He was leaner than she remembered, his thick black hair worn longer, well over his collar, although it suited his dark arrogance. Those deep blue eyes still mocked and scorned, the cynical twist to those firm lips was more pronounced.
He stood facing her, legs apart, arms folded in front of his muscular chest, challenge in every muscle and sinew of his powerful body. Hazel felt herself stiffen under that challenging gaze. So it was to be a fight as before! Well, she wasn't quite the inexperienced teenager she had been before her stay in America.
'Hello, Rafe,' she said obediently, time enough to show him her newly acquired confidence at a later date.
His mouth twisted into the semblance of a smile, the scarring even more pronounced. 'Not a very affectionate greeting after three years' absence. Can't you do better than that, Hazel?'
'What do you want me to do?' she snapped angrily, her poise momentarily forgotten. 'Get down and grovel at your feet?'
He laughed outright at her outburst, a deep throaty sound that she found attractive even against her will. 'Still the little hell-cat,' he drawled softly, moving forward with long easy strides, moving with all the stealthy grace of a jungle cat.
He was standing directly in front of her now, looking down at her through narrowed considering eyes, the jagged discoloured skin on the left side of his face clearly visible to her. 'I think a kiss might be more in keeping with our relationship, don't you?'
Hazel wrenched herself away from the mesmerising effect of the warmth of his body, drawn to him by the masculine smell of a hard day's toil and the long cheroots that he smoked constantly. She had been wrong before, nothing had changed! Rafe still disturbed her with the emotions he evoked in her soft traitorous body that wanted to be crushed against him, everything else forgotten.
She had thought herself over this stupid infatuation she had always had for Rafe, that Josh and men like him who had existed in her life during the last three years had wiped out these childish fantasies. But they hadn't! One look at Rafe as he stood there, so self-confident, so arrogant, so basically male, told her that everything was as it had been before. Except perhaps that Rafe seemed more withdrawn from her than ever, more distant somehow—if that were humanly possible.
'We don't have a relationship,' she answered tautly.
Both of them had forgotten Trisha, which was perhaps as well. She had quietly escaped out of the schoolroom at the first opportunity, feeling an unwanted third.
Rafe nodded. 'Maybe we don't.' One long hand moved up to run the fingers lightly over his scarred cheek. 'Not a pleasant sight, am I?'
It was a statement, not a question, and Hazel's eyes darkened. 'I would never have thought you a man to be full of self-pity,' she flung at him.
He smiled at her, a smile completely without humour. 'Oh, I'm not, not now anyway. Don't try any of your amateur psychoanalysis on me, little Hazel Stanford. keep that sort of rubbish for the people who really need it. I've grown quite used to looking at a monster every morning in the mirror when I shave.'
She looked down the length of his strong body. 'I thought you had a limp too?'
'Oh, I do, when I'm tired,' he confirmed mockingly. 'All I need is the hump on my back and I could stand-in for the Hunchback of Notre Dame.'
'Don't be ridiculous! You're certainly not ugly.' Far from it!
'Like I said, Hazel, save that sort of thing for the people who need it—or who actually believe it. I don't. Now, I think we've talked that subject out, let's talk about something less personal to me. Is your visit to be a short one?'
She licked her suddenly dry lips. 'That depends on you, doesn't it?'
Rafe shrugged his broad shoulders. 'In just over a week's time I can neither make you stay nor make you leave.' He grimaced at their surroundings. 'Let's get out of here—I never did like school as a child.'
'I can believe that. You're exactly the type I would expect to have played truant.'
'I did most days. I always enjoyed swimming in the cove to sitting at a desk all day.'
'And yet you want to keep this school open.' Hazel walked at his side back towards the house, the long safe way round this time.
'You've found out a bit in the short time you've been back,' he commented. 'I want to keep the kids in this area for as long as possible. It's for their own good in the long run.'
'Oh, I agree with you, although I'm not sure some of them would.'
He turned to face her. 'It's important that some of them learn to love the beauty and naturalness of this area. And they can't do that living away in the towns. If only a few of them learn to appreciate it that's enough for me. I won't be here for ever. If I should die tomorrow do you think Celia would keep the Savage estate and run it as it is now?' He shook his head. 'I know she wouldn't. She'd sell out to one of the holiday organisations that have been after this land for years. I like to think there would be enough of the local people to fight such a move.'
'You really think Celia would do such a thing?' Her horror showed in her face.
'I'm sure of it. I'm not blind to her faults, I never have been. Left to her the estate would be sold as quickly as possible. But I don't intend dying just yet— not to please anyone.' He gave her a sideways glance.
'Rafe!' Hazel was genuinely shocked. 'I've never ever wished you dead. How could you think such a thing?'
Again he shrugged. 'I had no word from you after the accident. It's a natural assumption to make.'
'But you didn't send for me.'
'Of course I damn well didn't!' He wrenched her round to face him. 'I was in the intensive care unit of the local hospital for over a month, delirious most of the time. I didn't realise you were waiting for a personal invitation!' he finished in disgust.
'But I wasn't. I------'
'Wasn't Celia's letter enough?' he asked bitterly. 'God, I know we've had our differences in the past, but I had no idea you disliked me to that extreme.'
'But I------'
'You what?' he demanded. 'Were busy? Your job was too important to you to risk losing it? Oh, I know all that, Hazel, I know all that. I've had plenty of time to think out your reasons. It's amazing the amount of thinking you can do in a hospital bed, especially with most of your body strapped up in bandages. But when you can't move thinking is about all you can do. I thought of you a lot, Hazel, about how much you must be enjoying yourself to not even have the common decency to enquire how I was. Ignore it and it will go away was your idea, wasn't it?' He touched his scarred cheek. 'Well, this isn't so easy to ignore.'
'None of that's true, Rafe,' she cried desperately. 'That isn't the way it happened at all.'
'How it happened doesn't matter any more. None of the reasons come out in your favour. I just hope that once you're twenty-one and can claim your inheritance you will kindly remove yourself from my sight.' He gave her one last scathing look before walking away with long easy strides, the navy sweat-shirt clinging to his back in the heat of the day.
Hazel stared after him with tear-filled eyes. She wanted to stop him, tell him it wasn't her fault, that Celia hadn't sent her any letter. But it was no good, he would never believe her. It would be Celia's word against hers, and Celia had a head start, three years to be exact.
Her feet took her automatically to the people she always ran to when troubled—the Marstons. Trisha's
family had always accepted her into their midst with-' out enquiring what upset it was that had caused her to escape this time. Only two people could so upset her, Celia was one and Rafe the other, and it was best not to question too deeply; the enmity in the Savage household not a matter for general discussion.
Sylvia Marston looked up from the magazine she had been perusing, her face lighting up with pleasure as she saw the identity of her visitor. As a child Hazel had spent so much time here that it had been almost like having a. second daughter, and at times she had wished she had a son Hazel could marry to make that possible. But she and Max had only been allowed the one child, leaving them love enough for an orphaned ten-year-old girl.
She stood up now, moving forward to hug this golden-haired child, for that surely was what she still was, even though she had lived alone the last three years. 'Hazel!' Sylvia studied her intently. Still the same trusting brown eyes that could glow with laughter or darken with pain, usually the latter in her last few months before leaving England for America. 'Trisha said you were back, but that you were at the school talking to Rafe.’
Hazel shrugged. 'I was. He's gone back to the house. At least, I presume that's where he's gone.’
‘I see.'
Hazel smiled wanly. 'You always did, didn't you? Oh, Aunt Sylvia, it's started again already!' She slumped down on to the sofa.
Sylvia sat down beside her, placing a consoling arm about her shoulders. 'Give it time, child, give Rafe time.’
Hazel's eyes swam with tears. 'Time is something I don't have too much of where Rafe is concerned. He's given me a week to get: out of his life once and for all,' she explained at Sylvia's questioning look.
'He's what!' Sylvia was astounded. There had always been a certain tension between Rafe and his ward, the occasional argument over trivial matters—but never open conflict. That seemed to be left to the female member of the Savage family. Poor Celia, hating a girl who could have been a good friend if allowed to be. She shook her head. 'I'm sure you must have misunderstood him. Rafe's your guardian, he can't just dismiss you out of his life.'
'He already has. And his guardianship ends in a week's time. He said I could stay until then.'
'But why ask you to leave at all? I don't understand this.' Sylvia looked sharply at Hazel. 'Does Celia have anything to do with it? Has she been up to her tricks again?'