The Right Bride? (29 page)

Where she longed to be.

At two-thirty in the morning, they made a round of goodbyes and left the ballroom. As Rafe locked the door of their suite behind them, Karyn kicked off her high-heeled sandals. “I hate to take the dress off,” she said wistfully, “I feel like a flower in it.”

“A very lovely flower,” he said, and kissed her long and hard. The result was predictable; Rafe took off the dress for her, and they made languorous and overwhelmingly sensual love: one more of the many moods of passion. Afterward, Karyn stretched as gracefully as a cat. “How many times was that today?”

Rafe laughed. “We both need to go home for a rest.”

“Tomorrow,” she pouted. “Back to reality. Yuk.”

“We’ll come again. Or go somewhere else. There are Holden Hotels all around the globe.”

She didn’t want to think about the future. Just the present. “I’ve had a wonderful time,” she said impulsively. “I’m so grateful you brought me here.”

“Gratitude goes both ways, Karyn.”

He? Grateful to her? What for? “You own everything you could possibly need,” she exclaimed. “Just look at what you’ve given me—how can I ever thank you?”

“By being yourself…that’s all I ask.”

She shifted restlessly. “How will it work tomorrow? Will I fly commercially from England to get back home?”

“No need for that—we’ll use the jet. I’ll go with you.”

Her eyes widened, a shadow in their depths. “Why would you go with me?”

“Because I want to.”

She lay still in the circle of his arms. In the last four days Karyn had learned considerably more about Rafe than the overpowering fascination his body held for her. There were the ordinary things: that he was an expert swimmer, he danced like a dream and his tennis backhand was a killer. He was well-versed in matters political, artistic and literary; their conversations entranced her, expanding her horizons. He treated the staff with an innate courtesy that she could only respect.

She’d learned something else: when he retreated to his office every day, his voice on the phone had a forceful edge, a decisiveness all the more powerful for being understated, that made her ill at ease for a reason she wasn’t quite ready to examine.

Her eyes lingered on his hands, with their long, lean
fingers and strong wrists. She would miss him. Desperately. She’d have to get used to sleeping alone again; in the privacy of her own thoughts, she could admit how much she loved waking in the night and finding Rafe’s arm lying heavy over her shoulders, or drawing her snug to his hips in sleep. But hadn’t she known from the start that this was an interlude, beguiling and impermanent?

She didn’t want him to come back with her to Heddingley. Far better that she make any adjustments on her own, in her own time. “I’ll have to go back to work as soon as I get home,” she said crisply.

“Then I’ll cook supper for you,” he drawled; because her head was bent, she didn’t notice how sharply he was watching her. He reached over to the bedside table, where there was a tray of exquisitely prepared fruit, and passed her a sliver of mango. “It’ll be a comedown from the meals here, I warn you.”

The mango was ripe and slippery. Licking her fingers, Karyn said, “I’m not sure I like this conversation. All good things have to come to an end.”

“Do they, Karyn?”

“Yes, they do,” she announced. Suddenly exhausted, she kissed him in the vicinity of the chin and closed her eyes. While it might be perfectly clear to her that she didn’t want Rafe coming to Heddingley, it was, after all, his personal jetplane; she could hardly kick him off it. Not when he’d been so overwhelmingly generous to her, and she owed him so much.

Once they got back to Heddingley, she’d insist that he leave right away, so that her life could settle back to normal. By no stretch of the imagination could normal include Rafe Holden.

He’d understand her point of view.

It was in London, as they waited for the jet to be refueled, that Karyn discovered Rafe wasn’t interested in understanding her point of view. In fact, he didn’t see eye to eye with her at all. He was sitting in the private lounge reading a Greek newspaper, its script incomprehensible to her. He was frowning. She said lightly, “Is the news that bad?”

He scarcely heard her. The headlines on the second page concerned an Italian businessman who had traveled to Athens and murdered his estranged wife there. The story sickened him; it could so easily have been Karyn.

She said patiently, “Rafe? Hello? Is anybody home?”

His lashes flickered. “Sorry. We won’t be much longer. You can sleep all the way home if you want to.”

Filled with confusion, she burst out, “I still don’t understand why you’re coming with me!”

“What did you expect me to do? Dump you at my earliest convenience?”

“Of course not,” she said shortly. “But there’s no point in you crossing the Atlantic when I have to go right back to work. This has been absolutely wonderful, and I can’t thank you enough. But it’s over now. There’s no point in dragging it out.”

“Is that how you see spending more time with me?” he said with menacing softness.

She bit her lip. “I have to pick up my normal life. I have a job, a house, friends and responsibilities—and so do you.” Attempting to lighten the atmosphere, she added, “Several houses, in your case, and megaresponsibilities.”

“And when—in this busy life of yours—will you find time to see me again?”

Her temper flared, driven more by nerves than actual anger. “Cut the sarcasm. I’ll be in England for Fiona’s wedding, I’ll see you then.”

“What if I want more than that?”

“You don’t. So why are we fighting like this? The last thing I want to do is ruin a perfectly marvelous four days.”

“How, all of a sudden, do you know what I want?”

His voice was tight with controlled anger. In an ugly uprush of emotion, all Karyn’s old fears resurfaced. Steve had never been ready to let go of her: the more she’d given him, the more he’d demanded. Was Rafe the same?

Surely not. Not Rafe.

But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t force her anxiety back where it belonged. Her own anger flared to match his. “Okay, so I don’t know what you want. How about enlightening me?”

Rafe tossed the newspaper on the marble table and said in exasperation, “This is all wrong, Karyn. Trading cheap shots with each other like this.”

She said flatly, “Tell me what you want. We’ll go from there.”

He gazed at her in silence. She was wearing simply cut linen pants and an embroidered vest she’d bought at the Athens airport. She didn’t look conciliatory. Neither did she look at all like a woman in love. For a moment fear ripped through him, as imperative in its own way as desire. Thrusting it down, he said, “I want to keep on seeing you.”

“Why?”

“We fit together. And I don’t just mean sexually.”

“We’re great in bed. But other than that, we couldn’t be more different. Look where we just stayed, Rafe! On my own, I couldn’t afford that suite for four minutes, let alone four days.”

“There’s a lot more to me than my money.”

“You’re enormously rich. I’m a country vet. You travel the world while I drive from the pigsty at LeBlanc’s Farm to the local stables. You’re cultured and sophisticated. I’ve
barely been off Prince Edward Island and half the time I’m covered in mud. Your lifestyle and mine, they’re as different as—”

As she fumbled for an analogy, Rafe rapped, “As I am from Steve. Because that’s what this is really about, isn’t it? It’s not about money, it’s about Steve.”

She stood up, jamming her hands in her pockets, determined not to cry. “Of course it’s about Steve. You’re the only person in the world who knows what he did to me. How he changed me. And yet you expect me to keep on seeing you? To start some kind of relationship with you? You, of all people, should understand why I can’t do that.”

She now sounded despairing rather than angry; again a deep unease spread through his body. “Yes, you can,” he said forcibly. “You did tell me about him, that was a huge step—and I know you’re going to tell Liz and Fiona. Since then, you’ve spent the better part of four days in bed with me. I’m going to sound arrogant as hell, but you liked making love with me—nobody can fake the way we were together. Wasn’t that another giant step? In bed with me, you let yourself be the woman you really are.”

The force of his willpower battered at her defences; his eyes were a hard steel-blue. “I can’t risk getting close to you.”

“Dammit, you’ve been as close to me as you can get. In bed, in my arms.”

“That’s not what I mean. That’s just sex. Astounding and incredible sex. But still sex. I mean intimacy, real intimacy. The kind that hurts too much when it goes wrong.”

“You’re assuming it’s going to go wrong.”

“You say you’re different from Steve. But you’re also like him. Handsome, charismatic, sexy, from a wider world than my own, with more money. I fell for Steve lock, stock and barrel—and I’ve paid for that mistake ever since. I
can’t afford to get involved with you.” Her voice rose. “Why don’t you understand?”

“Outwardly, maybe I am like Steve. But did you yell at him like you just yelled at me?”

She flinched. “Initially, yes.”

“Are you afraid of me, Karyn?”

Her shoulders sagged. As usual, he’d gone to the heart of the matter. Choosing her words, she said, “I’m afraid of what might happen if we continue seeing each other. You’re a very powerful man—you wouldn’t have risen to the top if you weren’t. You’re used to getting your own way. In business, and with women, I’m sure.” Her smile was twisted. “I don’t imagine you get turned down very often.”

This time some of his anger escaped in his voice. “You think I’m after you just because you’re unwilling? That’s how I get my kicks?”

“I didn’t say that! All I’m saying is no. Two letters, one syllable, not a complicated word. No, I don’t want you to come to Heddingley with me. No, I’m not interested in a relationship with you.”

“Because of Steve.”

“Because I lived in fear of my husband for months—a man I’d married for love.”

“We all have our nightmares.”

In deliberate challenge she said, “What are yours, Rafe?”

“Realizing at age seven that my parents, for all their fine lineage, were dirt poor, and that I might be stuck in a moldering old castle for the rest of my days.”

“From which Douglas rescued you…is that all?”

“Going to boarding school and having the tar beaten out of me because word had gotten out that I didn’t have two pennies to rub together. After that, I learned to fight dirty.”

“You still do,” she said caustically.

“No, I don’t—I don’t need to.” Briefly his jaw hardened. “Celine was the one who fought dirty. Telling me she adored me and neglecting to mention she adored three other men at the same time. Now that’s dirty.”

“Then for the next six years you avoided passion and intimacy—six years, Rafe! Steve drowned a year ago. Yet you want me to pretend it didn’t happen?”

He said with fierce conviction, “If I’d met you a year after I dumped Celine, I’d still be acting the way I’m acting right now.”

“I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Yes,” he grated, “you are. Look, I understand that my nightmares, bad as they were at the time, can’t possibly compare with yours. I’ll give you all the time you need. But in the meantime I have to be able to see you.”

“Rafe, I hate this! I can’t do it. I won’t.”

“Then Steve wins—is that what you want?”

“Of course he wins,” she said wearily. “His kind always does.”

“That doesn’t have to be true—get to know me and see that I’m not like him at all.” Rafe was gripping the back of the nearest chair, his knuckles bone-white with strain. Compassion ripped through her; but even that didn’t—couldn’t—change her mind. “The only way you get to know someone is by living with him,” she said in a low voice. “I trusted the world until Steve came along. He destroyed every vestige of my innocence. My trust in men, of course. But even worse, my trust in myself, in my own judgment.”

“So are you going to stay alone for the rest of your life?”

She shivered. “How can I answer that?”

Ruthlessly he drove his advantage. “Don’t you want children? You’d make a wonderful mother.”

Her face pinched, she whispered, “Yes, I’d like to have children. But not so much that I’ll marry to get them.”

He played his last card…what did he have to lose? “I want to marry you—you must have figured that out by now.”

“You
what?
”

He glanced around the elegant, impersonal lounge with its aura of impermanence, of travelers passing through on their way to other destinations. “I’d hoped to tell you this in a more romantic setting,” he said harshly. “I’ve fallen in love with you, you’re the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. Wife. Lover. Mother of my children. The whole deal.”

She said the first thing that came to mind. “But you scarcely know me.”

“I know you. Going to bed with you, spending the last four days with you, how could I not know you? Anyway, you’re forgetting I’ve known Fiona all my life. Your identical twin, who had the courage to fall in love and fight for a new life. You’ve got that same courage, Karyn. You just have to find it and trust in it.”

“I was married for twenty-three months to a man who made every day a living nightmare,” Karyn said bitterly. “That’s the difference between Fiona and me.”

He was losing her, Rafe thought. Right in front of his eyes, Karyn was moving away from him. He’d never begged for anything in his life; but if ever he needed to, it was now. He said roughly, “Forget I said I want to marry you. Or that I’ve fallen in love with you. Dammit, we’ll even stay away from the bedroom if that’s what it takes. But just let me keep on seeing you—that’s all I ask.”

Tears stung her eyes. For a man of Rafe’s pride to hum
ble himself for her sake…how could she bear it? “I’m not the woman for you, Rafe. I can’t give you what you want—I’m so sorry. We should never have gone away together. I swear I wasn’t using you, it just didn’t occur to me that you might fall in love with me. If I’d thought there was any chance of that, I’d never have agreed to going to Greece with you.”