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Zane’s eyes bored into her as if searching for her soul.Damn Ellery Rhodes and what he had done to his beautiful wife!Despite the desire for revenge seeping through his blood, Zane knew as he watched Tiffany battle against tears that he could never hurt her. It would be easy to make love to Rhodes’s wife, but Zane knew instinctively that she would never forgive him if he took advantage of her vulnerable state and she later found out that her husband was alive.
She managed to slowly get hold of herself. “Why does all this matter to you, and why on earth would you want to buy this farm?” she questioned, her voice a whisper. “You have your choice of every breeding farm on the market—so why this one?”
“I’m not interested in just any farm. I already have one in Ireland.”
“And that’s what you do—breed horses, when you’re not bothering widows?”
His lips thinned in disgust. Against his better judgment, Zane crossed the room and stood near the desk, near the attractive woman leaning against the polished surface. Her head was thrown back, her white throat exposed, her silken hair falling in a reckless tumble of honey-brown that touched the desk.
“Have I bothered you so much?”
“More than you’ll ever guess,” she admitted, straightening. She rubbed her arms, hoping to warm the inner chill of dread settling between her shoulders. After glancing up at the portrait of Devil’s Gambit, she turned cold, suspicious eyes on Zane.
“You really believe everything you’ve told me, don’t you?”
“It’s the truth.”
“And is that why you want the farm? Do you want to buy me out, and then blow this whole thing wide open about Devil’s Gambit? That way there would be an investigation and you would have a chance, as owner of Rhodes Breeding Farm, of recovering him?”
“I don’t think it would work that way,” Zane said stiffly. “You would still own the horse. That’s not the reason I want this farm.”
“Then what is, Zane? Why did you come here in the first place?” He was much too close, but she didn’t give in an inch. Proudly she faced him, her soft lips pressed into a frown, her skin stretched tightly over the gentle curve of her cheek.
Zane’s dark eyes drove into her very soul. “Ellery Rhodes stole from me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Deciding to distance himself from her, Zane walked over to the bar and splashed another drink into his glass.How much could he confide to Ellery Rhodes’ s widow without blowing everything?“It’s not a subject I like to discuss,” Zane admitted after taking a long swallow of the warm Scotch. “But about six years ago Ellery won a large amount of cash from me.”
“And you hate him for that?” Tiffany was incredulous. What kind of a man was Zane?
“Not until I found out that the game was rigged. Oh, by the way, your brother-in-law, Dustin, was in on it, too.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. Your husband was little more than a thief.”
Tiffany was numb from the tattered state of her emotions. “And you’ve waited all this time, just to get even with him,” she guessed, her voice without inflection. “It didn’t matter that he was dead—you just had to do something,anythingto get even.”
Zane saw the disbelief and silent accusations in Tiffany’s eyes. He wanted to purge himself, tell all of the story, but couldn’t. Stasia’s betrayal had been long ago, but it was still an open wound that continued to bleed. He’d accused himself of still loving his ex-wife, even after she’d run off with Ellery Rhodes. But Zane knew better. He doubted if he had ever loved Stasia, but his battered pride was still raw from her deceit.
“I want this farm,” he said as thoughts about Stasia gave him renewed conviction. The look on his face was intense, slightly threatening.
“I’m sorry, Zane. I told you yesterday that if I ever decided to sell, the first option would be Dustin’s.”
“Even when you know that he deliberately lied to you?”
“If he did, you mean. I can’t believe—”
Zane cut her off by slicing the air with his hand. He strode over to the desk, reached inside his briefcase and handed her a thick packet of legal documents.
“What are these?” she asked, slowly scanning the complicated pages.
“Corporate documents, ownership papers.”
“How did you get them?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just read.” He hated to put the damning evidence in front of her, but she’d been so bullheaded about Ellery and Dustin, he’d had no choice. Tiffany didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who would live in a fantasy world, but maybe when a woman loved a man as passionately as Tiffany loved Rhodes . .. He frowned darkly and finished his drink in one swallow. His inner vision of Tiffany entwined in Ellery Rhodes’s arms turned his thoughts back, and a senseless anger took hold of his mind.
