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‘Oh, don’t!’
She didn’t even want to think about it.
‘You still could,’ he went on, keeping up that casual, conversational tone. The one that contradicted so starkly the words he was actually saying.
‘We should give you another chance to wear it.’
That hit home so hard it knocked her flat, falling back against the pillows, her eyes closing in shock. She had to be dreaming or hallucinating; this couldn’t be happening! But when she opened them he was still there, still looking down at her with that skin-scouring stare that seemed to have scraped away a much-needed protective layer, leaving herself raw and vulnerable.
‘Better not let it go to waste.’
‘Why?’ She could barely form the word and it came out in a raw croak. ‘How?’
He couldn’t mean what it sounded like, and yet there was no hint of any amusement or anything that might indicate he was anything but deadly serious. With the emphasis on deadly.
‘You could always marry me.’
He’d said that before, in the middle of the night, but she’d taken it as a joke. A black, sick sort of joke that she hadn’t even let register in her mind. But now he was saying it again and the dark emphasis left her in no doubt that he meant what he was saying.
‘But why?’
‘Let me see…’
He lifted a hand, ticking off the points he made one by one.
‘You need someone to get you out of the financial mess you’re in—I can manage that and more. I want the stud. I like what I’ve seen of it so far—though it needs huge investment and modernisation. I want that stallion, Blackjack.’
Didn’t he hear what he was saying? Didn’t he realise that what he was offering was the reason why he had originally turned away from her so callously?
‘But this is what you accused me of before—of wanting you for your money. Like the others, no?’ she questioned as he shook his head almost savagely.
‘Alice—the others—played a role. They claimed they wanted me for myself.’
‘Which is why you pretended you were just a farmer?’
‘Until Rosalie told you the truth.’
‘That you actually owned the farm and the business. Yes, she pointed out the olive oil in the shops…’ Her words dried as she saw the quick frown, the disbelieving look, he had turned on her.
‘What else?’ he demanded.
‘Nothing else! Are you telling me your friend embroidered the truth a little—more than a little—when she reported to you? Did she claim she told me about the worldwide market for your oil?’
Rosalie hadn’t needed to add any such thing, Imogen admitted to herself. Because the truth was that she hadn’t actually listened—or cared. If Raoul was just a farmer, or something more, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she had fallen crazily in love with him and all she wanted was for the magical island interlude to carry on into a much longer future. So she hadn’t even thought of it, and instead had blundered in with her naïve and over-enthusiastic attempt to persuade him to let their relationship become something so much more than a holiday fling.
‘And perhaps she added in the details of the horse breeding programme you were working on? The beautiful stallions I might want to use in the Blacklands stud, just to make sure I bit?’
The answer was written on his face and she almost laughed as she put a hand up to touch his cheek, trace the line of the wry twist to his mouth.
‘Believe me, that was more likely to make me want to turn and run, rather than fight my way through your obvious defences. Oh, Raoul, don’t you think that perhaps your “friend” was a little interested in you herself? I feel sorry for you,’ she added as she saw his eyes change, darkening as realisation set in. ‘No—really, truly, I do. If you can’t trust anyone.’
‘I did once.’
It was a low, muttered growl and the fact that his eyes slid away from hers as he said it told her this was something important. Something he found it hard to speak of.
‘I was young, foolish, barely twenty. I met a girl and fell—hard. I thought she had too.’
‘What happened?’
‘She believed I had money—but it was my father who held the purse strings then. When she found out, she made a play for him instead.’
