Page 52 of One More Sleepless Night

He should have been thinking about ways to flatten out his client’s absurdly rigid management hierarchy. He should have been drawing up proposals and schedules and setting up meetings, but was he? No. All he could think about was that if ending things with Nicky had been for the best why wasn’t he rejoicing at having had such a remarkably lucky escape? Why did her accusations keep ricocheting around his head as if on some bloody unstoppable loop? And why hadn’t that stab of loss gone away?

He’d had plenty of time to forget her and he’d used up practically every drop of his patience trying to do just that, but neither had made a blind bit of difference because he simply couldn’t get her out of his head. She was in there all the damn time, sometimes distracting him with her smiles, her voice and that maddening habit she had of biting on her lip whenever she was thinking, but more often sitting in the darkness of his car, spitting fury and flinging all those awful things at him.

For the life of him he couldn’t work out why what she’d said was having such an effect on him. It wasn’t as if he’d sat around deliberately dwelling on it. No. In fact he’d never been busier. Apart from the welcome distraction of work, he’d taken his mother out to a hip new restaurant. He’d caught up with Gaby. And yesterday he’d spotted a new bud on the baobab he’d grown from seed.

But the food in that restaurant had tasted like cardboard. All he’d wanted to ask Gaby was if she’d seen Nicky, and the new baobab bud left him oddly numb.

None of his usual fail-safe methods of self-preservation had worked and he’d now got to the stage he wished he could reach down, yank out everything that was churning around inside him and twisting him into knots and toss it in the bin because it was all driving him insane.

Especially the guilt that at some point over the last week had taken up what was turning out to be permanent residence in his conscience. The guilt that, along with the little voice that had been niggling away in his head, was beginning to suggest that firstly he’d behaved appallingly and that secondly Nicky might have had a point.

For days he’d tried to resist both. For days he’d been telling himself that his reaction to her declaration she was in love with him had been perfectly normal given his experience with Marina, and that of course Nicky hadn’t had a point.

But right now he was just so tired. And not just physically. He was tired of resisting. Tired of constantly lying to himself—or at the very least denying the truth—and tired of trying to forget her.

Rafael rubbed a hand over his face as for what felt like the billionth time everything she’d said, everything she’d accused him of, ran through his head. And as something deep inside him finally gave way, fracturing and crumbling into dust, the truth smacked

him right between the eyes.

Nicky had been deadly accurate in summing him up, hadn’t she? He did back off and run when the going got tough. He’d started the moment he’d decided he’d had enough of his sisters hassling him when he’d been a boy and escaped to the end of the garden, and he’d never stopped. He’d done it with Marina, he’d done it with his sisters and his mother and his girlfriends and he’d done it with Nicky. Every time, every single time he faced anything that might require an emotional response he fought to escape. And if he couldn’t he shut himself down.

Look at what had happened when Nicky had told him she loved him. He’d been cold. Dismissive. Cruel. He’d hurt her. Crucified her, she’d said. And why? Because he’d been unable to handle it. Unable to let himself believe it, because if he allowed himself to believe it then what else might he end up believing?

Rafael stumbled over to his chair just in time to sink into it and buried his head in his hands as the now unfettered truth rained down on him.

God, he was the problem, wasn’t he? She’d accused him of being pathetic, stubborn and thick-headed, and he was, because was he really still hung up on what had happened with his marriage? It was nearly ten years ago, for heaven’s sake. He wasn’t twenty-three and Nicky wasn’t Marina.

She wasn’t needy and clingy and desperate for his attention, and of course she didn’t depend on him for her recovery or her well-being or anything else. She’d been taking care of herself for years.

And he did know the difference between lust and love, didn’t he?

Taking a deep breath, Rafael made himself face up to the facts he’d stupidly and lily-liveredly shied away from in an absurd effort to distance himself from Nicky and the way she made him feel, his pulse racing and his breathing shallowing.

It wasn’t lust that had made him wish he’d been there to protect her when she’d been attacked on that assignment. It wasn’t lust that had made him want to look after her that week at the cortijo. And it certainly wasn’t lust that was making his heart ache like this.

It was love.

And how else did he know? He knew because when she smiled his world brightened. When she looked at him his stomach melted. During the last seven days it hadn’t just been the sex he’d missed, but the very essence of her. He’d missed her laugh, her teasing and her vibrancy.

And he knew because for the first time in his life he wanted everything he thought he feared. He wanted to be someone she could depend on. Someone she could turn to for advice and support and comfort.

As wave after wave of emotion swept through him Rafael’s hands shook with the force of it.

God, he loved everything about her. She was the bravest, most incredible woman he’d ever met and he’d been a blinkered, idiotic fool. Well, not any more, he thought, suddenly jerking upright and filling with grim determination. Enough was enough and he was through with hiding.

Making a snap decision, he leapt to his feet and scooped up his wallet and his car keys. She wanted honesty and emotion and risk-taking from him? She’d get it.

He could only hope he hadn’t left it too late.

FIFTEEN

Buoyancy, focus and positive thinking had been pretty hard to maintain when she’d been feeling so up and down but Nicky didn’t think she’d done too badly over the last week or so.

For the first few days following her return home she’d swung like some sort of demented pendulum between utter misery at the thought of never seeing Rafael again and the grimly satisfying conviction that she was better off without him. But lately she’d come to terms with the fact that they were well and truly finished and that she was once again on her own, and, while she’d never claim to be happy about it, she had, at least, reached a place where she didn’t feel winded whenever she thought about him or about what might have been. Well, not every time.

So by and large she reckoned she was making good progress, especially with the changes she’d decided to implement. She’d thrown out her suitcase. Made some calls. Fired off a couple of exploratory emails and bought a few bits and pieces for her flat. When she wasn’t thinking about Rafael she felt calm, grounded, and, for the first time in her life, settled.

Any day now she might even be able to delete the photos she’d taken during the time she’d spent at the cortijo because while some of them were pretty good she knew perfectly well that that chapter of her life was over and that she needed to move on.

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