‘So you and Gaby haven’t been discussing me?’
He looked so unexpectedly and endearingly put out by the idea that Nicky found herself in the unusual position of grinning. ‘Well, you may have come up once or twice in conversation.’
He grimaced. ‘I don’t know whether to be flattered or worried.’
‘You should be flattered.’
The grimace eased. ‘Why? What did she say?’
‘That you’re a corporate troubleshooter and you like solving problems,’ she said, deciding that if she condensed the facts it wouldn’t sound too stalkerish, and actually feeling relieved to be talking about him rather than herself. ‘That you’re very driven and that your successes are stellar, both with work and with women.’ She paused and then added, ‘Oh, and that you’re divorced.’
Rafael winced and she instantly wondered exactly what had gone wrong with his marriage. ‘So perhaps not quite so successful with women.’
Telling herself that she had no business wondering and even less asking when they barely knew each other, Nicky tilted her head and had to agree. ‘No, perhaps not.’
‘Gaby has been chatty,’ he said dryly, twisting the stem of his wine glass between long brown fingers.
‘She’s fond of you. And proud.’
Her heart squeezed in the same way it had done every time Gaby had either sung her brother’s praises or lamented his failings.
She really ought to be used to it by now because, while the envy she felt at Gaby and Rafael’s evident closeness had taken her by surprise at first, she’d lived with it for as long as she’d known her neighbour. If anything, though, instead of lessening the envy had grown and, the more she’d listened to Gaby, offering words of either awe or sympathy depending on the circumstances, the more she’d come to realise that she didn’t have anyone who knew her or whom she knew quite that well. And in the early hours of the mornings when she’d been unable to sleep she’d begun to wonder if she might not be in the state she was in if she too had had someone that close to turn to.
‘It must be nice to have siblings,’ she said a little wistfully as the image of a two-point-four family popped into her head.
‘Don’t you have any?’
‘Nope,’ she said, pulling herself together because there she went again, wishing for the impossible. ‘It’s just me and my parents.’
‘Lucky you,’ he muttered, then got up and headed to the barbecue.
As she watched him slap the steaks on the grill Nicky frowned. She’d always got the impression from Gaby that while there was frustration aplenty between the sisters and their brother there was also a lot of affection. ‘Really?’
She heard him sigh. ‘No, not really,’ he said, leaving the steaks to sizzle and spit on the grill and returning to the table. ‘They’re fine. Except when they’re hassling me.’
‘Do they do that often?’
‘More often than I’d like,’ he said, sitting back down and taking a mouthful of wine.
‘So what do you do about it?’
‘Well, the last time it happened I came down here.’
The tone of his voice made her insides cringe. ‘Which was when?’
He set his glass down and gave her a look. ‘Yesterday.’
Oh, dear. ‘Looking for a bit of peace and quiet?’
He nodded. ‘Only to be attacked with
Don Quijote
.’
Nicky felt her cheeks flush with mortification. ‘I really am sorry about that, you know.’
‘Don’t worry, it was infinitely less traumatic than the quadruple whammy of one mother, two sisters and an ex-girlfriend.’
As her blush receded Nicky resisted the urge to roll her eyes because if
that
was what he considered traumatic he should try what she’d been through in the last six months. She’d take a mother, two sisters and an ex over the ghastly effects of burnout any day. ‘Which was highly traumatic, I imagine,’ she said as sincerely as she could, which wasn’t very.
He raised an eyebrow at her arch tone. ‘It seemed so at the time. Especially on top of such a busy time at work.’
Nicky reined in her cynicism because everyone had their hangups and actually what made hers any worse than his? ‘Do they often gang up on you?’
‘My sisters?’
She nodded.
Rafael tensed a little and her curiosity rocketed. ‘Not since I was about eight.’
‘Why? What happened when you were eight?’
‘I chose not to let it bother me.’
The words were spoken casually enough but she caught the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw and for some bizarre reason her heart squeezed again, only this time she didn’t think it was with envy. ‘Did it work?’
‘Beautifully,’ he said dryly, and gave her an easy smile that thankfully made the squeeze release its grip on her heart. ‘Trying to rile someone who won’t be provoked isn’t much fun. They very quickly lost interest and left me alone.’
‘Ingenious.’
He shrugged. ‘Not so much ingenuity as a need for self-preservation. Anyway it worked because we now get along pretty well.’
Fleetingly wondering if choosing not to let things bother him was a strategy he still employed to deal with difficult situations, but realising that there was no way she could ask such a personal question, Nicky decided it would be safer for her heart and its surrounding muscles to move on to more neutral ground. ‘So what does corporate troubleshooting involve?’ she asked, toying with her glass as the mouth-watering scent of sizzling steak drifted towards her.
‘I sort out companies in difficulties.’
‘What sort of difficulties?’
‘Anything really. A board might have a problem with staffing or be going through a tricky merger or there might be issues with the management. I go in wherever I’m needed and leave when I’m done.’
‘So you fix things.’
‘I do.’
‘Have you ever failed?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Do you fix people too?’ she asked as it suddenly occurred to her that he might be able to fix her. And then almost as quickly she dismissed the idea as ridiculous because, for one thing, why would he want to help her when he didn’t even get involved with his sisters’ problems? And for another she was pretty sure that no one could fix her but her.
He shuddered. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it would inevitably get...emotional...and therefore messy.’
‘And you don’t do emotion or mess,’ she said with a nod because the way he’d hesitated, the way he’d just flinched, said it all.
‘Not if I can help it.’
As Nicky wasn’t particularly fond of either, emotional detachment when it came to personal relationships was something she could definitely identify with, but nevertheless... ‘Not even for your sisters?’
‘Especially not for them.’ He frowned. ‘I wouldn’t even offer them advice.’
‘Really?’ she asked, becoming increasingly intrigued by these insights into family life because as an only child she knew nothing about the dynamics of siblings, and with parents who championed independence she’d become so self-reliant she couldn’t remember a time she’d asked for advice about anything.
‘Absolutely. If the advice I hypothetically gave them was wrong I’d invariably end up being blamed and if it wasn’t taken then what would be the point of giving it in the first place? It would be a no-win situation, not to mention an insanely frustrating one.’
There was a certain amount of logic to that, Nicky supposed, and frankly what did she know about how families worked? ‘Do they often ask you for advice?’
‘They’ve learned not to,’ he said darkly, and rose to head over to the grill to flip the steaks.
‘Well, I don’t know about the others, of course,’ she said, remembering the long conversations during which Gaby had bemoaned her brother’s lack of emotional support, ‘but I think Gaby might appreciate being able to ask from time to time.’
Rafael turned and shot her a humourless smile. ‘Gaby’s the worst. She once asked me for advice years ago, which I gave her. She didn’t take it and when things didn’t work out she still blamed me.’
‘Oh.’ That Gaby had failed to mention. ‘What happened?’
‘You’ll have to ask her. How long have you known her?’ he said, coming back to the table and reaching for the bottle that sat in the middle of it.
‘Two years.’
He poured her some more wine. ‘Well, wait another thirty and then you’ll see.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘How did you meet anyway?’
‘She lives next door to me.’
His eyebrows lifted as he topped up his own glass, then sat down. ‘In Paris?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Yet you’re British.’
And Gaby was Spanish. So what? ‘It’s a great place to be based for the work I do,’ she said, and told herself she really had to stop being so absurdly defensive. ‘And yes, technically I’m British but I prefer to think of myself as a citizen of the world.’
He shot her a quizzical glance. ‘Rootless?’
Hmm. Nicky tilted her head and pondered the question. She was certainly free and footloose. But rootless? She’d never really thought of it like that, but maybe Rafael was right because she’d been on the move for as long as she could remember.
Her parents had travelled extensively throughout her childhood—and still did—and she’d always gone with them wherever they’d been. As a result she’d never really had a base. She’d certainly never had a family home, or, come to think of it, a home of her own since. Even the flat she lived in now, with its minimalist décor and sparse furniture and general air of transience, was rented.
In fact the most permanent thing in her life was the suitcase she’d lived out of for the last ten years, a suitcase that was extremely well travelled and very battered but hanging in there. A bit like her, really.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, dragging her thoughts back on track and coming to the conclusion that Rafael was
right about her lack of roots. ‘And delighted to be so,’ she added firmly, because that was about the only thing about her that hadn’t changed in the last six months and it seemed important to remember it.
‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘Absolutely. I get itchy feet if I hang around in one place for too long. And the idea of staying in one place permanently...’ She shuddered. ‘Talk about stifling.’
‘How come?’
‘A by-product of my upbringing, I imagine.’
‘Which was?’
‘Internationally varied. My parents are anthropologists. They were—and actually still are—always heading off to investigate long lost tribes and things in far-flung places, and more often than not I accompanied them.’ She paused and tilted her head. ‘Remember that winning photo I took?’
Rafael nodded.
‘It was of a Yanomami child. The Yanomami live in the Amazon rainforest,’ she added in response to the quizzical look on his face. ‘I was nine when I took it and it wasn’t my first time in Brazil either. In fact, by the time I went to boarding school at the age of eleven, I’d got through three passports.’
‘You’ve had an exciting life.’
She shrugged and felt her smile fade because lately it hadn’t seemed quite so exciting. ‘I’ve been lucky.’
There was a second or two of silence while he just looked at her and then he said, ‘And yet with all that excitement you choose this place for a holiday?’
The words might have been spoken softly, but that didn’t stop Nicky tensing. And it didn’t stop a dart of wariness from flickering through her, because there it was again. The flash of perception—so similar to his sister’s—in the dark green depths of his eyes, which told her that if she wasn’t careful he’d be able to see far more of her than she wanted him—or anyone else—to.
‘Well, why not?’ she said, knowing she sounded on edge but feeling too unsettled to do a thing about it.
‘It just seems a little sedate for someone so adventurous and globetrotting, that’s all.’
Sedate was good, she thought, and determinedly pulled herself together. Sedate was exactly what she needed, so there was nothing wrong with sedate.
‘Yes, well, adventure isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be,’ she said with as breezy a smile as she could manage, ‘and sometimes even the most globetrotting of globetrotters needs a break, so thank you for inviting me to stay.’
FIVE
Allowing Nicky to stay was the worst decision he’d made in years, thought Rafael grimly, staring out into the inky darkness of the night. What on earth had he been thinking? Had he
completely
lost his mind?
So much for all that peace and tranquillity he’d been after. And so much for all that rest and relaxation he’d hoped for. He’d never felt less peaceful, less tranquil, less rested or less relaxed. In fact, he was even more tense now than when he’d arrived and it was all entirely down to his unwanted house guest and the startlingly dramatic, insanely irritating effect she seemed to have on him.
How he’d ever managed to convince himself that he wasn’t aware of Nicky he’d never know. Not aware of her? Hah. That was a joke. He must have been mad to even think it because over supper it had become pretty bloody obvious that he’d never been more aware of anyone, so since when did he do such complete and utter self-denial?
Rafael grimaced and knocked back another inch of his brandy. And to think that he’d blithely assumed he was doing so well. That his legendary self-control was fine. God, he was a stupidly arrogant idiot because he hadn’t been doing well at all. He’d been doing dismally, and he hadn’t even realised it.
He should never have suggested supper. If he’d known what torturous agony
that
was going to be he’d have gone straight from the vineyards to his bedroom and stayed there until he was sure the coast was clear, but that was what hubris and the cook’s weekend off could do to a man.
As a result, he’d had the most uncomfortable couple of hours he’d had in years, starting with the odd prickling he’d felt all over his skin when he’d been seeing to the steaks and had become conscious of the fact that Nicky was watching him.
He’d slowly turned, thinking that she might be mortified into jerking her gaze away, but was she? No. Those enigmatic blue-grey eyes of hers had continued to travel over him, languidly and totally unashamedly, and he’d been pinned to the spot, his body going into sensory overdrive and his head swimming.
But even then he’d just about held it together. Until he’d hit upon the idea of offering her a prawn in the foolhardy hope that moving on to food and small talk was the best way forward, and it had all gone downhill from there.
The prawns had been
such
a bad idea. There she’d sat calmly sucking them down and letting out those little soft moans while talking about her work, his siblings and her upbringing, and with every passing minute his head had got fuzzier and his body had wound tighter.
With his head filling with images of what Nicky might look like in nothing but a bikini as she lay by his pool, his stomach had twisted and his pulse had picked up until the desire he’d persuaded himself he’d conquered had slammed back with a force that had nearly floored him, and as hard as he’d tried he hadn’t been able to stamp it out.
God only knew what they’d talked about after that because as night had descended he’d fallen more and more under her strangely hypnotic spell, until all he’d really been able to focus on was the way her mouth moved when she talked, the auburn streaks in her hair that the soft flickering candlelight picked out, and her funny little wistful smile.
Thank heavens she’d got up and announced she was off to bed when she had because he hadn’t been sure how much longer he’d have been able to resist the growing pressure of desire.
It was completely baffling, he thought now, scowling down into his unexpectedly empty glass. He’d known her for less than twenty-four hours so how had things got so bad so quickly? When exactly had Nicky got into his head? And more importantly when exactly was she going to do the decent thing and get out? Because he really didn’t want her in there.
For one thing, he absolutely did
not
need the hassle of a new affair so hot on the heels of the last disastrous one and, for another, what on earth was the point of wanting her when the attraction was so clearly one-sided?
Rafael set his glass on the table and let out a low growl of frustration. He’d had more than enough experience to recognise the signs of mutual physical attraction, and Nicky hadn’t displayed any of them at any point. Which he should have been fine with, seeing as he was no longer a hormone-ridden teenager but a mature rational man of thirty-two, so the fact that he
wasn’t
apparently fine with it annoyed him even more.
What
was
going on? And what the devil was he going to do about it?
He leaned forward to pour himself another brandy with which to contemplate the dilemma, but he’d barely reached for the bottle when a yell tore through the warm still night.
The shock of it made his heart lurch and his arm freeze in mid-stretch, and the anguish in it made goosebumps break out all over his skin. All thoughts of unrequited lust fled from his head and instinct took over.
Shoving his chair back, Rafael leapt to his feet, his heart thundering and adrenalin pounding through his veins. He wanted to race indoors and charge up the stairs. He wanted to fling back the door to Nicky’s bedroom and see if she was all right. He wanted to find out why she’d yelled, what was wrong with her, and why she was really here. He wanted all that with such sudden clamouring urgency that every inch of him was tense and tight, poised and ready to—
He froze in his tracks as reason suddenly swooped down and barged aside instinct, and his blood ran cold.
God, what the hell was he thinking?
No. Absolutely not.
He didn’t
do
concern. He didn’t
do
rushing to the aid of damsels whether in distress or not. And he definitely did
not
want to know what was wrong with Nicky or what had caused her to cry out.
He shoved his hands through his hair and swore beneath his breath. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her he didn’t sort out other people’s personal problems. He might have grown up constantly being told by his mother that as their only brother he had a duty to protect and look out for his sisters, but he’d never met a group of girls who needed looking out for less. And the women he’d met subsequently—bar one—only confirmed the conclusion he’d reached that the so-called fairer sex was emotionally far tougher than the men he’d come across, and more often than not didn’t appreciate help with any issues they might have.
Steeling himself against the lingering urge to act on his instincts and go and check on her regardless, Rafael set his jaw and made himself sit down. Whatever was plaguing Nicky was none of his business, and whatever had made her yell like that was probably nothing but a bad dream. Besides, it wasn’t his job to fix her, and judging by her defensiveness when they’d been talking earlier he doubted she’d appreciate the interference.
So he was doing the right thing by leaving her alone, he assured himself as he splashed some more brandy into his glass. Nicky would be fine, and come the morning he’d have forgotten all about it so there was absolutely no need to give it any further thought.
Sitting back and downing half his drink, Rafael resolutely put it out of his head and turned his attention to his vines.
* * *
Nicky woke up a second before she cracked her head on the tarmac. As usual.
Once again she’d been trapped in the midst of a swirling mass of humanity, the bright colours blurring her vision, the thunderous noise deafening her and the increasing air of menace intensifying the panic and fear rocketing through her.
Once again she’d lost her balance and had desperately tried to counteract the momentum of the crowd by grabbing at air, at anything really, but with the crush of people pressing in and around her it was to no avail. And once again she’d felt herself go down and had filled with the sickening heartbreaking awareness that once she hit the ground she’d never get back up...
At least she hadn’t cried out, she thought, staring blankly up into the jet black darkness of the night, her heart pounding, sweat pouring off her and her head swimming with the horrible images that
still
haunted her sleep.
As mercies went it was a small one, but it was a mercy nevertheless because she knew from past experience that she was perfectly capable of letting out a yell that could wake the dead. Or, at least, Gaby, who’d pounded on her door often enough, demanding to know if she was all right.
If she’d yelled out this time Rafael would undoubtedly have heard and very possibly would have rushed in to see what was wrong. So it was a relief she hadn’t because she really wasn’t up to explaining.
Willing her heart to steady and her breathing to slow, Nicky sighed and flung an arm over her eyes and reminded herself for what felt like the billionth time that the shakiness and the fear pounding through her would pass. As they always did.
But, God, she was sick of the whole sodding lot of it. She was sick of the lack of control she had over her subconscious, sick of the hold that something that happened months ago still had on her—and her inability to get over it—and sick of being so prickly and defensive all the time.
It had to stop. Today. Now.
But how?
As the turbulent images faded and her trembling stopped something Rafael had said earlier flickered through her head. Something about not letting things bother him. Or rather, about
choosing
to not let things bother him...
Well, that was what she’d do too, she thought with grim resolution, because she had a choice, didn’t she? Maybe not about what went on while she was asleep, but while she was awake? That was a different matter entirely.
So today was going to be different. Today she was going to think positively and not dwell on the past. Today she’d choose not to care.