Rafael's Love-Child. Kate Walker

her forehead and all down the right side of her cheek. It was the darkest, most obviously damaged area, just above her eye, that had made her shudder to think just how lightly she had escaped and what might have happened.

      ‘But I’m feeling better now, and I’m able to think straight again. For a start, I’m in a private ward. And I’d have to be all sorts of a fool to think that the food I’m getting, the nursing care, the comfort that’s been provided is the same as I’d be getting if I had just been taken in as ordinary Serena Martin, brought in unconscious off the street, with no one to help her. So I asked a few questions…’

      That didn’t please him at all. It was stamped all over his autocratic face, etched into every arrogant line of bone and muscle. And the way his sensual mouth tightened, obviously clamping down on some angry response, dried her throat uncomfortably so that she had to force herself to continue.

      ‘I was told that I was receiving private medical care, and that you were footing the bill. Is this true?’

      For the space of several taut and uncomfortable seconds, it looked as if he wasn’t going to answer her. But then a disdainfully curt nod of his dark head admitted the truth.

      ‘But why? Why should you, a complete stranger, do all this for me? That is, if you are the stranger you said you were.’

      ‘And why the devil would I lie to you?’

      Scorn blazed in his eyes, searing over her skin until she felt as if it had scoured off a much-needed protective layer. Instinctively she folded her arms around herself, suddenly feeling over-exposed.

      Temporarily she had managed to blot out the fact that she was actually in a bedroom, however institutionalised, in her nightclothes, while this darkly devastating man was fully dressed beside her. But that look had ripped away the shield she had built around her.

      ‘I—I don’t know. I can’t even begin to imagine. You say I’d never met you before, and yet you do so much for me.’

      ‘I told you I could afford it.’

      ‘I know what you told me!’

      Serena flung out her arms in a wild gesture of rejection of his response, heedless of the way it made the slightly too large neckline of her nightdress gape, revealing the rich curves of her breasts.

      ‘It’s what you’re not saying that’s bothering me! I don’t need to know that you’re some wildly rich international banker or that the cost of my stay here is just chickenfeed to someone with your millions. I want to know exactly why you’re involved in all this—and don’t you dare say, All what?’ she flung at him as he drew breath sharply, prior, she was sure, to doing just that.

      In his turn, Rafael lifted his own hands in a gesture that surprised her by its apparent mood of concession. But the wry twist to his mouth, the distinct glint in his eyes, spoke of something else entirely.

      ‘You are obviously feeling much better,’ he murmured dryly. ‘But the doctor believes…’

      ‘Yes, I know that the doctor believes it’s better to wait. That she wants me to remember on my own. But I’m not remembering, and it’s doing my head in… It’s making me feel worse, even more confused,’ she amended hastily as he frowned his confusion, even his near-perfect grasp of English incapable of following the slang phrase. ‘I feel like I’m going out of my mind. I’m frightened—’

      Her voice broke unevenly on the last word, hot tears burning in her eyes, making them glisten brilliantly as she struggled to blink them back.

      ‘Right now you seem like the only person I know in the entire world, but I don’t really know you! I don’t know a thing about you except the way you seem to have moved in here, taking over…’

      ‘Maldito sea! I felt responsible.’

      It was the last thing she had expected and it stopped her dead, her eyes wide and stunned, her soft mouth actually falling open a little in shock.

      ‘You? Responsible? But how?’

      The look he turned on her made her stomach quail nauseously. Suddenly she wished she’d never opened her big mouth.

      ‘It was my car.’

      ‘Your…’

      Through the tumult of emotion inside her head she couldn’t begin to interpret the inflexion he put on the words, the feeling behind them. But she couldn’t stop herself from reacting purely instinctively, recoiling back against the pillow, all colour leaching from her face, one hand coming up to cover her trembling mouth.

      ‘You—you were driving?’

      ‘Dios, no! I wasn’t even in England at the time, but my—’ He caught himself up sharply, seeming to hunt for the right words. ‘It was my car that was involved in the accident.’

      ‘Your car…’ Slowly Serena lowered her protective hand, sitting back up a little, but her face was still clouded with confusion. ‘Was I driving?’

      ‘No. You were a passenger.’ It was curt to the point of rudeness, obviously deeply reluctant.

      ‘Then what…? How…?’

      ‘Miss Martin…’ Rafael used cold formality to freeze her out, stop her questioning in its tracks. ‘May I remind you that I have been instructed not to give you the full facts about your accident? Doctor’s orders, I believe you say.’

      But now she was really worried. Being left to remember in her own time was one thing. This dreadful feeling that something was being kept from her because it would be too upsetting to know it quite another.

      ‘But why? Did something awful happen? Who was the driver? Where is he—she—now?’

      ‘Miss Martin—Serena…’

      ‘Rafael!’ It was wrenched from her, her state of mind too disturbed to notice the way she had used his Christian name as she lurched forward, half out of the bed, to grab hold of his hand and clutch at it hard. ‘Please!’

      For the space of perhaps two dozen long drawn-out, heart-thudding seconds he hesitated, obviously thinking hard. With his hooded eyes looking down into her own darkly shadowed ones, she saw him come to a decision, change his mind, rethink and change it again.

      ‘Please!’ she repeated, knowing intuitively that he had decided against her. ‘I need to know.’

      His sigh was a blend of exasperation and unwilling resignation.

      ‘Serena—’ he said at last. ‘The driver…he did not survive the crash.’

      ‘Oh, no!’

      It was the worst she had imagined. The only thing that really explained his reluctance to speak. No, perhaps the worst thing was the way she was feeling—or rather not feeling. She couldn’t even remember who had been driving the car, so she didn’t know what she should be feeling.

      ‘Who was he? Did I know him?’

      But Rafael’s face had closed up, heavy lids and long, luxuriant lashes hiding his eyes and his thoughts from her.

      ‘That is for you to say.’

      ‘Oh, that’s not fair!’

      But, ‘doctor’s orders’ he had said, and he meant to abide by those orders, no matter what it did to her.

      ‘I must have done, mustn’t I? I mean—I was there with him—in the car. I wouldn’t have got into a car with a stranger.’

      She looked into his face, seeking a response that would help her, but finding only that stony-faced, blanked-off expression that made her think fearfully of the unseeing, frozen faces of the statues of Ancient Greece, carved from cold, unyielding marble.

      ‘I wouldn’t!’ For some reason she felt the need to repeat it, to emphasise the importance of what she had said. ‘I’m not that sort of a girl.’

      He