael’s dark eyes glinted in the starlight and he started to walk down the steps towards her.

* * *

Celeste was gazing upwards, rapt. It was a glorious starry night! In London stars were, at best, dim and hazy. But here in the countryside they were bright and vivid, the mighty sweep of the Milky Way clear in the heavens. So unimaginably distant...

Once she had wanted only to be taken up amongst them, leaving the earth far, far behind...

‘The ancient Chinese believed that the Milky Way was the source of the Yellow River.’

The voice came from behind her.

Celeste swirled round. There was little light, but she did not need light to tell her who this was. It was the man who had been looking at her as she’d walked along the runway. The man who had made her aware of him as no man ever had...

He was heading towards her. She could not see his features, only his height, his strolling elegance as he came to stand beside her. She heard the deep, accented timbre of his voice as he spoke again. Felt her nerve-endings start to send messages to her she did not want to feel!

‘They have a legend,’ he went on, ‘that says two lovers were cruelly parted by their parents and placed on either side of the Milky Way—the galactic river. We see them as stars, forever gazing at each other.’

He was looking at her as he spoke. Taking in her frozen stance, the sudden tension in her face. She looked, he thought, as if she was going to bolt—a reaction he found unusual in a woman. Long experience had taught him that women welcomed his attentions.

Madeline certainly had.

But she is not Madeline.

And that was what he wanted, he reminded himself. For her to be utterly different. So it was good that she was reacting as she was, wasn’t it? But whatever the reason for her radiating wariness on all frequencies he wanted to dispel it.

‘It’s incredible, isn’t it?’ he said, keeping his tone conversational. ‘To think of the vast distances of the heavens. Our galaxy is just one of billions, each with billions of stars.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Some of the stars we think of as stars are galaxies themselves. Andromeda is our closest, and it is...’ He searched the sky with his eyes.

‘It’s there,’ Celeste heard herself saying. ‘In the Andromeda constellation, between Pegasus and Cassiopeia. The galaxy is M31—Messier body thirty-one—but it’s not actually the closest galaxy to us, only to the Milky Way overall. It’s going to merge with the Milky Way eventually, and form a giant elliptical galaxy in a few billion years.’

She pointed jerkily upwards, mentally castigating herself for gabbling about galaxies and constellations, but other than marching away it had seemed the safest thing to do.

Though ‘safe’ was the very last thing she felt...

Her nerve-endings were firing in a way that she had never before experienced.

Rafael followed her gaze, then glanced across at her. Wanting to look at her. Wanting her to look at him. Wanting her to speak again.

He smiled appreciatively. ‘You’re very knowledgeable,’ he remarked.

‘I like stars,’ she answered, in the same abrupt, jerky manner. ‘They’re very far away.’

Even as she spoke she started. Why did I say that? Why am I standing here talking to him—letting him talk to me?

And why was the deep, accented timbre of his voice reaching into her? Disturbing her...firing all her nerves at high pitch...

‘Is that a commendation?’ he asked dryly.

‘Yes,’ she answered.

As if she’d realised it was a strange thing to say, he saw her give a tiny shake of her head. As she did so, he saw her change. She dipped her head, tightened her grip on her skirts. Getting a grip, belatedly, on the situation. A situation she was going to terminate right now. Because she did not let situations like this arise.

But there’s never been a situation like this...no man has ever made me react like this!

Which made it all the more imperative that she get away from him—right now! Stop this before it started.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I must go back inside.’

Her voice had changed, too. It was clipped now, and quite impersonal.

Distant.

‘Permit me to escort you.’ Rafael’s voice was smooth.

She did not hesitate. ‘Thank you—no.’

Her tone was decisive, and before his eyes she turned and walked back up the steps. He looked after her.

From chatting about stars to cutting him dead—all in under a minute.

No, nothing like Madeline at all...

* * *

Celeste gained the salon and walked rapidly across it. Her heart-rate was up, and it was not because of her rapid ascent of the exterior steps. What on earth had she just gone and done? Standing there with that man, talking about astronomy! She’d gone out to the gardens for two reasons—to take advantage of the clear night sky and to delay having to mix socially. Because over supper she would inevitably see that man again.

The man who had come in search of her.

Because of course that was what he’d been doing! She wasn’t an idiot—no one struck up a conversation about galaxies with a lone female if they weren’t trying to chat her up! Then, to make her heart-rate race even more, a mortifying thought struck her. Had he thought she was standing out there stargazing in order to deliberately invite him to talk to her?

She felt her cheeks flush. Well, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter either way. Because from now on she was going to avoid him totally until she could decently get away back to Oxford and the hotel room she’d booked. Staying well out of London and away from Karl Reiner for as long as possible.