Page 55 of One More Sleepless Night

‘No problem.’ He shoved a hand through his hair and told himself to stay focused. ‘It’s just something of a surprise to discover that someone who’s always claimed to be rootless wants to put down after roots after all.’ And without him.

‘Well, why not?’ she said indignantly. ‘I’m twenty-nine. I can’t drift around for ever.’

‘This is true.’

‘I need to start thinking about the future. You know, pensions and stuff.’

‘Sensible.’

‘It’s normal.’

‘It is.’

‘So why the surprise?’ Her expression cleared and she let out a little laugh. ‘Oh, I get it. You expected to find me huddled in a pathetic heap, weeping buckets over you, didn’t you?’

‘No,’ he said, because he hadn’t. Although to be honest he hadn’t expected to find her quite so together either.

‘Why are you here, Rafael?’ she said with a sudden weariness that for some reason scared the living daylights out of him. ‘Surely it can’t be to admire my interior-decorating skills.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘And it can’t be out of any concern for my welfare.’

‘Can’t it?’

‘You of all people know it can’t. So?’

She set her hands on her hips and glared at him and Rafael pulled himself together. However she felt about him now—and he really didn’t want to contemplate the notion he’d managed to kill off her love for good back there in his car—the least she deserved was an explanation for his abominable behaviour the last time they’d seen each other. Taking a deep breath, he stuck his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and said, ‘I came to tell you about my plants.’

*

Nicky really wished Rafael hadn’t done that thing with his hands because up until that point she’d been doing so well.

Deeply concerned by the realisation that she still loved him as much as she ever had, she’d decided that channelling her inner ice queen was the way to handle his sudden heart-stopping appearance on her doorstep, and in her mind’s eye she’d been standing there wearing a white dress encrusted with icicles, a vast pointy ruff made of glass round her neck and a white bouffant wig studded with a thousand tiny glittering crystals. She’d even mentally added a touch of white powder to her face and white lipstick to her mouth, and to her delight she’d had the feeling that he’d found her frostiness a bit uncomfortable. A little unsettling. And rather unexpected.

But then he’d stuck his hands in his pockets and it instantly dragged her attention away from all things ice and made it settle firstly on the stretched shirt behind which lay his chest, and then lower on the stretched jeans, behind which lay—

As heat blasted through her and incinerated the ice Nicky snapped her gaze back up and swallowed hard as she determinedly put all thoughts of his lovely warm body out of her head and concentrated on not giving in to her pathetically weak resistance and flinging herself into his arms.

‘Your plants?’ she echoed, hoping her disdain masked her sudden light-headedness. ‘You came all the way to Paris to tell me about your plants? Why on earth would I want to know about your plants? What do they have to do with anything?’

‘Very possibly, nothing.’ He glanced up at the clock solemnly ticking away on the wall and gave her a faint smile that was most definitely not making the ice chips surrounding her heart melt. ‘But I still have three minutes left.’

She frowned, momentarily distracted by his mouth. ‘What?’

‘You gave me five minutes. There are three left.’

So she had. ‘Of course,’ she said with an airy wave of her hand. ‘Well, if you want to use them to talk about your plants, be my guest.’

Rafael tilted his head and stared at her for a few long seconds during which it seemed to Nicky that all she could hear was the apparently thunderous beat of her heart and the rasp of her breathing.

‘You were absol

utely right, you know,’ he said eventually.

‘About what?’

‘Everything.’

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