A Fiery Baptism

‘Sorry, was I ages? We got caught up,’ Sarah said lightly.

‘I got taken over,’ Gordon shared wryly. ‘You were right. She’s not at all like you. She’s like a great overgrown schoolgirl.’

‘She’s a lovely person and there’s not an ounce of malice in her.’

Reluctantly he smiled. ‘Can you imagine the havoc she’d wreak if there were? Her brain is two steps behind her conversation.’

‘I wonder why she thought you were cute.’

‘Cute?’ His nostrils flared fastidiously.

‘A compliment you do not deserve.’

Unexpectedly he laughed, his pugnacious aspect vanishing. ‘I think of fluffy toys as cute but I was out of order. Let’s grab a seat,’ he suggested.

Gordon being Gordon there was no need to grab or even to search. He guided her between a low table and sofa, stowing her down in one corner. Ten seconds later he reappeared with two drinks he had evidently stashed somewhere near by in readiness. Gordon was always well organised. Meeting the level scrutiny she had been self-consciously evading, Sarah smiled. For once, Karen had made a mistake. Purely platonic friendship was perfectly possible between sensible people.

Her wandering gaze suddenly jolted to a halt. Shock reverberated through her in sickening waves and her fingers curled into her evening bag like white-knuckled talons, bracing for attack.

Rafael was lounging on the matching sofa on the other side of the low table. Her throat closed over. Every long lean line of his magnificent body emanated unnatural relaxation. There was a reckless violence in the dark, glittering stare that entrapped hers across the divide. Her ability to breathe was suffocated at source.

‘The punch has the kick of a mule,’ Gordon told her warningly.

Half of it went down Sarah’s convulsed throat in one go. Rafael had switched his attention back to the sinuous redhead curled under his arm. Cerise-painted fingertips were idly tracing the taut inner seam of the faded denim encasing one long, muscular thigh. Those caressing fingers exercised a sick fascination over Sarah. She could not take her eyes off them.

Gordon was talking to her and she couldn’t hear him. In desperation she turned towards him, only to be nailed again by Rafael’s steel-bright stare. Unforgivably he had been watching her watching him. She felt like an animal caught cruelly in the jaws of a trap with the hunter standing over her, making no attempt to administer a clean kill. She had the terrifying sensation that Rafael was seeing her naked and defenceless. Her muscles were so clenched that she physically hurt. For a crazed moment she was so wildly out of control that she almost ran for cover again.

Karen’s voice exploded in her ear. ‘Why aren’t you circulating?’

Karen wasn’t real. Gordon wasn’t real. The only reality was Rafael, even when Karen was blocking her view. He had not needed to speak to brutally intimate his savage contempt for her as a woman. He only had to sit there letting that tramp practically make love to him in public! She read the message like the banner he intended it to be and she felt ill, cornered.

‘Por dios, this world is truly a small place.’ Sarah’s head jerked up, a row of spectral toothmarks biting into her jangled nerves, her pallor pronounced.

Rafael had moved. He stood over her now, casting a long dark shadow before he crouched down in front of her with a natural athlete’s grace. So close, so unexpected was it that it took every atom of will-power she possessed not to rear back. Somewhere Karen was loudly proclaiming an introduction.

‘Sarah and I know each other.’ He said it to her, nobody else, his tiger’s eyes a golden threat on her white immobility.

‘You know each other?’ Karen positively squealed, hanging over the back of the sofa. ‘Where from?’

A smile slashed Rafael’s expressive mouth. A long brown forefinger skated over Sarah’s fiercely clenched hands, a mountain cat taking a first playful swipe at a trapped prey, frozen with fear. ‘Where from?’ he prompted silky soft. ‘Am I so easily, so quickly forgotten?’

Only desperation came to her rescue. ‘Paris, wasn’t it?’ she managed tautly.

‘When I was still starving in my garret, although not alone,’ he mocked, velvety smooth, smiling again as her trembling fingers snaked jerkily back out of reach. ‘I believe I was part of the Francophile experience.’ Slowly he sprang upright again, still ignoring Gordon. ‘Es verdad?’

‘Boy, have you got some explaining to do!’ Karen snapped painfully close to her eardrum as he walked away. ‘Give me an inch, Gordon, there’s a love. This is girl-talk, utterly beneath your notice. Sarah, you couldn’t possibly have forgotten him!’

‘To think that I once believed that the Spanish were a uniquely courteous race,’ Gordon drawled. ‘Shall we sample supper?’

Karen cut in on him, ‘Sarah, tell me—’

‘You don’t need a public address system, do you?’ Gordon detached Sarah’s numbed arm from Karen’s over-enthusiastic grip. They were a hair’s breadth from fighting over her, Sarah realised on the brink of hysteria. Rafael’s behaviour had shocked her into dumb stupidity. She couldn’t have made small talk to save her life.

‘Paris,’ said Karen and suddenly she burst out laughing. ‘Of course! He was one of Margo’s and you never did tell tales.’

Karen had herded them both into the dining-room. She was chatting nineteen to the dozen now, glad to have solved the mystery so easily. ‘We all thought it was a scream when Sarah’s parents let her go and stay in Paris with Margo. Easter in Upper Sixth, wasn’t it?’

Gordon passed out plates. ‘Margo?’ he prompted obediently.

Sarah parted bone-dry lips. ‘Margo Carruthers. Her father had an engineering business in Paris.’

‘Sarah used to sleep in French class,’ Karen took up impatiently. ‘And her parents put French on a level with flower arranging and good carriage.’

‘I went to Paris to improve my French.’ Sarah had to fight to keep her voice level on the unnecessary explanation.

Karen was giggling like a drain.

‘I’m afraid I don’t see the joke,’ Gordon imparted.

Karen gave him a ‘you-wouldn’t’ look. ‘Margo was sex mad. Anything in trousers,’ she emphasised. ‘But she acted like a little novice nun round parents. You must know what the Southcotts are like. If they’d had a clue what Margo’s favourite pursuit was, they’d never have let Sarah within a mile of her exclusive company!’

‘Teenagers are very vulnerable,’ Gordon said coolly.

‘You can’t know the Southcotts very well. When there was a flu outbreak at school, they kept Sarah home for a whole six weeks!’ Karen sent Sarah’s shuttered face a guilty glance. ‘Sorry, forgot you were there. Where are you in this conversation, anyway?’

Karen’s sister came up and whispered something. ‘No!’ Karen exclaimed in angry vexation. ‘Excuse me. Someone’s been in my dark-room.’

‘I hope we can assume that the interrogation is over,’ Gordon said grimly. ‘Alejandro had one hell of a nerve forcing himself on you like that. But then what can you expect from a gypsy?’

An extraordinary urge to slap the complacent superiority from Gordon’s well-bred features assailed Sarah. Karen’s assumption that Rafael had been one of Margo’s men had filled her with embittered humour. Even her closest friend couldn’t imagine any more intimate connection between them. Only the devil’s idea of a black joke could have matched two such radically different personalities. And why had she had to go to hell and back to discover what was so obvious to everyone else? The North Pole and the equator did not meet.

Gordon hailed a familiar face with relief. Another dinner-jacket and bow-tie. A man with a thin blonde on his arm shook her hand, spoke, and she must have spoken back. The dialogue roamed from government cuts to the Booker Prize on to Wall Street. Gordon was in his element. They worked their passage slowly back to the lounge, a comfortable part of a foursome, but shock was still curdling Sarah’s stomach. Nervous tension always made her feel sick.

Rafael was leaning back against the wall. He didn’t have a restful bone in his superbly built body. He was never still even when he was working. Oh, God…oh… In despair, she struggled to suppress the memories chipping away at what little remained of her poise. As people pushed past, propelling her uncomfortably closer to Rafael, Gordon draped an unexpected arm round her narrow shoulders. Rafael’s lady friend was tugging at his sleeve, her other hand resting on his chest. Sarah was reminded of a red setter bouncing up and down with a lead in its mouth, begging for a walk. Repulsion slithered through her. Some cruel fate had decided to punish her tonight.

‘I think it’s time we went home.’ It was Gordon’s clipped drawl.

‘Yes, it’s getting late.’ She had no idea what time it was, how long it might have been since she had finally contrived to wrench her magnetised attention from Rafael.

Gordon steered her out to the hall with surprising speed. ‘I’ll collect your coat.’

A chill was spreading along her veins. She would phone Karen tomorrow. In all likelihood, Karen would not even recall that she had left without speaking to her. Before she could take refuge in that hope, Karen emerged from the lounge and hurried over to her.

‘Will someone please tell me what was going on in there?’ she hissed.

‘Sorry, I don’t…’

‘Gordon and Rafael Alejandro. For a minute I thought there might be a punch-up but Gordon predictably opted for the diplomatic retreat. Talk about instant antipathy and not a word exchanged!’ Karen giggled. ‘You don’t mean to say you didn’t notice all that silent flexing of male egos? You’re blind, Sarah.’