Namely whether Goodman had any intentions of seeing Cristina.
Rafael had not cared for the answer. The handkerchief-sized red dress which had accentuated all her natural assets, along with her looking for fun frame of mind, had worked its magic. A date, he had been informed with a disgusting amount of relish, was planned for later that evening. In fact, Goodman had practically crowed down the phone, he’d had to get his skates on if he was to meet her in time at the restaurant he had booked in the West End.
Rafael had received this information through gritted teeth, and had immediately taken precautionary action by telling him that he would have to cancel his hot date.
‘Going to spring something on you, Goodman,’ he had said, without a twinge of conscience. ‘But my legal team have done rather more work on this particular investment than I originally let on, and if we’re to move ahead we’ve got to do it quickly. I’m going to download an evening’s worth of work … and I’ll need your comments by tomorrow morning.’ He had allowed sufficient time for his silence to be construed as rueful. Also for Goodman to appreciate just how much his firm would benefit from Rafael’s much-needed injection of funds. He had added with killer instinct, ‘’Course, I have a number of companies I’m thinking of investing in… the opportunity would not be lost elsewhere …’
The conclusion to their conversation had been predictable: hot dates were good, but work came first.
Now, staring at the telephone as though at an object capable of spreading contamination, Rafael tried and failed to put the whole thing out of his mind. He really would have liked to sweep the matter under the carpet, but he was realistic enough to realise that that just wasn’t going to happen.
For some reason the woman had got under his skin and, even now, with their relationship dead and buried, she was still getting under his skin.
He thought of Goodman, eyes popping out, staring at her breasts, mentally calculating how long he could feasibly wait before he tried to get her into bed, and congratulated himself on taking the action that he had.
Without bothering to talk himself out of his decision, he grabbed his jacket and stuck it on while his computer was logging off, then he headed for the door.
This was unprecedented behaviour. He was fully aware of that, but all rational thought processes appeared to have disengaged and his feet had a game plan of their own, taking him down the stairs because the exercise was good, into the underground car park and towards the Ferrari which had been parked up for the past four days.
It started at the first attempt, and before he could think through what he was doing he was on his way to her apartment.
The traffic, to his immense frustration, was atrocious. He hadn’t noticed before, but London seemed to be awash with road works—and, he thought, scowling, even with a million red-and-white cones in place no one appeared to be working.
He had plenty of time to imagine what the course of her evening would have been like had he not ensured that it was stillborn. Drinks and dinner at Harvey Nicols, where the noise levels in the bar would have been loud, the service slow and the opportunities boundless for Goodman to make sure that she worked her way through a decent amount of alcohol before dinner. He couldn’t imagine that it was her sort of place, but then neither could he have imagined her dressed in a red handkerchief and looking for fun.
It was well after eight by the time he had circled her road a couple of times and managed to find a spot to park.
At least he didn’t have Goodman to worry about. He had picked up a message on his BlackBerry a couple of minutes earlier, assuring him that the caseload was being scanned even as he spoke.
He pressed her flat number and waited for her to pick up, which she did. Goodman would have told her by now that the date was off. He wondered whether another had been set. Maybe the man had intimated that he would drop by later for a nightcap.
‘I was in the area,’ Rafael said, ‘So I thought I’d drop by.’
Cristina pulled back as if someone had suddenly shot a bolt of electricity through her body. James, her date, had called to say that he was in a bit of a pickle with work, and she had been guiltily aware of feeling a sense of relief. Having agreed to go out with him in the first place, she had spent the past two days having second thoughts.
He was an unashamed flirt. Without the safety net of a roomful of Rafael’s friends and colleagues, she had been getting that ‘out of her depth’ feeling that had only increased a couple of notches when he had said, over the phone, that he would call her the following day because ‘he couldn’t wait to show her a good time’.