AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Of course I never wanted to hurt him. I wouldn’t have done that willingly but for you. What you did tonight, you’re the one who hurt him.’
‘Hurt his pride, more likely. I saw his face when he came into the room—and I watched him last night with you. I’ve never seen anyone less in love.’
‘You think so?’ Defiance rang in her tone, and he saw the way her neat chin lifted high.
‘I know so.’ It was arrogant and hard. Totally assured.
She had to acknowledge that Raoul was right, Imogen admitted unwillingly. Though she was shocked at how easily he had seen through the act that she and Adnan had put on so that everyone would believe their marriage was real. Even Ciara had been convinced. She had to have been, because Imogen knew that her sister would have tried to dissuade her from going through with the marriage if she’d thought it was fake. And she’d promised Adnan that this arrangement would look like a marriage that meant something, so she had had to keep to that promise, even if it meant pretending to her new-found sister.
It was bad enough knowing that Raoul had seen through Adnan’s behaviour, but the thought that he might also have seen the truth of her own emotions made her feel as if the robe she had tightened round her so desperately only moments before was now as constricting as a corset, making it almost impossible to breathe.
‘You won’t exactly come out of this smelling of roses!’ she flung at him, needing to attack him to hide the tsunami of feeling that was raging inside her. ‘That stupid deal you came here for will all be for nothing. You don’t think Adnan will want to go through with it after this!’
‘Do you really think that was what I came here for?’
The challenge made her head go back, her face tensing.
‘Well, it sure as hell wasn’t for me.’
Again, there was that flicker of an expression across his face, changing the set of his muscles, the burn of his eyes. It made her shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other on the shabbily carpeted floor, her eyes going unwillingly to the bottle of wine and the two glasses. Surely another drink would ease this dragging, draining tension between them? But she didn’t want to go that way, the way her father went when anything went wrong, the path that had contributed so much to the perilous state they were in. Would her mother have left if Joe hadn’t already been too keen to turn to alcohol when times got rough? Could she and Ciara actually have shared a childhood, grown up together, if alcohol hadn’t been Joe’s answer to everything?
‘Two…’ she said unexpectedly, and saw that dark frown appear again in puzzlement at her words.
‘Two?’
‘Two glasses. You have that bottle of wine and two glasses.’
A sharp, silent nod was his only answer, acknowledging her awareness, but waiting for her to take the puzzle further.
So how much of this had he planned? Had he been expecting someone else here tonight? She knew he was a devastatingly good-looking man, but would he have been able to pick up another woman, met in the village only this afternoon? He’d done that with her in Corsica, so she guessed he was capable of doing exactly the same here.
‘Who were you expecting?’
The devilish smile that curled up the corners of that wide, sensual mouth was warning enough. But it was a warning she knew it was too late to heed.
‘I was waiting for you,’ Raoul drawled, letting that smile grow, widen fiendishly.
‘You…’
Just the thought knocked the air from her lungs, leaving it hard to breathe.
‘You thought I would come to you!’
‘Not thought.’ It was a flat, dark statement. ‘I knew.’
‘No way.’
That she might be so easy to read was something from her nightmares. If he had guessed—known—that she would come to find him, then what else might he know simply from looking into her face; reading the truth there?
Oh, dear heaven, how much of the truth could he see?
‘You couldn’t know!’
‘Well, you’re here, aren’t you?’ Raoul tossed at her, soft and dangerously low. ‘You’re here, drinking my wine.’
Imogen felt as if a noose had been thrown around her throat, inexorably tightening with every word that Raoul let fall. He had known. He had prepared for just this, ready for her to fall into his trap.
