‘Four years ago, you were exactly the same. A naturalborn tease—’
‘You bastard!’ Georgie was so outraged that she could hardly get the words out.
‘If I ended up with the wrong impression, ask yourself how much the act you put on for my benefit contributed,’ Rafael retorted drily. ‘If any teenage daughter of mine tried to walk out of the door on a date in a plunge neckline with a pelmet-length skirt, suspenders and an ankle chain, I’d paddle her backside!’
‘I was trying to look sophisticated, you insensitive toad!’ Her voice quivered with a mortification which merely increased her fury. ‘I suppose you’d have found me more exciting if I’d been covered from throat to toe like a nun!’
‘You would certainly have been more presentable in public. And less confusing in private,’ Rafael completed in a strained undertone, his starkly handsome features taut with an amalgam of emotions she was too angry to read.
Georgie had worked herself up to such a pitch of ungovernable fury that she was beyond speech. Snatching at her bag, throwing him a splintering purple glare of sheer loathing, she headed for the door.
‘Georgie…’ Rafael murmured very softly to her rigid back, ‘if you treat my aunt to a temperamental display, you will discover that my temper is far more dangerous than your own.’
Her teeth actually ground together. The note of cool warning in that assurance nearly sent her into orbit. Without turning her head, she walked out of the room, across the hall and out of the house. Another minute, another single minute in contact with that hateful tongue of his and she would have been up for murder! Aflame with rage, she stalked across the beautiful gardens like a tigress on the prowl.
He had no right to keep her here against her wishes! With flaring eyes, she shot a glance at the bare helicopter landing-pad and stalked on. There had to be some other way off the estancia. Family and guests arrived by air. What about everybody else? On horseback… on foot…or on four wheels? Her attention fell on the fourwheel-drive parked over beside a couple of other toughly designed vehicles. Well, well, well, she thought, glancing around the vast deserted asphalt expanse surrounding her.
Obviously there was somewhere to go out there on four wheels. Strolling over, Georgie glanced in and saw the keys in the ignition. It took her one split-second to make her decision. Her only other hope of escape was making a scene in the presence of Rafael’s aunt, and she was very reluctant to subject that sweet little old lady to the shocking revelation that her nephew was virtually imprisoning his supposed novia on the estancia.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, Georgie wasted no more time. Rafael could send her clothes on after her, and if he didn’t bother, escape would still be coming cheap at the price. She had her money and her passport and that was all she required. The engine fired and she checked the petrol-gauge. The tank was full and there was a bottle full of water lying on the floor in front of the passenger seat. She drove off down the asphalt lane with an almost crazed sense of release exploding inside her, her palms damply gripping the leather steering-wheel.
The lane came to an end only a mile out, but the lie of the ground in all directions as far as the purple snowcapped Cordillera mountains in the distance was flat and would provide no problems for a four-wheel-drive. Even so, the lush grass of the savannah provided a less smooth surface than she had expected and, where it was broken up by scrubland, the going was even rougher, but Georgie was nothing if not persistent.
The heat was intense, even with the air-conditioning running full blast. Perspiration ran down between her breasts and her lower body felt stifled in the jeans she was wearing. The very occasional tree was all that interrupted the monotony of the landscape. A sense of her own isolation began to creep over her. She stopped to moisten her dry mouth and only when she had tilted the bottle back did she discover that what she had gaily assumed to be water was, in fact, some form of tonsilsearing alcohol. Choking, tears springing to her eyes, she threw the bottle aside in disgust.
So far, her assumption that there had to be some form of settlement within a couple of hours’ drive of the estancia had yet to be fulfilled. She kept a careful eye on the petrol-gauge. If she didn’t hit somewhere soon, she would be forced to turn back and the realisation galled her, flattening her foot down more heavily on the accelerator. Then, far to her left, she saw a clump of trees and something pink shimmering… a rooftop?
Damn, damn, damn, she thought a little while later, watching the graceful flock of pink flamingos round the lagoon take flight in a gorgeous spray of heady colour against the deep blue sky. It was the most beautiful sight and, even in the mood Georgie was in, she responded to that beauty. Killing the engine, because she was in severe need of a break, she slid out into the enveloping heat, flexing her stiff muscles and tugging her shirt out of her jeans in a vain attempt to cool off.
She was going to have to turn back. Rage had been dissipated by exertion. Another one up to you, Rafael, she reflected in raw frustration, strolling towards the shore of the lagoon. The water shimmered like a spunglass enticement. She was so hot… Then something shifted in the corner of her eye.
‘Oh, my lord…’ Georgie watched what she had dimly taken for a floating log metamorphose into a big, ugly alligator heading her way. Her stomach heaved with a kind of sick, terrified fascination and then instinct shifted her frozen limbs and she ran like a maniac back to the car.
‘You can keep the local wildlife, Rafael,’ she mumbled, winding up the window as the creature was joined by another, their horrible little stumpy legs beginning to plough through the grass.
Without any further ado, she turned the car and started back. She had been driving about an hour when the engine began to make unhealthy spluttering sounds. Within a mile the vehicle coughed to a final halt, and none of her efforts could get it going again. The heat built around her and she was forced to take another swig of the noxious brew in the bottle. Liquid was liquid, she reasoned.
The emptiness of the savannah was surreal. It would have been terrifying had Georgie not had such immense faith in Rafael, who would find her if only out of a need to strangle her with his bare hands. She rested her head back, breathing shallowly, and waited miserably to be rescued. Another hour went by on leaden feet. Her optimism took a sudden dip on the recollection that the helicopter hadn’t been at the estancia and finding her without aerial reconnaissance might be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Better wed than dead, she thought, staggering out of the inferno-like heat of the car interior when she could bear it no longer. Severe sunburn as opposed to suffocation—not a lot of choice there. It was his fault. He had driven her to this. He had made her desperate. And yet what real effort had she made to escape before now?
Had she lifted the phone beside her bed to call Steve, who was almost certainly home again by now? Had she contacted the British Embassy? Had she tried to bribe his helicopter pilot? Had she thrown herself on Father Garcia’s mercy? No, she had rolled back to Rafael like a homing pigeon… and gone to bed with him. At no stage, she realised numbly, had she made a single realistic attempt to free herself. Until now, and then it had taken naked rage to push her to the attempt.
In the shadow of the car, she sank down on the scrubby grass. When she first saw the speck on the shimmering horizon, she thought it was a bird, undoubtedly of the vulture variety, scenting a banquet. Then she realised it was a horse and rider. On a slope, they briefly stilled, silhouetted against the skyline. It was Rafael. She knew it, felt it in her bones.
Nobody else but Rafael could possibly look that good on a horse. A big black Arabian, which ploughed across the rolling plain with power, stamina and extraordinary natural beauty. Her heart rushed up into her torturously dry mouth. And I said no, she thought, delirously impressionable as sheer relief washed over her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
GEORGIE rose shakily upright. The stallion thundered to a halt, reined back with powerful ease twenty feet from her. Incandescent golden eyes smouldered over her hot, crumpled length, patently checking out her physical condition. Rafael dug out a two-way radio and spoke into it in fast Spanish, but his compelling gaze didn’t roam from her for a second. It was curiously like being handcuffed and tied up.
Immobile, Georgie looked back at him in the simmering silence that was laden with menace. He was mad, of course he was mad. So he would say ‘I told you so’ in a variety of cutting, utterly unpleasant ways, because nobody said that phrase with greater satisfaction than Rafael. Rafael loved to be proved right. And, like it or not, she would take it all on the chin for once.
Setting off on a whim into an unknown, hostile terrain as featureless as this one had been the behaviour of a total idiot and no doubt she deserved everything she had coming to her. But the main reason Georgie would let him shout at her was the intense and naked relief she had seen etched in those gorgeous eyes as he visibly reassured himself that she was unharmed.
Rafael had been worried sick about her safety, probably far more worried than she had been on her own behalf. That dark, brooding temperament of his did not have a shred of her own invariably sunny, optimistic outlook. Rafael always expected the worst. A fat alligator snoozing beside a heap of picked-bare bones wouldn’t have surprised him. That certainty sent a pained tenderness washing through her.