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An addictive thought.
He turned his mind to something more mundane before his own desire for her became apparent. ‘Lance will be visiting tonight, around eight.’
Something whispered across her face. Her eyes widened a fraction. She chewed at the side of her bottom lip. ‘It’s nice to have a friend. Say hello to him for me.’
‘You’re welcome to join us.’
She shook her head. ‘I need an early night.’
What they needed was to be in bed together. Burning away the emotion and fury with their bodies. Not this cold war.
He nodded to the folder she held before her. The red clutched against her chest like a garish wound. ‘Have you finished reading?’
He’d been given a summary and could only guess the horrors it contained.
She dropped her head. The knuckles on her hands gripping the folder whitened. ‘They want to rationalise the public service.’
This he knew. A gross suggestion that punished the innocent whilst those responsible still grew fat, rewarded by their own negligence.
‘Sacking twenty thousand. As a start,’ she whispered, then her voice firmed, ‘I’ll sell the Crown jewels before I destroy the lives of twenty thousand people.’
‘You can’t do that. The country needs its symbols.’
She raised her chin, looking every bit the monarch she’d been crowned. He wished her people could see her like this. Then they wouldn’t doubt her, they’d exalt her.
‘People can’t eat diamonds and those precious symbols won’t keep them warm in the coming winter.’
‘We’ll find another way.’ He only hoped the alternative was better. It had to be. She seemed unmoved.
‘How long will it take to assemble a meeting of experts to discuss this?’
‘I’ve already given some acceptable candidates some thought. Hopefully only a few days, considering the urgency.’
She pulled herself upright, her mouth tight and hard as she stared him down.
‘Then make it so.’ He might have smiled at the very words he’d used with her only hours earlier being tossed back at him, as if he were one of her minions. But he didn’t think she’d appreciate any mirth. Not now. She tapped the folder in her arms. ‘I’ll spend the evening considering this. I don’t want to be disturbed.’
She stalked from the room. Damn it all. He hadn’t improved anything. Rafe watched her leave, the click of her low heels echoing on the marble floors.
They were now further away from each other than ever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LISESATONthe couch in her room, the cursed red folder on the table in front of her. A barely touched dinner to her side. She took a deep shuddering breath, but the trembling wouldn’t stop. She was cold, so cold. How could no one have told her? What were they thinking, that they could hide the coming disaster? She buried her face in her quivering hands. Pressed her fingers hard into her eyes, trying to push back the tears that stung her eyelids. If only her family had confided in her. She might have married Rafe if the importance of their union had been disclosed. She could have helped save the country in that way. Then her family would have lived. All ifs, buts and maybes.
She stood and looked out onto the darkening valley. The lights of the capital blinking on as dusk fell. All those people out there, living their lives. Hoping, dreaming and her government was demanding she decimate them. No. Never.
But she didn’t know what to do. Everything in that cursed report sounded so urgent. Budget emergencies led by poor decisions and some even poorer speculative investment of Lauritania’s funds, and here they were. The country’s fate was in her hands, yet none of them trusted her with it. Her actions would affect thousands. In her time at finishing school, with the palace tutors, managing a country’s economy had never figured in her education. She hadn’t even known how to manage a bank account until Albert taught her, a life skill he’d said every person needed to learn. She’d been locked in a pretty tower, given nothing to help her negotiate life other than being told she’d have an auspicious marriage and her husband would look after everything from then on.
The ache welled in her chest. Gripped her throat till she couldn’t breathe. She clutched the back of a chair. Weeks of fighting to hold onto control and it came to this. People who didn’t even know it yet were relying on her to make the right decisions. Twentythousandpeople. She fought the first sob that tore from her throat, the tears that flowed freely down her cheeks for the first time since she’d been told of her family’s deaths, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. If no one trusted her, how could shefixthings? It broke out with a rush, the grief, the fear. An avalanche she couldn’t hold back. Sobbing in a way she wasn’t sure would ever stop.
The door adjoining creaked open. A cool rush of air flooded in from Rafe’s rooms. She straightened, wiped frantically at her eyes and nose but there was no hiding these tears as she tried to choke down the agony cutting her in two. As the whole atmosphere of the room changed, she knew without looking that he was now bearing down on her.
‘Leave me alone.’ Her voice scratched out too rough and raw to hide how she’d weakened. She turned her back so he couldn’t see, shoulders hunched over, wanting to curl into herself and disappear.
‘Lise, I heard you.’ That voice. So soft, so gentle. Wrapping around her like a goose-down comforter. She sensed the warmth of him, standing behind her. For a moment she imagined he could take it all away. The pain, the fear. If only she could lean in, accept some support. She wouldn’t need long. Warm herself from all the cold...
No.
