Under the Spaniard's Lock and Key (12 page)

Maggie directed him and sat listening to the sound of running water.

It was a few moments later he emerged, his face and hair both dripping wet; he barely seemed to register the fact.

Dazed was the only word she could think of to describe his expression.

Oh, God, maybe he had a thing about blood?

She shot to her feet. ‘Sit down, you look…’

Acting as if he hadn’t heard her, he walked straight past her and headed for the door. ‘Rafael!’ she called after him, seriously spooked by his strange behaviour. ‘Where are you going?’

He swung back and she saw the dazed look in his eyes had been replaced by a grim but purposeful gleam. ‘I will make things right. Stay indoors until I get back.’

And with that he was gone.

M
AGGIE
covered her ears as the phone began to ring again. She clenched her teeth, willing it to stop. When it did she let out a long sibilant sigh of relief and felt like an utter coward as she carried on searching for her other shoe.

Where had she put the damned thing?

‘Calm down and think, Maggie,’ she muttered, recalling that she had been sitting in her armchair when she began to cry.

She had sat puzzling over Rafael’s enigmatic words while she had waited and waited some more, but he hadn’t come back. At some point in the early hours it occurred to her that she could spend the next few months doing just that—waiting.

What sort of man, she asked herself suggested living together and walked out before they had discussed it? A man who had cold feet? It was then she realised that it was never going to work—they had no sort of future together.

She resumed her search, angrily dashing tears from her cheeks, but it was unsuccessful and the respite before the phone started ringing again was brief.

She knew who it was without checking the caller ID again. He had called the first time an hour earlier and without thinking she had picked it up; the sound of his deep voice the other end had caused her to drop the receiver.

It had been ringing every few seconds since and she had been ignoring it. Maybe not ignoring—ignoring suggested she was tuning out the sound and carrying on with what she was doing, which was of course thinking about Rafael. When wasn’t she thinking about Rafael?

She was just not answering because she was a pathetic coward. While she didn’t answer she could pretend he had a perfectly good explanation for running out of there last night.

The only solution—why hadn’t she thought of it earlier?—she decided, was to get out of the flat with or without her shoes. Of course, she
could
answer, but that would mean hearing his voice and how badly she wanted to—simple
want
didn’t really describe the intense, deep, gut-wrenching longing—was so utterly terrifying that she just couldn’t do it.

It could be the first step on the slippery slope: this time answering the phone, the next time ringing his number just so she could hear his voice!

Last night he had literally run from her flat as though he couldn’t bear to be in her company—if ever there was a case of actions speaking louder than words, that was it!

Ditching her shoe search, she ran to the door where she’d left her trainers—why had she fixated on the black heels anyhow?—and began to lace them up with shaky fingers.

It was far too easy, she reflected to get into the mindset of thinking she had no control.

‘I do have control. I won’t love him.’

She angrily wiped a tear from her cheek and almost immediately realised she couldn’t
not
love him.

Halfway down the stairs, her thoughts in utter turmoil, she realised she had not got her car keys. She retraced her steps and discovered she had left her door wide open.

I’m losing it, she thought.

Rafael’s dark features flashed into her head and she sighed,
thinking, You lost it the moment Rafael-Luis Castenadas smiled at you and since then you’ve been in denial big time.

Denial didn’t seem so bad when she considered the alternatives.

* * *

She was reaching into her bag for a tissue when she walked straight into the blinding volley of flashes.

Confused she blinked and lifted a hand to shield her eyes as the waiting press pack advanced.

And this time they were here in force.

They were all talking at once, several were waving newspapers in her face, and all she could think as she stood there was how odd that they knew her name.

‘Miss Ward, are you going to press charges?’

‘Maggie, has this ever happened before? Has he hit you before?’

‘Miss Ward, is it true that Rafael Castenadas attacked you while you were trying to save the life of a—’

The questions hit her like missiles as the cameras kept flashing. Maggie shrank back in horror, her feet nailed to the spot.

‘Maggie, if you give us an exclusive we can get you out of here.’

Maggie focused on the man that had come close, his face right in hers. She could smell his aftershave and she stopped being scared and started being angry—very angry.

He took another step towards her, his face arranged in a sympathetic smile, and suddenly the feeling returned to her paralysed limbs.

He extended his hand towards her and she lifted her chin and said, ‘I don’t think so. Now move out of my way.’

He looked taken aback by the low note of cold authority in her clear voice, but he didn’t budge. None of them did; it was a scrum.

Like pack animals scenting blood—hers, which was not a nice thought—they continued to yell and jostle, physically blocking her exit and trapping her.

Head down, struggling to emulate the air of cold indifference with which Rafael treated the press intrusion, and failing miserably, Maggie tried to push her way through the screaming mass.

Of course, they would not have bumped and shoved him, not even the keenest paparazzo would have made that mistake.

‘Is it true the police want to question Rafael?’

Maggie’s head came up; the red dots dancing before her eyes formed a red mist and, eyes blazing, she rounded on the man who had spoken.

‘What did you say?’

‘Are the police questioning Rafe, Maggie?’

Wrapping herself in a cloak of icy dignity, Maggie lifted her chin and fixed the man with a direct unblinking regard. ‘The police are
not
interested in questioning
Mr Castenadas,
but they will be interested in questioning you if you don’t take your hand off my arm.’

She held his eyes until his hand fell away, then she nodded and said quietly, ‘Thank you.’

She managed to move another couple of feet forward before the pack closed in around her once more.

‘Do you think you’re setting a bad example to other abused women by not bringing charges?’

Maggie could almost hear the sound of control snapping. She threw up her hands as anger coursed through her veins.

‘That’s it!’ she cried, swinging back to face the general direction the question had come from. ‘How dare you take the moral high ground and preach to me?’ As if they were interested in anything but a headline.

In this situation Rafael would have acted as if they didn’t exist and he would never have tried to defend himself.

But she wasn’t Rafael and she couldn’t stand by and let them say these things about him while he wasn’t even there to defend himself—she just couldn’t!

‘I don’t know how you lot get away with saying things like this about a man who…’ She stopped, her throat closing over with emotion as she added furiously, ‘God, you’re not fit to breathe the same air as him. For the record, my black eye is courtesy of a patient who got nasty in Casualty, but a drunk hitting a nurse isn’t much of a story, is it? It’s the stuff that happens every day.’ She paused and let her contemptuous gaze move over the now silent crowd.

‘You don’t send out the cameras for that, do you? Oh, no, that’s not
sexy
news,’ she spat scornfully. ‘You’d prefer to make up lies about a man whose only crime is not crossing to the other side of the street when someone needs help, I wonder how many of you can say the same?’

The silence grew and, shaking with emotion, Maggie looked directly into the camera lens pointed at her face. ‘I don’t know how you’re going to sell this as being in the public interest. Rafael’s only crime is being successful and good to look at.’

She paused to catch her breath and thought, Maybe, just maybe I have got through to them—when one small voice broke the silence.

‘So what’s it feel like to be the girlfriend of a billionaire, Maggie?’

The question signalled the return of hostilities after the brief lull. The questions came thick, fast and frequently offensive. Maggie stood, her fists clenched, unable to defend herself from the onslaught. Her emotional outburst had utterly exhausted her emotional defences.

She wanted to run, but she couldn’t; they were pressing in on her from all sides.

She stiffened as she felt arms slide around her waist and instinctively began to hit out wildly.

Her flailing elbow made contact and Maggie felt a spurt of savage satisfaction when she heard a grunt of pain.

‘I come in peace.’

At the familiar voice Maggie stilled. She had elbowed Rafael. She stifled a totally inappropriate desire to giggle—probably hysteria—and said his name.

She said it again because it sounded good, then added, ‘Some people say better late than never, but I don’t.’

‘That is something we will speak of soon. For now just relax—we’ll be out of here in one minute. Trust me.’

Maggie did utterly, which was totally crazy because he didn’t represent safety and he had gone all weird and left her high and dry last night. Rafael represented rampant sexuality, dangerous excitement and misery because he couldn’t love her.

Even while she acknowledged this she leaned back with a sigh of relief into the hard solidity of his lean male body feeling his strength seep into her—a physiological impossibility, but true nonetheless.

On one level she recognised that her reliance on him was foolish. Hadn’t she always solved her own problems? She was no wilting flower. Yet here she was, leaning, and not just physically, on Rafael…It was actually just good to be able to let go and know that someone else would pick up the pieces…was that wrong?

The thoughts passed through her head in a matter of seconds, though time had little meaning to Maggie as around them the flashes became one continuous blast of light and the barrage of questions and requests to look at the camera became a hysterical babble.

Rafael, partially shielded from the press pack by the physical presence of the two broad-shouldered figures, with
a combination of expertise and their sheer bulk, were shielding the couple, turned Maggie around to face him and winced.

The sight of her poor face sent a blast of outrage through him, followed swiftly by an equally powerful stab of protective tenderness.

He had spent his entire adult life keeping, not just women, but his emotions at arm’s length and succeeding—until Maggie came along.

His emotional detachment had been crumbling from the moment he had laid eyes on her, he’d just been too blind to see it, but last night when those baby clothes had spilled out of the boxes in her bathroom and he had realised she was carrying his baby it had disintegrated and his vision had cleared!

Marriage, love, children—they were all things he had never wanted or needed. Ironically the very things he had actively avoided were now the things Rafael wanted more than anything.

He wanted Maggie, but after the way he had behaved he knew he had a lot of ground to make up. But he had made a start, and he would do whatever it took to convince her that he would be a good husband and father.

‘You do know you’ve turned my life upside down, don’t you, Maggie Ward?’ He touched her uninjured cheek and tilted her head a little to one side to examine the bruises.

If he had that loser from yesterday here now…His hands tightened into fists and he told himself that violence never solved anything. On the other hand it would make him feel a lot better.

Pushing away the thoughts of retribution, he curled his fingers gently around her chin and turned her face to examine the damage that appeared to be limited to the right side.

Maggie withstood his silent scrutiny with difficulty. Where was a paper bag when a girl needed it?

‘The bruising has come out today.’ Rafael, without her experience of similar injuries, probably found the sight more shocking than she had; he might not realise it was actually very superficial.

Maggie knew that tomorrow when the swelling began to subside she would be able to disguise most of the damage with make-up, but it had been a lost cause today.

Rafael swore through clenched teeth and, without taking his eyes from her face, lifted a hand to signal to the two men who had exited the car that had pulled up on the kerb behind the chauffeur-driven limo he and the first security contingent had arrived in.

Maggie, totally unaware of them moving into place beside the limo, unconscious of anything but Rafael, shook her head when he observed in a strained, thickened voice, ‘It must be very painful.’

‘Actually it—’

He laid a finger against her lips. ‘If you are about to say, “It looks worse than it is,” do not.’

How did he know?

‘And if you go into brave little trouper mode I will not be responsible for my actions.’

Maggie did not get the opportunity to ask him if he preferred she have hysterics as at that moment one of the big minders said something in Spanish. Rafael listened and nodded. Maggie, who up until that point had not even realised Rafael was not alone, watched as the man, complete with dark suit and mirrored shades, spoke into a mouthpiece, then said something in rapid Spanish to Rafael, who nodded in agreement.

‘You brought reinforcements?’

Rafael, recalling the moment he had drawn up and seen her in the middle of the media feeding frenzy, swallowed a retort. If it had not been for the intervention of Luis, he might have
waded in metaphorical guns blazing and made a bad situation worse. The way he was feeling now made him think it might have been worth it.

Dios,
at that moment he hated diplomacy; he loathed tactics. Frustration at being forced to stifle his natural impulses left the adrenaline with no place to go but notching up the tension in his body to a painful level.

‘This is my Head of Security, Luis,’ he said, introducing the man at his shoulder to Maggie.

The man with the mirrored shades inclined his shaved head and might have smiled, it was hard to tell, but Maggie smiled back just in case. He struck her as the sort of man you didn’t want to offend.

‘If I’d known you would be
stupid
enough to walk into this I would have fetched a small army.’

Maggie’s attention swung back to Rafael, eyes widened indignantly as she launched into a robust defence of her actions. ‘How was I to know that they’d—?’