Page 5 of Emergency Engagement

‘Good to know. Thank you for your time.’

She began to gather her things to leave, but Rafael stopped her by asking, ‘What’s your brother doing now? He wanted to go into medicine, if I remember.’

‘He’s a nurse now. He ended up having to repeat a year after you disappeared. He’d always been a model student until you came along.’

Rafael didn’t say anything. He remembered what life had been like back then, with his father a mess and him having to pick up the pieces. Rafael had had to make sure he got himself off to work and not back on the bottle because they’d needed the money to survive. He remembered himself as an angry, disillusioned, confused teenaged boy raging against the world, loving his fragile father but hating him at the same time.

There had been a lot of truancy back then but he’d been so bright that he’d never fallen behind. He hadn’t asked anyone to copy him, but some of the other boys in his class had followed his lead. He’d been too wrapped up in his own anger to give much of a damn about how skipping classes might affect them.

That said, he wasn’t in the business of apologising to anyone for anything. Besides, tough times made for tough people, and tough people did well in life. They knew how to handle its obstacles. He was a fine example of that.

‘I never encouraged anyone to follow me.’

‘But you never did anything to discourage them, either!’

‘I did my own thing. I wasn’t in the business of setting examples to anyone. At the time, there were more interesting things to do than listening to teachers who really didn’t know as much as me and, if there were kids who wanted to fall in with that, then who was I to start preaching to them?’

‘That’s incredibly arrogant!’

‘Maybe, or maybe I’m just being honest. I’m sorry if you feel that your brother went off the rails because of me, although it’s probably healthier to think that everyone is responsible for the decisions they make. It’s counter-productive to blame other people for their own poor choices. Send him my regards and, like I said, I would be happy to compensate you for any loss on whatever equipment you may have bought. I mean that. It took guts coming here and I admire you for that.’

She was already rising to her feet and heading to the door. He didn’t try to stop her. He wasn’t going to change his plans just because they happened to share a tenuous connection.

But he had to force himself not to follow her. Instead, he remained where he was, watching the angry sway of her slender hips as she stormed out of the door.

Lord only knew what his PA in the adjoining office made of the fuming slip of a thing who had just slammed a door behind her. Generally speaking, no one slammed doors behind them when they left his office, not even ex-girlfriends, which was a good thing; there had been enough angry exes to make the building rattle if they ever decided to join forces and slam doors.

Rafael enjoyed a colourful love life. He enjoyed women and, when he was dating, he was one hundred percent attentive and faithful. He just wasn’t into staying the course. He didn’t have the appetite for the disillusioning business of marriage and the pointless hope that fuelled it. He was always honest about that—some might say to a fault—but still, many an angry ex who hadexpected the unattainable would have slammed doors had they not feared his disapproval.

This woman, though... She hadn’t thought twice. He rose to his feet, suddenly edgy. When he glanced down, it was to find that she had forgotten the folder she had brought with her and dumped on the ground by the chair.

It was too late to chase her down the road waving a folder...not his style anyway. He would have a look to see if a contact number was anywhere inside, or at the very least her email address. He would get his PA to do the honours and return it.

He settled into his leather chair, kept all calls on hold and flipped open the portfolio she had managed to forget in her furious haste.

Halfway to Harrogate on the train, Sammy belatedly remembered the damned portfolio. It had taken her days to meticulously prepare her business plan, but no way was she going to turn around and go back for it. Nor was she going to phone and ask for it to be sent.

Frankly, after the reception she’d been given, it was probably winging its way to the dump by now. She hadn’t given it a passing thought because she’d been so worked up when she’d stormed out of his office, slamming the door behind her, aware of his glamorous PA half-rising to her feet in shock as she’d swept by. All those uninterested people who hadn’t noticed when she’d arrived had sat up and taken stock when she’d left—which had almost made her smile, except the last thing she’d been in the mood to do had been to crack a smile at anything.

Of course, it was the mention of her brother that had been her undoing. She had been shocked that he’d recognised herand then to remember Colin...and, to top it off, to remember her as the shy thing peeping at him while all the bolder girls had flaunted themselves in the smallest outfits they could get away with.

She stared through the window at scenery flashing past.

Rafael and Colin had been in the same form. Who could ever have predicted that Colin, always so quiet and studious, would have become a dedicated member of Rafael’s fan club? He’d gone off the rails, in true Rafael Moreno style and had dumped the school books for skipping class, as if he’d been making up for all that lost time when he’d been so diligent. Then, Rafael had disappeared in a puff of smoke, and her brother had discovered how woefully behind he had fallen. He’d failed four of the eight exams he’d taken. Rafael Moreno might have been capable of attending one class and still getting straight As, but no one else had been, including her brother. Everything had been delayed a year and her mother, fragile after the divorce, had become a bag of nerves all over again.

Sammy simmered and fumed and wondered what the hell happened now. She would have to start looking into things in the coming week. She rented somewhere at the moment, but she’d blithely given in her notice because she’d anticipated the fun of living above her café and doing the place up, somewhere that would be all hers. The thought of getting back in the rental market yet again made her feel sick. Her mum lived ten miles away in the nearest town. Should she migrate there for a while?

Sammy knew that she should feel angry and betrayed, because she had set her hopes high, had had it all just within her grasp... But how on earth could she be angry with Clifford when concerns for his ill daughter had driven his decision?

It was quite a lot to think about and yet, with all those pressing worries on her mind, she found herself drifting off to sleep, thinking of something else of a very different nature.

Or rather,someoneelse.

Rafael, with his darkly forbidding good looks and eyes that seemed to bore straight into her. He’d looked at her and she’d felt herself go hot and cold and then hot all over again. All she could hope was that he hadn’t noticed.

He’d made her relive a youthful infatuation and she hated that. She might not have openly flung herself into his path like some of the other girls but, as twelve had turned to fourteen, she had done her fair share of daydreaming. She’d been no different from everyone else. Like them, she had never met anyone as fascinating or as good-looking as Rafael Moreno.

She’d been smart enough not to show it, but it seemed that he’d noticed her looking from the side-lines anyway: a thin, boyish, self-conscious adolescent without any of the generous assets all the other girls had seemed to have.

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