‘But that was before he knew you’d acquired all this wealth,’ Ronan told her with malign silkiness.
He was turning away as he spoke, strolling back towards the house as if the subject was now closed, no room for further discussion.
Perhaps it was the fact that she no longer had to meet those appraising blue eyes, freeing her from their mesmerising force, that gave Lily the boost she needed to start thinking more clearly again.
Of course! Davey needed money to pay off his debts to Ronan. More money than she would ever be able to raise in her lifetime, it had seemed, but she hadn’t been looking at the problem in the right light. She had been missing the obvious, but now, belatedly, it dawned on her that there was something she could do.
Her flattened spirits lifted sharply, her heart seeming to do a tap dance of joy inside her chest.
‘Wait a minute!’
The speed with which Ronan spun round in response to her call was frankly unnerving. It was almost as if he had been waiting for her to call him back in this way.
‘I want to ask you something.’
Now that she’d got his attention she found herself losing her nerve and wishing she hadn’t. Her new-found courage seeped away under that cold-eyed scrutiny, his perceptible air of impatience draining her of the hope she’d stumbled on so unexpectedly.
‘This house—you said it was mine. Is that true?’
‘Of course.’ A frown drew his dark brows together. ‘Didn’t you get the deeds? I…’
‘Oh, yes!’ Brusquely she brushed his concern aside. ‘I got them. But do you mean it’s truly mine?’
‘Lock, stock and barrel,’ was the cynically flippant response. ‘You are lord—my apologies—lady of all you survey.’
‘And it must be worth quite a lot of money?’ Her voice lifted in hope on the question.
‘A fair bit,’ Ronan agreed, eyeing her curiously, as if he expected her to turn into some alien creature right before his eyes. ‘But I don’t see…’
‘Then please won’t you take it back? The house, and the allowance you promised me—everything you gave me. I know it isn’t really my money, that really I’ll just be giving you back something that was yours originally, but it would be something, wouldn’t it?’
She tried a smile of appeal, directing it straight into those watchful dark eyes. Meeting only an inimical mask of rejection, it faded rapidly.
‘It must go some way towards repaying what Davey owes you. And if you like I’ll sign some sort of disclaimer, a declaration that you don’t need to support me even though we’re married…’
Like the smile, her voice failed her as she saw the blaze of rejection in his eyes. The look he turned on her was so filled with savage contempt it had the force of a physical blow.
‘Money!’ He enunciated the word as if it was the most obscene epithet he could conjure up, the barely controlled violence behind the syllables making Lily flinch away inside. ‘You really think that money would compensate—would be any sort of reparation for what your brother’s done? Things have gone way too far for that!’
‘But they can’t have!’
Lily felt as if her world had collapsed around her. Davey had told her it would be like this but she hadn’t really believed him. She had always held out some hope that Ronan would at least listen to reason. And just for a moment she thought she had seen a way to escape from the nightmare in which she found herself, something she could offer to appease that lust for vengeance that possessed him. To have it thrown back in her face like this was all the more devastating in contrast to that brief flare of optimism.
‘Ronan, please…’
Just how much did this man want? Was it possible that his malevolent cruelty would not be assuaged by a simple accounting for the money Davey had caused him to lose? Davey had said that he was adding on some appalling rate of interest for every day that passed, which would mean that the original sum—huge as it was—was now building into an even greater fortune.
‘It’s not enough!’ he declared inimically, rejection making his eyes burn like molten steel. Turning on his heel, he marched away from her, his powerful stride taking him out of sight in seconds, leaving her staring helplessly after him.
‘No!’
Lily shook herself firmly in an attempt to clear her thoughts. She wouldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t give up now.
The memory of Davey’s white, terrified face surfaced in her mind like a reproach, jolting her into action. She had to make Ronan listen, force him to take the house at the very least as a down payment on what was owed. What she’d do after that she had no idea, but she had to do something!
She caught up with Ronan in the sitting room, where he had pulled open the drinks cabinet and now stood with a bottle of whisky in his hand.
‘I felt the need of a stiff drink,’ he said as she came to a halt just inside the door. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I help myself.’
The overly careful politeness jarred unpleasantly with the satirical tone in which it was uttered, making Lily shift uneasily from one foot to another.
‘Go ahead,’ she returned awkwardly. ‘It’s your house.’
‘I thought we’d just established that it was no such thing.’ He tossed back a measure of the powerful spirit with a speed that made Lily wince. ‘The house is yours and I want nothing to do with it.’
‘Then I’ll sell it and give you the money! Ronan, you must let me do this!’
‘Must let you?’ Ronan echoed darkly, pouring himself another drink, which Lily was relieved to see that he sipped at with considerably more restraint than the first. ‘There’s nothing I must do for you!’
‘Oh, but please! I have to do something to help Davey! You have to let me help my brother!’
You have to let me help my brother!
The whisky scorched through Ronan’s blood, making him feel as if he had just set light to a fast-burning fuse that led to a very large supply of dynamite, enough to blow away every chance he had of behaving rationally or reasonably.
You have to let me help my brother!
And who had been there to help Rosalie when Davey Cornwell had taken all that beauty, all that promise, that wonderful potential and destroyed it with a single careless act? Who had been there to help her mother and father, devastated by the most terrible, the most unnatural loss of all? Davey had left a trail of destruction in his wake worse than the after-effects of a tornado, and Lily wanted him to help her care for him!
His hand clenched around the glass he held until the knuckles showed white and he feared the fine crystal might actually splinter under the force of his grip.
‘Ronan, please, just tell me what you want and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything…’
Too late, Lily realised the trap she had fallen into.
‘Anything?’ Ronan questioned, his voice fiendishly soft.
There was a blatantly sexual speculation in those steel-blue eyes as they slid over her taut frame, lingering with calculated insolence at the curve of her breasts in the close-fitting tee shirt before dropping to the woven leather belt that cinched her narrow waist.
‘Anything?’ he repeated, drawing out the word with a lascivious enjoyment.
Lily swallowed hard. So much for her defiant declaration earlier. And from the look on Ronan’s face he had always known that he had only to call her bluff. That she wouldn’t be able to follow through.
But then he laughed, a dark, brutally cynical sound that made her wince painfully deep inside.
‘Not that,’ he declared, with a venom that curdled her blood. ‘I thought not. Not even for your precious Davey would you debase yourself by touching me ever again.’
If only he knew, Lily thought despondently. If only he realised the way that even now her weak body ached for the feel of his arms around her. How she yearned for the caress of his strong fingers, the warm pressure of his mouth. Her lips felt empty and lost without his against them, her breasts were tight with a primitive need that was close to pain, while the most intimate spot of all responded to even the thought of his touch with a sensation like the spark of a burning electric current.
‘So tell me, darling,’ Ronan went on, his voice sinking to a malevolent whisper, ‘just what is it that Davey’s got that makes him so very special?’
‘Can’t you see? Isn’t it obvious? He’s my brother—the only family I have! But of course you wouldn’t understand that.’
The flash of something raw and uncontrolled in the depths of his eyes made her pulse leap in fear. For the space of a couple of frantic heartbeats, as she saw his hand tighten on the glass he still held, she actually thought he might throw it at her and her slim body tensed, ready to duck.
But then he drew a deep, ragged breath and downed the last of the whisky in an obvious effort to curb the temper that had very nearly broken from him with the force of a nuclear explosion.
‘I may not have a brother to care about, as you do,’ he said, each precisely controlled syllable seeming to be formed in ice, so that Lily shivered as if she could actually feel them landing on her sensitised skin. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m not aware of the way that loving someone with all your heart can drive you to do something desperate, something that in a more rational frame of mind you would never even consider.’ Once more he lifted the whisky bottle and unscrewed its cap.