LITMIR.BIZ

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      She blinked at him for a moment or two, then gave him a tentative smile. ‘Well, I’m Nicky.’

      She said it as if it should have been obvious, and Rafael frowned. ‘Nicky?’

      ‘Sinclair.’

      He racked his brains for a spark of recognition but came up with nothing. ‘Is that supposed to mean something?’

      ‘I was rather hoping so.’

      ‘It doesn’t.’ He was pretty sure he didn’t know any Nickys, Sinclair or otherwise, and equally sure he didn’t want to if they were anything like this one.

      ‘Oh.’

      Her smile faded and something tugged at his chest. Rafael ignored it and concentrated on his original line of questioning. ‘And what are you doing in my house?’

      ‘I’m here on holiday.’

      His eyebrows shot up. Since when had the cortijo been open to visitors other than his family? ‘On holiday?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘How long have you been here?’

      ‘Two days.’

      ‘And how long were you planning to stay?’

      She shrugged then looked uneasy. ‘Well, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought.’

      Hmm. He really ought to have made more of an effort to come down here over the last few months, tricky merger or no tricky merger. In the five years he’d had the place he’d generally managed to make it down once a month, but lately he’d been so tied up with work he’d had no option but to stay in Madrid. He’d received the usual weekly reports about the vineyard, of course, but heaven knew what had really been going on in his absence.

      ‘Are there any more of you?’

      She looked at him warily. ‘No, just me.’

      That was something to be grateful for, he supposed, shoving his hands through his hair before he remembered the bruise, and grimacing as a fresh arrow of pain scythed through him.

      It shouldn’t be too hard to get rid of her. His plane was sitting at the airport a mere half an hour away and could take her anywhere she wanted to go at a moment’s notice. Within the hour he could be enjoying the solitude he’d been hankering after.

      There was no question of her continuing her holiday, of course, because quite apart from the fact that the house wasn’t open to visitors—of either the paying or non-paying variety—none of his fantasies about escaping everything for a few days had featured a hot house guest with a penchant for violence.

      Besides, he’d finally reached the end of his usually fairly long tether, and he’d had enough. Of everything. So he’d send Nicky on her way, wipe the bizarrely traumatic events of this evening from his memory, and set about relaxing.

      But not while they were both still on the floor, he decided, getting painfully to his feet then holding out his hand to help her up.

      ‘You have absolutely no idea about any of this, do you?’ she said a little wistfully as she put her hand in his and stood up.

      ‘No,’ he muttered, so disconcerted by the sizzle that shot through his blood at the contact that for a second he had no idea about anything.

      ‘I knew it would turn out too good to be true.’

      She sighed, slid her hand from his and Rafael ignored the odd dart of regret to focus instead on the way her shoulders were slumping. ‘What would?’ he asked, detecting an air of defeat about her and for some reason not liking it.

      ‘Coming to stay. Gaby said it would be fine.’

      That captured his attention. ‘You know Gaby?’

      She nodded and gave him another wobbly little smile. ‘I do. And she said she’d clear it with you, but she didn’t, did she?’

      That would teach him to issue an open invitation to his sisters to use the place whenever they felt like it. Rafael thought of the barrage of phone calls and emails that his sister had bombarded him with and which he’d disregarded, and frowned at the niggling stab of guilt. ‘No.’

      ‘I thought not.’ She sighed again and seemed to deflate just that little bit more.

      He watched it happen and to his intense irritation his chest tightened. There was a vulnerability about Nicky that plucked at the highly inconvenient and usually extremely well-hidden protective streak he possessed. Which was nuts, of course, because presumably the kind of woman to wallop him over the head as she had wasn’t in the least bit vulnerable. Or in need of protection.

      Nevertheless, right now she looked crushed, as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and Rafael found he couldn’t get the words out to tell her to leave, however much he wanted to. Besides, if she was a friend of his sister’s and he threw her out, he’d never hear the end of it.

      He sighed and inwardly cursed. ‘Look, it’s late,’ he said, deciding that he was way too tired for this kind of mental gymnastics and as it was pushing midnight he could hardly turf her out now anyway. ‘Let’s discuss this in the morning.’

      ‘OK,’ she said, with a weariness that made him want to do something insane like haul her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. ‘Thanks... And goodnight.’

      ‘Goodnight,’ he muttered, then turned on his heel and strode off down the corridor, thinking with each step that the night had been anything but good so far, and what with the traces of arousal and heat still whipping around inside him and the apparent disintegration of his brain it didn’t look as if it were going to get any better.

      * * *

      Well, this was all just typical of the crappy way her life had been going lately, wasn’t it? thought Nicky glumly, watching Rafael stop to pick up the suitcase he must have dumped at the top of the stairs earlier and then disappear round the corner.

      Why would her stay at the cortijo be turning out as she’d hoped when nothing had done recently?

      Feeling utterly drained by the events of the last half an hour on top of those of the past six months, she shut the door, retrieved Don Quijote from the floor and padded over to the bed. Setting the book on the bedside table, she slipped beneath the sheets and switched off the light.

      How had things gone so badly wrong? she wondered for the billionth time as she stared into the darkness and felt the relentless heaviness descend.

      Six months ago she’d been unstoppable. So full of energy and verve and enthusiasm, and fiercely determined not to let what had happened in the Middle East defeat her. She’d snapped up every assignment she’d been offered and had thrown herself into each one as if it were her last. She’d travelled and worked every minute she had, pausing only to hook up with the scorchingly hot journalist with whom she’d been having a sizzling fling.

      Everything had been going marvellously, exactly as she’d planned, and she’d enjoyed every minute of it. She’d taken some of the finest photographs of her career and had some of the best sex of her life, and she’d congratulated herself on beating any potential demons she could so easily have had.

      See, she’d told herself on an all-time high as she collected an award for one of her pictures and smiled down at the man she was sleeping with. All those colleagues who’d muttered things about PTSD had been wrong. Apart from the occasional nightmare and a slight problem with crowds, she hadn’t had any other symptoms. And besides, she wasn’t an idiot, so as a precaution she’d embarked on a course of counselling and therapy, which had encouraged her to make sense of what had happened, and get over it. As indeed she had, and the full-to-the-brim life she’d been leading, the work she’d been doing and the award she’d won, were all proof of it.

      For months she’d told herself that she was absolutely fine, and for months she’d

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