The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo by Julia James

Author:Julia James [James, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Women
ISBN: 9780373132447
Google: YanUAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0373132441
Barnesnoble: 0373132441
Goodreads: 18812510
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-12-31T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

CELESTE DRESSED ESPECIALLY carefully that evening. Her body felt wonderful after the massage, and she seemed to have a glow about her. Her eyes looked more luminous to her tonight, her hair more lustrous. She’d left it loose completely, and it cascaded down her back in silken folds, feeling cool and sensuous on her skin. She slipped her dress over her head—layers of gauze-fine cotton in shades of blue...azure and cobalt and deepest turquoise in a haze of colour. It was worn off one shoulder, and fleetingly she remembered that the dress she’d worn that evening at the charity fashion show had been, too.

The first time she’d set eyes on Rafael.

A little tremor of emotion went through her.

I never dreamt then that I would be here, with him—now, like this!

Was it possible? Was it truly possible that she was here with him?

But as she joined him on the terrace for their customary pre-dinner drink she knew it was vividly true. The physical impact of his presence overwhelmed her, and his smile, as he saw her approaching, made her breath catch. He took her hands as she came up to him, stepping back from her to survey her.

He said something in Spanish she could not catch and smiled down at her again. And though his smile was warm his eyes were warmer still...

Warm with desire...

She felt a little thrill go through her—a shimmer of awareness, of more than awareness. Intimacy. She had felt it earlier that day at lunch, when Rafael had told her of his parents just after she had told him about her father, his life cut short so young.

A sense of wonder came over her as she thought about that. She had been so reluctant to say anything at all of herself, even of the distant past and her childhood. The past was dangerous—all of it. Yet somehow she had found it possible to tell him something of her father’s life, even if only that brief fragment. Tragedy had struck them both, she realised, losing their parents far too young, and perhaps that realisation was another thread that was drawing her to him.

Drawing her closer and closer yet.

How close?

The question hovered tantalisingly in her mind as they went down to dinner, her hand still loosely held in his.

It felt, she thought, with that little thrill again, the right place for her hand to be...the only place...

This is right—it is the right thing to do. To be here with Rafael. To accept all that has happened, all that will happen...

Certainty filled her. And a sense of peace. Rafael had been right all along. She could remake herself. She could leave the past behind.

She would give herself to what was between them wholly and fully, with no more reluctance or resistance.

The past is gone—there is only the present. The wonderful, magical present that has Rafael in it.

Happiness glowed within her, radiant in its power.

* * *

They ate, that evening, once again at the French cuisine restaurant by the shore.

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