Imogen prayed her sister would never have to experience the way it felt to be on the receiving end of that sizzling glare and feel it burn her almost to ashes.
‘About what?’
‘About me… Don’t tell anyone about my—my past. Because I need you not to spoil things for Imogen and Adnan. Don’t ruin her marriage…please.’
‘And you think that what her silly little sister got up to would ruin Imogen’s chance of marriage? Why would that be?’
Imogen shivered to hear the coldness in Raoul’s voice. Ciara was too young, too sweet, too innocent to contend with a sophisticated monster like Raoul Cardini. Wasn’t that why she had got herself entangled with that hateful womaniser Pierre Moreau? She had emerged from that encounter bruised and battered, and only now was just beginning to put her life back together again.
‘I couldn’t bear it if you said anything. Imogen’s been through enough already. My father doesn’t know, nor does Adnan, and…’
‘But Imogen does?’
Now Imogen could see where his cold, dark, vengeful thoughts were going. He had always seen her as nothing but a gold-digger, worth no more than a brief holiday fling and some hot summer sex before tossing her aside. He’d been happy to walk away without a single backward glance, but then he’d obviously discovered that her family wasn’t out of his life after all, that her sister was the nanny who had been accused of almost breaking up his sister’s marriage—the source of the Nookie with the Nanny headlines that had called open season on Pierre Moreau and his wife Marina.
And the proud Corsican was not going to stand for that.
‘Monsieur Cardini—please—I’ll do anything if you’ll just let Imogen and Adnan…’
But that was more than Imogen could take. She couldn’t stay here in hiding and listen to the break in her sister’s voice, the savage ice in Raoul’s. She couldn’t let Ciara fight for her sister’s future, for what she thought was Imogen’s happiness, by taking the blame on her own slender shoulders.
Particularly not when the marriage Ciara was fighting to save was not the love match she obviously believed it to be. Now she regretted letting her sister believe in the delusion that this was a true romance.
‘Ciara—no!’
Imogen was rushing forward as she spoke, pushing her way out from behind the heavy curtains, struggling to get free.
She stumbled out into the room, blinking at the light after being hidden in the darkness. In the haste of her movements, her robe came adrift and was tugged backwards, pulling the sides apart, the belt open. Her hair had been dragged loose as well, tumbling round her shoulders, falling across her face, but she couldn’t care.
‘No—don’t say any more. I’m dealing with everything. Raoul and I…’
Her voice trailed off, dropping into silence as she blundered into the hard, solid form of Raoul Cardini standing right in the middle of the room.
‘Imogen!’ he exclaimed, his voice a bark of reproof.
‘Are you sure about that whisky, Cardini…?’
To her horror, that question came from her father, overly cheerful and still some way down the corridor, looking for someone to share his nightcap.
‘Oh, Immi!’ Ciara’s voice clashed with his but hers was a sound of shock and consternation.
Even as she caught her sister’s stunned exclamation, Imogen heard her father’s voice again, closer now. Desperately she struggled to brush back her tangled hair, sweep it out of her eyes and focus on the scene that was before her.
‘Imogen?’
That was her father who was inside the door now, one hand on Ciara’s arm, the other reaching up to cover his mouth as if to hold back further expressions of total disbelief.
It was bad enough being caught by her father and sister like this, on the night before her wedding in another man’s bedroom, in her nightclothes with her hair in disarray… But as her thoughts reeled, and she wondered how to explain the situation without making it any worse, her eyes cleared and she saw that it already was far worse. The worst.
It was not just her father who had come into the room. Someone else had been drawn by Ciara’s voice. Someone else was out in the corridor, his tall frame blending into the shadows, his battered leather jacket giving him away at once.