Crime Of Passion(5)

The silence went on forever, reverberating around her in soundless waves.

‘Are you able to settle your bill here?’

Four centuries of ice in that chilling enquiry—well, what did she care? Numbly she shook her head.

‘I’ll take care of it.’

For five minutes, she simply stayed there in the empty room, struggling harder than she had ever had to struggle for control. When she had managed it, she walked down to Reception and found him just moving away from the desk. Without once glancing in his direction, she climbed back into the Range Rover. He would take her to the airport, put her on a flight back home. She really didn’t care any more.

The silence smouldered, chipping away at nerves that were already raw and bleeding. ‘I presume you can take care of the passport problem,’ she muttered, half under her breath, thinking of the bribery he had apparently employed to get her out of her cell.

‘What passport problem?’ His accented drawl was dangerously quiet.

‘Well, obviously it went with everything else in my bag,’ she pointed out, surprised that he hadn’t grasped that fact yet.

He uttered a raw imprecation in his own language.

‘Oh, don’t be shy…say it in English!’ Georgie suddenly heard herself rake back with a sob in her voice. ‘You think I’m a stupid bitch!’

‘Georgie…’ Fluent though his English was, he couldn’t quite handle the two syllables of her name coming so close to each other. He slurred them slightly, his rich dark voice provoking painful memories. ‘Don’t start crying’

‘I am not crying!’ She bit her tongue, tasted blood, blinked back the scorching tide dammed up behind her eyelids.

Soon after that, he stopped the car and got out, leaving her alone for about ten minutes. She waited, enveloped by a giant cloud of unfamiliar depression. It took Rafael to do this to her. He slammed a lid down on her usually bubbly personality. He made her seethingly, horribly angry. And he hurt her. Nothing had changed. She didn’t even lift her head when he rejoined her.

‘We’re here.’

Rafael opened the door. One of his security men already had her bag in one beefy hand.

Rafael extended a black coat.

‘What’s this?’ Georgie had yet to focus on any part of him above the level of his sky-blue silk tie.

‘I bought it for you. You cannot walk through the airport with—with your top falling off,’ Rafael shared flatly.

She wanted to laugh, because she had managed to forget that she was still wearing yesterday’s torn and dirty clothes. But somehow she couldn’t laugh. She stuck her arms in the sleeves of the expensive silk-lined raincoat. It was light as a feather but so long it had to look like a nun’s habit. Numbly she watched Rafael’s fingers do up the buttons. It took him a surprisingly long time, his hands less deft than she had expected.

His double standards were perhaps what she most loathed about Rafael Rodriguez Berganza. He had undoubtedly stripped more women than Casanova. Maria Cristina had been a gossip while they were at school. Rafael had a notorious reputation for loving and leaving beautiful women. But Georgie would have known anyway.

Many very good-looking men missed out on being sexy. But not Rafael. Rafael was a blatantly sexual male animal, flagrantly attuned to the physical. The air around him positively sizzled. So why the heck was this sophisticated, experienced Latin-American lover having so much difficulty buttoning up her coat? Unwarily she collided with glittering golden eyes, and it was like being struck by lightning.

He was so close she could smell a hint of citrusy aftershave, overlying clean, husky male. Her nostrils flared. Her nipples tightened into painful sensitivity, a spiralling ache twisting low in her stomach. Nearby, someone cleared their throat. She tore her gaze from Rafael’s and met the looks of visible fascination emanating from his bodyguards, standing several feet away. She realised that she and Rafael had simply been standing there staring at each other. Devastated by her overpowering physical awareness of him, Georgie turned away, her throat closing over.

In silence they entered the airport. Her head felt incredibly light and her lower limbs weak and clumsy. Exhaustion, stress and lack of food, she registered, were finally catching up with her.

Officialdom leapt out of nowhere at them. The crowds parted. Uniformed guards paved every step through the airport, down an eerily empty concourse, their footsteps echoing. There was no sign of other passengers. Clearly she was being put on the flight home either first or last.

As they emerged into the fresh air and crossed the tarmac, she realised incredulously that Rafael intended to see her right on to the plane to be sure she went. It made her feel as though she was being deported in disgrace. And that was when it happened—something that had never happened to Georgie before. As she fought to focus on him and say something smart on parting, her head swam alarmingly. The blackness folded in and she fainted.





‘Lie still.’ As Rafael made the instruction for the second time and Georgie attempted to defy it, he lost patience and planted a powerful hand to her shoulder, to force her back into the comfortable seat in which she was securely strapped. ‘I don’t want you to swoon again.’

If he used that word again, she would surely hit him. ‘I didn’t swoon, I passed out!’ she hissed, twisting away from his unwelcome ministrations. ‘And will you take that wet flannel out of my face?’

Dense black lashes screened his clear gaze from her view, a curious stillness to his strong, dark face. ‘I was trying to help,’ he proffered very quietly.

‘I don’t want your help.’ She turned her head away defensively.

You swooned with Rafael and you really hit the jackpot, though, she conceded. The entire aircrew seemed to be hovering with wet flannels, tablets, and glasses of water and brandy. Any minute now the pilot would appear and offer her some fresh air! Dear Lord, she hoped not! Her violet eyes widened in disbelief on the clouds swirling past the port-hole across the aisle… they were already airborne!

‘What are you doing on this flight?’ Georgie demanded, feverishly short of breath. ‘We’ve already taken off!’

Rafael rose up off his knees, smoothed down the knife

creases on his superbly tailored trousers and said something to the crew. Everybody went into retreat. He lowered his long, lithe frame fluidly into the seat opposite and fixed hooded dark eyes on her.

‘This is my private jet.’

‘Your what?’ Georgie gaped at him.

‘I am taking you home with me. Until your passport can be replaced, you are stuck in Bolivia.’

‘But I don’t have to be stuck with you!’

Unexpectedly, Rafael sent her a shimmering, sardonic smile. ‘A lamb to the slaughter… I don’t think.’

‘I don’t know what the heck you’re getting at, but I do know you could have left me in my hotel…or thrown a few backhanders in the right direction the way you did to get me out of my prison cell!’ Georgie derided, horrified at the prospect of being forced to accept his grudging hospitality.

He went white beneath his dark skin, his facial muscles freezing. ‘How dare you accuse me of sinking to such a level?’ he ground out incredulously. ‘I have never stooped to bribery in my life!’

Georgie licked at her dry lips. ‘I saw you give the policeman the money,’ she whispered.

Rafael surveyed her with growing outrage, registering with an air of disbelief that his denial had not been accepted. ‘I do not believe that I am hearing this. The policeman, Jorge, took the money straight to the village priest! The roof of the village church has fallen in and my donation will repair it, thereby enhancing Jorge’s standing in the community but granting him no personal financial gain,’ Rafael spelt out with biting emphasis. ‘I wanted to reward him for his efforts on your behalf. Although he did not believe that you were entitled to claim my friendship, and he was afraid of being made to look foolish, he telephoned me. Were it not for his persistence and his conscientious scruples, you would still be in that cell!’

His explanation made greater sense of the villagers’ response to him than her own hasty assumption that he had used cash to grease the wheels of justice. She reddened, but she did not apologise.

‘The young truck-driver had lied about you but he withdrew his story,’ Rafael continued icily. ‘You were then free to leave without any further output from me. I did nothing but straighten out a misunderstanding.’

She bent her head, her empty stomach rumbling. ‘Do you think you could feed me while you lecture me?’

‘Feed you?’

‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.’

‘Por Dios,’ Rafael grated with raw impatience. ‘Why did you not say so?’

A microwaved meal arrived at speed. Georgie ate, grateful for any excuse not to have to speak while she attempted to put her thoughts in order. ‘I am taking you home with me,’ he had said, as if she was a stray dog or cat. ‘Home’ was the ancestral estancia on the vast savannah bounded by the Amazon. And the concept of Rafael taking her back there quite shattered Georgie. Even when she had been Maria Cristina’s best friend at school, Rafael had blocked his sister’s every request to bring Georgie out to stay on the estancia with them during the holidays.