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‘If you knew that….’
It took a monstrous effort to get the words past lips that were stiff and cold as blocks of ice. The normal flow of her blood seemed to have frozen in her veins, leaving her as cold as death.
‘Then why…why did you…?’
‘Why did I marry you? Or do you mean why did I make love to you?’
Hearing that emotive word, Lily lost her temper once and for all. The welcome heated rush of anger flooded through her like adrenaline, melting the ice that had clogged her emotions.
‘Love! Don’t honour what you did with the description making love! We both know it was no such thing!’
What had she expected? Guilt? Or sorrow? Some sign of repentance? If that was the case then she was sorely disappointed.
But she had expected something. Not just this blank, withdrawn silence. This total lack of any response, either conciliatory or hostile. It was as if steel shutters had suddenly slammed to behind his eyes, shutting off all sign of emotion.
‘So tell me the truth. Why did you have sex with me? Why not just get me to fall in love with you—marry you? Why didn’t you just leave that night?’
Why had he added that final, unbearable twist of the knife to the emotional torment he had already inflicted on her?
‘And make things easy for you? Oh, no, my lovely. I wasn’t going to have you claiming that our marriage wasn’t real, that it was never consummated. And so I made sure that it was. That way you’d have to go through the process of getting a divorce before you were free to be with anyone else.’
There was something not quite right here. Something that struck a false note, jarring badly on Lily’s tightly stretched nerves. But she couldn’t quite put her finger on what was worrying her, and his face gave her no help at all. His expression was still carefully blank, totally unrevealing, his eyes just slivers of glinting steel beneath thick black lashes.
‘But if I have to wait for a divorce…’ she tried stumblingly. ‘Then so will you.’
‘Yes,’ Ronan agreed, the single syllable enigmatically flat and toneless. ‘So will I.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I WARNED you that Davey wouldn’t come back.’
It was almost a week now since her brother’s precipitate departure from Belvedere House. A week in which Lily had slowly, unwillingly, had to adjust to having Ronan back in her life.
No, ‘adjust’ wasn’t the right word. She hadn’t adjusted to anything. But she had learned to cope with his presence in her home, to live with the emotional turmoil that seeing him every day inflicted on her.
And that turmoil was really her own fault. She had set out to prove how little she cared that he was back in Edgerton, but the plan had rebounded on her painfully.
When Ronan had first announced that he was staying, she had wanted to fight him tooth and nail rather than have him here, in this house that she had thought they were to share as husband and wife. She didn’t care if, morally at least, he had the right to be there because he had actually bought the house in the first place. She didn’t want him anywhere near her; she just couldn’t bear it.
But then a very different idea had struck her, forcing her into a total rethink. If she fought Ronan as she wanted, she would be giving him the impression that she cared about him being here. If he even suspected the strain she felt at having him in the house, he would know that her feelings for him were not quite what she claimed, and that was the last thing she wanted.
So what better way to demonstrate supreme indifference than to let him move in without a word of protest? That would show him that she couldn’t care less whether he came or went, that he was no longer any real part of her life.
And so she had shrugged her shoulders in a near approximation of unconcern when he had asked which room he should use.
‘Does it matter? This is a monstrous great house with more than enough space. I’m sure that out of seven bedrooms you could find one to use. Help yourself. You could even have the master bedroom, if you like.’
Ronan’s frown told her that he knew she was referring to the room they had shared on their travesty of a wedding night.
‘But I would have thought that you…’
‘That I would want to sleep there?’ She affected surprise at the thought. ‘No chance. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something rotten under the floorboards in there. There’s a singularly nasty smell hanging around the place. That’s why I moved into one of the rooms that looks out over the back garden.’
But now he had been installed in the house for a week, like a hungry lion patiently waiting for his prey, and there was still no sign of Davey.
‘You’ve frightened my brother away with your terrorist tactics, and by doing so you’ve ruined your own nasty little game. If Davey ever sets foot in this house again, I’ll be really surprised.’
‘I won’t,’ Ronan returned indifferently from behind the newspaper he was reading at the breakfast table in the big farmhouse kitchen. ‘I think that in this matter at least I know your brother better than you do. He needs money desperately and he’ll resort to anything to get it.’
‘He doesn’t have to come in person.’
Lily gave up all pretence at eating and reached for her coffee instead. It was impossible not to contrast Ronan’s relaxed appearance, in jeans and a royal blue polo shirt, with her own stiff demeanour. Dressed as she was, in a lacy white blouse and the peach-coloured skirt of one of the tailored suits she wore to work, she was only too aware of the way that she looked like the out-of-place visitor to Belvedere House while Ronan was clearly very much at home.
‘He’d only have to phone…’
‘And you’d come up with the needed cash?’
The paper was lowered slowly and Ronan regarded her appraisingly over the top of it.
‘You really are one hell of a soft touch.’
He sounded almost sympathetic, an unexpected softness in the words tying her nerves in knots. Seven days of living in close proximity to him hadn’t done anything to lessen the potent impact of that spectacular bone structure, the compelling light eyes and forceful physique. If anything, daily exposure to his own lethal brand of sexual magnetism had only heightened her sensitivity to it, so that she was shiveringly aware of the way that even a few days’ sun had brought a warm tan to the long, muscular forearms exposed by the short sleeves of his shirt.
‘A soft touch and all sorts of a fool is what you really mean,’ she snapped, fighting the unwanted tug at her heart.
Ronan lifted one winged brow in a gesture of lazy surprise.
‘Did I say that?’ he asked with derisive undertones of ‘if the cap fits’ to the words. ‘But even if you are, it works to my advantage.’
‘How’s that?’
Lily got up from the table and moved to place her breakfast things in the dishwasher, slamming it shut again with a force that betrayed the turmoil of her feelings.
‘Well, Davey obviously knows how to play you for a sucker, and so, although it looks like he’s gone into hiding right now, I don’t expect it will be long before he surfaces again. And when he does I’ll be here.’
And he’d be only too quick to suss out any contact Davey made, Lily thought bitterly, nervously smoothing an escaping strand of golden blonde hair back into the smooth coil at the nape of her neck.
Given the choice of all the bedrooms in the house, Ronan had selected the one right next to Davey’s. That way, even if her brother were to sneak in in the middle of the night, he would be sure to hear. And as he rarely left the house during the day there was no way she could prevent her brother from walking into his trap.
‘I thought you said you had work to do while you were up here.’
Ronan nodded slowly. ‘That’s right. This trip is supposed to be business as well as…’
He let the sentence trail off and Lily found herself unable to supply a word to fill the gap. ‘Pleasure’ hardly fitted on any account, though she had to admit with a shiver that Ronan took a grim satisfaction in his Machiavellian waiting game.
‘Some businesses you wanted to see, you said.’
‘Mmm,’ Ronan agreed, getting to his feet with lazy grace and stretching sensually. ‘A club and a wine bar. I thought I’d go tonight and see them while they’re open, so I can judge what sort of clientele they attract.’
Hastily Lily averted her eyes, not wanting to be reminded of the physical appeal of his strong body. The soft cotton of his shirt clung lovingly to the taut muscles underneath in a way that emphasised their honed power, and the well-worn jeans clung tight as a second skin on the long powerful legs and narrow waist.
‘They don’t sound like your usual sort of thing,’ she managed jerkily.
‘They’re not—strictly small fry that I wouldn’t normally bother with if I didn’t have other concerns that would bring me north anyway. I hear they’re both pretty rundown, and so they could be a bargain. If so, I’ll probably snap them up.’
As he had done with Davey. The thought sent a cold, creeping sensation sneaking down Lily’s spine. Would he work some other wickedly Machiavellian deal this time too? Manipulating the situation to his own advantage and leaving the owners at a loss, as he had done with her brother?
