One Night in Madrid: Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife / The Spaniard's Defiant Virgin / The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride

So she lifted her head, forced her drooping eyelids wide open and met his bronze stare head-on.

He was bigger than she remembered. Or, rather, she had forgotten how tall, how strong and imposing he was. And it seemed that the passage of time had only added to the impact he made simply by walking into a room. She couldn’t help wishing that she was not sitting down. The armchair was low and squat, making her feel uncomfortably vulnerable as Raul towered over her, overwhelming and ominously threatening.

In the two years since she had seen him, time had turned him from a young man into a dynamic, mature male. His powerful frame had become tauter, stronger, tightening muscles and enhancing his forceful stature. And nowhere were the effects of time on his bone structure more pronounced than in his face. The already lean shape, the high, slanting cheekbones were emphasised by the passage of time that had etched a few lines around his eyes and mouth. His brows seemed darker, thicker, and on either side of the straight slash of a nose his bronze eyes burned like molten gold, fiercely intent on her face.

Unlike her, he was immaculately dressed, the perfectly tailored lines of the elegant steel-grey suit he wore with a crisp white shirt clinging to those honed muscles, broad shoulders and narrow hips as if they had been moulded onto him. That suit and the pristine shirt were so much Don Raul Marcín, she reflected bitterly. So much the Raul she had known in the past. A man she had rarely seen in anything other than those tailored suits, almost never anything casual and relaxed. And his mind-set was the same. Always focused, always business, always working, making money. And when he wasn’t working then his attention was on the one other thing that mattered to him—the dukedom of Marquez Marcín and all the land they owned.

‘Buenas tardes Alannah.’ It came stiffly, curtly, with an arrogant inclination of his head, barely acknowledging her and sending stinging pricks of indignation skittering over her skin.

Long time, no see. The flippant words hovered on her tongue but she caught them back, swallowing them down hard, knowing they were not in the least appropriate—nor would they be welcome.

‘What are you doing here?’

The harsh demand in his tone drove all other thoughts from her mind, pushing her to her feet in a rush, her hands on the arms of the chair for support.

‘The same as you, I presume. This is a hospital.’

‘But I …’

The dawn of understanding in those burning eyes eased the sear of them over her skin, making her swallow again as her throat closed up in response to the sight.

‘Someone is ill?’ It came grimly, sharply. ‘One of your family.’ ‘My brother,’ Alannah managed, nodding almost fiercely for fear that he might see what was in her eyes; the tears she was having to blink back hard. She would have to come to the truth soon enough but who could blame her if she needed a little time to draw breath, to prepare herself? Find the courage to go on?

And especially when it was this man she had to tell.

‘Is it bad?’

Another change of expression almost defeated her, sweeping away all the strength she had gained. His look of sympathy, of understanding, seemed genuine, so much so that it knocked her sideways, emotionally and physically. She actually staggered where she stood for a moment, uncertain fingers clutching at the chair for support. He looked as if he really cared—though she knew it was only a polite mask, assumed by social necessity. And one that would soon be wiped straight off those handsome features when she explained everything further.

‘Bad enough.’

The worst, she should say. But how could she tell him that when admitting what had happened brought with it so many other admissions, so many other complications?

‘I’m sorry.’

Raul said it automatically and even though he knew that it sounded cold and distant, his voice harsh, abrupt, he didn’t have the energy or the concentration to change it. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel sympathy for her sick brother, but at this foul end of a long, foul day Alannah was the last person he needed to see right now. The last person he wanted to see now or at any other time.

When she had walked out of his life twenty-five months before, he had been glad to see her go. More than glad. If he had never seen her again, it would have been too soon. He had let her get under his skin in a way that no other woman had ever done before or since. In fact he had come close to wanting to spend his life with her. He had even gone so far as to ask her to marry him.

But when he’d proposed she had laughed in his face.

‘Why on earth would I want to marry you?’ she’d said, her voice showing the scorn that was so clear in the coldness of her eyes, the mocking smile on her lips. ‘That’s not what I’m in this relationship for. It was fun—and the fact that you’re so rich is great. But if you’re thinking of anything permanent, forget it! That’s just not going to happen.’

And that was when she had told him that she had already met someone else. The wound to his pride still burned like an open sore and her presence here like this had only wrenched away the scar that covered it. Seeing Alannah was the only thing that could make him forget just for a second exactly why he was here at all.

And that he didn’t want to forget. If he could have made it that it had never happened then he would, but that was impossible. If he forgot, if he put it out of his mind for a moment, then, inevitably, at some point he had to go through the agony of remembering all over again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, knowing that, even through the black fury and the hatred of her that had filled his mind since she had walked away from him, if she was going through one quarter of what he was feeling then it was only human to feel sympathy for another person caught in the same horror.

‘Thank you.’ She sounded almost as unfocused as he felt, but then that was only to be expected if her brother was very ill.

It explained the way she looked, he told himself, his numbed and bruised mind finally registering more about her than the unwanted fact that she was Alannah Redfern, the woman he had never wanted in his life again.

And now that he had become aware of just how she looked, now that his eyes had fixed on her face, he found that he couldn’t look away; couldn’t drag his eyes from hers.

She looked like a pale reflection of herself, he realised dazedly. It was as if someone had painted her in diluted pastel water colours or left a photograph out in the sunshine until it faded, all the brightness leaching away to leave just a negative of what had been there before.

Whenever a memory of Alannah had slid into his mind—and they had done just occasionally, maldito sea, in spite of his determined efforts to lock them out, then those memories had been of colour and life, of a vividly toned and animated face, a wide smile and flashing green eyes.

But now even those eyes seemed faded. The brilliant green that he recalled was dulled to the colour of the sea on a bleak winter’s day. Her skin, which had always had the creamy pallor of her Celtic ancestry, was now ashen almost to the point of less transparency where it was stretched tight across the fine bones of her face.

She had lost weight too, he would swear. The lush curves he remembered so well—too well—were lush no longer. Instead she looked finer drawn, almost fragile—and were the long lashes that fringed those almond-shaped eyes spiked by. tears?

Tears in a place like this, in a hospital intensive-care ward, were bad news, and with his own terrible revelation still so raw in his mind and his heart he knew that the shadows in her eyes, the lack of colour in her face, were probably mirrored in his.

‘Alannah?’

If the look of sympathy earlier had almost destroyed her, then this change in his voice, his expression, took the ground right from under her feet in a second. It was just what she most needed, and yet what she had most been dreading. It was what the weakness deep inside longed for, this note of concern and support, and yet she knew she could never reach for it, never allow herself to lean against his strength, let herself accept his help. Because if she did then she still had to tell him the whole truth. And she knew that if she had once known the feel of that support, even for a second, then it would tear her apart to lose it all over again.

And so she forced herself away from the temptation that had reached out to enclose her, pulling herself away, taking back the two small steps she had taken towards him without even being aware of having moved. She felt the withdrawal in every inch of her, the terrible wrench in her heart as well as her body, and it made her legs tremble beneath her, threatening to give way as she made herself move away instead of towards him and make it look as if she had been heading towards the drinks tray instead.

‘Would you like some coffee? It’s pretty foul but …’

What was she saying? Offering him coffee one minute and then telling him how foul it was the next! She sounded like … She didn’t know what she sounded like, only that the way she was rattling on gave away just how nervous she was feeling and that could only alert Raul to the fact that something was very wrong.

And if he started asking questions.

The nerves in her stomach twisted sharply and painfully, making her heart jump into a rapid uneven beat.

‘… coffee, gracias.’

At least that was what she thought Raul said but the words were blurred by the pounding of the blood through her veins, sounding like thunder inside her head. And somehow she found that she just couldn’t stop talking, no matter how much she wanted to. It was as if, having found a way to remove the gag that had kept her lips tight closed except for the barest minimum of forced speech, she had also ripped away the restraint on her tongue so that the words were just tumbling out in a rush without giving her time to think whether they were really what she wanted to say or not.

‘They try to make this place comfortable, make it feel a bit homely, for the families and friends who are visiting—or waiting for news—but of course that’s not really possible, is it? I mean, who would want to be at home in the families’ room of an intensive-care ward?’

The plastic cup she held under the spout of the insulated coffee-pot shook unnervingly in the uncertain grip of a barely controlled hand and she clenched it tighter, only to crush and crack the brittle material.

‘Damn, damn, damn!’

Painfully aware of the way that Raul was watching her, of the tall, dark, silently vigilant spectator who stood just behind her, golden eyes intent on every move she made, she tossed aside the broken cup, not caring that it went nowhere near the grey-painted metal bin, and reached for another.

‘And who could ever, ever be comfortable here? I mean—’

She broke off on a cry of shock and frustration as the too hard pressure on the lid of the coffee-pot forced the hot liquid out at such a rate that it filled the cup in seconds, coming to the rim and pouring over before she had a chance to stop it.

‘Oh, damn it!’

She knew she should put it down, tried desperately to find a space on the metal tray to do so, but the bitter tears that had been burning at the backs of her eyes now flooded them totally, blurring her vision so that there was no way she could see what to do. If she tried she might miss the tray altogether and so she stood frozen, helplessly unable to decide which way to move.