Use your eyes, she’d said. Look around you. Look in the shops—in the kitchens in almost every hotel on the island!
And Imogen had looked, seeing the distinctive labels for Cardini Olive Oil that she had been blind to before. She’d believed his story that he was a farmer, that he had olive trees on his land. That had been all. She had never dreamed that that was only a part of his fortune—that the rest came from the breeding of the small, sturdy Corsican horses that had brought him to Ireland to destroy the sense of peace she had thought she was reaching.
‘And I was not getting married.’
‘Still loving and leaving ’em?’ Imogen tossed at him, not wanting to acknowledge the flutter of something deep in her stomach at the thought that there had been no one special in his life in the years they had been apart. But then, she’d already known that Raoul was not the marrying kind.
‘Not loving,’ he returned, flat-voiced. ‘I’d be a fool to look for any such thing. And I was never the marrying kind. I told you that.’
He certainly had. Was she actually weak enough to let her memories make tears burn at her eyes? She blinked hard to keep them back, telling herself they were there for the baby who had had no hope of survival, not for its cold-hearted father who had never even known his child had existed.
Would he have cared? If she had done as she had planned, and managed to go back to Corsica to tell Raoul that she was pregnant before the agonising pain that had seemed to tear her in two had struck, would he have cared? Would he have insisted they marry for the sake of the child? The thought of that was somehow more unbearable than the way he had rejected her, turning his back on her at the end of their time in Corsica.
There was a heavy stone in front of her on the path and, eyes blurred, caught unawares, she almost stumbled on it. But she didn’t fall because Raoul’s hand shot out, hard fingers clamping around her upper arm and hauling her back so she thumped against his chest, losing her breath in a totally different and much more disturbing way.
Weakly, foolishly, she welcomed the feeling of his strength against her. At a time when she felt so alone, so afraid of the future, she wouldn’t dare to admit to herself how she longed to throw herself into that strength, feel it close around her.
He’d done that once before, in the sea off Bonifacio, when the tide had been unexpectedly rough. An uncertain swimmer at the best of times, she had been caught in a strong current and knocked off her feet. Going under the waves, with salt water stinging her eyes and water swamping her face, she had known a moment’s panic. But only for a moment. Because then, strong, bronzed arms had closed around her, taking firm hold and hauling her up and out of the water. As she had soared out into the heat and brightness of the sun in the clear blue sky, she had known such a glorious sense of freedom and delight. It had been as if she was reborn, rediscovering the joy of living—and loving. It was in that moment that she had known she had fallen deeply, irrevocably in love with Raoul and that her heart would never truly be free ever again.
Not even when he had rejected her before the end of her holiday, tossing aside her weak, stumbling suggestions that maybe they could make this more than just a fling, that perhaps they could see each other again. That maybe she didn’t have to go home…
Could he hear the thudding of her heart, see her uneven breathing? She could only pray that he would take it as being the result of coming close to falling. Though, from the dark gleam in those tiger eyes, she doubted it. He had looked that way when he had held her against him last night and he had made it plain that desire was all he felt. So she’d better get rid of the crazy idea that this time he might come to her rescue again.
‘OK?’ His voice was surprisingly low and husky on the question but she didn’t dare to meet his eyes to try to read why that was so. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the spot where his white shirt was open at the neck, the pulse that beat at the base of his throat heavy and strong, and disturbingly in time with the hungry thunder of her own.
‘I’m fine.’
She prayed it sounded convincing. She would have to be fine. No one was coming to her rescue like a knight on a white charger. Not Adnan and very definitely not Raoul.