He took her shoulders and she saw by the sweep of his eyes that he’d seen her suitcase. A flashing frown showed on his brow, but he simply manoeuvred her back inside her hallway, picking up the suitcase as though it was a feather and depositing it inside, then turned to shut the flat door.
‘I want to talk to you—’
His voice was deep, harsh. His eyes burned as they ground into hers.
She felt faint, dizzy. Heard him saying more.
‘I have to talk to you!’
There was still harshness in his voice, but there was more, too—a powerful, urgent emotion that impelled him forward so that she had to step backwards, back into her living room. She took another stumbling step away from his grip, which was burning through the layer of her coat to the skin beneath.
His rapid, sweeping glance was traversing the room, seeing its bareness—there was nothing of her there any more, no books or ornaments, only furniture and curtains. The flashing frown came again, and his eyes returned to her.
‘Where are you going?’ he demanded. ‘The empty flat, the suitcase...’
She found her voice. Finally forced her strangled throat to open.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said. ‘I’ve rented out my flat and I’m going abroad.’
Emotion knifed through him. She had so nearly disappeared again!
I got here just in time.
‘Where?’ he heard his voice demanding.
‘I don’t know...’ She spoke almost randomly, unable to force her mind into coherent thought. Because her mind was not working at all. It had been overwhelmed by emotion. Emotion that was pouring through her like scalding water.
I can’t bear to see him again—I can’t bear it!
To see him here again, in the flesh, in physical reality instead of just in the dreams that had tormented her, slain her, all these long months since he had gone, was unbearable.
‘Well,’ he said, and there was something different in his voice now, beneath the harshness that was still in it, ‘how about Australia? After all...’ and now his eyes had changed, too ‘...you have dual UK-Australian citizenship—’
She paled. ‘How...how do you know?’
But that wasn’t really the question she was asking.
Why did he know?
His eyes pinioned hers, as dark, as heavy as basalt. ‘I know a lot about you, Celeste. A lot more than I did. Which is why...’ he took a heavy, searing breath ‘...why I have to talk to you.’
She was shaking her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’
His hands came onto her shoulders again. ‘Yes, Celeste,’ he said. His voice was different again, and something in it made her throat constrict.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
He pressed her shoulders, not roughly but insistently, and her knees buckled. With a jerk she sat down on the sofa, indenting the cushions she’d lined up so neatly, ready for her tenant to find a pristine flat. He sat down heavily at the far end. There was empty space between them. Yet it seemed to her that there was a force field emanating from him that was holding her in a traction she could not escape. She had to try—
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a taxi coming.’
Even as she spoke the entry phone went again. She tried to rise, but Rafael was before her. He strode out to her hallway and she heard him press the intercom, heard him dismiss the taxi, then stride back in again. He stood there a moment, looking down at her. So tall, so overpowering...
She couldn’t breathe, but she had to. Had to go on breathing in and breathing out, even though her mind had left her body. She could not think or speak—could do nothing except sit there, like a bag of nerveless bones, on her sofa.
Slowly, deliberately, he sat himself back down. He looked at her as she sat, clutching her handbag as if it were a breathing aid.