Page 43 of One More Sleepless Night

‘Blonde. Beautiful.’

‘Naturally,’ she said dryly.

‘She was also temperamental and difficult.’

Looking slightly mollified by that, Nicky sat back. ‘So what went wrong?’

Suddenly feeling as if he were sitting on knives, Rafael shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘Hasn’t Gaby told you?’

‘No. She’s loyal and I didn’t like to ask.’

‘Let’s just say it didn’t work out.’

‘Yes, the divorce part of it kind of gives that away.’

He shrugged. ‘There you go, then.’

Nicky fell silent and for a moment Rafael thought with blessed relief that was that. That she’d understood that he didn’t want to talk about it, and that as far as he was concerned the topic was now closed.

But apparently it wasn’t, at least not for her, because she was lifting her sunglasses off her nose and up into her hair and giving him a look that suggested that she didn’t think him brushing over it quite so dismissively was on.

‘Is that it?’ she said, clearly not impressed. ‘Is that all I’m getting?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Not nearly.’

‘Tough.’ That was all he was prepared to divulge.

Nicky harrumphed and folded her arms over her chest. ‘Well, that doesn’t seem entirely fair, does it?’ she said eventually.

Rafael lifted an eyebrow at her indignation. ‘What doesn’t?’

‘I tell you all about the stuff that happened to me yet you get to avoid talking about what happened to you? I don’t think so.’

The urge to tense up was back but he stamped it down and pasted a bland smile to his face. ‘But the difference is that you chose to tell me. Willingly. And I don’t particularly like talking about my marriage.’

‘I’m sure you don’t,’ she said archly, ‘but you might find it surprisingly therapeutic. I did, after all.’

‘I don’t need therapy. I got over it years ago.’

She fixed him with another far too perceptive look. ‘Really?’ she asked with a scepticism that made him want to grind his teeth.

‘Absolutely.’

‘In that case, why the reluctance to talk about it? And why do you still have such a thing about getting involved with your sisters’ friends?’

This time Rafael couldn’t stop his jaw from clenching because as he contemplated her irritatingly shrewd questions he realised she had a point. And he, therefore, didn’t have much of a choice if he didn’t want her thinking she was right. ‘Fine,’ he said as if it didn’t bother him in the slightest. ‘What do you want to know?’

*

Rafael’s marriage might have been occupying her mind a lot lately, but Nicky had never had any intention of actually bringing it up.

However she’d been gazing in the direction of the wedding-goers gathering in front of the church on the other side of the square and idly wondering whether he and the beautiful but temperamental Marina had been married here or in Madrid and what the dress had looked like, when the warmth and the wine and a sheer sense of contentment had obliterated her inhibitions and the question had simply spilled out of her mouth.

Once it had there’d been little point in hoping he hadn’t heard her and even less in trying to back-pedal. And if she was being completely honest, she

wouldn’t have retracted it even if she could because the curiosity had been practically killing her.

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