Grabbing a towel, he rubbed it roughly over his soaking hair, thankful that the short, cropped cut retained little of the water. It was so damn cold in this ramshackle place; no hint of warmth in the old-fashioned bathroom.
‘Nom de Dieu!’ he swore explosively, tossing the damp towel aside and reaching for another, slinging it around his hips and fastening it tight. It was supposed to be summer!
But it wasn’t just the weather that was turning his mood sour, he knew. It was being here at all that was the problem. Being here, surrounded by the beauty of the countryside, the magnificence of the spectacular animals that grazed in the field, and knowing that the whole enterprise was rotten to the core; that there was no money to support the business and everything was in hock to the bank. Even the magnificent stallion Blackjack… Knowing that he had been conned into paying stud fees for a horse that didn’t actually belong to Joe O’Sullivan burned like acid in his gut.
Rubbing the back of his hand across his face to wipe away the moisture, he padded across the tiled floor, wrenching the handle to yank the door open. The financial situation couldn’t be any worse, so Imogen had clearly turned to the oldest trick in the book—marrying the nearest really wealthy man in order to help clear her family’s debts. The same trick that she’d tried to pull on him when she’d discovered that he was not the simple olive farmer he’d claimed to be. Obviously, the financial problems had already begun to bite back then.
‘Damn her to hell!’
He had known this—most of this—before he’d arrived. It was the reason he was here, after all. But it had all seemed so much simpler before he’d left Corsica. The woman who had tried to get her hands on his fortune had now found someone else equally wealthy to marry. Someone else whose child, it seemed, she was prepared to have when the truth was that she had already got rid of her first baby—his child. Tossed it aside because its wealthy father wasn’t going to fall into the trap she’d laid for him.
But now, she’d found someone who would do just as she wanted. Someone who would marry her, pour money into this downtrodden estate and pay off the bills.
He had come here to stop that wedding.
But things had got so much more complicated since he’d arrived. He’d seen Imogen and her sister. He’d met the man Imogen was going to marry, and—damn it to hell—he liked Adnan Al Makthabi. Respected him. Adnan was the type of man he’d like as a friend—if he had such a thing.
‘Raoul…’
A voice, soft, uncertain and shockingly familiar, broke into his thoughts, bringing his head up. Dashing any last trace of water from his eyes, he swung round sharply to face her.
It was as if his heated sexual memories of their time together, the ones that had made the inadequate temperature of the shower a positive bonus, had brought her out of the past, conjured her up as a real person here in his room.
But how the devil had she got in here? He was between her and the exit and he knew he’d turned the key in the bedroom door when he’d gone into the bathroom. Yet there she was, tall and slender in a deep crimson robe wrapped tightly around her, tied at the waist. She was standing against the wall, half-hidden by the heavy, embroidered drape of the curtains around one of the carved posters of the bed.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
He saw the way her breasts rose and fell under the delicate silk of her robe with every sharp, uneven breath she took. The wide, wide eyes were clear and sapphire blue even in the dusky shadows, and her mouth was partly open, as if to speak—or to kiss, his rebellious thoughts whispered to him. She’d always been beautiful. Hell, she was still beautiful—more so than before, if that were possible.
She had once worn a scarlet dress that had been little more than the nightgown she had on under the robe, but it had been short and sweet with a flippy sort of hem that had shown off her long legs. He had revelled in watching the pale, Celtic skin slowly tan to a subtle, sexy golden brown after days in the sun. The kick of lust at his groin was unwelcome and ill-timed—and appallingly distracting. The white towel suddenly felt like no covering at all and he shifted uncomfortably, pulling it tighter at the waist, tucking the edge in again.