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For a moment, he didn’t answer. Even in the darkness, she could feel his black eyes on her. Finally, he spoke in a rueful tone. “It seemed wiser to keep the agreement we made in March.”
Those humiliating tears rose again, thickening her throat, burning behind her eyes. She blinked them away. “What if I needed you? What if I need you right now?”
He was silent again, a breath-held kind of quiet. Then, finally, “Do you need me?”
She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it. Yet.
And he spoke again, chidingly. “You never said so in the messages you left. Or when you came to the gate.”
She had the tears under control for the moment. But still, her pulse galloped along, refusing to slow. Her cheeks were burning red. Memories of their four-day love affair seemed to swirl in the night air between them, dizzying. Glorious. Yet awful, too, in the sense of loss and hopelessness that dragged at her. “Yes, well, I do have some pride. I’m not telling your housekeeper I need you. I’m not putting it in a text or leaving it on your voice mail.”
He took a step closer. “Gen...” What was it she heard in his voice? Longing? Pain? Or only her own wishful thinking? She couldn’t tell, not with just that one syllable to judge by. Whatever emotion might have gripped him, he instantly banished it and added with his customary quiet control, “Come inside.”
“Fine.” She braced her hand against the wall, put most of her weight on her good foot and staggered upright. Her bad ankle didn’t give out, but it wobbled beneath her. She winced and let out a moan.
He was at her side in an instant. “Let me help.” Eerie, the way he could move, that magical swift grace that so completely belied his size. One of his legs had been broken in the accident six months before. Two months ago, he’d still had a slight limp. The limp was gone now.
But when the moonlight fell across the right side of his face, the scar was still there, puckered and angry, though not as red as before. It started at the corner of his eye, curving around his cheek in a shape that echoed the crescent moon above them, the end of it seeming to tug at the side of his mouth, as though trying to force him to smile—and failing. Rafe rarely smiled. Two months ago, she’d asked if he’d checked into the possibilities of plastic surgery. He’d said no, he hadn’t. And he didn’t intend to.
“Here.” He took her hand. His touch slammed into her, making him suddenly so real to her again, so warm and solid. And why did he have to smell so good? It wasn’t the least fair. He’d always smelled good to her, even when she thought of him strictly as a friend—so clean, so healthy, like new grass and fresh air and sweet, just-turned earth.
And please. What did it matter that he smelled good? She had to put all her concentration on the task before her, on telling him what he needed to know.
He guided her arm around his huge, hard shoulders. His heat and strength seared along her side. Together, with her leaning on him to keep her weight off her right foot, they turned to go in, taking the stone path through the hedge and across a stretch of lawn to the wide patio shaded by jacaranda and carob trees and through the open French doors into the combination kitchen and family room.
“Here...” He led her to a wide white chair.
“Maybe not,” she warned. “I’ve got bits of grass and dirt all over my jeans.”
“It’s all right. Sit down.”
“Your call,” she said resignedly, easing her arm from across his shoulders and sinking onto the soft cushion. “It hardly looks like the same place.” The large room had been redecorated and updated, the living area with light-colored fabrics and modern oversize furniture. The kitchen now had chef-quality appliances and granite and wood countertops.
“Tourists with fat billfolds don’t appreciate heavy draperies and an ancient fridge. They want comfort and openness to go with the view.” He gestured toward the terrace opposite the French doors. On that side, the villa needed no garden walls. It touched the edge of the cliff. From where she sat, she could see the crowns of palm trees and farther out, the harbor and the blue Mediterranean. The DeValerys were English, of Norman descent, but Montedoran blood also ran in their veins. Villa Santorno had come down through the generations from a Montedoran-born DeValery bride.
“So.” She tried not to sound wistful. “You really do plan to make it a rental?”
“I do.” He towered above her, the scar pulling at his mouth, his eyes endlessly dark and way too somber. Two months ago, he’d come to Montedoro to make arrangements for the villa’s renovation. At that time, it had been four months since the accident that took his older brother Edward’s life and gave Rafe the earldom as well as his crescent scar. Genny had essentially run him to ground then—just as she was doing now.
