The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo (16 page)

Least of all about Celeste.

Who was not Celeste at all. Who was not the woman he had seen and sought, whose trust he had so slowly won. The trust to give herself to him knowing he would never hurt her.

Savage pain lacerated him.

I trusted her—trusted her. Believed in her—believed her to be nothing like Madeline...

His face twisted. In his head he heard, over and over again, her voice crying out.
‘I am just like Madeline!’

And inside his head, all the things that Madeline had told him about herself forced their way in, in sickening, vivid detail. His revulsion had been instant—total. And her mockery of him for it had been virulent. She’d been incredulous at his reaction, refusing to believe he was shocked by her revelation. He could hear her voice now, inside his head, scornful and scathing.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Rafe, sex workers aren’t some kind of “fallen women” any more! Sex is just a commodity—an industry like any other! There’s a market for sex and people buy and sell in it! What the hell’s wrong with that? I had natural assets to capitalise on and I sold what my customers wanted—and my profit margin was the best I’ve ever achieved! So don’t look down your damn puritan nose at me and quote Victorian morality like you want me whipped in the stocks as a warning to other women!’

He hadn’t answered her—hadn’t been able to—and his silence only infuriated her more. Her eyes had flashed with anger. Her voice with scorn.

‘What’s your damn problem? Most men would think it a fantasy come true, what I’ve told you! Personal, private, on-tap professional sex! Which, I would point out, you’ve been enjoying with me for quite some time! I didn’t hear you complain while we were in bed! But if you think I’ve got boring, darling, well, let me spice it up for you! Because I can do that—with pleasure. Pleasure and a great deal of experience!’

He still had not spoken to her. Only his expression had shown his reaction. Then he’d turned to go. Her voice had screamed after him.

‘Don’t you dare walk out on me! Don’t you bloody dare! Women don’t have to put up with your kind of attitude any more! We are strong, we are independent and we can make our own millions—and we can have sex any damn way we want it, without men like you looking down on us! Half a century of feminism has made us free of men like you and your condemnation!’

He’d stopped then, turned back to look at her. Then he’d spoken to her. His voice flat. Bleak.

‘Half a century of feminism and all you’ve achieved, Madeline, is the oldest profession of all. You debase yourself, and you debase sex. It should be a gift, freely given by each partner, not a commodity to be sold for a cash profit. And if you cannot see that, if you cannot regret what you did, then there can be nothing more between us.’

He’d gone then—walked out of her flat and out of her life.

And now he’d done the same to Celeste. Walked away from her.

Inside, a voice was protesting.
Not Celeste—not Celeste! She can’t be like that—she can’t!

Not the woman he’d held in his arms night after night. Not the woman he’d been sharing his life with. A blow landed on his heart. Not the woman he’d wanted to go on sharing his life with.

For the bitterest truth of all was that in the anguished days he’d spent not knowing where she was, one overwhelming realisation had hit him. He did not want to be without her. He wanted her to be with him—stay with him. Make her life with him.

The realisation had shone like a beacon, impossible for him to deny, impossible for him to do anything other than reel from the truth of it.

A beacon that she had extinguished with one fatal utterance.

Pain jagged through him.

He walked on into the night.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

C
ELESTE
SHIVERED
AS
she stepped out of her front door onto the steps to the pavement. Though she was wearing a warm coat, the winter weather was cold. But it was more than the weather that chilled her. She was cold in her bones. Cold all the way through.

Sometimes, even though she tried desperately—despairingly—to keep them out, memories forced their way into her head, memories of when she had been warm...

The balmy Hawaiian breeze from the ocean, the heat of the day rising up from the hot sand, the sun like a benediction on her.

The memories mocked her. Mocked her just as all her memories mocked her. With cruel, jeering laughter. Mocking her for having dared to think that she could find happiness, that she could escape the past. Walk free of it.

Of course you couldn’t! You were a fool to think you could! A fool to think you could just ignore it, blank it out of your consciousness! A fool to think you could set it aside as though it had never happened—as though you’d never done what you did! A fool to think you could allow yourself to have what you knew from the start must be impossible!

Yet you thought you could have it—you thought you could finally take for yourself the happiness that was barred to you. And all you have achieved is to wound a good man—a man who cared for you and cherished you, a man you deceived by your silence. You betrayed his trust in you.

Remorse filled her—remorse at what she had done to Rafael. At her culpable silence, her self-blinding foolish hope that she could take what he offered her—take the happiness she’d found with him.

Telling him the truth had been like stabbing him... And the knife had thrust into her as well. A lethal, deadly thrust to the heart.

And you deserve it! You deserve to feel that pain, to feel it now, still and for ever! You deserve it for what you did to him! You deserve your broken heart.

She had broken it herself. No one to blame but her. No one to rail against but her. No one to mock but her.

She hugged the coat around her, against the bitter arctic wind. There was no spare flesh on her to warm her. She was thinner than ever, for she had no appetite at all. But it was
good
that she was so thin. She’d done the autumn fashion shows, and now she was booked in for the round of shows that would take place before the spring.

She would be as gaunt and starved as even the most demanding designer wanted, she thought mockingly. It would be exhausting, non-stop, but she’d welcome it—just as she had welcomed the punishing pace of the autumn shows. For it would blot out the rest of the world for her. Not that she could do anything but just get through them. Tough them out until they were all over. And then... She took a lungful of freezing air. Then she would quit. Quit everything.

She could not face continuing with her career. Could not face the absurd triviality of fashion, the endless fuss and furore over what was so entirely pointless, so utterly unimportant. Who cared what hemlines and silhouettes and colours and fabrics were in or out? Who cared which designers were on a roll and which in decline? Who cared?

Where once she might have had a careless tolerance now she had none. Only a bleak, chill emptiness.

About everything.

What she would do when she no longer modelled she didn’t know. Didn’t care. Could not care. She would sell her flat, that much she knew, because she could not bear to be in London any more. Where she would go, though, she didn’t know either. Somewhere far away. Remote. A Scottish glen, a Welsh hillside, a Yorkshire moor... It didn’t matter where.

Because wherever she went she would be trapped in her past—the past she could never leave behind her. The past that had destroyed her happiness, broken her heart...condemned her to a future of perpetual loneliness.

Loveless and alone.

Without Rafael for ever...

* * *

The small podium was illuminated by light, which also pooled on the rainbow-hued display of clutch bags at the side of the man who was speaking.

‘But my greatest gratitude,’ Lucien Fevre was saying, ‘must go to the man who had faith in me and whose generous support has enabled me to bring you this collection today.’

He turned towards Rafael, who was standing some way away, letting Lucien have the limelight. But he smiled and nodded in acknowledgement.

He did not feel like smiling. He never felt like smiling. There was a grimness on his features, and he knew his staff found his manner intimidating. He could not alter it. It was permanent, he knew. A kind of bleakness of the soul.

Lucien was speaking still, moving on to the others he wanted to thank for their support. It was the official launch of his new company, his new collection, and it was going well. The fashion editors and their ilk were praising the collection, welcoming his revival, and since Rafael had ensured that Lucien had a crack management team around him—everything from publicity to finance—all the signs were that this time around he would not hit the rocks as he had before.

He was glad for him—though he wished with grim endurance that he did not have to be here at this moment.

It was too close a reminder of the informal party held for Lucien when Madeline had arrived like the uninvited witch in a fairy tale. And the curse of her presence had borne its baleful fruit. As had his own denunciation of her.

If I’d never warned her about her insanely unachievable political ambitions...! If I’d never thrown in her face just why they were so impossible...! Then Celeste would never have known why I ended it with Madeline...

And if she had never known then she would never have told me about herself.
The punishing logic tolled through his head. He felt his stomach clench. And if she hadn’t—?

I would have never walked out on her. And she would still be with me.

Pain stabbed at him. He knew what he had lost.

But if she had never told him about herself—never confessed her past to him—then they would have been living a lie...a lie of silence by her. After wrenching Madeline out of his life, as he had made himself do, there had been times when he’d cursed her for telling him about what she had done—just as he was now so torn about Celeste’s confession to him.

But what he had felt about Madeline, about ending everything with her, was nothing to what he felt now. How could it be?

For, whatever he had once felt about Madeline, never at any time had he felt anything at all of what he had come to feel for Celeste.

I never fell in love with Madeline...

The words formed and shaped and burned in his head. Burning through his flesh...burning through his heart.

Lucien had finished his speech and the audience was breaking up, the proceedings becoming informal now. Rafael watched Lucien being approached by two influential fashion directors who were smiling enthusiastically. Rafael started to mingle, doing his bit, but a few minutes later Lucien was at his side.

‘I was so sorry to find that Celeste was not here,’ he said. ‘I had hoped she would be.’

Rafael gave a reply that he hoped was not too clipped—something about her working in Europe at the moment.

‘I was hoping she would be here,’ Lucien went on to say, ‘so that she could take her pick from the collection. I wanted to give her whichever she liked best.’ He looked at Rafael. ‘I will not forget her kindness to me when Madeline Walters gatecrashed. It is so rare to find kindness and beauty together.’

‘Yes,’ said Rafael, ‘it is.’

Saying more than that was not possible. He moved the conversation on—away from the dagger in his heart that was Celeste.

But as more people came up to Lucien, keen to speak to him, and Rafael stepped aside to let them, Lucien’s words echoed in his head.

‘I will not forget her kindness...’

In his memory he saw the scene again—Celeste going up to Lucien, intervening, diverting him from Madeline’s scornful boasts of sales and profit. She’d seen his distress and taken action.

Another memory played inside his head. Just as she’d taken action when she’d seen the hapless Louise in Karl Reiner’s toils. She hadn’t hesitated—just marched straight up, got Louise out of the danger she was in. She’d cared enough about someone she hardly knew to risk making a scene, risk the anger of a powerful and influential man in her industry.

Madeline wouldn’t have done that. Madeline would have laughed—found it amusing to see Louise’s drink spiked. Or she would have simply shrugged and said the girl was an idiot. Rafael’s eyes darkened. Or she’d have said she was smart—doing the right thing. Getting on the good side of a man who could help her career.

But she would no more have dreamt of intervening, of rescuing Louise, than she would have dreamt of caring a cent for the feelings of a man whose company she had bought out from under his nose, then trampled on his pride and kicked him scornfully into the dust.

Words sounded in his head. Celeste’s voice...

‘I am just like Madeline!’

His eyes blazed. Fists clenched suddenly. She was
nothing
like Madeline! He had hurled that at her and she’d refuted it, spewing out the sordid, unbearable reason for their alikeness...

His face contorted.

And is that it? Is that all she has to prove their similarity?

Memory of that hideous evening stabbed again—memory of him trying desperately to argue that she had been too young...that she’d been exploited and taken advantage of...that she must surely regret what she had done...

But she’d refuted that, too.

‘No—I don’t regret it.’

Her voice—so very clear, so very insistent.

His voice now, in his head, just as insistent.

It doesn’t make sense!

The words forced themselves into his head, repeating themselves.
It doesn’t make sense!

Because it didn’t. It couldn’t. What Celeste had told him about what she had done—that she had just wanted quick, easy money and had no regrets about how she’d got it!—matched nothing else that he knew about her!

She’d turned down renewing her lucrative contract with Reiner Visage because she’d refused to give Karl Reiner what he wanted—sex in exchange for another year’s contract! She’d refused to prostitute herself for her career—for easy money...

How did that match with what she had confessed to him?

Nothing he knew about her matched with her confession!

Memory blazed through him like a forest fire, igniting the undergrowth, ripping through his consciousness. Nothing in any memory of her until that last painful confession bore any indication at all that she could justify that insistence of hers! It was the one jarring note in everything he knew about her!

Making no sense at all.

He stilled. Like an unbearably slow gear wheel turning, his mind worked. The cogs of logic twisted, bringing up into his consciousness the one blazing truth that proved beyond all things just how much her insistence that she was like Madeline simply made no sense. How much it was a lie—
must
be a lie!

If she has no regrets for what she did, then why was she living a celibate life? Why had she cut herself off from all relationships with men? Why was she so obviously haunted and traumatised by her past? Why was it so painfully hard for her to come to trust me—to give herself to me—to accept me in her life?

He stood stock-still, feeling winded by the realisation. All around him people seemed to be moving like an inchoate sea, but he was alone in it. Slowly, clankingly, the wheels of logic turned again.

Madeline had no regrets—and she lived a life that showed it! A life that gave her her fill of affairs, of revelling in her sexual appetites!

Yet Celeste had withdrawn totally from that side of her existence. Shown extreme reluctance—every sign of trauma...

And that could mean only one thing—

She must regret what she did! She must! Or she would be as brazen as Madeline!

But why would she lie about it?

It can’t be the truth—it can’t! If she had no regrets, if she didn’t care about what she’d done, then she would not have lived the lonely, passionless life she has...

Yet what reason could there be for lying about something that had destroyed everything they had together? Smashing to pieces all that was between them?

With infinite slowness the wheel inside his head made one last turn. If Celeste were not lying about regretting what she had done, even though what she had done had so clearly traumatised her, then there was only one other explanation for her insistence...

Only one.

Without conscious awareness he started to walk out of the crowded room. His hand slid inside his jacket pocket. Took out his mobile. He had calls to make. Urgent calls upon which his entire future happiness depended.

I have to be right about this! I have to be!

Desperation filled him. Mingled with the most precious quality in all the world. Hope—to which he clung with all his strength.

* * *

Celeste was packing. Not for another modelling assignment abroad, but to leave London. For good. She didn’t know where she was going to go. She was just going. She’d let her flat, furnished, and tenants were moving in after the weekend. An agency would deal with them—deal with everything that came up. Her clothes and personal effects were locked away, and she’d cleaned the flat scrupulously. Now she just had to finish packing the case she was taking with her. Summer clothes, for somewhere warm, because she was cold to her very bones...

She wasn’t going to stay in the UK—not even now that spring was finally approaching. She’d done the fashion weeks for this time of year and then had quit her agency.

Her last act had been to leave an encouraging card for Louise, to wish her luck in the career that was taking shape for her. Not that she needed any luck—she was doing well and, Celeste had been glad to see, was dating someone from outside the fashion world. Someone who was six foot two and played rugby—quite enough to take on the likes of Karl Reiner or similar, who might be intending to exploit Louise. Louise had wised up fast, and was pretty good at taking care of herself now.