Her lips were soft and tasted of champagne and she let out a breathy sigh as he deepened the kiss. She grabbed his shoulder to steady herself but even so they ended up sprawled on the sand, the kiss going on and on and on.
He slipped his hand under her T-shirt and revelled in the warm softness of her body. As he tugged on her capri bottoms she let out a little laugh.
‘Here...?’
‘Why not? It’s not as if anyone can see.’ He smiled down at her and she blinked up at him, a look of wonder in her eyes. She cupped his face with her hands and for a second Mateo’s heart felt like a cracked vessel that had been filled to the brim—overflowing and leaking, going everywhere. She’d done this to him. She’d awakened the heart he’d thought had been frozen for ever behind a paralysing wall of grief and fear. Love was too dangerous to consider, and yet here he was. Here they were.
‘Rachel...’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the words, but he felt them, and he thought she saw it in his eyes as she brought his face down to hers and kissed him with both sweet innocence and passionate fervour. With everything she had. And Mateo responded in kind, moulding his body to hers, wanting only to keep this moment between them for ever.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RACHEL WAS HAPPY. It was a frail, fragile thing, like gossamer thread or a rose just about to bloom—all it would take was a gentle breeze to blow it all away. But, still, she was happy.
Since their afternoon on the island, Rachel had sensed a shift in Mateo, a softening. He’d willingly talked about his family, his emotions—things that Rachel had sensed had been off-limits before. The aloofness she’d felt from him since their marriage—the shadow lurking in his eyes, the slight repressiveness of his tone—had gone. Mostly.
Mateo, Rachel suspected, was a man at war with himself. He was starting to fall in love with her—if only she really could believe that!—but he didn’t want to. At least, that was her take on the matter, and Agathe surprised her by agreeing.
They’d been having lunch in one of the palace’s many salons when Agathe had said quite out of the blue, ‘You must be patient with him, my dear.’
Rachel had nearly choked on a scallop. ‘Pardon?’
‘Mateo. I know he can be...difficult. Remote. It’s his way of coping.’
Rachel absorbed that remark, tried not to let it hurt. ‘What is he coping with?’ she asked even as she thought, Me? Was his marriage something her husband had to cope with?
‘Everything,’ Agathe answered with a sad little sigh. ‘The pressures of the kingship, certainly. His father was the same.’
‘Was he?’ Once again Rachel realised how little she knew about the Karavitis family.
‘My husband believed he needed to keep a certain distance between him and his people. It was a matter of respect and authority. I don’t know if he was right or not, but Mateo feels the responsibility, especially when he was never meant to have any royal role at all. I am afraid we did not prepare him as we should have.’
‘Yet he is rising to the challenge,’ Rachel returned, a fierce note of pride in her voice.
‘Indeed he is, but at what cost?’ Agathe smiled sadly. ‘But it is more than that. Mateo has lost so many people...if he closes himself off, it’s because he doesn’t want to risk losing anyone else. Losing you. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Rachel said after a moment. She paused, deliberating whether she should mention the person who was still utterly off-limits. ‘Sometimes I wonder if he has any more room to love, after...’ she took a quick breath ‘...after Cressida.’
Agathe’s face softened into sympathetic lines. ‘Of course he does. His relationship to Cressida...that was no more than schoolboy infatuation.’
‘He doesn’t talk about it like that,’ Rachel said, even though she desperately wanted to believe it. ‘He won’t talk about it at all.’ Agathe nodded slowly, and Rachel looked down at her plate. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. I know Mateo wouldn’t like it.’ He’d feel as if she’d betrayed him, and she couldn’t stand that thought.
‘Give him time,’ Agathe said by way of answer. ‘Be patient...and believe.’
Rachel was still holding onto those words, praying they were a promise, when she got ready for an engagement in Constanza one foggy afternoon in November. She and Mateo had been married for six weeks, and winter had finally hit the island country, with thick, rolling fog and damp, freezing temperatures.
Mateo remained as busy as ever, but not as aloof, and Rachel continued to feel she had reason to hope. To believe. And, she reminded herself, she was happy.
A knock on her bedroom door had her turning, expecting Monica to tell her the car was ready to take her into the city. To her surprise, Mateo stood there, stealing her breath as he always did, wearing a navy-blue suit with a dark green tie that brought out the brightness of his eyes.
‘You have an engagement?’ he asked and she nodded as she fastened the second of her pearl earrings. ‘Yes, at the bazaar in the city. Supporting women stallholders.’
‘In the bazaar?’ Mateo frowned. ‘That’s not the safest place.’
‘I’ll have my usual security.’ Rachel glanced at him in concern. ‘Has something happened? Are you worried?’
‘No, I just don’t like you being in such an exposed, rough place.’
‘It’s a market, not a Mafia den,’ Rachel told him with a little laugh. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine.’