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Harriet could not believe there was a red-blooded male within ten miles unaware of who Frankie Millar was. A former glamour model, Frankie had made a highly successful transfer into the world of television as a presenter. Popular and talented, she now interviewed the rich and famous on her own chat show. He must have slept with her last night. Try as she might, that was the only thought in Harriet’s head. She felt sick. But it was two days since Rafael had told her that he wanted her back, and she had turned him down and done a runner, so what had she expected? Guys that rich, handsome and in demand did not go solo for long.
‘Rafael tells me you’re his first business partner ever,’ Frankie continued cheerfully. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Interesting. There’s not a lot of discussion about decisions, and there’s a lot of the unexpected.’ To avoid looking direct at Frankie, who was adding being warm and friendly to the unwelcome parade of her virtues, Harriet focused with a wooden smile on the rosettes being handed out to the winners in the obstacle race. ‘But he has this very irritating habit of picking up on the things I miss, so I can’t complain. Excuse me—I have some things to check on. Lovely meeting you, Frankie.’
As Harriet walked away, with an eagerness she could not hide, Frankie watched Rafael stare after the curvaceous redhead with the kind of acquisitive intensity he usually reserved for thoroughbred racehorses.
‘You should’ve mentioned I was married to your best friend,’ Frankie told him ruefully.
Rafael shot his companion a wickedly amused glance. ‘It was a deliberate oversight.’
‘You sneaky bastard!’ the brunette gasped, as she realised that she had been used to test the water. ‘I hope she gives you hell!’
‘She probably will. She’s no push-over.’
‘If you don’t tell her I’m a mate, I will,’ Frankie threatened.
Blinded by the raw surge of conflicting feelings surging up inside her, Harriet trudged slowly through the ranks of parked cars. Rafael had found a replacement for her and, what was even worse, a thinner, prettier and sexier lady, with a glamorous television career. She heard a shout and thought she recognised her half-brother’s voice. Frowning, she glanced up from the ground. Boyce was racing across the lane as if he was chasing after someone. In fact several people from different locations seemed to be giving chase, and she spun round to see what was causing the commotion. Had there been an accident? Or a theft? Wheels were screaming over gravel too fast, and she only had an instant to register that a car with a sobbing woman at the wheel was bearing down on her.
Someone shouted at her. Suddenly there was a blur of movement and she was snatched off her feet and hauled clear of danger. Her shoulder caught a glancing blow off the wing of a parked van before she hit the ground in a tangle of limbs. Winded and shocked, she gasped and fought to fill her squashed lungs with oxygen again. She heard the horrible crunch of tearing metal as the car, which had missed her, took the corner too wide and too fast and cannoned into a stationary vehicle.
Rafael bent over her. His eyes were bright as the heart of a fire, his lean, dark face displaying a level of anxiety that she had never expected to see there. ‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me you’re OK.’
Her shoulder was throbbing and her whole body ached, for sh
e had hit the ground hard when she fell, but in that moment the discomfort meant nothing to her. He had risked his own life to yank her out of the path of a car.
‘Frankie’s married to my oldest friend. I used her as bait to see if it bothered you to see me with another woman.’ He grabbed up her hand and his own was not quite steady. He turned his beautiful mouth into her palm to press a kiss there before lifting his head again and muttering roughly, ‘I’m a stupid smart-ass bastard. I might have killed you!’
‘It’s all right…’ Her throat tightening with the onset of shock and strong emotion, she was blinking back tears. ‘I like smart-asses.’
For a split second she thought he was about to kiss her. Then the raised voices and the tearing sound of a woman crying intruded. Rafael vaulted upright and helped her up. ‘I think we’ve caught your stalker…I just hope she hasn’t hurt anybody else.’
‘Stalker?’ Her attention locked in consternation to the tableau playing out thirty feet away.
Mercifully nobody appeared to have been hurt in the accident, but a youthful blonde woman was having noisy hysterics at the bonnet of the Porsche that had just missed hitting Harriet. For some reason she appeared to be surrounded by a good proportion of Rafael’s events organizers, and a garda officer for good measure. But what drew Harriet’s concerned scrutiny was the sight of her brother, lodged ten feet away. He was staring at the blonde with an unusually bleak expression, and then he swung away.
‘Boyce!’ the blonde called frantically after him. ‘Help me…don’t leave me here like this!’
Shoulders hunched, Boyce walked straight over to Harriet and put his arms round his sister. ‘I’m so sorry…I’m really sorry about all of this. Are you all right? Thank God you’re not hurt. If Gemma had run you over I don’t think I could have lived with myself—’
‘Why should you be sorry?’ Harriet winced as the blonde began to sob with noisy abandon. ‘Gemma? Do you know her?’
‘Let’s take this discussion elsewhere. We’re beginning to attract attention.’ An arm around Harriet’s form, Rafael led the way over to his car, saying only loud enough for her to hear, ‘The stalker is your brother’s ex, Gemma Barton. She went overboard for him and he broke it off. But she made it tough for him to cut loose completely and he was glad to get away on tour. Evidently she followed him over to Ireland and assumed that you were his latest squeeze.’
‘Oh, heck.’ Harriet stole a glance at her half-sibling’s pale, set profile, her heart going out to him as she let Rafael help her into the passenger seat. ‘Why didn’t it occur to me that he might be the “him” in that message on the stable wall?’
‘I suspect you felt that I deserved a bunny-boiler more than he did.’
Harriet was shocked to feel her lip quiver at that deadpan response. ‘How come you know so much more about this than I do?’ she asked. ‘Look, why am I getting into your car?’
‘I put you in it,’ Rafael pointed out equably.
‘But I can’t leave the gymkhana,’ Harriet argued as Boyce climbed into the back seat.
‘Yes, you can. My staff are more than capable of running what remains of the show. You need to be checked over by a doctor—’
‘No—’
