The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

Then, as he finished his question, before his eyes he saw her face change. Closed.

Closed completely, as if a shutter had come down.

‘I don’t remember,’ she said. Her voice was quelling. This time there could be no allowances for his simply making conversation. This was a subject that she must terminate—now. Just as she must terminate this encounter. She must go home right now.

Rafael’s eyes narrowed minutely at her stony reaction. What had just happened? The change was total. He saw her reach for her teacup, lift it with a jerking movement and take a mouthful of the pale green fragrant liquid. Then she set the cup down with another jolt. Her eyes swivelled to his.

‘Thank you so much for the tea, Señor Sanguardo. And thank you for intervening back there. It was very good of you.’ She spoke rapidly, in clipped tones. Clipped, impersonal tones that went with the totally closed expression on her face.

He could see her total withdrawal happening in front of his eyes.

She’s gone away again—back into that separate space she lives in. The one she uses to keep the rest of the world at bay.

She was getting to her feet, slipping gracefully off the high bar stool.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said again, her tone formal. She picked up her clutch bag from the bar surface and bestowed a tight, perfunctory smile on him again.

Rafael got to his feet as she did. ‘I will see you home,’ he announced.

Again, that look of immediate wariness—more than wariness...alarm—flared in her eyes.

‘Purely and solely,’ he continued, ‘for the purposes of ensuring that you do not risk any further unwanted attention from the uncharming Mr Reiner. My car is outside, and it is no trouble, I assure you.’ He looked down at her. His eyes were steady, their message clear. ‘I will see you safely to your home and then leave you. Does that meet with your agreement?’

Celeste opened her mouth. She wanted to say, No, it can’t possibly meet with my agreement! I can’t want to spend the slightest further amount of time with you because there is no point—absolutely and totally no point! I am not going to let you get to know me better and I am not going to have anything more to do with you and that is all there is to it!

But she didn’t say it. A sudden vision of Karl Reiner waiting outside her flat assailed her. However reluctant she might be to allow this magnetic, disturbing man who had behaved so chivalrously to drive her home, it was preferable to encountering Karl Reiner again—drunken and angry and still trying to press his hateful attentions on her.

Then, without any answer from her at all, she felt Rafael Sanguardo’s strong hand cup lightly around her elbow and guide her out of the bar. It was only a light, courteous touch, but she was vividly aware of it. He dropped his hand the moment she seemed to be going the way he wanted her to—which was across the lobby and out onto the pavement. A hovering car glided to the kerb, and then a chauffeur was opening the passenger door for her and she was getting in.

‘Where to?’ Rafael asked her as he took his place beside her.

With a flurry of consternation Celeste realised she was going to have to tell him where she lived. Well, if he’d found out who she was, then he’d be perfectly capable of finding out where she lived as well. So she gave her address, and the car started to make its way westward out of Mayfair towards Park Lane.

It would take a good fifteen minutes at least to reach Notting Hill, Celeste knew, and in the meantime she had better make anodyne conversation to prevent Rafael Sanguardo getting any other ideas about how to pass the time in the back of his car...

‘What part of South America do you come from, Mr Sanguardo?’ she heard herself asking. Her tone was no more than politely interested.