Even so, Rafael’s distinct lack of inhibition had been a decided shock to her system. And nothing could have prepared her for the pain of that initiation. Had she been less miserably tense, less bitterly resentful beneath her seemingly submissive faade that night, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened that way. That it had, ironically fulfilling her worst fears, had been extremely unfortunate.
‘It will never be like that again,’ Rafael had promised fervently, gathering her rigid body close, fighting her silent unwillingness to be held.
He had been correct but the damage had already been done. From that night on, Sarah had never been able to relax, had never been able to vocalise the raw feeling of resentment that tensed her up every time Rafael pulled her into his arms.
He had railroaded her into a relationship she wasn’t ready for, refusing to allow her the smallest space in which to find her feet in a threateningly new and very demanding environment. The disillusionment of the bedroom had soon been followed by other less important but no less upsetting discoveries for Sarah. Rafael would not allow her to draw on her trust fund, disdaining what he saw as Southcott money. Sarah had not found it easy to manage on a small budget. She had been no more at ease in the kitchen, where her efforts swung between the inedible and the just passable with humiliating regularity.
Few marriages could have set sail under a heavier stress factor. Sarah had been brought up to believe that she was deeply indebted to her adoptive parents. In one fell swoop she had destroyed all their ambitious hopes for her future–her marriage to Rafael had shattered them. It had also burdened Sarah with guilt and a helpless need to try and compensate her parents for the bitter disappointment she had caused them. But in striving to please both Rafael and them she had pleased neither. And as the hostilities had hotted up rather than showing any sign of abating, Sarah had been put under intolerable pressure by the people she loved.
Not surprisingly, her self-esteem had sunk to an all-time low. She had felt horribly inadequate and Rafael’s attitude towards her hadn’t helped. He had taken charge of her life, taking over exactly where the Southcotts had left off, controlling her every move and treating her like a witless child in need of care and protection. At times she had wanted to scream that she was sick and tired of people telling her what to do…only she hadn’t been able to let go of her frustrations that easily.
She had been taught to hide her emotions and suppress her anger. Nobody had ever told her that it was all right…indeed perfectly normal to get furiously angry with someone she loved. Nobody had ever taught her how to cope with such conflicting emotions. Rafael invariably turned discussions into fierce arguments, shooting her down in a hail of words she could not hope to match. As the months passed, Sarah’s inner resentments had mounted to stifling proportions…
The bell went in three shrill, staccato bursts. It was unmistakably Karen’s signature tune. Cursing under her breath, Sarah went to answer the door.
CHAPTER FOUR
KAREN erupted breathlessly through the door like a tornado. ‘Rafael Alejandro is your husband and it’s time you came clean!’ she delivered and, as a guilty afterthought, ‘Where are the kids?’
‘In their room.’
‘Good.’ Karen took advantage of her bemusement and pressed her into the kitchen. ‘Enlightenment hit me over lunch. Gilly and Ben are the picture of him!’
‘I was planning to tell you,’ Sarah muttered uncomfortably.
‘Rubbish!’ Karen shot her a glance of mingled annoyance and reproach. ‘You were going to take your secrets to the grave with you!’
‘Secrecy gets to be a habit.’
‘I thought you’d married a waiter or a deckchair attendant or something!’ Karen fumed. ‘I also thought I was your best friend.’
‘You are.’ Squirming with guilt, Sarah sighed. ‘I just don’t know what you expect me to tell you…’
‘What’s he like in bed? No, scratch that! It was quite, quite unforgivable,’ Karen retracted hurriedly as Sarah turned pale. ‘Sorry. It’s just one can’t help wondering and putting one’s foot in one’s mouth by thinking out loud.’
‘Don’t ask me.’ Sarah put the kettle on with unsteady hands. ‘Take a census of public opinion.’
‘Ouch,’ Karen framed and ruefully released her breath. ‘Enough said to be understood,’ she added with unusual quietness.
Involuntarily Sarah was recalling the passion she had roused in Rafael. A look or the merest touch had been enough to communicate the primitive depth of that masculine hunger she had not then properly understood. But she had not been the only one guilty of misconceptions. Rafael had mistaken her inhibitions for shyness, her reluctance for innocence, and neither trait had displeased him. Women had been throwing themselves at Rafael since he was a teenager. One capable of coolly detaching herself from his most heated embrace to repair her lipstick had challenged the hunter in his hot-blooded temperament.
‘When did you marry him?’ Karen cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘Or wasn’t there a marriage?’
Sarah could see some justification for that question and she wasn’t offended. ‘We got married three weeks after we met. In Paris.’
‘Three weeks?’ Karen exclaimed incredulously. ‘You only knew him for three weeks?’
‘My father made an unscheduled visit and…he found out about Rafael,’ she encapsulated with understatement, losing colour at the memory. ‘It was either marry him or never see him again. We hardly knew each other. We must have been insane. I couldn’t boil an egg without burning it!’ She forced a laugh.
‘There are more important things,’ Karen said drily.
But she had failed in that field as well, she acknowledged painfully, and thumbscrews wouldn’t have dragged that admission from her. Instead she managed a careless shrug. ‘I was only eighteen. We had a lot of strikes against us. We had my parents doing everything they could to break us up and we didn’t have much money either—’
‘What?’ Karen cut in. ‘Elise told me that he’s from a very wealthy background.’
Sarah looked at her in astonishment. ‘I can’t imagine where she picked up that idea.’
Karen frowned. ‘Maybe I misunderstood. Sorry, I interrupted you.’
‘There isn’t much more. In the end, Rafael got bored. His reputation as an artist was taking off,’ she murmured flatly. ‘And he took off with it. End of story.’
‘That was very informative, Sarah,’ Karen breathed with irony. ‘You spend a couple of years with a male who looks as if he could make a handshake into a whole new erotic experience and you compress him into two throwaway lines like a tax write-off! You could take the fantasy out of Disneyland.’
Sarah’s lashes veiled her strained eyes. She suppressed an urge to admit that that had been more or less Rafael’s opinion as well.
That night she lay awake for a long time. To be in the midst of a gathering storm and do nothing was to invite disaster. And where Rafael was concerned sitting on the fence was positively suicidal. The fence was likely to collapse while you were still sitting on it. Hours of frantic soul-searching forced her to certain conclusions, none of which eased her mental conflict.
Rafael had a legal right to see Gilly and Ben. Admitting that went against the grain but there it was, one of those facts of life that couldn’t be ignored. She ought to be able to take control of the situation and act like a mature woman of twenty-five. As a rule she was calm and sensible. She could usually see both sides of an argument even when her own feelings were involved. Why should those qualities go out of the window now when she most needed her wits about her? Why had both her attempts to reason with Rafael ended in dismal failure?
And she knew why, oh, yes, she knew within her heart and her soul where only the truth could dwell. Some bonds went too deep to break. Some emotions were quite independent of pride and common sense. You didn’t stop loving someone just because they hurt you. If love died so easily there would be a lot less unhappiness in the world. In every other way her life had changed since their separation. There was only one constant between then and now.
It was a humiliating irony that she should grow and mature and still retain an utterly adolescent and uncontrollable set of reactions to Rafael. She refused to put a label to those feelings. After all, time had moved on for Rafael, if not for her, and every time she saw him she hated him just that little bit more for that reality. Perhaps in the end that would be the saving of her, she conceded with angry self-loathing.
She had a frantic rush to get out the next morning. Gilly and Ben were attending a birthday barbecue after nursery school and she not only had to search for the present she had bought, but wrap it as well. Arriving at work within a minute of opening time, she felt under pressure. Summer flu had decimated the office and she had a heap of typing to do while she greeted arriving clients and dealt with their queries. She made elementary mistakes in letters she could normally type with her eyes closed. By finishing time she felt like a wet rag and that was when Rafael strolled in.