‘Isn’t it?’ Rafael stared at her blankly, trying to see what he’d missed, and she gave a twisted smile.
‘This is going to sound really crazy but I feel as though I’ve lost my father.’ She swallowed. ‘And I know it’s mad to feel that way because obviously he’s never cared about me but that’s a really hard thing to accept. I’ve spent my entire life trying to please him and make him proud of me but it’s obvious that my father didn’t ever want me to succeed. That’s pretty hard to take.’
‘Why?’ He frowned at her. ‘That says everything about your father and nothing about you.’
‘I know that’s the theory,’ she said in a small voice, poking at the food on her plate, ‘but it isn’t that easy in practise.’
Rafael sighed. ‘Having children is a massive responsibility which the majority of people get hideously wrong,’ he said in his usual cynical drawl. ‘Which just goes to show that you should never put your faith in people. Better to rely on yourself.’
‘And I do. I always have done.’ Her eyes slid away from his. ‘But what sort of life is it, without love?’
‘A simple one?’ Seriously disconcerted by the direction of the conversation, Rafael reached across the table and piled some food on her plate, noting that she didn’t eat anywhere near enough. ‘Forget it, now. You need to toughen up and learn to be less trusting.’
‘Don’t give me any more.’ she held up a hand to stop him filling her plate ‘.I’m not really hungry. And I’m not sure that I really want to toughen up. I don’t really want to live the sort of life where I don’t feel anything.’
‘Believe me, it’s much simpler that way,’ Rafael assured her and she lifted her eyes to his.
‘Did she really hurt you? Your ex-wife?’
Everything about him tensed in an instinctive rejection of her intimate question but then he told himself that a short reminder of other people’s failings might help her build that shell she so badly needed. ‘No. She didn’t hurt me.’ It was a long time since he’d let a woman hurt him but he had no intention of revealing that much about himself.
‘Were you in love with her?’
Sliding his mind back into the present, he raised an eyebrow in silent mockery. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well, I know you claim not to believe in love, but you did marry her. And your reputation is for avoiding commitment so there must have been a reason.’
‘There was a reason.’ Emotion, dark and deadly, rushed towards him and he forced it away. ‘She told me that she was pregnant.’
‘Oh.’ She put her fork down on her plate. ‘You married her for that reason?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what happened? Or would you rather not talk about it? I mean, I know you don’t have a child so.’ she hesitated, stumbling over the words, clearly anxious to protect his feelings ‘… if it makes you sad then let’s change the subject. I’m so sorry. I should never have asked.’
‘I’m not sitting here pining, Grace.’ His tone was rougher than he’d intended. ‘There was no baby.’
Her eyes misted. ‘She lost it?’
He studied her with a mixture of disbelief and fascination. Her emotions were so incredibly close to the surface. Everything she felt was reflected on her face. She was designed to go through life being severely bruised.
‘There was never a baby to lose.’ His tone was harsher than he intended and his knuckles whitened on his wine glass. Forcing himself to slacken his grip, he studied her shocked face with a faint smile. ‘So you see, Grace Thacker, even the most cynical of us can be duped.’
‘She lied to you in order to persuade you to marry her?’ Her eyes were bright with sympathy and something much, much softer that flowed over his ragged nerve-endings and soothed like a balm. ‘She loved you that much?’
Rapidly coming to the conclusion that Grace Thacker’s mind worked in a completely different way from the rest of the population’s, Rafael felt his muscles clench. ‘She didn’t love me at all.’
‘But if she—’
‘Being married to a billionaire comes with certain compensations,’ Rafael drawled lightly, resigning himself to the reality of pointing out what, to him, was totally obvious, ‘not least of all a guaranteed income for life.’
‘You think she married you for your money?’
‘I know that she married me for my money.’ He watched her across the table. Was she really that naïve? ‘What else?’
‘Is that all you think you have to offer a woman? Money?’ She sounded genuinely shocked and he heard the bitterness in his laugh.
‘No. Apparently I excel in the bedroom, as well.’ He watched as the colour bloomed in her cheeks. ‘After I ended the relationship and gave her the settlement she’d worked so hard for, she was keen to make it really clear that she was more than prepared to continue with that element of our relationship. After she’d sold her story to the tabloids, of course.’