She frowned. While she was no keener than he to face a presumably ghastly, stressful and horribly complex financial crisis, which was evidently destined to leave them ultimately as poor as church mice, she did feel it was something that had to be dealt with immediately. Then, what did she know about such things? What possible advice could she offer? No doubt Rafael appreciated that too and, equally certainly, he had
within reach all the professional assistance he could require.
'I just wanted you to know that I'm here... to be supportive,' she added tautly.
'This I have noticed,' Rafael commented with a slightly dazed inflection from above her downbent head. 'After all, you are now showing some—some—er—affection for me for the very first time.'
Affection? What a milk-and-water translation of the ferociously strong feelings which were driving her! But then, she didn't want to overdo it, did she? Rafael was very proud. Very probably affection was the most he was prepared to accept until he felt in control of events again. Although she had to admit he had already made the most remarkable recovery from his apparent stupor of intoxication. 'I thought you might need it.' 'And maybe you find—er—losers more appealing? Her head flew up. 'Rafael... you are not a loser,' she protested emotionally. 'Just about anybody can get into trouble with money—it doesn't mean you're a loser! You've got to allow yourself to make mistakes. Nobody's perfect.'
'I used to think I was,' Rafael breathed with sudden austerity, his stunningly handsome features hardening as his mouth curled. 'And I'm starting to realise that I got what I deserved.'
'Please... It depresses me to death when you start getting all grim and self-critical.'
'But I have not been sufficiently critical of my treatment of you.'
Georgie looked levelly into lustrous dark eyes. 'This is a fresh start for us. I mean, it is.. .isn't it?' she pressed, with desperate hope that this wonderful new openness she sensed between them wasn't about to prove a flash in the pan by morning. 'As if we've just met for the first time?'
'Permit me to warn you, then, that you are in serious danger of being ravished on the very first date,' Rafael murmured slumbrously, delightfully willing, it seemed, to play along with the suggestion, his hands settling on the swell of her buttocks as she sat astride him.
'It wasn't like that, though, was it? Not back then,' she remarked, unable to silence the rueful observation. 'You were so cold.'
With a stifled groan, he leant his brow against hers and sighed. 'Georgie... don't you have any idea how much restraint it took for me to keep my hands off you? I was desperate to make love to you but you were so young '
'Was that really why?'
'I didn't want to take advantage of you and I didn't want the hunger of our bodies to take over to the exclusion of everything else... as it so easily could have done. For me, marriage is a very serious commitment which I would want to last a lifetime,' Rafael stated with firm emphasis. 'I have seen too much of the misery which broken homes inflict upon children. Think well before Saturday, querida. Once we are married, I will not give you your freedom again.'
Georgie felt reassured rather than challenged. At the back of her mind, she had been afraid Rafael might choose to cast her off again when familiarity bred contempt in the marital bed, as she had believed it surely would if only the most basic sexual instincts had prompted him to marry her in the first place. But now he was telling her that he expected their marriage to last.
'I need a shower and some coffee,' he said wryly. 'And you should be in bed. Beatriz will be wide awake listening for creaking floorboards, and I'm very much afraid that, if she hears them, she will take great pleasure in telling you.'
'I don't give a hoot.'
Rising up, Rafael slowly slid her to the ground. He gazed down at her and his eloquent mouth twisted. 'But I do,' he told her with quiet finality.
Georgie reddened fiercely and recognised how much had changed between them. For just a little while Rafael had seemed out of control, but now he was back in the driver's seat again, instinctively reasserting his dominance. 'I feel pretty cut off now!' she said baldly.
And he flung back his handsome head and laughed with spontaneous appreciation. It crossed her mind that he looked incredibly light-hearted for someone who was facing the loss of a fortune, said to run into billions. Was he trying to save face or something? Or were things not as bad as she had innocently imagined?
Patently unaware of her thoughts, he guided her to the door and reached for her hand. 'Georgie.. .that your passion matches mine is a wonderful thing,' he said intently. 'In fact, it is a source of sublime satisfaction whenever I think about it.'
He drew her to him, extracted a driving kiss that she felt sizzle right down to her toes and back up again, and then set her back again, breathing hard. 'Buenas noches, emmorada.'
Of course, of course—he was probably intending to sober up and sit up all night and work in an effort to sort the financial mess out. It dimly occurred to her that they couldn't have picked a worse time for a wedding. Surely he would need to travel abroad and have loads of serious meetings with banks or creditors or whatever? Abruptly, Georgie said as much, before he could vanish back into the library.
Rafael stilled, black lashes swooping down low on his suddenly hooded gaze. Colour darkened his blunt cheekbones. 'No...it is absolutely essential that I maintain a pretence of normality and that no word of this leaks out before I am properly prepared to deal with it,' he stated very abruptly.
'Can you really keep the lid on something like this? Won't it make it more of a strain—sort of pile on the agony?' Georgie reasoned anxiously.
Rafael drew in a long, deep shuddering breath. A tiny muscle tugged at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. 'Querida... let us not spoil our wedding with such concerns,' he urged.
'Well, if you think that's best '
'Believe me, I do.'
Biting at her lip, Georgie nodded, terribly touched that he should be putting their wedding ahead of all else. Up on the landing, she very deliberately bounced on the floorboards outside Rafael's bedroom, giggled, opened and closed the door and then crept like a mouse into her own room beside it. Her methods of dealing with Beatriz Herrera Leon were considerably more basic than Rafael's and nobody, least of all a nasty piece of work like the snobbish Beatriz, was about to make Georgie ashamed of the fact that she and Rafael were already lovers.
The next morning, Georgie leapt out of bed and realised how happy she was. Oddly enough, she had always scorned that old chestnut that a crisis often drew people together. If there were cracks in a relationship, the crisis was more likely to blow them wider apart. And yet look at what had happened between her and Rafael last night! Somehow all the barriers had come down between them. The hostility and the rough uneasy edges had miraculously vanished. Rafael had been really strong and tender and caring.
Anxiety flooded her as she heard the burst of voices over the breakfast-table. She was suddenly so scared that Rafael might have reverted again overnight. But the minute she entered the room, Rafael rose to greet her. With Beatriz looking on as though she was being forced to witness an indecent act, Georgie found her hand being carried to his mouth as he planted a kiss intimately to the inside of her wrist.
'You look fantastic, querida,' Rafael murmured in his dark, deep seductive voice while she hovered there in a haze of stunned pleasure. "That colour is spectacular on you.'
Georgie skimmed a self-conscious hand down over her chain store-bought pink sundress and positively glowed. 'You think so?'
Hungry golden eyes clung to her vibrantly beautiful face. 'I think so.'
Georgie's gaze wandered dizzily over the open-necked white shirt and the close-fitting faded denim jeans he wore. 'You look wonderful too,' she whispered. 'I've never seen you in jeans before.' 'Your coffee is getting cold, Rafael,' Beatriz said flatly. Beatriz discussed the price of coffee in the Third World, moved on to Bolivian politics and then did them all to death with her opinion of the British Welfare State. Absently impressed by her intelligence, Georgie ate and watched Rafael watching her and letting his coffee get cold, and she was so happy that it was like being on another planet.
'I have something for you,' Rafael informed her, pulling her chair back for her and generally behaving as though a slight draught might give her pneumonia. She loved it.
He carried her off into the drawin
g-room and ten seconds later he was sliding an incredibly opulent emerald ring on her engagement finger. 'Where it belongs at last.' 'You mean you bought it four years ago?' Her violet eyes swam. 'It's so big—I mean beautiful!' she adjusted hurriedly, biting back what he would probably consider a very tactless suggestion that, if it was as hugely expensive as it looked, he might be wiser to hang on to it and sell it. He laughed softly, as though he could read her mind.
'Rafael?' She swallowed hard. 'I was so scared you would have changed again this morning '
'Changed?'
'Never mind.'
'No.' Rafael tugged her slowly, indolently forward into his arms, bringing her into stirring contact with his superbly masculine body and she simply stopped breathing—she was so electrified, not only by that physical proximity but by the softened darkness of his gaze. 'From now on, I want you to share everything with me.'
'You're just so different...'
He smiled brilliantly. 'But so are you.'
That reality belatedly occurred to her. Last night, she had been all over him like a dose of chicken-pox, and this morning she had been floating around like a star-struck teenager again. And evidently he just loved that kind of response, she registered a little dazedly. Did it massage his ego? Was that it? Or had this miracle been solely worked by his shocked realisation that even though he had lost every penny, she was going to hang on to him like grim death?
'So I'm not going to be needing the old silver bullet again, then?' Georgie teased.
He leant forward and traced her sensitive lower lip with the tip of his tongue and she trembled, her lower limbs displaying all the solid capacity of cottonwool as a burst of heat slivered through her, swelling her breasts, pinching her tender nipples almost painfully tight. Low in her throat she moaned, and yesterday she would have been embarrassed about such instant susceptibility, but today she was ready to suggest she risked the alligator again so that they could have some privacy.