Page 16 of One More Sleepless Night

So he was doing the right thing by leaving her alone, he assured himself as he splashed some more brandy into his glass. Nicky would be fine, and come the morning he’d have forgotten all about it so there was absolutely no need to give it any further thought.

Sitting back and downing half his drink, Rafael resolutely put it out of his head and turned his attention to his vines.

*

Nicky woke up a second before she cracked her head on the tarmac. As usual.

Once again she’d been trapped in the midst of a swirling mass of humanity, the bright colours blurring her vision, the thunderous noise deafening her and the increasing air of menace intensifying the panic and fear rocketing through her.

Once again she’d lost her balance and had desperately tried to counteract the momentum of the crowd by grabbing at air, at anything really, but with the crush of people pressing in and around her it was to no avail. And once again she’d felt herself go down and had filled with the sickening heartbreaking awareness that once she hit the ground she’d never get back up…

At least she hadn’t cried out, she thought, staring blankly up into the jet black darkness of the night, her heart pounding, sweat pouring off her and her head swimming with the horrible images that still haunted her sleep.

As mercies went it was a small one, but it was a mercy nevertheless because she knew from past experience that she was perfectly capable of letting out a yell that could wake the dead. Or, at least, Gaby, who’d pounded on her door often enough, demanding to know if she was all right.

If she’d yelled out this time Rafael would und

oubtedly have heard and very possibly would have rushed in to see what was wrong. So it was a relief she hadn’t because she really wasn’t up to explaining.

Willing her heart to steady and her breathing to slow, Nicky sighed and flung an arm over her eyes and reminded herself for what felt like the billionth time that the shakiness and the fear pounding through her would pass. As they always did.

But, God, she was sick of the whole sodding lot of it. She was sick of the lack of control she had over her subconscious, sick of the hold that something that happened months ago still had on her—and her inability to get over it—and sick of being so prickly and defensive all the time.

It had to stop. Today. Now.

But how?

As the turbulent images faded and her trembling stopped something Rafael had said earlier flickered through her head. Something about not letting things bother him. Or rather, about choosing to not let things bother him…

Well, that was what she’d do too, she thought with grim resolution, because she had a choice, didn’t she? Maybe not about what went on while she was asleep, but while she was awake? That was a different matter entirely.

So today was going to be different. Today she was going to think positively and not dwell on the past. Today she’d choose not to care.

SIX

Guilt wasn’t a feeling Rafael was all that familiar with, but the guilt—and shame—he felt about not going to see if Nicky was all right last night was seriously beginning to grate.

So much for assuming he’d have forgotten all about it by this morning. He’d barely thought about anything else, because he might have gone to bed convinced he’d done the best thing by leaving her alone, and he might have congratulated himself on stoically resisting the urge to give in to his instincts, but over the course of the morning the doubts that had crept in overnight had intensified and nothing was making them go away. Not the knowledge that he had at least put his ear to her door on his way to bed, not the reassuring sounds of movement coming from her room at the crack of dawn, and not the jaunty whistling he’d heard coming from the landing moments before he’d shut the back door behind him.

Not even the hard physical work he’d engaged in in the vineyards had been enough to put it from his mind because, regardless of the consequences, he should have paid attention to his gut and checked up on her. Quite apart from it being the gentlemanly thing to do, Nicky was a guest in his home and therefore her welfare was technically his responsibility, however much he might not want it to be.

Which really left him with only one course of action, he thought, narrowing his eyes and glowering at the blindingly white cortijo he was striding towards. Never mind that it directly contravened his policy of not getting involved. Never mind that it could potentially open up a whole messy can of worms. He had no option but to ask Nicky outright what was going on, and the sooner the better because the doubts and the guilt and the shame were driving him nuts and he didn’t think he could stand any of it much longer.

Pushing open the back door he strode into the hall and briefly wondered where to start hunting for her. She shouldn’t be too far away. If she wasn’t in the house she’d probably be—

‘Rafael?’

At the sound of her voice he automatically stopped and turned. And went still as all the blood rushed to his feet and his plan to clear his conscience shot clean out of his head.

Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, Nicky wasn’t too far away at all. On the contrary she was uncomfortably close, and, in a bright red bikini top, a very short turquoise skirt that sat low on her waist and nothing else, her nose a little pink from the sun and her hair still semi-wet from the pool and hanging in thick waves to her shoulders, very very appealing.

Unable to stop himself, Rafael ran his gaze over her, over the swell of her breasts, pushed up and in by the bikini top, the dip of her waist, the flat abdomen and the flaring of her hips and then down to below the hem of the itsy-bitsy skirt and those long slim legs, which he’d envisaged wrapped around his waist so often in his dreams.

She looked like some kind of siren and as lust shot through him, so hot and fast it nearly brought him to his knees, he had the feeling that if he wasn’t careful, if he didn’t focus on what was important here, he could well find himself being lured to his doom.

Which wasn’t nearly as ominous a notion as it ought to have been. In fact as he stood there staring at her, desire pounding through him and his head whirling, doom was looking increasingly tempting, and he had to ball his hands into fists to stop himself lunging for her because he was pretty sure that that kind of behaviour would get his face slapped.

With superhuman effort Rafael swallowed hard, ruthlessly deleted all images of sultry temptresses and entwined legs from his brain, and pulled himself together because wanting her was not why he’d decided to seek her out. ‘What?’ he muttered.

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