AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He had to swallow down hard against the nausea before he could speak again.
‘I thought the time for truths of that sort would have been earlier—when he asked you to marry him.’
Perhaps, if he’d been looking at her, then Imogen might not have been able to reveal the full truth. She couldn’t help but feel that it put her in a position of danger to let this man know any more about the way her marriage had been arranged. The bargain she had made with Adnan.
‘He didn’t.’
It had been a sort of mutually accepted fact that this was how they were going to proceed—a business deal, really, but one in which they cared about each other enough to make certain aspects of it work. The memory of how it had felt to be held close to Raoul—the heat that had seared through her, then and in the past, the acknowledgement of how easy it would have been to go along with the heir-making part of that relationship—made her bring her teeth down sharply on her tongue to stop herself from adding anything even more stupid to her last remark.
But it was too late. Raoul had clearly already noted it, spinning round to subject her to a frighteningly intent scrutiny.
‘He didn’t ask?’
‘We didn’t need things like that. It was…accepted that we would marry. Almost from the day we were born.’
That was the story they’d decided on if anyone challenged their commitment. She’d never expected to have to justify it to this man who’d stolen her heart so that, like Adnan, she didn’t have one to give to anyone else.
‘We both grew up here, and were both likely to inherit the two studs. So joining them together through a family union seemed inevitable.’
What had she said to draw those dark, straight brows together in an ominous frown?
‘And this arrangement—was it in place when we were together?’ It was a harsh demand.
‘Er…no. We were…’ She couldn’t believe she was actually going to say this. ‘We were on a break.’
They’d rebelled against the way that both their families had kept suggesting that the dynastic union was the best way to go. Adnan had lost the real love of his life when the girl he had wanted to marry had been killed in a vile hit-and-run accident, and Imogen had come to feel that she could never go through with a marriage without love and passion. That was why she had been holidaying in Corsica. She’d needed the freedom and relaxation to find herself. To find what she really wanted in life.
She’d believed that in Raoul she’d found what she wanted, only to discover that he didn’t want her. And he wouldn’t have wanted the tiny baby she had barely realised she had conceived before she’d lost it. When she’d come back to Ireland after the nightmare of her visit to Ciara in London, she’d understood so much more about the way Adnan had felt. At the same time, it seemed that he had sensed the deep wound in her, so that his consideration, his gentleness, had made it so much easier to accept the marriage of convenience that was all he had to offer. He had never asked for details about her private sense of loss, and for that she had been grateful, knowing that to tell anyone would rip open the barely healed scar and leave it raw and bleeding.
Somehow, by opening her eyes wide and staring straight ahead, Imogen managed to force back the burn of salt behind her lids. She needed to rebuild her defences, put something up between herself and Raoul. He was getting far too close.
‘And, besides, we—you—were nothing but a holiday fling.’
He hadn’t liked that. She saw the blink of his heavy lids, the way his head came up.
‘A holiday fling—was that all?
‘Of course it was!’ Did her claim sound too emphatic, too shrill? It seemed so in her ears. ‘You don’t think I wanted you to marry me, did you?’
His expression said everything she had thought she’d imagined back then, and she had been dreading that he might remember to throw it in her face.
‘You did, didn’t you!’ she bluffed, grateful for the lingering effects of the wine that took the edge off the dark bruises of her memories. ‘Oh, really, Raoul—sorry to disappoint you. You were fun, but you were just not that irresistible.’
