The Thorn in His Side

An hour later Libby was relieved to see the village come into view. The rain that had made motorway driving a nightmare had finally stopped but the puddles on the narrow country lane where she parked were the size of small lakes. By the time she’d brought the Labrador back to the car her shoes were saturated and her legs splashed with mud.

While the excitable animal strained on his leash Libby fumbled for her keys to open the car door. Her fingers closed around them at the same moment her heel caught in a pothole in the uneven surface. Libby staggered, and, losing her balance in her efforts to stay upright and not land in an inelegant heap in the mud, she lost her grip on the dog’s lead.

‘Great!’ she muttered, maintaining a fixed smile as she approached the dog, who was sitting a few feet away looking pleased with himself.

‘Good boy, Eustace,’ she cajoled, approaching him slowly with her hand outstretched. ‘Just stay exactly where you are …’

The lead was a tantalising inch away from the fingers when he took off, barking madly as he raced away down the lane.

Libby closed her eyes and groaned. ‘I don’t believe this!’ Then she set off after him.

She was panting and had a stitch by the time she caught up with the errant animal. He was sitting in the middle of the narrow lane, his tail banging like a metronome against the ground as he looked at her with soulful eyes.

‘Glad someone’s having fun,’ Libby croaked as she bent forward, hands braced on her thighs as she tried to drag some air into her lungs. ‘Oh, my God, I am so not fit.’

Sweeping wayward strands of her thick chestnut hair from her eyes with her forearm, she straightened up and, tucking her hair in a businesslike fashion behind her ears, took a cautious step towards the dog. The dog barked and took a playful leap backwards.

Libby bit her lip and glared in frustration at the animal.

‘I refuse to be outwitted by an animal who even his owners admit isn’t the sharpest knife in the box!’ she yelled, and thought, You’re talking to a dog, Libby.

Worry when you start expecting him to answer back.

The inner dialogue came to an abrupt halt as her attention was distracted by the sound of a powerful engine. Tractors were pretty much the only kind of traffic this lane saw and this did not sound like a tractor.

It wasn’t.

The exact sequence of events hard to recall after the fact, the next few seconds always remained a blur in her mind. One moment she was watching the big black sleek car going at a shocking pace heading straight at Eustace, who clearly thought this was the second phase of the great game, and the next she was there in the middle of the road holding up her hands—it seemed like a good idea at the time—and the car was going to hit her.

When his detour to avoid the snarl-up on the motorway had led him along lanes that were as narrow as they were winding, Rafael had not been unduly concerned. It did not cross his mind to consult the cars inbuilt navigational system or open the road map in the glove compartment. He preferred to rely on his own naturally excellent sense of direction. And it wasn’t as if the green lanes of England were dangerous, unlike some of the terrain he had negotiated in his life.

As he drove Rafael’s thoughts drifted back to a solo journey he had made at seventeen crossing the mountain ranges of Patagonia in a beat-up Jeep that had broken down at regular intervals until it had eventually been swept away. Who knew that the road he had been driving along had actually been a dry river bed? The recollection of managing to open the jammed door and leap out into the raging torrent seconds before the Jeep had been swept down the mountain brought a wolfish grin to his lean face.

His expression sobered, intensifying the brooding quality of his dark features as he identified the pang in his chest as something approaching envy.

Envy?

Or dissatisfaction?

Rafael’s dark brows knitted into a frowning line of impatience over his narrowed cinnamon-coloured eyes. Neither response was either logical or defensible in his opinion—not for a man who had as much as he did.

Rafael attributed in part his uncharacteristic mood of introspection to yesterday’s meeting.

A meeting that had not been strictly essential, he need never have seen the man, but to Rafael’s way of thinking there were some things that a man, even one as feckless and criminally incompetent as Marchant, deserved to be told face to face, and explaining that he was about to lose his business and his home was one of those things!

He had not expected it to be pleasant and it hadn’t been! To see a man, even a bungling idiot, crushed had been painful to witness.

The man had disintegrated before his eyes. A proud man himself, Rafael, embarrassed on the other man’s behalf, had found the overt display of tearful self-pity by the Englishman distasteful.

And even though he knew that the man had been the architect of his own misfortune, with a little help from his own grandfather, Rafael had found himself experiencing an irrational flash of guilt as he had taken his leave, guilt that had faded when the other man had yelled after him.

‘If you were my son—’

Rafael had cut him off in a bored drawl. ‘If I were your son I would have pensioned you off before you bankrupted your firm and lost your family home.’

With a show of more spirit than Rafael had yet observed the man delivered a parting shot.

‘I hope one day you lose everything you love and I hope, I really hope, that I am there to see it!’

Maybe the words had stayed with him because the curse was uniquely inappropriate?

Rafael had lost the only thing he had ever loved long ago, and the hurt of that loss was now no more than a memory. He had not laid himself open to a repeat of that experience; there was nothing and no one in his life he loved. He could lose all the wealth he had amassed tomorrow and there would be no pain; a small part of him might even welcome the challenge of starting again.

At thirty he had achieved everything he’d set out to and more. The question now was where to from here?

Rafael recognised that the main problem was how to remain motivated. He was financially successful beyond most people’s wildest dreams. A faint mocking smile tugged the corners of his lips upwards. His life was sweet—so sweet that here he was envying the boy he had been, the boy who had led a grim hand-to-mouth existence and relied on his wits and cunning to survive.

Maybe there was such a thing as too much success, he mused, smiling at the irony as he shifted gear to negotiate an extra tight bend in the road.

‘So what will it take to make you happy, Rafael Alejandro?’

The harsh curse that was dragged from his lips was seamlessly tacked onto the self-derisive question as out of nowhere a figure ran into the road.

She seemed to materialise in the twilight; for a split second she stood there in the glare of his lights like some ghostly apparition.

Rafael had a fleeting impression of a slight figure, an alabaster-pale face, a cloud of dark red hair; he had no time to register anything else. He was too busy trying not to add homicide to the list of sins recently laid at his door as he fought to avoid the collision, which seemed sickeningly inevitable.

Rafael had never in his life accepted the inevitable.

He had been blessed with catlike reflexes and a cool head when facing danger—and luck, of course. Never underestimate luck, Rafael thought, wondering as he saw the tree ahead if his was finally running out.

It wasn’t.

Against all the odds he avoided the suicidal redhead and the tree and remained in one piece. No matter how many times he later reviewed the incident he never could figure out how—it was a miracle!

He might actually have escaped the incident totally unscathed if the car had not at the critical moment hit the patch of mud at speed. Rafael was then forced to sit back helpless as the car went into a dramatic skid that turned the car through three hundred and sixty degrees before it took it across the road and into a ditch. Even the seat belt could not prevent the velocity causing his head to connect painfully with windscreen.

Rafael saw stars through his closed eyelids then he heard voices—no, one voice, female and not, he mused groggily, unattractive.

The voice was begging him not to be dead. Maybe he was?

The pain in his head suggested otherwise and the voice sounded too sexily husky to be that of an angel.

Rafael thought, Great voice, stupid questions, and tuned them out while he applied himself to more important matters like was he still in one piece and did those pieces all work?

He took a personal inventory of his limbs. Everything still seemed to be attached and in working order, which was good. His head felt as though someone were playing cymbals behind his eyes, which was less good.

One supportive hand at the back of his neck, Rafael began to lift his head cautiously and heard the voice—the one that did not belong to an angel—murmur a fervent, ‘Thank God!’