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Nor did he know anything about the broken heart that had driven her into that agreement with the man who had once been her best friend. And he never would.
‘This way, he’ll be a man of honour, doing what was right. He’ll be seen as standing aside to let two soul mates—’
‘Soul mates!’ The words choked her, burning in her throat. ‘Never! We’re whatever the opposite is…’
She couldn’t finish the sentence in the face of his slow nod, the sardonic twist to his mouth.
‘You might know that—we might know that—but for this to work the world has to believe in those soul mates. And so does Adnan. For the devil’s sake, Imogen—give the man back his honour.’
So he acknowledged that Adnan had gone into this for honourable reasons—but not her? Of course not; he believed that all she was after was the money—just as he’d decided that had been her motive with him. But at least this way she could give something back to her friend, for what he had been prepared to do to help her. She owed him that at least.
And maybe that way Ciara too would no longer be so angry at what she obviously now saw as a dark lie she found so hard to forgive. Something tugged at her brain, a thought of Ciara meeting Adnan. Worried about the story she had had to spin to her sister, was it possible that she had failed to interpret their feelings for each other properly? But now, if Adnan was free…
‘All right. If that’s the way you want to spin it.’
It wasn’t so terribly far from the truth, was it? She had fallen madly in love with Raoul when she had first met him. She’d been carrying a torch for that love for years. She might have thought her love for him had been lost when their baby had died, but the truth was that she had never truly let go of it. She had always had the tiny, secret hope that if she had gone back to Corsica and found him, if she had told him about the baby they had created between them, then he would at least have given her a hearing. She’d even allowed herself to dream that one day he might realise she had not been after his money but had loved him with all her heart. She still did, she acknowledged miserably, while all the time the dark, sombre sound of the death knell for her hopes and dreams rang inside her heart.
‘You call it a spin?’ Raoul had the nerve to look surprised, even a trifle shocked. The man could lie through his teeth and not turn a hair, it seemed. ‘It’s a win-win situation—surely you can see that?’
Win-win for everyone but her. She could marry Raoul and give him what he wanted, give everyone what they needed—rescue her father, the stud, Adnan, even Ciara. At the very least, her sister would have the family home to stay in—and perhaps a chance with the man her sister had once admitted she’d fallen for since she’d come to Ireland, even if she was determined to keep his name a secret. But she couldn’t do a thing for herself.
Except to admit to the weakness of dreading watching Raoul walk away from her again as he had done years ago. She didn’t know how she’d survived that separation then, and he had only to reappear in her life for her to realise she couldn’t go through it again. If she agreed to his proposal—such as it was—then she could at least give herself the double-edged pleasure of knowing she could live as Raoul’s wife, loving him with all her heart. But at the same time, she would have to know that he did not love her and had only married her for the business deal he had cold-bloodedly offered her.
But what other choice did she have? He could ruin everyone, destroy them completely, and still walk away from her. Or she could take the little he was offering and pray that one day she might find a way to make him see how she felt—perhaps even bring him to care for her just a little.
Perhaps one day she could end up loving his child, as she had so longed to do years before.
He admitted that he wanted her more than any other woman in the world. Was that enough for her to face the future that lay before her?
It would have to be.
‘OK, then.’ She forced herself to say it. ‘That’s the way it will be.’
Raoul’s smile was fast and hard, a mere curl of his lips, bringing no light to his eyes at all.
