But she’d always seen Rafe as the kind of man who couldn’t care less what people thought of him—as a man who stood apart from the rest, protected by an impenetrable ring of strength he wore around himself.
Now she realised that, far from being protected, he was as vulnerable as the rest of them!
And who to? Madeleine. His younger brother’s childhood sweetheart. A small, sweet, gentle creature, with wheat-blonde hair and corn-flower blue eyes. The kind of woman who incited a man’s primitive need to love and protect.
The kind of woman men like Rafe and Piers, for all their character differences, preferred.
The absolute opposite to herself, in fact.
She shuddered, hating herself—despising Rafe.
Did Madeleine know how he felt about her? Had Piers known? From what she’d overheard of that recent conversation, then, yes, the whole world except Shaan seemed to know! Which must hit right at the very heart of Rafe Danvers’ ego.
It was no wonder he had jumped in with this marriage thing. It was a simple case of damage control—not for her sake, particularly, but for his own damned sake!
So why did he make love t
o me? she wondered on a wretched clutch of pain that had her fingers crushing the sheet where it covered her breasts. Had he been simply using her—was that it? As he’d accused Piers of doing? Had he been getting a bit of his own back?
My God; she closed her eyes, her body swaying slightly as she pushed herself upright from the door-frame. ‘I want no more part in this,’ she whispered, and stumbled back into the bedroom, only to stand looking around her in blank incomprehension of what she was going to do next.
‘No part in what?’ It was his turn to prop up the door-frame, looking more in control of himself now in the way he had his hands resting casually in the pockets of his white towelling robe.
But she knew better now. Everything about the Danver brothers was a damned cleverly erected lie. Piers with his warmly smiling, open expression of love, Rafe with his you-can-depend-on-me façade.
Lies. Damned lies.
‘I won’t play substitute for yet another damned Danvers man,’ she declared.
‘No one is expecting you to,’ he said quietly.
‘No?’ Her chin came up, dark brown eyes shrouded in bruises of deep personal pain as she bitterly contested that.
The shocked look had gone, she noted, the consternation at being exposed now wiped clean from his face. But he was wary—very wary—she could see that in the way he was looking at her, as though he wasn’t quite sure what was going to come out of this.
‘Are you in love with Madeleine?’ she demanded outright.
He didn’t answer for a moment, the expression in his eyes shaded by some deep thinking of his own he seemed to be doing. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with this situation,’ he replied carefully at last.
‘Yes, you do,’ she argued. ‘Because if you’re in love with her then it makes you no better than your brother.’
‘Because I wanted to marry you in his place?’
She made a sound of scorn at that. ‘Don’t make this a bigger farce than it already is, Rafe. You didn’t want to marry me. You merely wanted to save face.’
‘Your face.’
‘My face—your face.’ She shrugged away the difference. ‘Whatever, you were still using me to cover up your own failures.’
‘And you weren’t using me in exactly the same way?’
Oh yes, she acknowledged heavily. Very much so. ‘At least you knew my reasons!’ she flashed at him angrily. ‘But you had no intention of revealing yours to me, did you?’
‘I didn’t see them as relevant,’ he replied.
‘Well, I do!’ she cried.
‘Why?’