The Wedding Bargain

by Yvonne Lindsay

  Raif hooked one arm around her and pulled her to him, kissing her fiercely before letting her go. “I’ll be waiting right here for you.”

  She lifted one hand to stroke his cheek with her fingertips. “I know,” she breathed softly. “That means everything to me.”

  “How touching,” Burton commented. “I suppose you think you’re one up on me now, Masters?”

  “I’m always up on you, Burton.”

  Shanal could hear the loathing in Raif’s voice as he answered his old nemesis.

  “Funny, I don’t believe Laurel felt the same way. As I recall, she chose me over you.”

  “Don’t you dare bring her into this.” Raif started to move forward, his hands clenched into fists, but stopped when Shanal put a hand on his chest to halt him.

  “Don’t, Raif. He’s just baiting you,” she pleaded.

  “Don’t dare? Or what?” Burton jeered. “You’ll take my fiancée from me again? I don’t think so. You’ll remember that Laurel left you for me. I don’t suppose you told many people that, did you? That she was with me because you weren’t enough for her anymore. While you secreted Shanal away in your love nest on the water over there, did you share that piece of information with her? Does she realize that these past few days have probably been little more than a childish tit for tat? You attempting to get back at me for Laurel choosing me over you.”

  “Laurel would never have been happy with you. Don’t kid yourself into believing differently,” Raif growled.

  “Oh, really. Perhaps it was more accurate that she would never have been happy with you. She saw that you wouldn’t, or perhaps more accurately couldn’t, offer her what she needed, the way I did. The way I’m doing for Shanal now.

  “Shanal, are you coming?” Burton changed tack, his voice once again sickly sweet. “Don’t let him trick you any longer, darling. I’ll forgive you for this episode if you come with me now. Trust me, this was more about his need to poke at me than any real desire for you. I’m prepared to overlook that and forget all about this if you’ll come back where you belong.”

  Shanal threw Raif a silent plea to refute those poisonous words. What he’d suggested, that Raif had taken her away only to get back at Burton, was nothing but spite on the part of a man thwarted in his goals, surely. When Raif said nothing, she had to ask him.

  “Revenge, Raif? Seriously? Was that what all this was about?”

  He stood stoic and strong, his eyes not budging from Burton, as if he didn’t trust the man one inch. “No.”

  “But you thought of it, didn’t you?” she asked, desperate to know the truth.

  “Far as I know, a man can’t be condemned for his thoughts.”

  But he could be condemned for his actions. Had everything about these past couple days been a lie? Had their night of loving been no more to him than a means to an end, driven by rivalry with Burton rather than real feelings for her? Shanal didn’t want to believe it was true, but Raif said nothing to tell her differently. He seemed more determined to continue the now silent standoff between the men than to assure her he hadn’t been using her.

  “Shanal, come with me,” Burton instructed. “I promise you, if you come now, everything will be as it was before. I have a message for you, too. From your father. He’s counting on you.”

  Shanal almost got whiplash from the speed at which she spun her head to look at him. The threat implied in his words was clearer than anything he’d ever said before.

  “What’s he talking about?” Raif asked.

  “Nothing,” Shanal said automatically, so used to keeping her father’s shameful secret that she couldn’t bring it out into the open now. The time for confidences in Raif was gone. She cast one more look at him, silently begging him to contradict Burton’s accusations—to be someone she could trust again. But even if he did, she was still caught between a rock and a hard place. A helpless sense of the inevitable seeped like a dark fog into her mind.

  “Remember just how much you have hanging on this,” Burton reminded her in an undertone. “Your job, the roof over your parents’ heads. And if you think your father’s still worried about his reputation, I can only imagine how he’d feel to see yours raked through the muck along with his.”

  Shanal bit the inside of her mouth to hold back the cry of protest that instinctively rose. The writing was on the wall. If she didn’t go back with Burton, she wouldn’t have a job or a reputation left. It would be no hardship for him to use his extensive network and power to ensure that she didn’t find work again in Australia. Possibly even overseas, as well. Anyway, seeking work overseas was a moot point with her parents needing her so much and her father’s illness progressively getting worse. But without the income from her job, how would she be able to take care of her parents?

  “I’m losing patience,” Burton said with an ugly twist to his mouth. “Figure out what you want, darling. You are running out of time.”

  It was what he left unsaid that drove her to her decision. She knew he wouldn’t hesitate to act. To make both hers and her parents’ lives hell. There was only one thing left she could do.

  “I’m coming, but let me say goodbye to Raif—alone,” she added, when Burton made no move to get back into his car.

  “Two minutes, no more,” he conceded.

  The second his car door was closed Raif caught her by her arms. “You don’t have to do this,” he said urgently.

  She looked into his eyes and knew this was the end of what they’d shared together. “Yes, I do. Look, whatever your reasons for helping me, I am grateful at least for the fact you got me away from a situation I wasn’t comfortable with.”

  “What about us?”

  “Good question.” She dived on his words. “What Burton said about you wanting to hurt him, that was true, wasn’t it?”

  “I can’t lie, Shanal. Not to you. There’s bad blood between us and yes, it did cross my mind and give me a certain amount of pleasure to know that spiriting you away would drive him crazy.”

  She felt Raif’s words as if they were tiny cuts across her heart. “Then that’s all I needed to know.”

  “But that’s not all,” he persisted. “It might have started that way—back in the park, at the very beginning—but it isn’t how I feel now. Not about you, Shanal.”

  “How can I believe you?” she asked desperately, tears filling her eyes and obscuring her vision. “Let’s be honest, Raif. For years we’ve been sparring with one another. We’ve never seen eye to eye and it’s not as if we were ever friends. I’m the fool. I should have questioned your willingness to help me in the first place.”

  And really, what did it matter whether she believed him or not? Staying with him wasn’t an option, even if he truly wanted her to. She had only one choice available to her: she had to go back with Burton. That crushing sense of how inescapable her situation was now consumed her. She pulled away.

  “I have to go. He won’t wait forever.”

  “Let him leave then.”

  “I can’t.”

  She forced herself to turn away from Raif and walk toward the car. Burton got out as she approached and strode around to the passenger side to hold the door open for her.

  “Looks like history repeats itself,” he taunted. “And yet again, I win the girl.”

  Nine

  Raif watched as the BMW drove away, his body a mass of bunched muscle still tensed in shock. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. That Shanal had chosen Burton over him. Burton’s parting jeer echoed in his head, and a red film of rage crossed Raif’s vision. The man was toxic. He’d twisted the truth of what had happened in the past—surely Shanal had to see that.

  So why had she chosen to return to him? There had to be more to it. She was an intelligent woman and she had to see that things didn’t add up with Burton. The man
always had an agenda, always had to be on top—by fair means or foul.

  Even when they’d been at private school together he’d been competitive, but that had been nothing compared to how competitive Burton had become as they’d grown into adulthood. Nothing was sacred anymore. Burton had crossed the bridge between good-natured rivalry and the out and out need to win at any cost long before they’d finished high school. Raif had felt the rifts in their camaraderie—for they had never truly been friends—years ahead of the issue with Laurel.

  But none of that meant anything right now, he thought as he watched the taillights on the BMW flick once before it turned and disappeared from view. All that mattered was that the woman who’d blown his mind and his body into new realms had walked away from him for good.

  Raif strode back to the houseboat. There was nothing keeping him here now. He needed to get back downriver and home. As he shoved off and headed back toward the lock he considered everything that had happened in the past four days. It had been such a short time and yet it felt like so much longer.

  After passing through the lock and setting his course, Raif let his mind mull over the final confrontation. Though he hadn’t heard everything they’d said to each other, there’d been an undercurrent between Shanal and Burton. He’d felt it as if it was a tangible thing. Their body language had not been that of lovers, that was for sure. In fact, when he thought back to the church—to before that moment when Shanal had dropped her bouquet, given Burton back his ring and headed for the door—Raif had noticed already the sense of triumph in Burton’s posture. As if Shanal was a prize he’d won, rather than the woman he loved and wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

  Raif knew Shanal deserved more than that in her life partner. In fact, he’d always believed she wanted more than that, too. Even Ethan had said the same after that botched business when he’d asked Shanal to marry him, as part of his misguided efforts to avoid admitting his own feelings about Isobel a couple years back. If Shanal was the kind of woman who was just after what money could bring her, or even if she simply wanted a marriage that brought practical benefits and made logical sense, she’d have accepted Ethan’s offer with alacrity, not laughingly but lovingly turned him down. And Ethan was her best friend—someone she always looked at with warmth and affection, even if there was no heated passion between them. There had been no warmth or affection in her expression when Shanal looked at Burton.

  Raif thought about the niggle he’d had a day or so ago, suspecting there was way more to this than met the eye. His instincts hadn’t let him down before and he had no reason not to trust in them now. And even if he was wrong about Shanal and what she really wanted, he needed to know the truth, for his own sake. If he was right, and he fully expected to be, somehow he’d convince her to walk, hell, run away from Burton again. And this time, he’d hold on to her and keep her safe forever.

  * * *

  Traveling back on his own had been harder than Raif had anticipated. First there was the physical evidence of their passionate lovemaking to contend with. Second was the physical memory of expecting her to be by his side when he worked in the kitchen or even here, at the helm of the boat. The houseboat was not large and yet it felt echoingly empty without Shanal there beside him. He couldn’t get away from it fast enough. What had taken them a leisurely few days to travel upriver, he accomplished in half the time, heading back down.

  Mac was at the marina to greet him.

  “Everything handle okay?” the older man said.

  “Like a breeze,” Raif replied, tossing him the rope to tie off.

  “Where’s your little lady?”

  “Gone home with her fiancé,” he answered, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

  “Her what?”

  “Yeah, Burton Rogers. You remember him?”

  “Remember him, sure. Ever want to see him again? No. I couldn’t understand it when Laurel left you for him. I thought I’d raised her to have better judgment than that. But I think she was swayed more by what he could offer her than by who he was. I’ve always like to think that if she’d lived, she’d have eventually figured him out and left him.”

  Raif just grunted in response. After all, what could he say? That he’d stood by and not fought back when she’d given him an ultimatum about marriage or breaking up? He hadn’t been ready for that commitment. But he certainly hadn’t been ready to lose her altogether, either. And the thought that his choice had driven her into Burton’s arms and from there to her death... No, he wouldn’t let himself think about that.

  “What happened?” Mac asked.

  Raif gave him a brief rundown once he was off the boat.

  “And you let her go?” There was censure in the older man’s voice.

  Raif wanted to vehemently deny it, but he couldn’t. “She was never mine to hold on to.”

  Mac stared out at the slow-moving river. “You know, I never held with that saying about letting love go free. I’ve always thought that if you really want something, you gotta hunt it down and fight to keep it.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Raif concurred, picking up his bag. “And that’s just what I’m going to do.”

  “That’s my boy.” Mac slapped him approvingly on the shoulder.

  Raif drove back to his home in the Adelaide Hills in heavy rain, which meant he had to keep his concentration very firmly on the road ahead and not on his plans to get back Shanal, where he wanted it to be. But the minute he walked through his front door he was reminded of the last time he’d returned home, and who he’d had with him.

  There was a note from his cleaner on the hall table:

  I have hung the wedding dress that was on the floor in the guest room en suite on a hanger in the guest room wardrobe. Please inform me if you need the garment sent to the dry cleaner.

  —H.

  Raif cracked a wry smile. It would have been worth it to see the expression on his cranky cleaner’s face when she came across that little surprise. He went to the spare room to see the dress in question.

  It hung in all its subdued glittering splendor on the rail, the layers of froth at the bottom almost filling the generous space of the wardrobe. Off Shanal’s body it lacked the power and substance it had carried when she’d worn it into the church last Saturday. It was nothing more than a pretty dress with maybe a few too many sparkles attached. He wondered if she wanted it back, and the dainty shoes set beneath it on the shoe rack.

  A swell of impotent rage filled him, making him want to drag the gown from its hangar and cast it back on the floor where Shanal had left it. He swallowed against the urge to roar in disgust at the whole situation. The relief would be only temporary and yelling would do nothing whatsoever toward solving the problem. Shanal had chosen to go with Burton. Sure, there had been disturbing undercurrents between her and her fiancé—it didn’t take an honors student to figure that out. What they hadn’t said in front of him was certainly more interesting than what they had.

  But how to get to the bottom of it, that was the question. Burton had to have some kind of leverage over Shanal. He just had to. Or did he? Maybe it was just that Raif preferred to believe that, since otherwise he’d be forced to conclude that Shanal had used him simply to make a point with her fiancé. He shoved the idea ruthlessly from his mind before it could bloom into anything else.

  She was not like that. At least, she’d never been like that in all the years he’d known her. Besides, Ethan was a great judge of character and he certainly wouldn’t call someone his best friend if she was the type of person to use another, to go so far as to sleep with him, simply to further her own agenda. And there’d been that sense of innocence about Shanal when they’d kissed and when they’d made love for the first time. That wasn’t something you could fake.

  Raif slammed the door of the wardrobe and strode from the room. He’d get to th
e bottom of this somehow.

  * * *

  Shanal shoved a pen behind her ear and rubbed at her eyes. Working late at the laboratory, going over and over the test results from their latest genetic experiment to increase the yield of a particular strain of vinafera hybrid, had done nothing to calm her mind or relieve the ever tightening noose of strain that trapped her. She pushed her chair back from her desk and stared out the window of her office into the darkness that lay beyond. How symbolic it was of her life at the moment, at least of her future, she thought with a shiver of foreboding.

  When Burton had delivered her to her parents’ home on Tuesday night last week, she’d felt exhausted and unwilling to talk. But sometime in the night she’d heard her mother up and moving about in the house, and she’d gone to her. Shanal still couldn’t quite rid herself of the dreadful and overwhelming sense of guilt she’d felt as she’d seen her mother—her shoulders bowed, her skin gray with worry and her mouth a grim line as she’d paced back and forth. It was Shanal’s fault her mom was unable to sleep even though she was exhausted from caring for her husband all day. All their problems could be solved if she’d just do one thing—marry Burton Rogers.

  And she had a second chance now to put things right, even if doing so would probably kill every last dream and hope she’d ever had. She had to go through with it, though, for her father and for her mother. They’d done everything for her, given her every opportunity. Oh, sure, she knew that’s what parents did for their beloved children. Yes, with love came sacrifice. But what of her love for them? If she could do anything, anything at all, to make her father’s remaining time—whether it be months or years—as trouble free and comfortable as he’d worked to make her life from the day she was born, she would do it. It was that simple.

  And that hard.

  Burton had been civil since he’d brought her home—that was about the only term she could use to describe the cool politeness with which he greeted her each day as she’d arrived at work. She caught his reflection behind hers in the window now. It was as if thinking about him had helped him to materialize here in her office. She turned, ready to face him.