Rafael's Love-Child

‘Oh, no!’

It was the worst she had imagined. The only thing that really explained his reluctance to speak. No, perhaps the worst thing was the way she was feeling—or rather not feeling. She couldn’t even remember who had been driving the car, so she didn’t know what she should be feeling.

‘Who was he? Did I know him?’

But Rafael’s face had closed up, heavy lids and long, luxuriant lashes hiding his eyes and his thoughts from her.

‘That is for you to say.’

‘Oh, that’s not fair!’

But, ‘doctor’s orders’ he had said, and he meant to abide by those orders, no matter what it did to her.

‘I must have done, mustn’t I? I mean—I was there with him—in the car. I wouldn’t have got into a car with a stranger.’

She looked into his face, seeking a response that would help her, but finding only that stony-faced, blanked-off expression that made her think fearfully of the unseeing, frozen faces of the statues of Ancient Greece, carved from cold, unyielding marble.

‘I wouldn’t!’ For some reason she felt the need to repeat it, to emphasise the importance of what she had said. ‘I’m not that sort of a girl.’

He didn’t say a word, but some change in his face, a movement of his head, an expression in those burning eyes, a momentary lift of one black brow that he couldn’t quite control, seemed to question the truth of her assertion.

‘You don’t believe me?’

Angry now, she could no longer stay still. Swinging her legs out of bed, she got to her feet, snatching up the calf-length robe that matched her nightdress and pulling it on, belting it firmly around her slim waist with a rough, jerky movement that betrayed her inner feelings.

This was better. At least her slender height gave her the ability to look him in the eyes, even if he was still some five or so inches above her five-feet-nine.

‘How dare you? You have no right to sit in judgement on me when you don’t even know me—if that is the truth.’

‘I had never set eyes on you in my life until the first day I came to this hospital and saw you lying unconscious in that bed.’

‘Then—then you can’t tell me what I was doing at the time of the accident or just before it and why.’

Her delicate toes curling on the soft carpet, Serena shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. She didn’t want to think of Rafael standing beside her bed, looking down at her unconscious form from that imperious height. Just the thought of those cold eagle’s eyes watching everything about her, judging, assessing, when she was utterly defenceless, unaware even of his presence, made her blood chill in her veins.

‘You can’t know anything about me—who I am or what I am—so you’ll have to take my word for it that I’m just not that kind of woman.’

‘You may believe that you were not that sort of woman—’

He bit off the sentence swiftly, but not quite quickly enough. Serena pounced on that revealing change of tense.

‘Were not?’ she repeated shakily. ‘Were? What does that mean? What do you know that you aren’t telling me?’

But he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Instead he turned to where little Tonio still lay, sleeping peacefully.

‘I have to leave,’ he said, not even attempting to hide the fact that he was deliberately ignoring her anxious questions. ‘Tonio will need feeding…’

‘No! You can’t do this to me! I won’t let you!’

The sidelong glance he turned in her direction was one of supreme indifference. I can do exactly as I wish, it declared, as clearly as if he had spoken. And you can do nothing to stop me.

Oh, couldn’t she?

Just as Rafael looped the handles of the carrycot over one strong hand she slipped past him, heading for the doorway and positioning herself just in front of it.

‘I mean it!’ she declared, praying that her vehemence hid every sign of the uncertainty that nagged at her.

‘Serena…’ Her name was threaded through with a note of ominous warning, one she knew she would be wise to heed, but she couldn’t bring herself to give up the fight so easily.

‘No. I won’t let you go until you tell me. It’s my life, I have a right to know!’

No, defiance was the wrong approach. It was only hardening his resolve. She could see that in the set of his jaw, the cold light in his eyes, the way they had narrowed, dangerously assessing. Hastily she rethought her plan of campaign.

‘Rafael, please… ‘ she cajoled, carefully adjusting her tone, making it soft and pleading, totally unlike the challenge of moments before.

‘Serena, don’t do this… ‘

Are you sure you know what you’re doing? a small, nervous voice questioned at the back of her mind. Are you sure that you really want to know?

‘No!’

Stubbornly she pushed the weak thoughts away, refusing to let them take root. If she gave in to Rafael now, if she let him go without answering her, then she would have lost her chance for ever. If he defeated her once, he would always be able to do so again.

‘Please—you don’t know what it’s been like! I’ve lain awake at nights trying and trying to remember, but it’s all just a blank—a big, gaping black hole where that day should be. Can you imagine how that feels—how frightening it is?’

‘Madre de Dios!’

Rafael dropped the handles of the carrycot and raked both hands through the shining luxuriance of his black hair in a gesture so expressive of burning exasperation that Serena couldn’t hold back a smile at the knowledge that she was getting through to him at last.

‘You will regret this.’

It was a flat statement of fact, not a threat, and that was what firmed her resolve, making her even more set on continuing.

‘I’ll regret it even more if I don’t find out what you’re talking about. This is my past—my life! How can I ever hope to move on, go forward, if I don’t know what’s behind me?’

Rafael’s only answer was another outburst of explosive Spanish, but at the end of it he flung up his hands in a gesture of defeat.

‘All right, you asked for it! And perhaps it is best that you know the truth. That date you gave… ‘

‘It wasn’t right? I was unconscious longer than I believed?’

‘On the contrary. In all but one detail the date was perfectly correct. The right day, the right month…’

‘But…’ She had to force the word out in a hoarse, tight-throated croak, because it was obvious that there had to be a ‘but’.

‘But it was a year early.’

‘Early? I don’t understand.’