Secrets of Castillo del Arco. Trish Morey

good being there and nearer her parents, too, while they were alive. And I’d see Mum’s name on winners’ boards and amongst lists of past prefects and it made me feel good—walking those same corridors, sitting in those same classrooms that she had. Like I was closer to her, if that makes any sense.’

      Suddenly she wasn’t sure what made sense and what didn’t. She gave a nervous laugh, tilted her head. ‘Did you actually mean it about coming to Venice?’ Immediately she dismissed it. ‘But, no, sorry, it’s a crazy idea. I’m probably not making any sense.’

      ‘You make perfect sense,’ he said, raising his glass to her. ‘And it’s not such a crazy idea.’

      Oh, but it was. If she went to Venice she might get used to the warm, wonderful way he made her feel—as if she had one hundred per cent of his attention all the time, as if she were the only person, the only woman, in the world.

      And that would be crazy.

      ‘Anyway,’ she pressed on, determined to get back to her story and not dwell on things that could not be, ‘That’s where I met Phillipa.’

      ‘Your friend I met today?’

      She nodded, remembering the first day they’d met, the two girls who’d teamed up in desperation because they’d known nobody else in the entire school and yet had stayed friends ever since. ‘She was my very best friend from day one, even through the couple of years when her family shifted to New York. She came back to study librarianship at uni as well, and we ended up living together during terms. We’d each go our separate ways in the holidays, her to New York, me to Paris, or we’d take turns at visiting each other’s homes.’ She smiled. ‘Phillipa’s the most brilliant friend. Better than a sister—not that I’ve ever had one.’

      She stopped, and looked at him, leaning back and smiling patiently at her. ‘Oh God, I’m talking too much, aren’t I?’

      ‘No, I could listen to you all night. I wish I had been there more for you, Bella.’ Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have ended up so lost himself … ‘I should have done more.’

      She shrugged. ‘Come on, Raoul, how could you? The last thing you needed was to be bothered with a girl barely in her teens. And I was fine. I actually liked boarding school. It was hard at first, but in a way it took my mind off things. Besides, what could you have done? You were busy with your own life.’

      Busy? That was one way to put it. And, realistically, what could he have done? He’d spent the two years after his parents’ death either drunk or aiming for it, playing every casino he could find, throwing money at every game and every horse it was possible to lose on and finding himself a new family into the deal. A family that loved someone who could splash money around and not care, a family who had adopted him for one of their own, if only to suck him dry.

      And then, emerging out of the bleakness of that time, he’d found Katia—or she had found him. Playboy of the year, bachelor of the year; he’d been awarded so many of those meaningless titles he couldn’t remember them all. But she had wanted him above all others and they had been so absorbed in their own special world that nothing else had mattered. Or so he had thought. Not until much later when the foundations of his world had once again been torn apart …

      He shook his head, wondering at the insanity that had driven his actions then, knowing he should know better now. For it had to be a form of insanity to be contemplating what he was doing, to be undertaking what he was doing.

      Even now he’d primed Gabriella perfectly; she was still thinking about Venice even though he’d said nothing to encourage her after that first exchange. Even now she was still thinking it through, working out the angles, making it possible in her own mind, making it her own decision.

      Even now it could still happen—and he could get her to Venice and clear of Paris before the news of Consuelo’s inevitable arrest broke. For Consuelo would be arrested, nothing was surer.

      But right now, looking into Gabriella’s eyes flickering brandy-gold in the lamplight, he wasn’t so sure of anything else. The way she looked at him …

      She wasn’t the girl she had once been. She was a woman now, and his body was reacting the way a man’s body did to a woman he desired.

      He shook his head, trying to dispel those images. ‘You were no doubt better off without me.’ As you would be now.

      She reached over, took his hands in hers. ‘I’m sorry. How about we make a deal? How about we don’t think about the past? Maybe it’s time we let it go. You yourself toasted to a new beginning, so can’t we just leave it at that? Can we let the past go and start again?’

       If only it were that easy!

      His past was him. It was his past that had made him, shaped him and moulded him, even broken him along the way. It had made him who he was now.