Kitabı oku: «From Paris With Love Collection», sayfa 33
CHAPTER ONE
Three weeks later
WINTER had come early, the late-September day dressed in drab colours as if the planet itself was mourning the death of her grandfather. But the inclement weather found only empathy with Gabriella D’Arenberg, the damp air and misty rain matching her mood as she stood beside her grandfather’s flower-strewn grave in the Cimetiere de Passy. Then the last of the mourners whispered condolences and pressed cold lips briefly to her cheeks before drifting away along the path.
She would leave shortly too, once Consuelo had returned from the call he had excused himself to take, and they would join everyone at the hotel where the caterers were no doubt already serving canapés and cognac. But for now Gabriella was happy to be left alone in quiet reflection in the cold, dank stillness of the graveyard. Here, under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, there was nothing to intrude, the sounds of the city barely penetrating the stone walls.
Until a dark shadow made her gasp and look around.
He appeared out of the fog, tall, broad and dark as night as he moved stealthily between the funeral sculptures, the winged angels and fat cherubs suspended ghost-like in the swirling mist as he passed. A shiver of recognition—or was it of relief?—washed through her and bizarrely, for the first time that day, she felt warm.
Raoul.
She had seen him at the service; it had been impossible to miss his dark presence in the back of the tiny crowded chapel. Her heart had lifted at the prospect of seeing him again after so many years, only to exit the chapel to a bubble of disappointment when she had found him nowhere amongst the mourners gathered outside.
Raoul, who with his intense black eyes and passionate mouth had been her every adolescent fantasy—dark fantasies she’d had no right to imagine. Wicked fantasies that brought a blush to her cheeks just thinking about them. And, when she’d got news that he’d married, she’d cried for two days solid. She’d cried for him a year later when she’d learned of his wife’s death. Thank God he had no idea about any of it or she could never face him now. Thank God she was over all that.
The crunch of boots on gravel grew louder, his long leather coat swirling about his legs, his hair pulled back into a ponytail that served to accentuate the strong lines and angles of his chiselled features. His eyes, if anything, were even more intense than she remembered under that dark slash of brow. Tortured, even. And something about that intensity frightened her a little, just as if his purposeful stride held a portent of danger, sending a tremor skittering down her spine.
The mist, she thought in explanation, as she continued to log his approach with her eyes. The cold, swirling air …
The air shifted and parted before him and then he was there, standing before her, a mountain of blackness in a mist-shrouded world, so tall that she had to tilt her head back to look up at him and his unflinching expression. He didn’t smile. She didn’t expect him to, not really, not this day.
But this was Raoul, an old family friend, so she dismissed her feelings of foreboding and danger and ventured a nervous smile of greeting, slipping her hands instinctively into his as easily as she had once done, relishing their instant warmth, thinking, you came. ‘Raoul, it’s so good to see you.’
For a moment he seemed to tense, and she wondered if she’d overstepped the mark by presuming familiarity. Then his hands squeezed hers and the tightness around his mouth relaxed just enough to give an answering smile that still spoke of sadness and loss. ‘Gabriella,’ he said in a way that seemed to cherish every syllable as he uttered it.
Then he leaned down to kiss first one cheek, and then the other, slow, lingering kisses. She shuddered under the brush of his lips against her flesh, his warm breath curling into hers and peeling back the years. She breathed him in, taken by the way he smelt so familiar, of clean skin and warm leather and the same woody notes of his signature scent that she recalled—yet there was so much more besides, as if what she’d remembered had been but a shadow of his essence.
‘I am so sorry for your loss.’ He drew back then, letting her hands drop, and she tried desperately not to be disappointed by his absence, shoving her hands in her coat pockets, not just to keep them warm but more to stop them reaching out for him. Those teenage fantasies might have been behind her, but Raoul was here now, real, broad and achingly close. Inside her pockets, her hands curled into fists.
‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she managed a little shakily, surprised he could still affect her so deeply and so fundamentally, even after so many years. ‘Or you could have stayed at the house. Where are you staying? You should have let me know.’
He rattled off the name of a hotel that barely registered in the force of the impact of seeing him again. But then, she was hardly herself right now. Memories, especially memories of anything and anyone connected to her grandfather, seemed all too willing to bubble to the surface. Raoul had been close to her grandfather for longer than she had, their two families intertwined as long as she could remember, at least until the tragedy that had wiped out both sets of parents. ‘And of course,’ she said, acknowledging that truth, ‘It’s your loss too.’
‘Umberto was a good man,’ he said with a nod, his deep voice rich with emotion. ‘I will miss him more than I can say.’ Then he blinked and something skated across his eyes, something so sharp and painful she could almost feel its sting, so fleeting it was gone before she could make sense of it, even if he hadn’t turned his head to look down at the grave.
Remembering, she assumed, as she studied his profile and catalogued the changes time had wrought. He had always been on the outer edge of good-looking, his dark, strong features organised in a way that was compelling rather than handsome in any conventional sense, the shadows in his features hinting at unknown dangers and untold secrets.
How many nights had she lain awake imagining all those dangers, all those secrets, wishing she might one day know them all?
Age had lent him even more mystery. The angles of his jaw looked sharper. The secrets hinted at in the shadows seemed darker, his eyes more haunted. True, there were lines around his eyes, but he was simply more, she decided, more than he had been before. More edgy. More mysterious.
More Raoul.
And with a start she realised that, while she’d been lost in her musings, he had changed his focus and was now studying her.
Dark-as-midnight eyes scanned her face, a hint of a frown creasing his brow, and she wondered if something was wrong before he nodded, gave her another of those slight smiles and stepped away a little to look at her. ‘Whatever happened to the Gabriella I used to know? The skinny girl with plaits who always had her head in a book.’
She hid her embarrassment under a laugh, secretly hoping his comments meant that he approved of how she looked now, for it seemed important somehow that he did. She had long since come to terms with the knowledge that she’d never be classically beautiful—her eyes were too large and wide, and the chin that she’d hidden under a hand for much of her early teenage years was too pointy. But it was her face and over the years she’d learned to accept it, if it had taken finishing school to give her the skills to emphasise her eyes and learn to like how she looked. ‘She grew up, Raoul. That skinny girl was a long, long time ago.’
‘It was,’ he agreed, and then he paused, as if remembering another time, other bleak days filled with funerals … ‘How have you been?’
She shrugged. ‘Good. And sometimes not so good.’ She glanced at the open grave, felt the anguish of loss bite hard and bite deep. ‘But, even so, better now for seeing you.’ She paused, wondering how much she could say without revealing too much of herself, and then decided simply to be honest. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’
‘And me.’ His dark eyes looked past her. ‘But you should not be alone now.’
‘Oh, I’m not. Not really. Consuelo—a friend—is here. He left … ‘ She looked around, pushing a loose tendril of hair from her face as she scanned the cemetery. ‘He left to take an urgent phone call.’ That seemed to be taking for ever. ‘Probably for one of his foundations, I expect. He heads a charity for children with cancer and leukaemia. He’s always on the phone chasing contributions.’
She was babbling, she knew, making excuses for him as she glanced at her watch before scanning the grounds again, wondering how he could let one of his donors keep him so long, today of all days. ‘We’re heading to the hotel shortly for the wake. Everyone’s already there.’
She looked back up at him, suddenly fearful that this man was about to step out of her life as quickly as he had stepped back into it, leaving her with no idea when she might ever see him again. The thought of going another ten-plus years was suddenly too awful to contemplate. ‘You will come, won’t you? I saw you in the chapel but you’d disappeared by the time I got outside, and I thought I’d missed you. There’s so much I want to talk to you about.’
He lifted a hand and pushed that wayward coil of her hair from her cheek with just the pads of his fingers, the lightest touch that sent a rush of heat pulsing through her. ‘Of course I will come. It will be my pleasure.’
Breath stalled in her lungs; his fingers lingered as he coiled the strands behind her ear, as he looked down at her with those dark, dark eyes …
‘Gabby!’
She blinked, registering her name, but registering even more that Raoul had still not removed his hand. His fingers curved around her neck, gently stroking her skin, warm and evocative, even as she angled her head towards Consuelo’s approach. The touch of an old friend, she told herself, reaching out to someone over a shared loss; it was nothing more than that. It would be rude, an over reaction, to brush his hand away.
‘Are you coming?’ Consuelo asked, still metres away and frowning as his eyes shifted from one to the other, taking in the tableau. ‘We’re going to be late.’
‘Gabriella was waiting for you, as it happens,’ Raoul said, and she looked up at him, surprised. For, even if he had correctly assumed this was Consuelo, that would hardly explain the note of barely contained animosity in his words.
Consuelo didn’t seem to notice. He seemed far more interested in staring at Raoul’s hand where it lingered at her throat, as if just the heat from his glare would make it disappear. For the first time she wondered if maybe it had been there too long. She put her hand to his and tugged it down, but wasn’t about to let him go completely, sandwiching it between her own instead. She noticed he made no move to withdraw from her completely.
‘Am I missing something?’ she asked, looking from one to the other, for the first time realising the similarities in the two men—and the differences. Both shared Spanish colouring, with dark eyes and hair, but that was where the similarities began and ended. Raoul was taller, broader, more imposing. He made Consuelo look almost small. ‘Do you two know each other?’
‘Consuelo and I are old friends,’ Raoul uttered slowly, in a measured tone that suggested they were anything but. ‘Aren’t we, Consuelo?’ The other man’s eyes skittered with something approximating fear before he turned to Gabriella, tugging on his tie.
‘Phillipa said the priest wanted to say a few words,’ he said, ignoring the other man as much as it was physically able. ‘He’s waiting for you to arrive to begin. Now.’
‘Phillipa called you?’ Was that the phone call that had kept him so long? That was odd. Her friend had never before called Consuelo; Gabriella wasn’t convinced Phillipa even liked him. Unless Phillipa had figured—correctly, as it turned out—that her phone would be off and that Consuelo, with his twenty-four-seven phone addiction, would be a better bet. She nodded. At least that made some kind of sense. ‘Then we should go. Raoul, can we offer you a lift?’
Consuelo stepped closer alongside her, tugging at her arm. ‘Look, the car’s waiting. We should get going.’
Raoul smiled. ‘Thank you for your kind offer, Gabriella, but I wish to have a few words with your grandfather before I make my own way.’ He lifted his hand, capturing one of hers as he raised it to his mouth, pressing his warm lips to her skin, his dark eyes glancing up at her as dark tendrils of his hair fell free from his ponytail to dance around the sharp angles and shadowed recesses of his face. ‘Until we meet again, Bella,’ he said, using his old pet name for her, an endearment she hadn’t heard in over a decade.
But he had remembered.
And then those same eyes turned to meet the other man’s and somehow turned ice-cold in the interim. ‘Garbas,’ he said with a nod, so simply that it took Gabriella only a second to realise he’d dismissed the other man out of hand. Consuelo felt it too, for he took her hand and tugged her away.
Raoul watched them disappear along the misty path, unable to suppress a growl when Garbas looped a proprietorial arm around Gabriella’s shoulders and pulled her in close.
For his benefit, he had no doubt. Umberto had been right about the hyena sniffing around, watching and waiting for his chance to strike—not that he would see a penny of Gabriella’s fortune if Raoul had anything to do with it. Not now the dogs were closing in.
It hadn’t taken much. He’d known there would be dirt and plenty of it if he just dug deep enough. Now he just had to sit back and wait. It wouldn’t be long and then Gabriella would be safe from his clutches.
Gabriella.
Bella.
Forgotten for years, lost under the weight of time, yet still the endearment had come to him automatically, as if all he had to do was see her before it tripped from his tongue. Yet she looked so different now from the last time they had met. When had twelve years ever passed so profitably? For him, it had been a period of loss, betrayal, death and ultimately of his own self-imposed exile. For her, it seemed those years had worked some kind of magic, transforming her from a gangly child into a very beautiful woman.
They might just as well have been living on different planets.
Huddled alongside the grave, her coat lashed tightly around her slim waist, her glossy chestnut hair coiled behind her head, she had been almost unrecognisable from the child he remembered, yet he should have seen it coming. Her mother had been beautiful after all, half-English-rose, half-Italian-royalty, her father the crème de la crème of French aristocracy. Her heart-shaped face somehow captured the best of all of them: her mother’s cat-like eyes and smooth-as-silk complexion, her father’s passionate mouth. Beautiful. Fragile.
Much too good for the likes of him.
What had Umberto been thinking? Dealing with the likes of Consuelo was one thing, but why would he want to saddle his own granddaughter with a broken creature like him? Why make him promise to marry her?
“You don’t have to love her!” Umberto had said.
Just as well. What would a woman like her want with his love, even if he were able to give it? And why would she waste hers on him? Why would a woman like her ever want to marry him?
And why should she have to? Consuelo would soon be history, untouchable, locked away where he could not reach her—and not even someone who saw the good in everyone would want to defend him when she discovered the truth. Raoul could just as simply deal with any other Consuelos if it came to that. He could weed out the hyenas and the jackals, the parasites who came to prey on a rich, beautiful woman.
He could take care of them all.
Except then he remembered the touch of her skin, the smooth column of her throat and the trip of her pulse under his fingertips. He remembered the press of her cheek against his palm, remembered that moment when she had looked up at him and he had imagined the impossible, had wanted the impossible. For the first time in a long time he had felt his body stirring with want.
And that knowledge shamed him.
He hadn’t meant his fingers to linger. He had wanted just to establish a contact between them, as if that might help eradicate the years that lay between them. But one touch had not been enough, and when a stray strand of hair had blown free from the knot behind her head he had been unable to resist tucking it away, using the excuse of Garbas coming upon them to leave it there.
It had been worth it just to see the look of unbridled hostility in his eyes. It had been worth even more because she had felt so damned good under his fingers.
He squeezed his eyes shut on a groan. What was he thinking? She was his oldest friend’s granddaughter! The last time he had seen her she had been twelve, and it didn’t matter how old she was now; she was still more than a decade younger than him. And he had been charged with taking care of her, not with taking advantage of her. He was supposed to keep her safe.
By mauling her at her grandfather’s grave?
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Umberto, but what were you thinking?’ he muttered, as he stood by the grave of his friend with just the tangle of his conflicted thoughts and the mist for company. ‘Why would you make me promise such a thing when no good can come of it?’
The soft, damp air swirled around him, whispering no answers, offering no solutions, and leaving him with just one truth. He had promised his dying friend it would be so.
So he would make it happen.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WHAT is he doing here?’ Consuelo demanded as he strode along the path like a man with the demons of hell after him. ‘Why did he have to come?’
Gabriella skipped a step to keep up with him. ‘Raoul is an old family friend. Of course he would be here.’
‘But the way he was touching you—like he owned you. Like he meant something to you. You let him touch you!’
‘We grew up together, Consuelo. Our two families were practically inseparable, at least until I was twelve years of age. The last time I saw him was at our parents’ funerals. Of course there is some feeling between us. He is like a brother to me.’
He looked across at her suddenly, his eyes wild and frantic, and she wondered what else must be troubling him for him to overreact in this way. ‘And that’s all he is to you?’
‘But of course,’ she said, wanting to soothe, but mostly because there was nothing else she could say, even if she might so foolishly have once dreamed of more.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her close in to his body. She needed to be hugged but she wondered why this contact didn’t stir her blood or warm her as Raoul’s touch had done. Perhaps because she saw more of him, or because he was more familiar to her, more comfortable to be around. She shouldn’t encourage him—she knew he wanted more out of their relationship than she could commit to right now—but today she was glad to have someone to hold on to, even if his touch didn’t stir her like another’s …
She shuddered now with the memory of it, of how just the gentle touch of Raoul’s fingertips had set her blood fizzing. How was that possible—a man she hadn’t met other than in her dreams for so many years? Or had she just wished and hoped for it so much, she’d believed it had happened?
But then he’d always had that impact on her. He’d always seemed larger than life, and she’d always been drawn to his dark mystery. Why should it be any different now, simply because a dozen years had passed?
‘How do you know Raoul?’ she asked, curious as he hastened her towards the waiting car. ‘Is he one of the foundation’s benefactors?’
He laughed, a short, derisive laugh. ‘Him? No, he would not give to a charity such as ours, not even to save the lives of sick children.’
‘Why do you say that? Have you ever asked him?’
‘I do not bother with his sort. His kind have no heart.’
‘No, Consuelo,’ she protested, remembering back, thinking that Raoul had had the biggest heart of anyone she knew. Nothing had been too much trouble for him back then, nothing too much effort for his family and hers. And when the police had called that fateful evening with the shocking news it had been Raoul who had cradled her, letting her cry her eyes out, offering her the remnants of his own shattered heart. ‘That cannot be right.’
‘Then you do not know him very well, after all. Come,’ he said, opening her car door so she could precede him into the vehicle. ‘Forget Raoul; there are more important things to think about right now.’ He tapped the waiting driver on the shoulder to let him know they were ready. ‘Like arranging for your things to be moved from the house into my apartment. Given you’re on leave, it would be the perfect time.’
She blinked, momentarily stunned. Where had that come from? ‘What are you talking about?’
But he was engrossed in the traffic, scanning it, almost as if he was looking for someone. Raoul? Surely he was a long way behind. And then he turned back to her, smiling, and she wondered if she’d imagined his nervousness. ‘Come on, darling. Now that your grandfather’s gone, there’s no reason why we should live apart any longer.’
‘We haven’t talked about this.’
He took her hand in one of his, patted it with the other. ‘Come, Gabby, you know as well as I do that half the reason you haven’t moved in already is because your grandfather needed you. Now there is no reason for us to be apart. Now it is time you were looked after the way you should be. The way I want to look after you.’
She shook her head. ‘Consuelo …’
‘Of course, I can always move in with you, but I thought you might prefer a fresh start somewhere else, somewhere without the memories.’
‘I like where I live,’ she said, stiffening and wondering what she had said or done to make him think she was ready to move in with him. ‘And my grandfather is barely cold in his grave. I would actually prefer not to have to deal with this today.’
He sighed and lifted her hand to his lips, although his eyes lacked any warmth to go with it. ‘I’m sorry, Gabby. I’m rushing you. Of course we can talk later.’
Much later, she thought, clutching her coat at her neck and wondering what it was that was throwing Consuelo so off-kilter today; he was so very anxious as he resumed his busy scanning of the traffic.
They were almost at the hotel when Consuelo’s phone buzzed again. He pulled it from his pocket and held it to his ear, and Gabriella looked across, wondering if it was Phillipa again wanting to know how far away they were. But even as she watched the colour drained from Consuelo’s face.
‘Mierda!’ he said, before he snapped it off and shoved it away, tapping the driver on the shoulder. ‘Stop here. Let me out here.’
‘Consuelo, what’s wrong?’ she asked as the driver cut across two lanes of traffic, to the squeal of tyres and the blare of horns, to double park on the side of the road. ‘Who was that?’
But he was already climbing out. ‘A problem at the office. I have to go.’ And then he slammed the door and disappeared into the crowd.
* * *
The priest’s words were moving, the condolences she received from old friends and associates heartfelt, and Gabriella felt one kind of peace descend on her soul. Her grandfather had been much loved by all who had known him, had touched so many lives, and it was clear that it wasn’t just her who would be left with an Umberto-sized hole in her heart.
But now the wake was winding down and she felt suddenly deflated with it. She’d turned her phone on to silent, hoping that she might get some news from Consuelo, some kind of explanation, but there had been no messages explaining his sudden disappearance or when he might join her. She was beginning to think he wouldn’t make it at all.
And maybe she could have lived with that if Raoul had bothered to turn up like he’d promised. She’d hoped he’d soon follow them from the cemetery. From the very first minute she’d stepped into the hotel’s plush reception-room, she’d been anticipating his arrival, scanning the room for a hint of his broad, dark-clad shoulders or a glimpse of his blue-black hair. She longed for the dark solidity of his presence. She longed for the comfort she’d found in it at the cemetery, a comfort she yearned for now.
He’d promised he’d come. She ached with wanting him to come. So where was he?
Phillipa appeared at her side and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘How are you bearing up?’
‘Do men always let you down?’ she mused as she stared blankly into a cold cup of coffee in her hands that she battled to remember picking up. First Umberto, the grandfather who had taken her in as a grieving twelve-year-old and had been both mother and father to her, was gone. Then Consuelo, who couldn’t even stop thinking about his foundation for just one day, disappeared to who knew where and for how long? And now Raoul, who she’d lost before she’d even found again.
‘Hey, don’t worry,’ said Phillipa. ‘You know how he is,’ she continued, clearly only seeing one side to Gabriella’s concerns. Her friend squeezed her hand as she prised the neglected cup from her fingers. ‘The foundation is everything to him. He’s got caught up in something, that’s all. And, for the record, men don’t always let you down. Not all of them, at any rate.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, remembering Phillipa’s gorgeous husband. ‘I’m just feeling maudlin. You have a keeper of a man. He is a wonder to bring you all the way from London just for me and with such a young baby.’
She kissed Gabriella’s cheek. ‘Nothing is too much trouble for you, but you’re right; Damien is a keeper, but he will need rescuing from our baby soon. Will you be all right if I leave?’
‘I’ll be fine. You’ve been so wonderful today. Oh, and I meant to say before, thanks for calling while we were at the cemetery. I lost track of time completely out there.’
Her friend looked blank.
‘You phoned Consuelo,’ Gabriella prompted. ‘To tell him the priest was waiting for me to begin his talk.’
Phillipa frowned and shook her head. ‘I never called. I don’t even have his number.’ It was Gabriella’s turn to blink. Why had Consuelo made out that she had? Unless he’d been so desperate to get her away from Raoul that he’d resorted to lies to do it. What had happened between the two men that nobody was letting on about?
Phillipa put a hand on her elbow. ‘Gabriella, are you okay?’
Suddenly it was too hard to think. She put a hand on her brow. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got a rotten headache. I must have misunderstood.’ Her friend smiled and squeezed her arm.
‘Let me get you some painkillers and some water. It might take the edge off it.’
Gabriella sighed, letting herself sag, hidden for a moment behind a marble pillar, trying desperately to relax. Her head hurt. Her feet ached. And her heart felt like a giant void. If only she could take a pill for that. Today she’d said goodbye to her grandfather, the man who had taken on the role of both her parents and more when they had been ripped from her life. Such a good man. Such a brilliant man. Why did the world—why did she—have to live without him just yet?
She looked around the room, looking at the few remaining guests talking over their coffee and cognac, wondering if anyone would notice if she simply disappeared. But she was kidding herself. Of course she couldn’t just slip away. She would have to stay until the grim and bitter end.
Then the air in the room seemed to still and intensify until it shimmered with expectation. The hairs at the back of her neck stood up as she felt the scorching gaze of dark eyes drinking her in. Phillipa joined her, blinking as she held out a glass of sparkling water—not that she was looking at Gabriella. ‘Oh, wow, forget keeper husbands for a moment. Who on earth is that?’
Gabriella didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. She could feel his identity in her rapidly liquefying bones. She could feel it in her heated flesh and empty lungs.
He had come.
And then he was beside them, so broad, tall and dangerous-looking that his presence should darken the world, except that it only served to brighten hers.
‘Raoul Del Arco,’ he said, bowing to her friend. ‘At your service.’ Although it was the fingers pressed to the small of her back that had Gabriella’s full attention, the press of them against her flesh sending an electrical current surging along her spine, needles of sensation that radiated out to take anchor in the suddenly sensitive tissue of her breasts and dark places inside, deep down in her belly.
‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ she said a little breathlessly when she’d managed to unglue her tongue from where it had been stuck to the roof of her mouth. And then, because she realised it sounded like it contained a note of desperation and even accusation, she forced herself to smile. ‘But thank you for coming now. And let me introduce Phillipa Edwards. We went to the same boarding school in England.’
Raoul nodded, taking her hand. ‘It is a pleasure.’
‘Raoul was like a big brother to me growing up,’ she continued. And my personal hero.
‘Umberto was a very important influence in my life and Gabriella has always been very special to me,’ he said as his arm moved upwards, his long-fingered hand cupping her shoulder, pulling her close against his heated body, a gesture that seemed a world away from brotherly, at least the heated way her body seemed to be interpreting it. ‘Unfortunately we lost touch for several years, so to meet again under such circumstances makes for a bittersweet reunion.’ He looked down at her, his dark eyes intense, mesmerising. ‘I see now I will have to ensure I do not allow such a lapse to occur again.’
