Harlequin Presents January 2015 Box Set 3 of 4(202)
Wasn’t it?
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Rafael paced up and down the length of the grand formal dining room, pausing only to check his watch once again. Where the hell was she? She knew that dinner was to be served at eight-thirty and she was now an hour late. Was she deliberately taunting him?
It was half an hour since he had gone up to find her, when the sudden, irrational fear had gripped him. He’d pounded his feet along the corridor to her room, convinced that she had gone—run away as she had before. He’d rapped sharply on the door, and the thirty seconds of silence before he had heard her moving about had seemed like an eternity.
But then the door had opened and there she’d been—all sleepy eyes and tousled hair, straight from a rumpled bed still warm from her body. And the sight of her, and that bed, had twisted a coil of lust deep inside of him.
Now that she still hadn’t appeared he could feel the same fear spreading through him again. Ten minutes, she had said—just enough time for a quick shower. Pacing back towards the head of the table, he told himself to calm down, get a grip. Stop behaving like an idiot.
He was glaring at the heavy panelled door when it finally opened and Lottie hurried in, all breathless apologies and pointed lack of eye contact. Reaching behind him for the bell that rang down in the kitchens, he waited in cold silence as she walked the interminable length of the table to join him. He watched from beneath the sweep of lowered lashes as she carefully sat down, sliding long legs under the table, shaking open her napkin to cover her lap.
Tearing his eyes away, he seated himself beside her at the head of the table, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge just how adorable she looked. Her hastily washed and dried hair had resulted in a cloud of tumbling blonde curls that she had loosely twisted into a knot on top of her head, and already escaping tendrils were framing her delicate features. A short jersey dress, its colour a darkest purple, hugged her slender curves in a way that already had the blood racing around his veins.
Lifting a heavy crystal decanter, he started to fill Lottie’s glass, watching as her slender fingers curled nervously around the stem. Then, raising his own glass between them, he saw Lottie automatically doing the same. What exactly were they toasting? With her meltingly clear blue eyes mercilessly trained on him he felt for the bedrock of bitterness to help him counter their effect and found it in the pit of his stomach, where it had sat ever since she had left him.
‘Your good health.’
It was hardly the warmest of toasts. Lottie looked at his darkly glowering face over the rim of her wine glass. She knew he was angry that she was late for dinner; he had already been in a bad mood when he had woken her up from her unexpected nap, banging on her bedroom door, demanding to know what was keeping her. But her promise of ten minutes had proved impossible to achieve and, torn between nervousness at keeping him waiting and a desire to make herself look at least half decent, the latter had won.
Though now she wondered why she had bothered. It would appear that her hastily applied makeover had simply darkened Rafael’s already coal-black mood.
‘Yes—salute.’ After taking a small sip, Lottie put down her glass and concentrated on straightening the already straight silver cutlery, wondering just how she was going to get through this ordeal.
Almost immediately two waiting staff appeared, and in the flurry of dishes being revealed from under domed silver lids and food being expertly served onto their plates Lottie was able to ignore, at least for the moment, the ill-tempered man at her side.
When the staff finally left he pointedly waited for her to pick up her knife and fork before doing the same.
‘I suggest we eat this now, before it is completely ruined.’
He really was determined to be relentlessly bad-tempered, wasn’t he? This evening was going to be horrendous.
But the meal was delicious and, seated beside Rafael in this magnificent cavernous room, drinking mellow red wine from the ancient, vaulted cellars beneath them, Lottie could feel herself being transported back to the life of wealth and privilege that she had torn herself away from so violently two long years ago. Rafael’s world. And even though he was casually dressed now, in jeans and a soft cotton shirt open at the collar, he still looked every inch the master—every inch the Conte di Monterrato.
The conversation was limited, with Lottie’s attempt at small talk falling on stony ground and Rafael seemingly too intent on eating his meal to discuss the weightier subject, though it hovered between them like an uninvited guest at the meal.
Instead Lottie found herself surreptitiously watching him, drawn to the shape of his mouth as it moved, the sweeping line of his jaw, now shadowed with a stubble that covered some of the bruising, the way dark curls fell over his forehead when he lowered his head, only to be pushed back with an impatient hand. In the flickering light of the candelabra set on the table between them his injuries were much less visible, and he looked alarmingly like the old, impossibly handsome Rafael.