by Kate Walker
‘She actually said that?’
A slow nod of her head was her silent answer.
‘Then your mother was a blind fool,’ Raoul growled, unable to hold back the disbelief he felt. ‘Ciara is a little glamour puss, there’s no doubt of that—that burnished hair, those emerald eyes, will be many men’s fantasy.’
His brother-in-law’s, for one thing, and look where that had led.
‘But you are the real beauty in the family. You have a natural elegance and grace. Your hair—’
‘Oh, don’t!’ Imogen broke in sharply, rawly, her voice cracking on the words. ‘Please don’t!’
‘Why not?’
Looking into her eyes, he was astonished to see the pleading expression in their depths. It shook him rigid. Never before had he offered a woman a compliment—a heartfelt compliment like this one—only for her to react as if he had just thrown acid in her face.
‘But you must know that’s true,’ he said, astounded. ‘Your mirror must tell you it’s so each time you look into it. And you must recall the way I—the way it used to be. I was knocked off-balance from the moment I saw you in that bar. I still am.’
‘Oh, please, no!’
She shook her head so violently that the dark, silky strands of her hair flew out around her face, the soft essence of some shampoo she had used reaching his nostrils and tantalising them with the subtle fragrance.
‘I don’t want to think about that—I don’t ever want to remember how you claim you felt back then.’
‘Not claim—’ he began, but her hand came up between them in a slicing gesture, cutting off what he had been about to say.
‘No! The past is the past and I want it to stay there. We don’t want to revive any of those unwanted memories.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
He’d revive everything right this minute if he could. Nothing of the way he had felt about her had been buried. He still hungered; his body still burned for hers. The only thing that would be different was that this time...
He couldn’t hold back the cynical laugh that escaped him at the thought that last time he had hated the fact that she had only wanted him for his money. This time that fact would be an advantage, a lever to get exactly what he wanted.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘The idea of you claiming that all of that was buried when you know it’s a lie. Remember...’ he reproved when her pretty mouth opened, obviously about to frame a tart protest.
He found he actually liked the thought of her protesting. He didn’t want too easy a conquest; a spirited woman was much more satisfying. He had enjoyed Imogen’s spirit when they had been together before.
‘Remember, I had you in my arms last night. I held you against me.’
The fluttering of those long, lush eyelashes told him he’d hit home with that and she was, even now, remembering just how it had felt to be that close.
‘I kissed you. I felt your response—the instinctive response you couldn’t hide.’
‘I...’
Was she going to try to refute it? How could she even think of lying about that? He’d held her, kissed her, tasted her, felt her response. And he had known then that he could not walk away again without experiencing the heat of her embrace; the warm, welcoming moisture at the core of her; the pressure of her body against his; her slender, soft legs entwined around him, hips opening to him, breasts crushed against his chest.
Under the force of his reproving stare, she bit the words back. He could see the rapid adjustment of her thoughts, the change that flitted behind her eyes.
‘You said that would make things easier,’ she muttered, with a defiance that didn’t match her expression. ‘What did you mean by that? Make what easier?’
Now was not the time to go into that. That would come when they had time really to talk. When everything about this abandoned wedding had been cleared away. When she was left to face the future without it.
Then he would tell her what he had planned—and how she fitted into it. He would reveal most of his thoughts, but not all of them. The last truth would come when he knew he had her where he wanted her.
‘Not now.’
He was already turning away, back into the big dining hall where the caterers had just about completed their packing away, and the fine food and elegant dishes were all waiting to be disposed of like so many guilty secrets.
‘We have to get things sorted out. What do you want doing with all this?’
As he expected, drawing attention to all that needed to be done immediately distracted her. He actually felt a twist of sympathy when he saw the way her face paled, her eyes dulling as she surveyed the task before her. She looked very slender, almost delicate, and disturbingly vulnerable. The way she straightened her spine, squaring her shoulders, brought a new sensation of admiration for the way she was handling this. Alone.
‘Where the hell is the rest of your family?’ That sister—her father?
Her soft mouth actually twisted into a sort of wry amusement.
‘My father will still be sleeping off his hangover or...’
A quick glance at the watch and another wry smile.
‘Starting on a new one. And Ciara? You tell me. Ciara is wherever Adnan can be found, but Adnan seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. He’s not answering his phone; no one at the Hall has seen him. Not even his mother.’
‘She spoke to you?’ Raoul let his surprise show.
‘Not for long,’ Imogen admitted. ‘Just to say that she had seen or heard nothing of Adnan—then she took great delight in shutting the door in my face.’ Her shrug was one of resigned acceptance. ‘And who could blame her? She’d been looking forward to being mother of the groom at the perfect society wedding. Watching her son make a brilliant dynastic union...’
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t add the other parts of the bargain she and Adnan had come up with between them. Geraldine Al Makthabi had also been hoping to become a grandmother—and her future father-in-law to achieving his dream of becoming a great-grandfather. Under the cover of the piles of food containers stacked up on the tables, she slipped a hand over her lower belly, remembering how it had felt to think that a new life was forming there, nestling deep inside...
A new life fathered by the man who now stood beside her, amongst the ashes of her hopes. The man who had sent her dreams toppling down into ruins.
‘What am I going to do with all this?’ she said again, sharper now, the fight against the bitterness of her memories making her tone harsher than she had planned.
Obviously Raoul thought so too because he shot her a quick, assessing glance from under hooded lids, then those golden eyes slid away from her and a frown creased the space between his brows as he considered the food problem thoughtfully.
‘Do you have an old people’s care home nearby? Disabled living? A children’s home?’
Impossibly, now, when she had coped with everything else that had gone before—had coped without a single tear—the introduction of a very practical solution almost demolished the walls she had built around herself. The room blurred, her eyes stung and roughly she rubbed her hands against them to dash away any tears before they even had the chance to fall.
‘Great idea,’ she managed gruffly. ‘Perfect.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Raoul said and helplessly she found that she was capable of nothing more than nodding as she handed the responsibility over to him.
CHAPTER NINE
‘COME AND SIT DOWN. You’ve been on your feet all day.’
Raoul’s voice caught Imogen by surprise as she wandered into the shabby, old-fashioned sitting room where the glow of the setting sun gilded the windows and made the cream-painted walls look as if they were blazing red and gold.
‘I thought you’d gone.’
She hesitated on the threshold of the room as she tried to decide whether to go in or to make some hastily concocted excuse to take her away from there, away from him.
He lifted a glass of white wine, so much paler than the rich, red liquid from the previous night. But still, the memory of that time in his room, the way it had trapped her with him, destroying all her plans and hopes for the future, kept her frozen, not knowing which way to move. To turn and walk away seemed impossibly rude after he had spent so much of the day helping her sort out the results of the disaster that was supposed to have been her wedding day, but to walk into the golden shadows of the room where he sprawled comfortably in a huge armchair seemed to bring an intimacy that she shied away from nervously.
‘Of course not,’ she managed unevenly. ‘A drink’s the least I owe you after the help you’ve given me today.’
Whenever she had needed help, whatever had wanted doing, he’d been there, silent, strong and disturbingly reliable. So now, if it wasn’t for the fact that the downstairs part of the house still looked like a display for the Chelsea flower show, one might almost believe that today had never been planned as anything special.
It hadn’t been anything truly special, she couldn’t help reflecting, remembering the way she had been thinking in the church when Raoul had suddenly reappeared in her life. Was it really just two days before? It felt as though she had lived through several different lifetimes since then—one of them as Adnan’s fiancée, another as the bride jilted almost at the altar. Or wouldn’t everyone really think that she had jilted Adnan when he had found her in flagrante with Raoul? And now...
What was she now? Who was she now? What sort of life was she to go forward into when everything she had hoped and dreamed of had been blasted apart, shattered into tiny, irreparable fragments? She had seen the hope of marriage to Adnan, the joining of their two families, the restoration of the Blacklands stud’s fortunes, the hope of a child to ease the non-stop nag of loss ever since she’d miscarried Raoul’s baby, as a way to give herself the prospect of a future. A future that would help heal the wounds that Raoul Cardini had inflicted on her vulnerable heart.
But now that future had been closed off to her, the darkness of the bleak tomorrow she faced closing in around her. Once again, it seemed that Raoul Cardini was the darkness at the centre of the storm surrounding her that had ruined every chance of happiness. Even knowing that, when she heard him speak with quiet consideration after a day of so much anger, disappointment and upset, it was almost more than she could take.
She couldn’t let herself rely on him—on anything about him. Not just for today but for any sort of future. The weakness in her heart because he had been there for her during such a difficult day was just that—a weakness she couldn’t afford to indulge. She’d been here before and had paid a terrible price for her naïve trust.
‘Then share it with me.’
His smile was what did it. She needed that smile, needed some company—even his company.
No, Imogen admitted as she moved to sit opposite him on the other side of the huge inglenook fireplace: especially his company. He had only been back in her life for what? Three days? And once again she was back in the feeling that had overwhelmed her from the first day of their meeting two years before. The feeling that he was as vital to her as breathing, essential to life itself. He kept her heart beating. It couldn’t be for long but she would take whatever she could and be grateful for that.
She was no longer the naïve young girl who had met him in a bar in Corsica. She had much more experience of life. She had known love and loss—too much loss. She had been a mother, if only for a few weeks. She’d lost the love of her life.
There, she could finally admit that to herself as she looked into his face, the burn of the setting sun casting deep shadows across his carved features. Did she need any more evidence of what she’d known already? The loss of the wedding she’d planned with Adnan, the hopes she’d had for a future, had all but knocked her flat. But with Raoul at her side, for today at least, she’d been able to cope. His quiet strength had seen her through the day, bringing her through the rough waters of shock and distress to this quiet mooring where at least she had a moment to breathe, to let her shoulders down and to think about which way to turn next.
The idea of any time, any space, with Raoul being considered quiet or calm was such a shock that Imogen found her hand shook as she held out her glass for him to pour the wine. Since the moment he had walked back into her life just days ago, she had been in turmoil. How could she feel peace when he was the cause of all the upheaval and destruction from the start?
But she’d take it, such as it was; it was what she needed right now. And if by midnight she found that, like Cinderella, all the magic of the moment vanished and her fantasy handsome prince had turned back into a rat, then at least she would have had tonight.
‘Have you heard from Ciara?’ he was asking now, and only someone as attuned to everything about him would have noticed the tiny hesitation before the name. The one that revealed he had actually meant to ask had she heard from Adnan, but had held back. Was that because, like her, he wanted to enjoy the moment of truce between them, even if it was temporary?
‘Not a word.’
Her tone was low, regretful, and it made Raoul scowl darkly to hear it.
‘What sort of a sister is she?’
‘Oh, don’t!’
Imogen’s head came up sharply, the wine glass jerking in her hand. The raw note in her voice, an unexpected sheen on her eyes, caught on something uncomfortable deep inside him and stilled the cynical comment he had been about to make.
‘Why not? She’s your sister. Family matters. I know I would do anything for my sister.’
It was part of what had brought him here after all. The way Ciara had behaved with his sister’s husband. And because...
For a moment his vision dimmed as he recalled the photograph he had seen in the newspaper. The way Imogen had been leaning on her sister’s shoulder. The slightly glassy smiles they had shared.
The Scandalous O’Sullivan sisters.
‘Not for very long,’ Imogen said now. ‘We barely know each other.’
Raoul froze with his glass halfway to his lips again and then lowered it slowly to rest on the wide arm of the chair.
‘Why not? I know your mother took Ciara with her when she left, but surely... No?’ he questioned as she shook her head slowly, black hair falling loose from the tie she had it fastened with at the back, tumbling around a face that he could now see was pale and shadowed with stress.
‘If you’re trying to say that surely we were still sisters—well, of course we were, but we never got to see each other.’
‘Never?’
Raoul became aware of the way his grip had loosened on the stem of his wine glass so that it almost tipped over. Hastily he closed his fingers round it, pulling it back, but still a small spill of wine slipped over the edge and onto the furniture.
‘Pardon...’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed it on the offending stain.
‘Oh, don’t worry.’
Imogen’s smile was reassuring, though slightly weary, and to his consternation he found that caught on his over-tight nerves, leaving him feeling uncomfortable and unsettled.
‘That chair—the whole suite—is so old it’s practically vintage. In fact, I think it was the same sofa that was in this room when my mother took off with her lover. Papa could never bring himself to replace it. In fact...’
One long-fingered hand moved over the well-worn velvet, smoothing the nap one way and then stroking it back the other way.
‘He used to say he could remember his two little girls playing together on it.’
‘Two little girls,’ Raoul echoed, crumpling the white cotton into his hands and clenching his fingers tight over it.
That gleam in her eye was stronger, brighter. Tears? Now? Why tears for this when she had been so strong through all the rest of the day? The shift from the a
dmiration he’d felt to a disturbing twist of sympathy was not an easy one.
‘How old were you when your mother walked out?’
‘Seven.’ And already crazy about the horses, lost in the world of the stud, the beautiful animals bred there. ‘Ciara was not quite three.’
The memory of the day she had woken up to find that not only her mother but also her beloved little sister had disappeared into the night was almost more than she could take. As she had grown up, she had tried so hard to keep this home for herself and her father—and now that Ciara had returned to the family, that had been so much more important. But Ciara had vanished, allying herself with Adnan, and the house and stud would soon belong to someone else. So what had alienated her sister?
‘I know what it’s like to live without a mother,’ Raoul stated now, and her startled glance into his face caught the burn of darkness in his hooded eyes. ‘My mother died of cancer when I was nine.’
‘That must have been so horrible for you. At least I had had the chance that my mother might come back one day. You had no such hope. How on earth did you cope?’
‘My father was determined to help us through. He was always there for us—and my older sister took on the mothering role as well as she could.’
‘I would have loved to do that for Ciara.’
The unevenness in her voice was put there by the thought of him as child of nine. Her own memories told her how he must have felt.
‘Mother kept us apart,’ she forced herself to continue, staring wide-eyed into the empty fireplace. ‘We didn’t even know where she was. She was determined that we wouldn’t have any contact with each other—or Ciara with my father. It was her way of getting back at my father, of carrying on the civil war between them.’