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Claire had turned pink. ‘Sometimes you use an awful lot of words to say simple things.’
‘I still want you,’ Raif admitted more frankly.
‘I’m not sure I can believe that when you walked away and never got in touch again,’ Claire said baldly.
‘There was a reason for that...’ Raif compressed his lips.
‘One night was enough?’ Claire suggested flatly, shrugging her slim shoulders in an effort to deny her sensitivity on that score. She was embarrassed for herself because she had taken the dialogue in a direction that was too personal and revealing.
‘I was very tempted to see you again, but it wouldn’t have been fair to you.’ Raif breathed in deep and slow, hesitating because he was not an insensitive guy. ‘I’m not convinced that you truly want to hear me beingthishonest.’
‘If we can’t be honest even now, what kind of marriage could we have?’
‘I’m in love with another woman. I fell for her many years ago,’ he confessed with grim reluctance. ‘But she is not someone I have ever been with or ever could be with because she is married to another man and seems perfectly happy with him.’
‘There’s been no affair?’ Claire checked with a horrid hollow sensation spreading in her tummy.
‘That was never an option...it would not be my style, nor would it be hers.’
‘If it’s someone you can never be with and you recognise that, youshouldhave got over her by now,’ Claire opined with strong conviction.
‘Do you think I haven’t tried?’
‘Try harder,’ Claire instructed with a brittle smile of encouragement, because the little hopes and dreams she had been on the brink of nourishing about his marriage proposition had just been snuffed out and stamped into dust. In love for years with an unobtainable woman? How was she supposed to fight that?Livewith that? But then he was suggesting marriage for their child’s sake and she was getting far too involved in much more personal feelings, feelings she shouldn’t have and could hardly share with him. ‘But thanks for telling me the truth.’
‘But where does it leave us?’ Raif enquired a shade drily.
‘With a better understanding of each other, I hope. I assume we’re staying here tonight?’
Raif nodded, trying and for once failing to read her shuttered face.
Claire was already engaged in burying his confession deep at the back of her mind. Reassured that there had been no affair and that he believed he could never be with the woman of his dreams, she told herself that she shouldn’t be hurt by the unavailability of his heart. What was more, she did respect him for telling her an ugly truth, which no woman would welcome. ‘I was going to ask you to let me sleep on my decision, but I don’t think that’s necessary now. I’ll marry you.’
‘I won’t give you cause to regret it.’
‘You have to be faithful and honest,’ she told him ruefully. ‘That is all I ask from you. I also don’teverwant to know the identity of the woman you told me about. Let’s be clear about that point.’
Raif released his breath in a slow hiss. ‘I can meet those terms. Then we have a deal.’
‘No,nota deal, a marriage. You’re too much of a businessman sometimes,’ she reproved.
Raif grinned with appreciation of that criticism, enjoying the way she treated him: hiding nothing, pretending nothing, indeed disdaining pretence. There was much he admired about Claire that went way beyond her physical appearance and her effect on his libido. Looking at her, he was aroused, fiercely aroused, at the awareness that soon they would be married and she would be his again. When she married him, together they would be able to give their child a stable, loving home. He did not want anything fake either, any more than he wanted to contemplate a future divorce. Divorce, after all, had ripped his life and his mother’s asunder, as well as separating him from his brothers and his father. He would not allow their child to suffer such cruel losses and mercifully the answer to preventing that risk was in his own hands. If he made Claire happy, she would not seek a divorce.
They had a late supper on the terrace, and it was magical, fairy lights twinkling over the trees, apparently left over from some fancy business dinner he had once held at the villa. His reserve was back squarely in the control of him by then. Personal questions still made him tense. He did admit barely knowing his father in any other guise than as the King at ceremonial events. She made him laugh when she told him about being forced to join the church choir as a child even though she had the harsh singing voice of a corncrake. He frowned, though, when she mentioned being loudly rebuked by her father from the pulpit when she whispered or squirmed in her pew as a little girl at Sunday service.
She went up to bed with a little knot of sadness locked up inside her heart. If he hadn’t told her about his love for another woman, she knew she would have crept out of her own bed to find his, but such boldness no longer felt possible. Yes, he still might want her in the most basic way of all, but pride warned her that he should also learn to appreciate her for other things. What exactly those other things might be, well, she had no very clear idea, but somehow slipping covertly into bed with Raif in a way that once would have felt utterly natural and normal to her no longer felt so straightforward.
Claire wasn’t someone accustomed to hiding her emotions and she was used to acting on them, but intelligence told her that in the future she would have to be more guarded, even if it was just in an attempt to match Raif. A princess wouldn’t have an unruly tongue, a silly giggle or think of fluffy, flirty stuff like putting on fancy underwear with which to shock him. And he would be shocked because he had finally admitted that that night he had been a virgin as well. She cherished that fact. At least that other woman couldn’t stealthatfrom her as well.
Raif went for a cold shower, but it didn’t solve his problem and he decided that cold showers were very overrated. He marvelled at all the years he had remained impervious to such cravings. Now he craved Claire as much as though she were some illicit drug already in his bloodstream, but after the casual way their relationship had started out he was convinced that he ought to treat her with the greatest possible respect to ensure that she did not think he would ever take her beautiful body for granted.
In the morning, Claire asked what she should wear for the wedding ceremony and Raif frowned. ‘I’ll consult my staff and organise something here at the house. You will require a complete wardrobe, but we can’t shop together here in Monaco where I am well known.’
He didn’t want to hurt Claire by telling her the truth that if his father found out that he was marrying a woman without his approval he would move heaven and earth to stop him because Claire was neither royal nor connected to some important Quristani family. At the same time, however, his father had never once indicated any interest in when or even if Raif would ever get married, although he had exerted himself to personally select his older sons’ wives. Having consulted his lawyer, Raif knew there was nothing in the constitution that even implied that he needed anyone’s permission to marry and once the deed was done, it was done. He would not risk his child being born out of wedlock.
Claire went to visit Circe again, but this time with Mohsin as her escort. Her cat was more responsive than she had been the day before and Claire was glad, because it looked unlikely now that her pet would suffer any further problems from her injuries. She regretted her inability to take Circe back to the villa with her, but that wasn’t possible when they were about to fly to Spain, and she could hardly saddle Eileen with a convalescent cat.
‘So, what do I wear?’ Claire asked Raif again when on her return he informed her the ‘fashion people’ had arrived and awaited her in the main salon. ‘A wedding dress or something less bridal?’
