The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

She gave yet another shrug. ‘He was involved with one of the other models under contract, so I thought he would leave me alone—which he did, by and large, until now. And the reason I wanted the contract in the first place was simple.’ She looked straight at him, giving him the courtesy of an honest answer, for surely he deserved no less after his rescue of her. ‘It paid well,’ she said.

She lifted up her cup, took a mouthful of tea, breaking her gaze. Then she set down her cup again, looked at him once more. She swallowed, then spoke.

‘Modelling is a crowded profession. Often poorly paid. Only a few make it to the very top. I won’t be one of them, I know, but I’ve not done badly—for which I’m grateful,’ she allowed. ‘Anyway, it’s the only way I know of to make money—’

She stopped, and for a moment—just a moment—there was an emptiness in her gaze. As if she had been scoured hollow.

Then it was gone.

Yet in its aftermath there seemed to Rafael to be the residue of something lingering. Unsettling. He wanted to banish it.

He took another mouthful of his brandy, feeling its warmth filling him. ‘It seems to me you know about astronomy,’ he said.

He’d lightened his tone deliberately. Yet his attempt to lighten the atmosphere seemed to have failed. Her throat tensed; a shadow occluded her eyes. Memory oozed within her of the way she had first gazed desperately up at the heavens, wanting only to be part of them. Incorporeal. Free from her body...

Then she forced the memory from her. He’d obviously only made the remark as a conversational gambit—she must treat it as such.

‘Hard to make a living at that,’ she answered. ‘And I am the rankest amateur!’ she added lightly.

Rafael smiled across at her. ‘Yet your name is ideally suited for a career in astronomy, no?’ She looked blank, and he enlightened her. ‘Celeste—celestial?’ he said.

His eyes rested on her, drinking her in.

And that is her aura, too—celestial. As if the impurities and imperfections of the world below the stars are nothing to do with her! As if she moves through this world apart from everyone else, everything else, untouched by anything that seeks to stain her...

In his head he heard Karl Reiner’s sordid accusation. If ever there was a woman who was an unlikely target for such foul names it was this one!

She was looking at him, a slight expression of surprise in her clear grey-blue eyes. ‘Do you know, that’s never struck me?’ she said. ‘Celeste and celestial...’

His own smile deepened. Absently she noticed how it curved the lines around his mouth, made his basalt-black eyes lighten. Noticed even more the way it seemed to make her breath catch. Made her want to do nothing more than go on sitting here, beside him, being with him—

No! She mustn’t! It was pointless—useless! Talking to him about anything—anything at all—had no purpose! She was calmer now, recovered from that horrible scene out in the lobby, and so she must go—leave—go home to the life she had. A life that had no place for Rafael Sanguardo in it. No place for any kind of relationship with anyone.

She nerved herself to take her leave. To terminate this conversation that could go nowhere—nowhere at all! But he was speaking to her yet again, clearly intent on keeping her in conversation.

‘So what first got you interested in astronomy?’ Rafael asked.

Deliberately he kept his question casual—nothing more than the kind of enquiry anyone might make in social conversation. A safe topic under whose aegis to do what he most wanted to do—set her at her ease. Stop her tensing all the time. Make her comfortable talking with him. Make the most of the opportunity this evening had presented so that he could move on to inviting her out to dinner, and then from there to where he wanted to be—making love to her.

Her arms around me, clinging to me, her mouth opening to mine, my hands curving around the bare column of her back, her hair loosened, streaming like a silver banner across the pillows, her body warm and yielding to desire...

He felt the power of his own imagination, his own desire, kick through him. Surely she must feel it, too? Surely she must? Wasn’t she starting to thaw to him, little by little? Slowly—oh, so slowly—but it was starting to happen, he was sure of it.

Then, as he finished his question, before his eyes he saw her face change. Closed.

Closed completely, as if a shutter had come down.

‘I don’t remember,’ she said. Her voice was quelling. This time there could be no allowances for his simply making conversation. This was a subject that she must terminate—now. Just as she must terminate this encounter. She must go home right now.

Rafael’s eyes narrowed minutely at her stony reaction. What had just happened? The change was total. He saw her reach for her teacup, lift it with a jerking movement and take a mouthful of the pale green fragrant liquid. Then she set the cup down with another jolt. Her eyes swivelled to his.

‘Thank you so much for the tea, Señor Sanguardo. And thank you for intervening back there. It was very good of you.’ She spoke rapidly, in clipped tones. Clipped, impersonal tones that went with the totally closed expression on her face.

He could see her total withdrawal happening in front of his eyes.

She’s gone away again—back into that separate space she lives in. The one she uses to keep the rest of the world at bay.

She was getting to her feet, slipping gracefully off the high bar stool.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said again, her tone formal. She picked up her clutch bag from the bar surface and bestowed a tight, perfunctory smile on him again.

Rafael got to his feet as she did. ‘I will see you home,’ he announced.

Again, that look of immediate wariness—more than wariness...alarm—flared in her eyes.

‘Purely and solely,’ he continued, ‘for the purposes of ensuring that you do not risk any further unwanted attention from the uncharming Mr Reiner. My car is outside, and it is no trouble, I assure you.’ He looked down at her. His eyes were steady, their message clear. ‘I will see you safely to your home and then leave you. Does that meet with your agreement?’

Celeste opened her mouth. She wanted to say, No, it can’t possibly meet with my agreement! I can’t want to spend the slightest further amount of time with you because there is no point—absolutely and totally no point! I am not going to let you get to know me better and I am not going to have anything more to do with you and that is all there is to it!

But she didn’t say it. A sudden vision of Karl Reiner waiting outside her flat assailed her. However reluctant she might be to allow this magnetic, disturbing man who had behaved so chivalrously to drive her home, it was preferable to encountering Karl Reiner again—drunken and angry and still trying to press his hateful attentions on her.

Then, without any answer from her at all, she felt Rafael Sanguardo’s strong hand cup lightly around her elbow and guide her out of the bar. It was only a light, courteous touch, but she was vividly aware of it. He dropped his hand the moment she seemed to be going the way he wanted her to—which was across the lobby and out onto the pavement. A hovering car glided to the kerb, and then a chauffeur was opening the passenger door for her and she was getting in.

‘Where to?’ Rafael asked her as he took his place beside her.

With a flurry of consternation Celeste realised she was going to have to tell him where she lived. Well, if he’d found out who she was, then he’d be perfectly capable of finding out where she lived as well. So she gave her address, and the car started to make its way westward out of Mayfair towards Park Lane.

It would take a good fifteen minutes at least to reach Notting Hill, Celeste knew, and in the meantime she had better make anodyne conversation to prevent Rafael Sanguardo getting any other ideas about how to pass the time in the back of his car...

‘What part of South America do you come from, Mr Sanguardo?’ she heard herself asking. Her tone was no more than politely interested.

He glanced at her. There was amusement in his eyes. ‘Am I to take it that you’ve been making enquiries about me in return?’ he asked.

Damn, she thought, I walked into that one!

‘One of my fellow models the other evening at the charity show mentioned it,’ she replied, making her voice as unconcerned as she could.

Did she, now? Rafael thought. And does that mean that you’d asked her? A ripple of satisfaction went through him. She was not as studiedly indifferent to him as she was trying to make out. How long, he wondered, before she finally admitted that? Before she finally started to lower her guard to him?

But whenever that happened—and it would happen; he had set his mind to it, and nothing in the intervening days since seeing her walk down that marble staircase, captivating him with her opalescent beauty, had changed his mind on that—it was not happening now.

Her guard was sky-high. A guard consisting of polite attentiveness and the kind of impersonal conversation she could have with anyone at all. Well, he reminded himself, it was better than her doing her disappearing act again, and he would make the most of it.

‘She was a little out,’ he answered. ‘My country of origin is Maragua, which is in Central America.’

He could see her give a little frown in the passing street lights as the car drew out into Park Lane.

‘I thought Managua was the capital of Nicaragua?’ she commented.