The Spaniard's Love-Child (8 page)

‘Oh?'

‘I work the late shift in a convenience store three nights a week. They'll be more than happy to extend my hours.'

‘A convenience store?' he repeated, looking at her as though she had just disembarked from a spaceship.

‘Yes, a convenience store, and I have had an offer to be a life model at the art school. It pays good money. I have a couple of friends who did it when we were at college.'

The muscles in his brown throat worked. ‘You would take off your clothes in front of strangers?' Raul was conscious of the dull roar in his head building in volume as his imagination provided a picture of a bunch of drooling, lascivious men lusting over Nell's naked body.

Nell gave a disdainful little sniff. ‘There's nothing smutty about it,' she flared defensively. ‘The human body is a perfectly natural, beautiful thing.'

A muscle clenched in Raul's cheek. ‘Some more beautiful than others.' The studied insolence of his bold survey
brought Nell's arms up in an instinctively protective gesture.

‘Do you really think you have what it takes to be an artist's model?'

Nell's arms fell away; she was unsure whether this comment referred to her body or her modesty. She could have told him that she was only self-conscious about her body when he was around.

‘Modelling is art,' she contended.

‘Oh, well that makes it all right, then,' Raul drawled with acid sarcasm that brought an angry glitter to her eyes. ‘And how can you be so sure that all the people who come to draw naked women are inspired to do so by such pure and elevated motives as you ascribe to them?' he demanded. ‘Do you not think it conceivable that some actually come to ogle nubile young women who they would not normally get within five feet of?'

‘Just because you have a disgusting mind, don't assume that everyone else has.'

Raul released a dry laugh. ‘I find if you assign the worst possible motives to people you are rarely disappointed.'

‘Which means you wouldn't recognise someone who was actually on the level,' she cried, appalled by his cynicism.

He gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘I'll take that chance.'

‘And I,' she retorted, ‘will take off my clothes if I wish, despite narrow-minded bigots like you!'

‘I would pay you more not to.'

This driven, extraordinary statement took the wind out of her sails. ‘You would do
what
?'

A self-conscious expression slid across his face before his extravagant lashes came down, brushing the slashing contours of his bold cheekbones before lifting.

‘I mean that living in my home would solve your finan
cial problems and my domestic ones. Unless taking off your clothes in public is the culmination of a lifelong ambition?'

Before Nell had chance to respond to this outrageous suggestion he took her elbow and led her towards the door. ‘You should never make a decision on an empty stomach. Let me buy you dinner. Your bag?' he asked, picking up her leather satchel.

Shocked into temporary submission by his hands-on approach to taking charge of the situation, Nell nodded.

‘Coat?'

She shook her head.

Raul clicked off the light switch. ‘Aren't you forgetting something?' he asked, looking down at her as they stepped out into the night.

Nell shivered as the cold night air penetrated her sweater. When she had dressed that morning it had been a fine autumn morning, but it had been raining for the better part of the day and the street lights were reflected in the rain-soaked pavements.

‘That I have a will of my own?' She wouldn't mind betting that a lot of women did that around Raul.

He grinned mechanically at her self-condemnatory quip and inclined his head towards the door, which stood open.

‘Oh, I forgot,' she said, flustered as she reached for the keys on her belt. Aware in just about every cell of her body of the man watching her, she clumsily inserted the key into the lock and turned it.

She brushed the hair from her eyes and attempted to regain control of the situation, show him that he couldn't push her around.

‘I'll eat with you if you promise not to mention me moving in. That's the deal, take it or leave it,' she explained.

‘I'll take it.' He held open the passenger door of the low-slung saloon.

Nonplussed by his easy capitulation, she stared at first the car and secondly the driver. ‘But I thought…'

A smile of worrying complacency spread across his impossibly perfect features. ‘Then you thought wrong. And not for the first time,' he added enigmatically under his breath. ‘Just get in.'

‘I'm not dressed for…'

‘Reneging on a deal, Nell?'

Nell cast him a look of acute dislike and slid into the low-slung car.

N
OT
only did Raul not introduce the taboo subject of Nell moving in during the journey, he didn't introduce any subject. He didn't actually say anything until he had parked the car.

‘We're here.'

‘Where?' she asked, getting out of the car.

Raul pointed at the grand-looking Georgian terrace they had drawn up in front of.

‘Is this a hotel? Because I can tell you now a place like that won't serve me dressed like this.'

Raul mounted the steps that swept up to a porticoed entrance and gestured her to follow him. ‘It's not a hotel.'

Frowning at his evasive response, she did reluctantly follow him. The door opened before they reached it. A man in uniform stood there. Nell had a very bad feeling about this.

‘Is my mother still up, James?'

‘Yes, sir,' the impassive flunky replied. ‘She is in the kitchen.'

God, was I slow not to see this one coming,
Nell chastised herself.

‘I'm not going in there.'

Raul spun back to her, his preoccupied expression suggesting he'd forgotten she existed.

‘I want to go home,' she wailed.

‘Dios mìo!'
With an expression of exasperation he caught her hand and virtually frogmarched her into the
house. A house that just happened to have an entrance hall you could have fitted a football pitch in.

Blinking at the brightness of the illumination provided by umpteen chandeliers suspended from a ceiling covered with elaborate mouldings, she snatched her hand from his and rounded on him furiously.

‘This is kidnap,' she claimed wildly. ‘I'll report you to the police!'

Raul did not look unduly put out by the threat and the impassive manservant focused on some point above her head and excused himself. Clearly as far as he was concerned his employer was at liberty to kidnap as many women as he chose to.

‘I think you're overreacting slightly,' Raul commented mildly. ‘However, after we eat you can report me to whoever you please, and ask for Chief Superintendent Pritchard. He's a good man—mention my name.'

‘You think that just because you're rich you can do anything you like!' she accused loudly. ‘You planned this,' she added in a throbbing undertone.

His laid his hand lightly across her forehead.

Her reaction to his touch was instantaneous and intense; her temperature shot up several degrees and her stomach dissolved.

‘Ah, I diagnose a blood-sugar dip and a tendency to dramatise.'

Complicated by lust.
Nell regained enough control to pull back. Panting gently, she angrily tugged her feathery fringe back down to cover the area he had just touched.

‘I prescribe a traditional supper of paella.'

‘I suppose you have a team of flunkies waiting to cook anything you fancy at any time of the day or night.'

‘No, my mother is in the kitchen. My mother does not believe in therapy, but when she is stressed she cooks. She
can only cook one dish, but,' he added, looking into Nell's confused face, ‘she cooks it very well.'

Nell attributed his comments to a bizarre sense of humour until they actually entered the kitchen, a vast, cavernous room on the lower-ground-floor level, which, it seemed to an envious Nell, incorporated every modern appliance known to man.

These gleaming appliances and the sleek units that housed them sat cheek by jowl with impressive period features such as a lead-blackened range, original bread oven and flagstone floors. The combination could have looked odd, but the stainless steel modernity married happily with the traditional.

‘This is Nell.'

Nell stepped forward. She didn't actually have much choice in the matter; there was a firm hand in the small of her back propelling her in that direction. She slung a resentful scowl over her shoulder before arranging her features into an expression of polite neutrality.

The woman standing stirring a saucepan on the stainless-steel hob looked from Raul to Nell. The genuine smile of delight that revealed laughter lines around her glittering eyes made it hard not to smile back. Maybe some people might be able to resist such charm and warmth, but Nell was not one of them.

‘I know who this is. I am Aria Carreras.' The woman who identified herself as Raul's mother possessed an attractive husky voice made huskier by the emotion in it. ‘I am so glad you came!' she cried as she floated towards Nell with the sort of natural grace that many a dancer would have envied.

Several inches taller than Nell and slim as a wand, she stooped forward and enclosed Nell in a fragrant hug, then,
drawing back, she kissed the startled younger woman soundly on both cheeks.

‘You were expecting me?'

‘Of course we were, and so pretty, Raul!' she exclaimed, running a knuckle of her beautifully manicured hand softly down the curve of an astonished Nell's cheek. Then as she turned to her son an indignant expression spread across her fine-boned patrician features. ‘Why didn't you tell me she was so pretty?' she scolded, wagging her finger at him.

Because his taste runs to obvious blondes with legs that go on forever and gravity-defying bosoms,
Nell thought, deriving a small degree of satisfaction from the flash of patent discomfiture that chased across his dark, devastatingly gorgeous features as he took the brunt of his parent's teasing censure.

‘And don't tell me you didn't notice, Raul.'

‘I've noticed.'

Nell's lowered gaze lifted, and was instantly snared by his bold, glittering stare. Transfixed by the combination of sexual challenge and hunger in his half-closed eyes, she fought a crazy compulsion to walk straight into his arms.

The craziness didn't stop there. She had no more control over the breath she felt escape her parted lips in a long, tremulous sigh than she did the pulse of sexual longing that stabbed through her. There was a whooshing sound like the sea in her ears as she stood there feeling the vibration of each individual thud of her heartbeat echo like a drumbeat in her throat. She struggled to catch her breath and shake herself free of an atmosphere that literally crackled with sexual tension.

‘I feel I already know you; the children speak of you all the time.'

Nell heard the older woman's words as if they came from a great distance away. She made an enormous effort and
dragged her attention back to her. She gave a vague, disorientated smile and cleared her throat.

‘I really didn't have any idea they meant to run away,' she promised the older woman earnestly.

‘Why, we never imagined you did, my dear. Did we, Raul?'

‘No, I suppose you would have to be a particularly paranoid and suspicious person to think that,' Nell cut in sweetly.

‘And you were a friend to my dear Javier when he needed a friend.' Her liquid dark eyes filled. ‘For that we shall always be in your debt.'

Nell, who had assumed that the entire Carreras family would share Raul's view of her relationship with Javier, made some self-deprecating, embarrassed gesture. Her thoughts were in a whirl.

‘Won't we, Raul?'

Nell held her breath.

‘Eternally.'

Nell released her breath. His mother seemed oblivious to the ironic quality in his response that made her own cheeks burn angrily.

And Raul's mother? Nell was finding it extremely hard to reconcile this svelte youthful figure, who oozed vitality and exuded the sort of effortless style that so many women tried fruitlessly all their lives to achieve, with her mental image of a bedridden little old lady with failing eyesight!

Her outraged gaze swivelled again towards the man who had provided her with this erroneous image. He smiled languidly back at her, not a trace of embarrassment or discomfort in his manner. The man, she decided in disgust, wouldn't recognise a scruple if he fell over it! Were there no depths to which he would not sink, no web of lies he would not spin in order to get his own way?

Pretty pointless too, considering she was obviously going to find out that his mother was hardly the candidate for a nursing home.

‘Raul said that you would come.' Aria smiled at her son, revealing lines around her beautiful almond-shaped eyes. ‘You have no idea at all how relieved this makes me.'

It dawned on a dismayed Nell that Raul's mother believed that she had come to stay. Had that been Raul's intention? Of course it had. Well, if he was relying on her being too embarrassed to correct this false impression—one he had obviously cynically cultivated—he was going to be disappointed.

She was so furious with him she didn't trust herself to look at him.
Is anger the only reason you're scared to look at him?
the cynical voice in her head enquired drily.

‘Actually I just came for supper.'

‘Of course you did.' The older woman patted her arm and drew her towards the table. ‘Do have a seat—you look tired.'

‘I think there's been some misunderstanding,' Nell began uncomfortably as she took a chair at the long refectory table. ‘I've not
come
, that is, I've not come to stay.'

‘You haven't?' The mature and beautiful brunette turned a look of questioning appeal in her son's direction.

‘We are still negotiating terms.' Nell was frustrated to hear him make it sound like a done deal. ‘But I have no doubt that the outcome will be one that is beneficial to us all.'

Not if I have anything to say about it,
Nell thought as she listened to his deliberately ambiguous words.

‘You must not let him bully you. My son always thinks he knows what is best for other people.'

‘You mean he thinks he's always right?' Nell nodded and sent Raul a spitefully sweet smile. ‘Yes, I'd noticed
that, actually it's hard to miss, but don't worry, I won't,' Nell promised.

The older woman looked at her with amusement. ‘I believe you,' she decided, sounding pleased by this discovery. ‘Turn that hob down for me, Raul!' she instructed without looking at her son.

‘It's not on.'

‘I did turn it off by mistake, but I distinctly recall turning it back on.'

‘The back burner is on,' Raul inserted gently.

A spasm of distress, which seemed to Nell disproportionate to the mild domestic blip, contorted the classical features of the older woman as she sat down heavily in a chair.

‘I do that sort of thing all the time,' said Nell.

‘It's not the same. These wretched eyes,' Aria cried, passing a hand across the items she had cursed. Her expression was tinged with embarrassment as she turned to Nell. ‘I expect Raul has mentioned that my eyesight is not as good as it might be?'

‘He did,' she confessed uncomfortably. ‘But I thought…' Nell stopped mid-sentence; you could hardly tell a fond mother that you had thought her son was a liar who had invented a sick parent.

‘What did you think, my dear?'

Her cheeks burning, Nell's eyes automatically sought out the tall, silent figure who had left the stove and was crossing the room. Their eyes locked and his knowing expression confirmed her worst fears—he was perfectly aware that she had assumed he'd been lying about his mother's condition.

‘I expect you thought that he was an over-anxious son exaggerating.' Unwittingly it was Aria who came to her rescue. ‘I only wish he was,' she admitted with a sigh.

Before Nell could respond to this wistful comment Raul came to stand behind his mother. He laid a hand on her shoulder and said something soft and rapid in Spanish. Whatever he said drove the melancholy expression from her face and drew forth her light, musical laughter.

‘Mother has diabetes. It went undiagnosed for some time and unfortunately it has affected her eyesight.'

‘Yes, I have diabetic retinopathy. The doctors are hopeful that the damage has been arrested, however I am still adjusting. An adjustment, which, as Raul rightly says, would be a lot easier if I wasn't so vain. They want me to use a white stick.
A white stick!
' she exclaimed with an eloquent shudder before sliding seamlessly into her native tongue.

Nell's expression grew thoughtful as she listened to the to and fro of conversation between mother and son. ‘Does it need to be white?'

The conversation stopped.

‘I was just wondering, if the idea is for you to be able to feel obstructions, the colour of the stick really doesn't matter, does it?'

‘I really don't see what relevance the colour is.'

Refusing to be put off by Raul's dismissive manner, Nell persisted. ‘I mean, people have handbags to match their outfits—why not canes? You could start a new fashion.' She shrugged as silence greeted her comment. ‘It was just a thought.'

‘And a particularly foolish one.'

Nell's chin went up to a belligerent angle. ‘I was only trying to be helpful; there's no need to be rude.' She watched his expression darken with annoyance. ‘Would it be foolish if
you
had thought of it?'

‘I wouldn't have because I—'

‘Because you are a man,' his mother interceded. Nell's
moment of triumph was short-lived. ‘It will be so nice to have another woman around the place for a while.'

‘Well, actually, I—'

Raul cut in with a frown. ‘I thought you were going back home to Spain to rest when Nell moved in.'

Nell isn't going to move in!
It was a simple enough thing to say, so why, oh, why couldn't she just say it? The longer she delayed, the harder it was going to be. Why hadn't Raul's mother turned out to be a horrid, cold aristocrat and not warm, genuine and very obviously in need of support?

‘And I shall, only Nell and the children shall come with me.' She gave a pleased smile that invited their admiration. ‘I really don't know why I hadn't thought of it earlier.'

‘The children have school.'