Secrets of Castillo del Arco Read Online Free Page B

arm.
    ‘Let me get you some painkillers and some water. It might take the edge off it.’
    Gabriella sighed, letting herself sag, hidden for a moment behind a marble pillar, trying desperately to relax. Her head hurt. Her feet ached. And her heart felt like a giant void. If only she could take a pill for that. Today she’d said goodbye to her grandfather, the man who had taken on the role of both her parents and more when they had been ripped from her life. Such a good man. Such a brilliant man. Why did the world—why did she—have to live without him just yet?
    She looked around the room, looking at the few remaining guests talking over their coffee and cognac, wondering if anyone would notice if she simply disappeared. But she was kidding herself. Of course she couldn’t just slip away. She would have to stay until the grim and bitter end.
    Then the air in the room seemed to still and intensify until it shimmered with expectation. The hairs at the back of her neck stood up as she felt the scorching gaze of dark eyes drinking her in. Phillipa joined her, blinking as she held out a glass of sparkling water—not thatshe was looking at Gabriella. ‘Oh, wow, forget keeper husbands for a moment. Who on earth is that?’
    Gabriella didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. She could feel his identity in her rapidly liquefying bones. She could feel it in her heated flesh and empty lungs.
    He had come
.
    And then he was beside them, so broad, tall and dangerous-looking that his presence should darken the world, except that it only served to brighten hers.
    ‘Raoul Del Arco,’ he said, bowing to her friend. ‘At your service.’ Although it was the fingers pressed to the small of her back that had Gabriella’s full attention, the press of them against her flesh sending an electrical current surging along her spine, needles of sensation that radiated out to take anchor in the suddenly sensitive tissue of her breasts and dark places inside, deep down in her belly.
    ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ she said a little breathlessly when she’d managed to unglue her tongue from where it had been stuck to the roof of her mouth. And then, because she realised it sounded like it contained a note of desperation and even accusation, she forced herself to smile. ‘But thank you for coming now. And let me introduce Phillipa Edwards. We went to the same boarding school in England.’
    Raoul nodded, taking her hand. ‘It is a pleasure.’
    ‘Raoul was like a big brother to me growing up,’ she continued.
And my personal hero
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    ‘Umberto was a very important influence in my life and Gabriella has always been very special to me,’ hesaid as his arm moved upwards, his long-fingered hand cupping her shoulder, pulling her close against his heated body, a gesture that seemed a world away from brotherly, at least the heated way her body seemed to be interpreting it. ‘Unfortunately we lost touch for several years, so to meet again under such circumstances makes for a bittersweet reunion.’ He looked down at her, his dark eyes intense, mesmerising. ‘I see now I will have to ensure I do not allow such a lapse to occur again.’
    Clearly she should have eaten, because she felt dizzy at his words, so light-headed that she could have fallen into his eyes right then and there if Phillipa had not excused herself, saying she needed to get back to her baby. Gabriella hugged her friend and then she was alone with Raoul.
    He dropped his arm to face her; absurdly she missed his touch and the warm solidity of his body pressed against hers. Then he tilted his dark head and smiled in a way that transformed his features from darkly threatening to something warm and dangerous that could melt cement as easily as it could buckle her knees. ‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Bella. You said you wanted to talk and I felt that might prove easier after everyone had gone. I thought, I hoped, you might allow me to take you to