One Night in Madrid. Kate Walker

been through this tragedy herself so recently. Of all people, she would understand so much. He had someone to share the darkness with. ‘I know.’

      And this time she leaned even further forward so that her forehead rested against his own. Her breath was warm on his cheek. The soft brush of her hair against his skin was a caress that had him biting his lip against the groan of response that almost escaped him.

      From darkness and emptiness his feelings suddenly leapt to burning awareness. Where there had been a sort of suspended animation, the numbness of loss and despair, suddenly a shaft of feeling, sharp and brilliant as a flash of light, delicate and painful as a stiletto, pierced the armour of restraint he had locked round himself and let life back in.

      His hand closed around hers where it lay on his arm, strong fingers lacing with her finer, paler ones, and he felt her squeeze his in response to the pressure of his touch. There were no more words, just as there had been no words when he had held her as she cried out her distress in the hospital. He’d envied her those tears then, and he still felt the same way now. His eyes burned but they were dry and gritty. The release that she had found escaped him, though the storm that raged in his heart demanded the expression he couldn’t give it.

       ‘Gracias …’

      He wasn’t quite sure what he was thanking her for. For her understanding, for her touch, for her closeness or just for her silence. The silence that meant he didn’t have to try to speak or even to think. Just for this moment he could simply rest as he had been unable to rest since the news had broken. For now, the silence was enough.

      But even as he thought that he realised there was something about the silence that was not right. Something that made it not the gentle silence of comfort, of sharing. The silence between two hurting people who had suffered the same terrible loss. Instead Alannah had pulled back—just an inch or so, but she had moved away. And suddenly there was an almost dangerous edge to her stillness. An edge that scraped like sandpaper over his nerves, telling him—warning him that there was something that was wrong here; something that had to be brought into the open.

      And instinctively he knew that it had to do with the reason she had brought him up here.

      ‘Alannah …’

      His voice sounded rough and husky, as if he hadn’t used it in days.

      ‘No …’ she said at last, and it was almost a moan, a sound of despair. ‘No—don’t thank me. Not yet. Not until I’ve told you everything.’

      ‘Everything?’

      Alannah’s heart sank right down to somewhere beneath the soles of her feet when she heard the way that Raul’s voice had changed, darkened, the deeply suspicious note coming back into it. She wished she could go back just a couple of minutes—retreat to the moment when she had been so close to him. When he had been grateful that she was there.

      ‘What the hell is everything? Just what is it you’ve been dancing around telling me? That’s obviously the reason you brought me up here and yet you insist on making coffee—doing anything other than tell me!’ ‘I’m sorry.’

      It was barely a whisper. Now that the moment was here her voice threatened to fail her and the fearful race of her heart made the blood pound so loudly inside her head that she could barely hear herself speak.

      ‘I will tell you. I need to explain—about when I met you in the hospital, why I was there—’

      ‘Your brother,’ Raul inserted sharply.

      ‘Yes, and—there was more to it than that. Much more. And—oh, I’m sorry …’

      She had his attention now, dark eyes narrowed, that burning, searching gaze fixed on her face. He must see the glimmer of tears in her eyes, the way she was having to blink them back.

      ‘Sorry for what?’ It was low, dangerous, intent. ‘Alannah—tell me.’

      ‘I’m sorry …’

      Oh, if only she could stop saying that phrase! She felt sure that Raul would pounce on it again like a tiger on its prey. But the fierce scrutiny of his stunning eyes didn’t waver, and although his beautiful mouth tightened briefly he didn’t say a word. He just waited. And the dark intensity of his silence dried her throat so brutally that she had to fight to force out the words that needed to be said.

      ‘When I said that I knew—about Lori … that I heard in the hospital, that wasn’t quite true.’

      The mention of his sister’s name had stilled him, focused him totally on one thing. If his gaze had been fierce before then now it burned like a laser. ‘And the truth is?’

      ‘That—that—well, I did hear at the hospital, but that was because—it was when I was there for Chris.’ ‘Your brother?’

      Raul was frowning now, clearly having trouble following what she said. And she really couldn’t blame him. She was making a terrible mess of this. And it would have been so much better—kinder too—if she had just come out and said it.

      ‘You were at the hospital for your brother.’

      ‘And for Lori …’ Somehow she forced it out. ‘They were brought in there together.’

      Raul’s head went back sharply as if reacting to a brutal slap. Confusion, disbelief, suspicion all crossed his face in quick succession and to Alannah’s horror it was suspicion that caught and held.

      Hard hands clamped around her shoulders, holding her bruisingly tight, and he pushed her away until she was at arm’s length so that he could look into her face, probe her eyes.

      ‘But Lori was in a car crash—killed outright. And your brother was ill.’

      ‘No …’

      The word was so low and miserable that he must have barely caught it. But he couldn’t mistake the way that she shook her head to confirm what she’d said.

      ‘You assumed that—I let you assume that. Because I didn’t dare tell you at the time. I was there to tell you. I meant to tell you. But—’

      ‘Tell me what?’ Raul’s voice slashed through her stammering attempt to explain. ‘Madre de Dios, Alannah, tell me what?’

      ‘That Chris and Lori were injured together—in the same crash.’ There; it was out. She had actually said it. ‘They were in the same car. The crash killed them both.’

      This time he was silent so long that for a dreadful moment she thought that, crazily, for some reason he hadn’t heard. The fear that she might have to say it all over again was like a twisting pain inside her head and she had just forced herself to open her mouth again to do just that when Raul finally spoke.

      ‘I don’t understand. Just what the hell were my sister and your brother doing in any car together? I thought you said she came to see you.’

      The hands that held her released their grip with such suddenness that she stumbled backwards, opening up a space between them. But one look into his face stilled her again in an instant.

      The dark pools of his eyes above the pallor of his cheeks and the appalling, almost greyish tinge to his skin were alarming. They made Alannah bite her lip hard in distress as she saw him try to take in what she was saying. She knew how much he had doted on his young sister and it tore at her heart to think of what this was doing to him.

      ‘Don’t you think you would be more comfortable if we sat down …?’

      She couldn’t finish the sentence when he suddenly took a couple of steps towards her, rejecting her suggestion with a violent shake of his head, a terrible mixture of anger and pain darkening his eyes.

      ‘I don’t want to sit down and I sure as hell don’t want to be comfortable! I want to know—’

      ‘They were seeing each other,’ Alannah blurted out in a rush, desperate to get it said, to get this over