‘Oh, God.’ A trembling hand flew up to cover her eyes in burning mortification as his voice came again, deep and angry.
‘I don’t care if it causes problems!’ he snapped ‘Yes, I know,’ he answered to whatever had been said to him. ‘But it will just have to stay on the backbumer until I get back… I don’t know when,’ he sighed. ‘When I’m ready—When she’s ready…’
And Shaan slowly straightened, the hand sliding from her face as she realised he was talking about her here.
‘Piers?’ His hard voice gave a crack of deriding laughter. ‘Since when did he give a damn about anyone else but himself?’
Oh, damn. Feeling that dull thud as her heart dropped at the mere mention of Piers’ name, she came to her feet and just stood, swaying dizzily.
‘Of course he saw it,’ he muttered. ‘Hell—didn’t they all see it?’ he growled in rough derision. ‘What do you think it was all about? He wanted to ruin things for me in revenge for Madeleine… What? Yes, of course I still love her,’ he sighed. ‘You can’t turn love on and off like a bloody tap just because she happens to love someone else, you know…’
Madeleine? Eyes hot and burning, Shaan stared out at nothing and saw the cruel, bitter truth leering knowingly back at her.
Rafe was in love with Madeleine.
‘My mistake was in not realising that he would sink that low just to get back at me,’ Rafe’s voice continued bitterly, while, as if she’d been pulled helplessly through the frames of a very bad dream, Shaan found herself walking over to the bedroom door.
With the bedsheet clutched to her in one cold, trembling hand, she reached out to grasp the edge of the door with the other, pulling it towards her so she could step silently into the next room.
He was standing at the desk wearing only his bathrobe. He had his back towards her and a telephone clamped to his ear.
Angry tension pulsed from every muscle in his long, lean frame. ‘You think I don’t already know that?’ he muttered. ‘But he gave me no time, no space—nothing to work with! Shaan’s feelings certainly didn’t matter to him. As far as he was concerned they were expendable…’
Expendable, she thought painfully. Was that all she was to Piers—just an expendable pawn in a fight he had been having with his brother over Madeleine?
‘Yes, well…’ Rafe sighed. ‘At least he got what he wanted out of this bloody mess. Which means I can do what the hell I like with the leftovers…’
Leftovers. Her. Oh, God, she couldn’t hold back on the choked gasp of distress that particularly cruel word had dealt her.
He heard it and spun around, eyes flashing silver sparks of anger her way—until he realised just who he was looking at, then the look changed to one of utter, absolute, jaw-locking consternation.
She didn’t speak—couldn’t. Her voice felt trapped in her own horror-stricken throat, and neither, it seemed, could he say a word.
What he did do was drop the phone onto its rest without even warning the person on the other end that he was going to break the connection. Then he made a gesture with one hand—a short, angry, half-helpless gesture.
‘Don’t even begin to think you understood what that was all about,’ he clipped out gruffly. ‘Because you couldn’t possibly have done.’
She’d understood enough. More than enough. ‘You’re in love with Madeleine,’ she told him in a stark, broken whisper.
If anything, he looked even more disconcerted. Colour shot across his high cheekbones; his eyes turned from silver to dark mirrors of shock. She’d clearly hit accurately on the truth.
And while she stood there, staring at him through a haze of deep personal humiliation, the whole thing slotted together like the end of a whodunnit movie.
He hadn’t urged Madeleine back to England to bring Piers to his senses, but because he must have believed it safe to bring her back for himself, with Piers effectively committed to another woman!
And he hadn’t suggested this marriage between the two of them simply out of a sense of family honour and guilt—but because his own pride had been slighted!
‘That makes us both someone else’s leftovers,’ she said, then laughed as it appeared that once again the quick-thinking Rafe Danvers had been rendered utterly speechless. Because he just continued to stand there staring at her across the full length of the room, his clever mind seemingly gone perfectly blank!
‘My God…’ she choked, leaning weakly back against the frame of the door as full appreciation of the whole morass of deception took the strength from her legs. ‘What a mess,’ she whispered. ‘What a damned mess.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he muttered.
‘No?’ Her dark eyes flashed a look at him—and saw a completely different person from the Rafe Danvers she was used to seeing. Not that he’d changed, exactly. It was her own perception of him that had taken on a radical alteration.
So, she thought bitterly. This is it. This is him. The real Rafe Danvers. The head of the great Danvers empire. The older brother, the darker brother, the stronger brother. The one with a finger on the pulse of every single thing that went on in his tightly controlled sphere. And the one who showed no hint of weakness anywhere in his make-up.
Not like Piers, or so she’d let herself believe. Nothing like Piers. The younger brother, the extrovert. The one who smiled at lot where the older brother rarely ever did. The one with the poetically handsome features that half the female population swooned over, the one who liked to be liked and even went out of his way to make sure that he was liked.