Under the Spaniard's Lock and Key (13 page)

‘Save it!’ he snapped, cutting her off with an impatient motion of his dark head.

Her chin went up in response to the autocratic decree. ‘But I—’

‘Just do what I say and do not argue, also do not speak.’

Maggie nodded meekly, her eyes dropping as she recalled her diatribe.

The entire face-the-press-and-yell-at-them thing was all a bit of a blur. But she had yelled, yes, there had definitely been volume—this she knew even though the content of her rant remained frustratingly elusive.

Around them there was noise and frenetic activity, but everything about Rafael, from his carved features to his steady regard, was still. But nobody would mistake that stillness for tranquillity.

Fascinated by the resolution she saw etched into every
stunning angle of his lean face, Maggie stared. Resolution, not to be confused with coolness, and the light gleaming in his eyes had a combustible quality that was echoed in his body language.

His black leather jacket open to reveal a blue shirt that deepened the intense startling colour of his eyes, he reminded Maggie of a dark avenging angel.

A shiver trickled down her spine and things shifted and clenched low and deep inside her as she stared, her eyes drawn to the muscle clenching and unclenching along his shadowed jaw.

She was frightened by the dangerous idea that surfaced in her brain: to touch him, run her fingers over his hair-roughened cheek. Once planted, the impulse was almost impossible to resist. She pressed her clenched hands to her chest, and silently mouthed, No!

Either he could read lips or she had not been so silent because Rafael bent forward and said, ‘There is no need to be frightened of them.’

Just of you she thought. ‘Easy for you to say—you’re the sort of person who gets a kick from chasing hurricanes.’

‘A hurricane,’ he observed bitterly, ‘is child’s play compared to you!’

It was always good to have the man you loved inform you that you were a nightmare. Maggie opened her mouth to deliver a suitably ironic response and was horrified to feel her eyes fill.

Rafael watched her luminous eyes fill and felt a pain that was roughly the equivalent of having a dagger plunged into his chest.

He snarled something very un-angelic and wrapped an arm supportively around her waist. She saw the muscles in his brown throat work as he framed her face with his free hand, angling it up to him.

His eyes swept her pale features again, a spasm twisting his lips into a pained grimace as he made himself look again at the extent of the damage to her cheek and eye.

Maggie went instinctively to lift a protective hand to her face, but found she couldn’t. Her hand was trapped between their bodies and the fingers of her free hand had somehow become interlaced with Rafael’s.

Maggie stared at the brown fingers wrapped around her own wondering when that happened as Rafael swore soft and savage under his breath as one of his minders spoke.

The muscles along his jaw tightened as he turned his attention back to Maggie. This madness was his life, not hers—what had he got her into?

‘This,’ he said, self-condemnation putting a harsh uneven note into his deep voice as he flicked a harsh glare at the media pack. ‘It should not have happened.’ He touched the bruised, discoloured skin tenderly with the pad of his thumb and swore again, turning his head as he closed his eyes and clamped his jaw.

Maggie’s eyelashes came down in a protective sweep, a turbulent cocktail of emotions lodged tight like a weight in her chest as she struggled to hold back the hot tears that stung her eyelids.

She was vaguely conscious of a flurry of movement as one of the minders confiscated the camera someone had pushed under Rafael’s nose. He acted as though nothing had happened.

Maggie wondered enviously how he managed that.

And how did he put up with this sort of invasion on a daily basis? How did he tune out the press who dogged his footsteps?

Presumably this was why he had adopted a strict policy of ‘say nothing, not even yes or no’ and, though the details still remained a bit of a blur she was pretty sure she had said more
than that and it would probably be edited to suit whatever angle they were pursuing.

She took a deep breath. Better to come clean now before she lost her nerve.

‘I didn’t keep my mouth shut. I said…stuff.’

The guilty admission brought his eyes to the mouth in question. Lust slammed through his body. That was predictable, if painful, but the protective instincts that accompanied it were so alien to him still, so strong, that his normal restraint snapped.

Didn’t consider the audience or their cameras, but the need that drove him as he framed her face in his hands.

Didn’t consider them as he bent his head.

Didn’t consider them as he fitted his mouth to hers and with a groan of male need slid his tongue deep into the soft heat of her mouth.

The paparazzi, unable to believe their luck at the cool, controlled Rafael Castenadas’ public display, went crazy as they snapped the kissing couple.

Rafael lifted his head.

Dazed and clinging to Rafael’s jacket Maggie was vaguely aware of Rafael’s extended arm protecting her and bodies, encouraged by their escorts, parting to let them through to the waiting car.

The door, held open and flanked by another two tough-looking suited figures who were both talking into headpieces, was closed with a decisive sound after Rafael slid into the back seat beside her.

Rafael spoke to the driver and leaned back in his seat as the car moved off and the smoked-glass partition between them slid into place.

Maggie willed herself not to lower her gaze, while for the first time she started asking herself why he was here.

His glance skimmed her profile. ‘I am sorry that you had
to go through that,’ he said, sounding angry, which, considering he was the one that had done the kissing, struck Maggie as pretty unreasonable.

‘I told you to stay in and I did try and warn you,’ he added.

‘Did you?’

Maggie could not recall any warning.

Just the memory of his mouth, she mused her glance drawn irresistibly to that strongly sculpted sensual curve. And his probing tongue sliding—that was very clear. She huffed a shaky breath and, sliding her fingers into her heavy hair, pushed it from her face. The memory was not so easy to remove; it lingered like the heat lying low in her pelvis.

‘I’ve been ringing all morning.’

‘Ringing?’ she echoed blankly.

‘You were not picking up.’

‘I was busy,’ she lied.

His public display had been totally out of character, so possibly she was irresistible?

If that were true he would hardly have walked away last night.

Or—a less flattering though possibly more likely explanation—it had been a dramatic way of telling the circus that dogged his footsteps that they did not make any impact on his life—Rafael’s way of thumbing his nose at them.

He clenched his teeth in frustration and pushed his head back deep into the soft upholstery as he closed his eyes. ‘You were not busy, you were simply punishing me because I walked out last night.’ His eyes opened. ‘There was a reason.’

Maggie shook her head and betrayed no interest in hearing it.

What was the point? Nothing, with the exception of hearing him say he loved her, would make anything better—and that was not going to happen.

He studied the obstinate angle of her averted chin and said softly, ‘Look at me, Maggie.’

Maggie ignored the instruction and carried on staring at the smoked-glass window.

She listened to him curse fluently, then turned her head. ‘I want to go home.’

‘We are.’

She looked at him, a question in her narrowed eyes.

‘Going home, to my London house. We can be private there.’

‘I don’t want to be private,’ she retorted, thinking that it was a pity he hadn’t been so keen on privacy before he gave the photo opportunity of a decade to the paparazzi.

‘Why did you agree?’

She was thrown by the question and her startled gaze flew to his face, her first mistake—his compelling metallic stare shredded her thin veneer of composure.

She cleared her throat and tugged fretfully at the neck of her top. ‘Agree to what?’

‘To meeting Angelica—why did you agree?’

‘Why the third degree? I thought that’s what you wanted.’

‘And you always do what I want?’ He loosed a dry laugh and reminded her, ‘Before you gave the very strong impression that your mind was made up, you were totally inflexible on the subject, unwavering…’

Maggie’s eyes fell from the disturbing speculation in his silver gaze.

‘I wasn’t.’

‘You were dead set against it.’

Maggie focused at some point over his shoulder God if only it were that easy to ignore him! She was painfully conscious of him.

‘Things change,’ she countered.

‘And what changed with you?’

Maggie lifted her head in response to the pressure of his fingers under her chin. She shook her head mutely.

‘Susan thinks you might be pregnant.’

M
AGGIE’S
eyes went wide with shock. For the space of several heartbeats her breathing was suspended. The colour seeped from her already pale cheeks before she took a deep gulping breath.

If she had not been sitting her legs would have failed her.

That statement did not work on more levels than she could count.

‘Susan…Mum…?’

He confirmed her incredulous query with a calm nod of his head. ‘An incredible woman,’ he said. “Like her daughter.”

Talking long into the night with her parents had helped him understand what had made Maggie the woman she was today—too mature for her years in many ways, yet untouched…
until he came along.

He clenched his teeth against the self-condemnatory stab of self-loathing that sliced into him like a dull blade when he considered the impact his selfish actions had had on the one person in the world he wanted to protect.

Madre di Dios,
he seemed to have inherited an uncanny ability to mess up when it came to the people he loved…

He could only imagine how Maggie must be feeling.

She’d spent all her life weighed down by responsibilities. This was her time, her time to finally put her needs and desires
above those of others, her time to be carefree, and if her mother’s suspicions were correct he was responsible for clipping her wings before she had spread them.

Maggie had no control over the rush of pleasure she experienced at the compliment. Her throat clogged with emotion she struggled not to show, it was one of the nicest things that anyone had ever said to her.

‘You do know that I’m not her real daughter?’ She stopped—of course he did.

With an expressive sweep of his hand Rafael brushed aside the comment as irrelevant. ‘She has passed on her qualities to you, strength, compassion, and, I suspect,’ he added, flashing a grin that sent her sensitive stomach into a lurching dive, ‘bloody-minded stubbornness.’

Maggie stared at him in a daze. ‘You
really
spoke to her?
When
did you speak to her? She thinks I’m…’ A slow flush worked its way up her neck until her face was burning.

Rafael’s eyes didn’t leave her face. ‘And is she right, Maggie?’ he asked quietly.

Maggie struggled to tear her eyes from the nerve pulsing like a metronome beside his mouth, and she was not fooled by his conversational tone. Even though his hand had fallen away, she could feel the waves of tension rolling off his lean body.

‘How can you have spoken to my mum?’ It seemed better to deal with one extraordinary comment at a time. ‘You don’t even know her phone number.’

The moment the words left her lips she knew how stupid they were. It was hardly beyond his capabilities to pick up a telephone book or have a flunky do it for him.

Delegated or not, why would he want to?

‘I did not phone your mother—’

‘I didn’t think so—’

‘I called on her. The term “jaw dropped” has just taken on
an entirely new meaning,’ he observed, placing a helpful finger under her chin. Maggie’s mouth closed with an audible click as she continued to stare at him.

He stared back, allowing himself the luxury of examining the delicate features turned to him, committing each soft curve and delicate hollow to memory. As emotions that he had finally stopped fighting welled up he tried to put them in words, but for once in his life the words wouldn’t come.

Instead he mumbled huskily, ‘A better look for you I feel.’

Maggie shivered as he trailed a finger over the curve of her cheek.

He thinks you’re pregnant.

Her brows twitched together in a dark line of distrust as she wrinkled her nose. ‘How do you mean “called on her”?’ she quizzed suspiciously.

‘What part of “called on her” do you not follow? You wish for me to describe my actions step by step?’

He gave every appearance of being amused, relaxed even but, noting the more defined foreign inflection in his voice—something she had previously noticed occurred at moments of heightened emotion—Maggie wondered if he might not actually be so stress free as he appeared.

Of course he’s not stress free, dunce, she told herself scornfully. He’s trying to figure out if you’re about to lumber him with a baby he definitely doesn’t want. Wow, was he going to be happy when she set him straight—he might also feel less inclined to tell her she was beautiful.

Ignoring the stab of pain administered by this timely reality check, she snapped, ‘Do what you like.’ Spoiling the delivery by allowing a quiver of emotion to ruin her snarl.

She saw him register the quiver, felt him tense for a moment, and thought he was about to reach for her. When he didn’t the relief—or was it the anticlimax?—was intense.

‘I knocked on the door, and she let me in, or to be precise
your brother let me in…Sam, I think? They are both very alike.’

This comment dragged her wandering thoughts back from the confused dark place they had fled. Wide eyes flew to his face.

‘Sam has the broken nose.’ This conversation had gone past surreal.

‘Then it was Sam,’ Rafael confirmed. ‘Susan was late back from her physiotherapy appointment.’

Maggie blinked at the casual familiarity of the comment. ‘Will you stop talking as if you know my family?’ she pleaded, pushing both hands into her dark hair.

‘Know
might be overstating it,’ he admitted. ‘But I felt we got on well.’

‘You really went to my house?’ She eyed him with suspicion, and wondered if this was his idea of a joke.

‘I did, last night.’

‘You went to my house.’ She shook her head as she tried to imagine Rafael in his immaculate designer suit and handmade leather shoes in her parents’ chintzy living room, complete with its out-of-tune piano and large shaggy dog, and failed.

Talk about worlds colliding!

He crossed one ankle over the other and raised his brows. ‘Why do you find this fact so extraordinary?’

‘Why?’ She laughed. ‘Because you’re—’ her gesture took in his elegant person from sleek dark head to gleaming handmade shoes ‘—
you
and my family are…’ She stopped. ‘What were you doing there anyway?’

‘I wanted to explain the situation to your parents before they woke up this morning and saw this.’

Maggie’s eyes shifted to the paper he rustled. She was turning back to him when she registered the photo splashed
across the front page and felt the pain behind her eyes kick up several uncomfortable notches.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, her freckles standing out against the marble pallor of her skin. Rafael, a breath trapped in his throat, frustration lodged like a fist in his chest, felt every protective instinct he possessed screaming for him to make her feel better, but how?

He was reaching out when she opened her eyes.

‘Fame at last,’ she said faintly. ‘Some people try all their lives to make the front cover.’ It was a struggle to treat the situation like a joke when she thought of all the people she knew who would be looking at it. ‘Not very flattering,’ she finished hoarsely.

Rafael, his eyes welded to her face, watched her lips quiver and cursed. The violence of the mumbled epithet brought her eyes to his face.

‘It could have been worse.’

Maggie stared at the brown fingers covering hers and gulped, resisting a mad impulse to throw herself into his arms. As if that were going to solve anything…though it would feel nice while it lasted.

Maggie didn’t believe him but appreciated the white lie.

‘I didn’t think…’ she admitted with a shamefaced grimace as she thought of her parents picking the newspaper up off the mat and seeing that.

He took the newspaper away and slung it over his shoulder. ‘You have other things on your mind.’ Like carrying my baby. ‘I have been there before, though not with anyone like you.’

The concession made her stiffen. He did not need to labour the point that he was not normally photographed with a woman who looked as seductive as a scarecrow.

‘I’m so sorry if it’s injured your reputation to be seen with a woman who is fully dressed and not drop-dead gorgeous!’

Dark head tilted to one side, he regarded her with an air of
frustrated incredulity. ‘You have a positive genius for misinterpreting everything I say. The women I have been photographed with previously have been with me because they want to be photographed, not because of my charming personality. They want their five minutes of fame.’

‘Well, don’t flatter yourself. I wasn’t with you because of your charming personality. You’re not charming, you’re a…a…’ She stopped and thought, The man I love, before adding with a husky note of enquiry, ‘Mum and Dad…’

‘They know that you are all right. I wanted them to stay with friends but they preferred to sit it out.’

‘You mean the press are there too?’ Maggie asked, startled. That had not even occurred to her.

‘A few when I left this morning.’

Maggie groaned.

‘Look on the bright side—your brothers are anticipating an upsurge in female interest in the near future.’

The comment drew a reluctant laugh from Maggie. She could almost hear the boys. ‘You really were there,’ she said wonderingly.

‘I like your family, Magdalena.’

‘Me too. I suppose I should thank you for making the effort…?’ Her eyelashes came down in a protective sweep. ‘So what did you say to them?’

‘We had quite a long talk…’

She clenched her teeth in frustration at the evasion. ‘About?’

‘You, mostly.’

Maggie found this cryptic utterance deeply disturbing. ‘Sure because I’m such a fascinating subject.’

‘I wouldn’t call you a subject.’

‘No, just a total pain in the neck, probably.’

She tensed when Rafael leaned across without warning and fastened the clasp on her seat belt. ‘A legal requirement.’

Rigid, Maggie sat as still as a statue while he performed his task, staring through the mesh of her lashes at the top of his dark head, her nostrils flaring in response to the evocative scent of his clean washed hair. In her head she could see herself pushing her fingers deep into the luxuriant mass.

She released a small sigh of relief when he straightened up. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a semblance of sanity when she became a mass of craving hormones every time he so much as glanced her way.

As he leaned back in his seat Rafael’s eyes brushed her flushed face. Maggie, her palms damp with the effort of maintaining eye contact, was too caught up in her own struggle to notice the dark bands of colour etched across the angles of his razor-edged cheekbones.

‘You inspire strong feelings in everyone who meets you.’

This cryptic response drew a frown from Maggie. Thanks for nothing, she thought. ‘How tactful.’

‘Tact is not something I’m known for.

‘You didn’t tell me that you were your mother’s carer when you were younger.’

Maggie’s air of studied nonchalant defiance fell away at this, she felt a surge of anger.

‘I was not her carer. We all mucked in. Mum was always very independent.’

‘That’s not what she said.’

‘I wouldn’t know—I wasn’t there. You were talking about me behind my back.’

‘Did you never resent that you didn’t have a normal childhood?’

His curiosity made Maggie see red. She drew herself up poker-straight, ignoring the pain from the belt digging into her bruised shoulder as anger burned away the last shreds of her restraint.

‘Of course I never resented Mum or anything else—I had
a great childhood. Don’t you
dare
feel sorry for me!’ she growled.
‘I’m
not the one with the hang-ups and emotional scars, I can express my feelings. I don’t have to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator—’ She stopped, appalled by what she had said. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that…’ Maggie cast a stricken look at his face before her eyes fell. ‘My parents would never discuss me with a total stranger.’

‘You had sex with a total stranger.’ He watched her flinch and shook his head, regret etched in the drawn lines of his strong features. ‘Now we have both said things we should not have. I’m not a total stranger, Maggie.’

The emotion she heard in the husky addition brought her head up, but it was not anger she saw stamped on his dark features; it was a raw need that made her stomach muscles contract and flip.

Her eyelids, suddenly heavy, half closed as she registered the sensual glow in his eyes. She struggled to retain control; she felt an erotic shiver trickle down her spine.

Control…?
She swallowed and ran her tongue over her dry lips. Who was she kidding?

She definitely had more control over the direction her glance drifted than she did the dramatic dilation of her pupils. As her eyes moved slowly across the sensual curve of his incredible mouth she thought about his lips on hers, his tongue sliding into her mouth.

‘Maggie.’

The sound of her name brought her eyes back to his, the tension climbed as she read the silent message in his hot hooded stare. A tiny gasp left her lips as desire tightened like a fist low in her belly.

The fog of sexual tension in the confined space grew denser, almost tangible and totally unbearable, she felt torn apart as conflicting desires and fears battled inside her skull.

She lifted a hand to her heaving chest as she struggled to draw enough air into her lungs.

She could almost see the breaking point she was about to collide with when a sudden thump on the car broke the spell. She jumped instinctively towards Rafael.

‘Relax.’

Maggie was too tense to register the rough-edged strain in his thickened voice as he soothed her.

‘What?’ she asked as the car slowed and she heard several more thuds.

Then Rafael was drawing her towards him. ‘It’s just the reporters camped outside my place. This will only take a minute and we’ll be inside.’

Maggie silently accepted the support of the arm he placed across the back of the seat; she tried to tune out the sound of muffled yells outside and the further thuds on the paintwork of the limo as she responded to the pressure of the fingers on her shoulder and shuffled her bottom across the space separating them.