‘Whatever happened to the “quiet”?’ Raul cut in with unhesitating humour.
Her momentary ripple of foreboding ebbed, only to be replaced by a more pressing urge to leap out of the bath as Raul stepped in. Arms wrapped tightly round her knees, Polly twisted her head back round and slung him an accusing glance as he settled fluidly down on the other side of the bath and rested his burnished dark head back against the inset cushioning.
‘Look, why can’t we just do it in bed like other people?’ she suddenly launched at him in mortified condemnation. ‘I think you’re going out of your way to make this more difficult for me!’
Dealing her a briefly bemused appraisal, Raul suddenly flung his head back and burst out laughing without restraint. ‘Caramba, cielito—’
‘That is it...that is finally it!’ Polly raked at him, chagrin tipping over into a sudden empowering rage that enabled her to begin rising without any constraining fear of exposing her own body.
Raul leant forward and caught her hand, tipping her sufficiently off-balance to ensure that she was powerless to resist the ease with which he reached up his other hand and tumbled her down on top of him, water splashing everywhere.
Panting furiously for breath, Polly pulled herself back from him. ‘Let go of me!’
Raul regarded her with deceptive languor. ‘I wasn’t actually planning to consummate our marriage here... I just wanted to talk...’
‘T-talk?’ Polly parroted weakly as she subsided back beneath the water to conceal herself, carefully avoiding the slightest contact with his long extended limbs.
‘No need to panic...at least...not yet,’ Raul drawled smoothly, the golden gleam deep in his shimmering dark eyes increasing the colour in her hot face. ‘In my innocence I believed that this was a comparatively mild first step towards greater intimacy.’
‘Do you normally just talk in the bath with your women?’ Polly practically snarled in her discomfiture, knowing that any plea of innocence was not to be trusted in this instance, perfectly well aware that Raul was highly amused by her enervated state.
The golden gleam vanished, leaving her gazing in sudden fear into wintry cool dark eyes. ‘Infierno! You’re obsessed. Jealousy is a very destructive thing. Do you want to destroy us before we even begin with these constant attacks?’
Pale now, Polly just closed her eyes. In the space of a moment she saw a dozen beautiful female faces skim cruelly through her mind’s eye. Only then did she grasp the source of her jealousy, the day when it had been born to increase the bitterness she had experienced after leaving Vermont. To satisfy her driving need to know more about the father of her child, she had gone to the library and scanned through newspaper gossip pages and glossy society magazines...
Time after time she had come on photos of Raul with some gorgeous blonde babe on his arm. And that was the day when she had finally accepted how pitiful her love was, how hopelessly without foundation or any prospect of reciprocation.
Then, months on, to have that impression of Raul as a heartless womaniser reinforced all over again—to watch Raul leave that London clinic to walk into another woman’s arms, to live through that mortifying misunderstanding about the stewardess and then the very same day to be confronted with the horrendous real shock of Melina D’Agnolo. Was it any wonder that she was desperately insecure, afraid to trust Raul and lashing out in an attempt to protect herself from further pain?
‘I won’t live like this with any woman,’ Raul breathed with terrifying quietness. ‘It’s like trying to fight an invisible enemy... Whatever I do you’ll always be suspicious!’
As he pulled himself upright, her lashes lifted. Stepping out of the bath, Raul snatched a fleecy towel from the rail and strode back into the bedroom without a backward glance.
And, just as suddenly, Polly’s defensive attitude fell away. She saw a marriage which hadn’t even begun now going down the drain without fanfare. She saw the chance she had been given thrown away out of proud defiance and a refusal to face her own insecurities and faults.
Raul hadn’t made love to her in Vermont. She had been the one who had misinterpreted his intentions. He had had the right to pursue other relationships. His freedom had been his own and she had had no claim on him. That was the reality which she had failed to accept all these months because she had fallen in love. And what was she doing now but driving
Raul away from her, in spite of the fact that he had given her no cause to distrust him?
In a panic, now that she had seen herself at fault, Polly climbed out of the bath, tugged a black towelling robe off a wall hook and hurriedly dug her arms into the too long sleeves.
‘Raul...I’m sorry!’ she called in advance, afraid he might already have left the bedroom beyond.
‘Forget it... I need some fresh air.’
Rolling up the sleeves of what she now realised had to be his robe, Polly edged apprehensively round the door and peered out. Damp black wildly tousled hair flopping over his bronzed brow, Raul was zipping up a pair of skintight cream jodhpurs.
In silence, she watched him yank highly polished leather boots out of a cupboard and sink down on the chaise longue at the foot of the bed to pull them on. ‘You’re going riding? ’ she muttered uncertainly. ‘But it’s getting dark.’
‘Get back in your bath with your bubbles,’ Raul advised with brooding satire. ‘Immerse that little body you protect so assiduously...and leave me alone.’
‘Look...I said I was sorry.’ Polly lifted her chin. ‘Do I have to crawl?’
Raul lifted his dark head and regarded her directly for the first time since she had entered the room. She was shaken by the black brooding distance etched with clarity in his spectacular dark eyes. ‘How are you on disappearing? ’ he drawled in a tone like a silken whiplash. ‘Because right now, I just don’t want to be around you.’
Polly flinched from that brutal candour, the flush of pink in her cheeks receding to leave her paper-pale. Without warning, Raul was like a dark, intimidating stranger.
‘So go back in the bathroom before I say anything else to hurt your sensitive feelings,’ Raul told her harshly. ‘I’m not in the mood to control my tongue!’