Emerald Mistress (18 page)

When Rafael emerged from the bathroom the phone was ringing. A towel wrapped round his lean angular hips, he swept up the receiver. He listened to the caller with a darkening brow, stated that he
would deal with the situation, uttered a flat apology and concluded the call.

‘Can you be ready to leave in fifteen minutes?’ he asked Harriet grimly. ‘I have to get back to Ballyflynn in a hurry. Una’s bolted from school again.’

‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed in dismay, rising from the dressing table where she had been brushing her hair. ‘Have you to call at the school first?’

‘I see no point in going to St Mary’s at this hour of the day. If I know my sister, she’ll already be halfway back home by now.’ Even as he spoke Rafael was getting dressed in a series of quick, economical movements. ‘Right now I need to call her mother and her sister to find out if either of them have heard from her. As usual I’ll be treated to a load of time-wasting bull, because nobody has either the guts or the interest to tell me the truth!’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘No, this time Una is the one who will be sorry.’

Harriet could not conceal her concern. ‘Rafael—’

‘Have you any idea how much at risk Una is? Every time this happens I have to ask the police to check out that she hasn’t been kidnapped. She’s very young, and very stupid when it comes to her personal security,’ Rafael framed with icy clarity. ‘The
last time she did this she hitched lifts halfway across Ireland to get home. Suppose she picks the wrong car and the wrong driver to trust?’

Harriet paled. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

Samson was rudely snatched from his comfortable doze in the kitchen. He let out a cross little growl of complaint. Harriet held the tiny animal aloft and studied him with rampant disbelief. ‘What was that?’

His liquid dark eyes blinked and he squirmed, looking as ashamed of himself as a chihuahua could look. ‘No more bad temper,’ she warned, tucking him under her arm.

Harriet met up with Rafael again in the hall. ‘Any news yet?’ she asked.

‘None.’

She had to almost run to keep up with his long impatient stride on the path to the helipad. ‘Obviously Una is extremely unhappy at school—’

‘Una is extremely unhappy at being forced to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Until I entered her life she did exactly as she pleased and she played truant for weeks at a time.’

‘She’s sitting exams at the minute, and that has definitely put her under pressure,’ Harriet persisted gently. ‘I think she may be struggling to cope with her schoolwork.’

‘Like Valente, Una is cleverer than a cartload of monkeys, and equally manipulative. She hopes that if she gets chucked out of yet another educational establishment I’ll surrender and let her leave school for good this summer. I’m sorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rafael concluded, in cool and cutting dismissal of that suggestion.

In the sensitive mood that Harriet was in, it was a painful snub. She was dismayed and annoyed to feel tears prickle the back of her eyes, for crying was not something she did easily. But the warmth and intimacy between them had gone as if it had never been. Did she blame him for that? She tried to imagine how she would have reacted to being called by another woman’s name. It would have hammered her self-esteem. She would certainly have wondered if she was a second best substitute for some female whom he would have preferred to be with. Ultimately, however, being of a practical rather than melodramatic nature, she would have calmed down.

Rafael might have been offended, but he was certainly intelligent enough to accept that that kind of error could be a mere slip of the tongue and nothing more. On the other hand, it was perfectly possible that nothing she had said or done was responsible for creating the fresh detachment she now sensed in him. It was a mortifying thought but perhaps, having
slept with her, his interest in her was simply at an end.

With her temper rising rapidly at that lowering suspicion, Harriet had to force herself to concentrate on Una’s plight instead. She was very worried about the younger woman, and concerned that Rafael would be too tough on her. Although she was very wary of interfering in something that was none of her business, she felt that she ought to at least show Rafael that misspelt note from his sister. Incredible as it seemed to her, he did not appear aware of Una’s low level of literacy, or of the difficulties that this had to be causing her at school. He seemed to believe that only wilful defiance lay behind the teenager’s problems. He might be right too, she conceded ruefully. How well did she really know Una?

When they landed at Flynn Court, Rafael walked her over to the Lamborghini to run her home immediately.

‘There’s something I want to show you. It relates to Una,’ she said awkwardly when he drew up outside the cottage. ‘Will you wait for a moment?’

She was surprised to discover Peanut waiting for her in the house, rather than in the barn where Fergal had said he would leave her overnight. But in a rush Harriet rifled through the kitchen drawer to find the note and hurried back outside again. Standing out of
the car, with his arms braced on the driver’s door, Rafael treated her to a cool, measuring appraisal as she moved back to him to extend the note.

‘What is this?’ he asked drily, before he had even looked.

Annoyance and mortification made her stiffen. She wondered if he imagined that she might be using delaying tactics to keep him with her. ‘Una wrote it to me a few weeks ago…I thought you should see it.’

Rafael stared down at the crumpled sheet in his hand and then strode out to the front of his car, where the outside lights shone down with greater clarity on the paper. ‘Una wrote this? Is this a joke?’ he demanded.

‘She can’t spell very well—’

Rafael shot her a look of raw incredulity. ‘But this is like something a child in nursery would write!’

‘I think she tries very hard to hide the problems she has, but could this explain her failure to meet work targets at school? Whenever she gets the chance she seems to use a computer spellchecker, but most of her schoolwork has to be handwritten. When I last spoke to her on the phone she was really unhappy…I suspect it was the stress of the exams she was about to sit.’

Rafael was an ashen colour below his vibrant
olive-toned skin. He looked devastated. ‘I’ve never seen Una write or read anything. I had no idea there was a problem.’

‘I’m sure that with the right help she’ll be able to catch up, but you’ll need to be careful how you discuss this with her,’ Harriet warned him. ‘She’s ashamed of the difficulties she has, and she does seem to think of herself as stupid—’

‘She’s not stupid,’ Rafael breathed in gruff interruption, long brown fingers crushing the note. ‘She’s probably dyslexic. Like me.’

It was Harriet’s turn to be shocked, and she could think of nothing to say but a muttered, ‘Oh…’ that made her wince at her own lack of verbal dexterity.

‘I have been so blind,’ Rafael ground out in a driven undertone of regret, his lean, strong face bleak. ‘I’m very grateful to you for bringing this to my attention.’

Harriet went back indoors. Well, she’d had the fling she’d thought she wanted, and got her fingers burnt with painful thoroughness, she acknowledged tautly. But if she had managed to do Una a good turn, then at least something positive had come out of the experience.

‘Is Rafael gone?’

Harriet almost leapt right out of her skin, for Una was poised a few feet away in the kitchen doorway.
For once, the fifteen-year-old looked her age, and pretty pathetic at that, in her crumpled clothing with her eyes and her nose red and swollen from crying.

‘You almost gave me a heart attack…’ Harriet whispered shakily. ‘Where were you when I came in a few minutes ago?’

‘Trying to get to sleep in the guest room,’ the teenager muttered, hanging her dark head. ‘I know where Fergal leaves the spare key…’

‘Well, I’m really glad that you’re here and you’re safe. Will you ring your brother…or will I?’

‘No!’ Una sobbed. ‘Please don’t ask me to do that!’

Harriet put a comforting arm round the distressed girl, fetched her a box of tissues and let the storm of tears run its natural course. ‘Why did you come here?’

‘I thought you’d be at home and we could talk, but you were out,’ Una mumbled unevenly.

‘Rafael is worried sick about you—’

‘No, he’s not…he doesn’t care about me.’

‘He
does
—’

‘No, he doesn’t. Do you know how Rafael found out about me? Mum was in a bad way, so Father Kewney went to Rafael and told him that I was his father’s kid. Rafael didn’t get a choice about taking me up as a charity case. I’m just a nuisance and an embarrassment to him.’

‘My stepfather raised me alone. He didn’t get a choice either, but even though he’s not related to me by blood he genuinely loves me,’ Harriet said quietly. ‘You
are
related to Rafael, and he values that. You matter to him.’

Una lifted her head and studied her through puffy eyelids. ‘Did he tell you that?’

‘No. He’s not the kind of guy who’s comfortable talking about stuff like that. But I’ve seen his concern for you, and I think he probably understands more than you imagine he does. He didn’t have a very happy home life either when he was growing up.’

The teenager could not hide her surprise at that news. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Perhaps you have more in common with your brother than you think.’

‘Yeah, like I’m so rich and clever,’ Una mumbled.

‘He’s very cynical too.’

‘Is he raging with me?’

‘He’s more worried than angry. Please let me call him and let him know that you’re safe.’

‘No…I’ll do it,’ Una muttered tautly. ‘Are you dating Rafael now?’

‘No,’ Harriet answered, feeling that that was the truth as matters stood. ‘But he took me to the races at Leopardstown today.’

‘So when is a date not a date?’ Una hovered by
the phone as if it was an actively hostile object, likely to leap up and attack her at any minute.

When it’s over before it’s properly begun, Harriet reflected inwardly, suddenly taut and cold with misery. Why had she slept with him? How could that have seemed so right when it now felt so wrong in retrospect? How had she ever believed that she could handle a fling? What sort of a fool was she to know and understand so little about herself that she had believed she could abandon her principles with impunity? For now, in spite of her brave belief that she could enjoy passion without commitment, she felt cheap and silly and thoroughly unhappy. A few hours and it was over. She cringed at that awareness.

Una rang Rafael on his mobile. Determined not to intrude, Harriet stayed inside when the teenager went out to greet the arrival of his car. A few minutes later Rafael appeared at the front door on his own. ‘Thank you.’ His dark eyes were unusually level and open. ‘This is the first time Una hasn’t treated me like the enemy. I owe you for that.’

Harriet lifted her chin. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’

‘Learn to accept compliments, gratitude and gifts with grace,’ Rafael countered, smooth as silk. ‘I won’t change the habits of a lifetime.’

Hope leapt inside her and she crushed it back,
angry with herself. She was not going to start reading unintentional personal messages into his every stray remark. Nor was she planning to jump with painful anticipation every time the phone rang over the next week. ‘Neither will I,’ she traded, smothering a suggestive yawn in a hint that he was keeping her standing around on the doorstep.

After Luke, she told herself staunchly, she was as hardened and tough as old boots, and Rafael Cavaliere Flynn was already the equivalent of ancient history. He had cooled off and her pride had suffered a momentary pang. But that was all! And naturally there was a more positive angle to be considered. Now that she had lived through the proverbial rebound romance, popular report suggested that she would be in prime emotional condition to embrace a deeper and more lasting relationship with someone else. If right at that moment she felt that she would never in the longest day she lived look at another man again—well, no doubt that was only because she was feeling tired and battle-weary.

‘Rafael…my sister and her husband will have gone to bed if you don’t hurry up!’ Una wailed from the Lamborghini. ‘If we wake the baby Philomena will be furious!’

‘Relax…I’ve told them that you’ll be staying at Flynn Court tonight.’

Rafael continued to look at Harriet until she was rigid with nervous tension and the stress of avoiding a direct encounter with his all too knowing gaze. When he finally headed back to the sports car Harriet sagged and shut the door fast.

The phone rang. It was Boyce.

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day,’ her brother complained. ‘Guess what? I’m flying in to Kerry airport tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ Harriet was delighted at the news that she was about to have a house guest.

CHAPTER SEVEN

R
AFAEL WAS RUDELY
awakened by an infernal noise that in terms of annoyance fell somewhere between an animal shriek and chalk scraping down a blackboard.

A scraggy black and white rooster had taken up a perch on the worn statue of Neptune on the paved terrace below his bedroom. Rafael sprang out of bed and hauled up the nearest sash window. The bird loosed one more teeth-clenching screech before hopping niftily down and taking urgent flight over the fence to disappear into the long grass in the field.

‘I can’t believe that neither of you heard the hideous racket that bird was making this morning,’ Rafael commented at the breakfast table.

‘I sleep like the dead.’ Una was loyally determined to protect Harriet’s rooster, Albert, from being identified as the culprit.

‘At over seventy I can’t expect to have the hearing of a young man.’ Tolly cast his amused blue eyes down.

Harriet’s day had enjoyed an equally lively beginning. Having slept in late, she got up in panic mode. She had to skip breakfast and race straight up to the yard to help feed the horses, for she felt that it was only fair to take advantage of Davis’s presence there when she was away from home. A large delivery arrived for the tack shop and she had to check the goods and set them out. After all, on Saturday next she would be open for business. To publicise that opening she had, with the help of several keen parents, organised a mini gymkhana for the same day, and had promised a substantial percentage of its profits to a children’s charity. The attendance of the local radio station at the event was part and parcel of her determination to promote the Flynn Court Livery yard in every way possible.