His Suitable Bride(54)

So Rafael’s voice on her intercom, while a shock to the system, left her feeling a little giddy with relief. She had thought for a split second that James had decided to jettison the heavy workload and had somehow managed to get to her place so that he could show her this good time he had mentioned.

Not that she was going to give Rafael any inkling of what was going through her head. Not a chance. She had spent the past few days thinking about the new woman in his life, and telling herself that she needed to likewise move forward by having a chap on her arm. Or at least a possibility in her address book.

‘Well? Are you going to open the door or not?’

‘What are you doing here?’ she said, stalling.

‘I told you. I was in the area. Why not drop by? After all, we hardly spoke at the party.’

‘Well, we did, actually,’ Cristina was constrained to point out. ‘When I arrived, you told me that I looked awful, so after that I thought it best to keep out of your way.’

‘Open up the door. We can talk about this when I’m inside.’

Cristina chewed her lip, hesitating, and finally she pressed the button to open the front door downstairs because she knew that he wasn’t going to go away until he was allowed in. Besides, despite all the bracing lectures she’d given herself on a daily basis about the unfeeling, cold, sad human being that he was—a man she was well rid of—her unruly heart still wanted to lay into him for the speed with which he had moved on to another woman.

She still hadn’t changed out of her going-out outfit. James had mentioned something about a smart restaurant in the West End and she had dressed accordingly, in an elegant turquoise dress that clung to the figure she was more proud now to have on display than ever before in her life.

On the verge of getting undressed and settling down for a night in watching television, she had kicked off the high shoes. Now she stuck them back on as she waited for Rafael to appear. Rafael was a dominating presence as it was without the added advantage of towering over her even more because she was barefoot.

She heard the rap on the door and momentarily froze, even though she had been waiting for that rap with every straining inch of her body.

She had to take a few deep breaths before pulling open the door. Normally that did the trick whenever she was nervous, but this time it had the opposite effect of making those somersaults in her stomach even more frantic.

She involuntarily stepped back the minute she saw him, and he immediately took advantage and brushed past her into the small hallway.

The previous Saturday, Rafael had looked devastatingly handsome at his party, but this was the look she had grown accustomed to and loved most: that end-of-day, slightly dishevelled look. His hair always looked as though he had been running his fingers through it, and he had seldom walked through her door in the evening without his sleeves cuffed to the elbows and his tie stuffed into his briefcase or in a pocket somewhere. At the start of the day he looked powerful, at the end of the day he looked downright dangerous.

‘Going out?’ Rafael asked, swinging round to look at her, perfectly aware that thanks to his intervention she would be going nowhere tonight.

She was wearing another dress which he hadn’t seen before, another sexy number designed to show off her fabulous curves. For someone who had once preached the virtues of practical clothing, she seemed to have discovered the allure of the impractical wardrobe. First siren-red, now a turquoise that was exquisitely dramatic against her skin, and the way it clung … Having had an uninterested libido for the past few weeks, he now had the insane urge to strip her of her clingfilm garment and take her the way he’d used to when things had been going good between them. Before she’d tried to pin him into a corner and turn him back into the kind of man who had seen his ex-wife grow bored and demanding and eventually unfaithful.

For a few seconds, Cristina was seriously tempted to lie and tell him that, yes, she was just about to leave her apartment, but then where would she go? She had no date, and there was no way that she was going to circle the block like a fugitive just to pretend that she was as busy on the romance front as he obviously was.

‘I was,’ she confessed stiffly. ‘But something came up and my date had to cancel.’

‘Nothing worse than an unreliable date,’ Rafael purred smoothly, dragging his eyes off her and heading up the stairs so that she had no option but to follow him.

He was standing in front of the open fridge with a wine bottle in his hand by the time she joined him in the kitchen, and he took down a couple of wineglasses and placed them on the counter. ‘So who was the lucky guy?’ Rafael asked casually. ‘Anyone I know?’