The Man Behind the Scars

by Caitlin Crews

  He reached over and traced what she knew were deep bags beneath her eyes, and his mouth tightened. She wanted to feel nothing when he touched her. She wanted to be blank—cured of that devastating addiction to him by the terrible things he’d said. But the same old fire danced to life low in her belly, filling her with chagrin. And need.

  “I’m sorry,” he said simply, devastatingly.

  It was too much. She couldn’t process it.

  She felt her face crumple slightly, and she batted his hand away, fighting with herself until she got back under control. She felt unbalanced. Commuters jostled all around them, bursting with hurry and stress, but all she could focus on was Rafe, and the careening sensation inside of her. As if all of her screws were coming loose at once and she was in imminent danger of flying apart.

  And then she felt nothing but the red-hot haze of rage. Everything he’d said, everything he’d done, flooded into her, and she was no longer frozen. She was no longer worried about losing him—she already had.

  Which meant she had absolutely nothing left to lose at all.

  “You can’t just show up on a train platform and apologize!” she threw at him, her voice some kind of strangled whisper, the anger taking her voice away with its strength. “Do you think this erases everything? Do you think it changes—”

  “Angel.”

  Just her name, in that dark magic tone of his. It shouldn’t have affected her. She shouldn’t have cared. All of the cruel things he’d thrown at her whirled in a loop in her head, and the misery of it, of this, threatened to swamp her. She should hate him. She hated that she didn’t, that she couldn’t, and she focused it all on him.

  “It was my mother, by the way,” she told him, tears in the back of her throat, distorting her voice. He blinked. “My mother is the one who ran up that bill. She used my name to get the credit card. It was her debt—but I knew she wouldn’t pay it. She doesn’t have the money and even if she did, she has convenient amnesia when it comes to her debts. What was I meant to do?”

  “I believe you,” he said quietly. “I do.”

  “Did I deserve those things you said to me?” she demanded wildly. “Did I deserve the names you called me?” He moved as if to put his hands on her upper arms, as if that might soothe her, but she twisted away. “Don’t!” she said sharply. “That won’t work anymore.”

  She worried it would work all too well.

  “Listen to me,” he said, and that was the Rafe she knew, autocratic and demanding, his hard mouth set in that granite line. She told herself it only made her angrier.

  “I don’t want to listen to you,” she retorted. “I’ve done nothing but listen to you for months. You can listen to me for a change. I’m going back to London. I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t even want your money. I don’t know how I’ll pay off that fifty thousand pounds, but I’ll manage it.” Her mouth twisted. “After all, as you so kindly pointed out, there’s always money in prostitution, isn’t there?”

  He didn’t answer, as the train that had been sitting next to them on the track lurched into motion and started rolling out of the station. Angel stared at it, anger pounding in her veins, too close to tears again and far too off-balance. The train leaving was the last straw, somehow, even though some part of her knew that there would be another one. There always was.

  But she wanted away from him. From the whole of Scotland. From manor houses in the wilderness and Georgian townhomes in the heart of London, countesses and earls and weeks of insulting contracts. From these past months of her life, this crazy idea that should never have been made real—this marriage. She wanted to pretend that none of this had ever happened. That it hadn’t touched her. That she was perfectly, happily whole.

  She wanted to be on that train.

  “This is pointless,” she muttered, turning on her heel and heading back toward the concourse. She had no particular destination in mind, she just wanted to get away from him, so she could clear her head. So she could think.

  “I love you,” he said.

  He didn’t shout it. He simply said it, and still it slammed into her like bullets. One, two, three. Angel jerked to a halt, dimly aware that she was lucky the platform was now empty. There was no one left to watch her bleed.

  Her heart pounded. Hard and then harder. Something ugly and powerful rolled through her, nearly flattening her, too big for her to contain. Too much to tamp down, to hide. She turned around to look at him. Those cold eyes, that dark, ruined face. How she loved him, to her detriment.

  And she would never forgive him for this. Never.

  “You would say anything, wouldn’t you?” she threw at him, her voice shaking. Rage and pain, mixed into something toxic. She thought she might be crying again when he started to blur in front of her, and she no longer cared. “You would tell any lie you had to tell. You don’t care about anything except that house of yours, and the heirs you want to fill it with. You couldn’t love me if your life depended on it. You wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “And what if my life does depend on it?” His voice was urgent, and there was something in that gray gaze—but she couldn’t fall for that anymore. She couldn’t let herself care. “I think it does.”

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to tell you I loved you in the first place?” she demanded. “I cried, Rafe—and I never cry. The one thing I always promised myself was that I’d never fall in love, that I’d never give someone that much power over me—”

  “Angel,” he said in a low voice that seemed to reach into her, finding her most vulnerable places and wrapping around them and demand, “don’t you understand? All I’ve ever had are those ghosts, that poison. You terrify me too.”

  She didn’t want to understand. She wanted to disappear. She wanted things to be easy again. She wanted to be anywhere but in the middle of all this painful truth telling. Anywhere but near this man, the only person alive who had ever seen her like this. No mask. No pretty words. Not even showing off her body to distract him. Nothing at all but Angel.

  She couldn’t take it.

  “Go to hell,” she raged at him, and then she turned around again, mindless and panicked, and simply ran. She dropped her bag at some point, and she didn’t care. She dodged through the crowds in the concourse, weaving her way around them, running as if it was her life that depended on it now. She knew without a doubt that it did, and she didn’t even know why.

  She burst through the grand doors of the station and out into the street. Only then, in the pouring rain, did she come to a stop. She simply stood there and let the rain fall all over her, soaking her, while she gasped for breath. And somehow she was not at all surprised to find Rafe standing next to her, holding her bag, not even breathing hard.

  “Run wherever you like,” he said, his voice tight, his eyes intense. “As long as you feel you must. It doesn’t matter. I will always find you.”

  “As if you’d want to find me!” she tossed at him, incredulous. And something else beneath it, something she ignored. “Why don’t you find someone else?”

  “I want you,” he said. Implacable. Sure. “I married you.”

  “I can’t do this,” she said, tears mixing with the rain, and she couldn’t bring herself to care. “I can’t live like this. I never should have approached you—”

  “But you did,” he said, some fierce note in his voice that she didn’t fully understand, though her body heard it and warmed. “And here we are.”

  “It’s your fault!” she accused him. “It was just a crazy idea. I never would have gone through with it! But you were so …” She shook her head, wishing she could clear it, but nothing seemed to work. Not since the day she’d met him, if she was honest. “I never really meant for any of this to happen.”

  “While I can’t regret a single moment of it,” he said. He shifted, this strong, powerful man, as if he was uncertain. As if she meant that much to him. But how could she believe tha
t? He sighed, slightly. “I don’t want to be a ghost anymore.”

  She turned toward him, searching his face, looking for something she wasn’t even sure she would recognize if she found it. That great red rage left her in a sudden rush, along with that driving, instinctive need to run, and she wasn’t at all certain what was left. But she couldn’t seem to look away from him as the rain came down in sheets all around them, over them.

  “I have been alone all my life,” he said gruffly. “I lost my father too young. My mother and brother excelled at cruelty. They enjoyed it. The only friends I ever truly had were in the army, and they all died in that explosion.” His mouth tightened, and shadows twisted through his dark eyes. “I survived, but I was covered in scars. Suddenly my outsides matched what I’d always thought was already on the inside.” He looked away for a moment, as if he was battling something, and then met her gaze again, his own fiercely probing. Furious—but not, Angel understood, at her. Perhaps none of this had ever been aimed at her. “My mother only told me she loved me when she was playing one of her games,” he said softly. “She thought it was funny if she could get me to believe her, even for a moment.”

  “Rafe …” she whispered, her throat tight, her heart seeming to somersault behind her ribs. Something in her shifted then. The fear fell away, the hurt seemed to subside, and all that was left was that same old feeling, that sharp urge to protect him, somehow, even from this, his own past.

  Maybe she had loved him all along.

  “You are the first person I’ve ever known who is more beautiful inside than out,” he said, his eyes so dark, so very dark, and Angel felt it inside of her. “I don’t know why you love me,” he continued in the same low voice, twisting in and around the rain that fell upon them, and her heart began to pound. “I don’t know if I’ve already ruined it. All I’ve ever seen in me are these scars, long before they showed on my face. Ugly, incapacitating scars, in and out, that make me wholly unfit for the company of others. I don’t know why you approached me, and I can’t think of a single reason why you would stay.”

  She couldn’t speak. He raised his hand, cautiously, and when she didn’t flinch away, he slid it over her jaw to cup her cheek, leaning down close, as if the rain that fell on them was some kind of blessing. As if it held them there, in a kind of embrace, cocooning them. Washing away all the harsh words, all the pain. The past. Their families. All their shields and armor, masks and hiding places.

  Clearing the way, somehow, for whatever came next. Making space for their strange marriage, their rocky start. Making it feel new. Right, somehow.

  “What I know is that you are like sunlight to me,” he said, his voice ragged, but sure, and his eyes warming to quicksilver as he looked at her. “You make me want to come out of the dark, Angel. You make me want to believe that I can.”

  She felt that dangerous spark of hope ignite within her, but this time, she let it glow. She felt it turn into a fire, then grow into a blaze. And then it began to spread. And spread.

  And she let it.

  “You can,” she whispered, almost overcome with the heat of all that hope.

  She was lost again, but this time with him. In him. Where she belonged. Where she would stay. No masks. No scars. Just them. She smiled then, a real smile, and after a moment he returned it.

  “I am skeptical,” he whispered, and she could hear the pain in his voice, the monster he believed himself to be, the fear. It made her heart ache. She concentrated instead on the matching gleam of hope she could see in his dark gray gaze, and she knew, somehow, that it would be okay.

  That they would make this work, make it real. Together.

  “I am not,” she said. She turned her face into his palm, and kissed his hand. Loving him, pure and simple. Forever. She smiled wider. “I’ll show you.”

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  First published in Great Britain 2012

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  THE MAN BEHIND THE SCARS © Harlequin Books S.A. 2012

  Special thanks and acknowledgement are given to Caitlin Crews for her contribution to The Santina Crown series.

  ISBN: 978-1-408-98197-9

  53-0612

  Harlequin (UK) policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the legal environmental regulations of the country of origin.