The Thorn in His Side (18 page)

Libby looked at him, loving every line of his proud face. He was her family. Pity he didn’t know.

‘I know families are important. I love my family, Rafael, but they needed to know—’

‘Needed to know what?’

‘The truth,’ she said, talking to his tie now.

He ran a finger down the curve of her cheek and said softly, ‘Look at me, Libby.’

Libby lifted her gaze.

‘They were angry. They did not mean the things they said, you know. Your family loves you.’ If making them value what they had meant he had to force-feed them a few home truths, Rafael was more than prepared to perform this task.

Libby swallowed and thought, Why can’t you? She pushed away the wistful thought. She had to accept what she could not have and enjoy what she could.

God, it
sounded
so easy!

‘I know they do. And I love them.’ The difference was she wasn’t asking them to prove it.

‘If you are estranged from your family, eventually, not today perhaps or even next week, but the time will come when you will blame me.’

Libby shook her head in rejection of his theory. ‘That isn’t true!’ she insisted fiercely.

‘Go to them, say what they need to hear, take their side. I will be fine with it.’

‘Fine with us not …’ Libby, ghostly pale, struggled to keep the tremor from her voice as she said huskily, ‘So you’re saying that you don’t want us to …’

Rafael dragged a hand through his hair and stared at her as though she had lost her mind.
‘Madre di Dios,
of course that is not what I’m saying.’

Libby, weak with relief, sighed. ‘Then what are you saying?’

‘Say what they want to hear, say you have seen the light and I am the Antichrist, and we can continue to be discreet.’

‘Lie, you mean. Hide in a corner and feel cheap, as though we’re doing something wrong, you mean?’ Her voice cracked as she asked miserably, ‘Is that what
you
want?’ If it was all she could get Libby was willing to take it, but not without trying for more first.

She took a step back in order to study his face her hands twisted in a white-knuckled knot on her chest.

Rafael swore and shook his head, not looking at her directly as he growled, ‘Of course it is not what I want.’ He wanted to shout from the rooftops that she was his. ‘But the situation requires compromise,’ he said, struggling to think past the need pounding in his skull.

Libby leaned back, pressing her head against the bark of the tree trunk as she laughed.
‘You,
compromise? Since when?’ she jeered shakily.

His glowing eyes raked her face, his lips twisting into an ironic smile as he said bitterly, ‘Since I met you.’

Libby stilled, something in his face making her heart rate pick up.

‘I was never the one who wished to keep this affair secret, and that has not changed,’ Libby heard him say, and thought, I
have.

‘Perhaps in time your parents will—’

‘In time you will have moved on to someone else!’ Her fear slipped out unchecked … She closed her eyes; could she sound more needy?

A look of utter amazement crossed his face. ‘That is not going to happen. How can you think that?’

‘How can I not think that? Because you are so renowned for your long-term relationships! Look,’ she added, struggling for some degree of composure. ‘I’m not complaining. You never pretended it was anything other than it was.’

‘I was an idiot!’

The contempt in this observation made her blink.

From where she was standing Libby could feel the tension rolling off his big body.

‘The thing you did—’

She watched him swallow and was utterly amazed to realise that Rafael, the epitome of cool, was struggling for composure.

‘What thing?’ she prompted gently.

‘Lose something you value greatly—that you are willing to do that for me, it means …’ He pressed a clenched fist to his chest and turned his head jerkily away. Libby could see the muscles in his brown throat working as he swallowed.

There was a space of several nerve-shredding seconds before he turned back. ‘It means a great deal, but I cannot let you lose your family because of me.’

‘I won’t, but I can’t let them make me lose you, Rafael.’ Her heart was in her eyes as she lifted her chin and declared, ‘I love you …’ She saw his stunned expression and groaned. ‘Oh, God, I wasn’t going to say that, and you don’t have to look so horrified—I won’t say it again. Honestly,’ she promised, miming a zipping
motion across her lips. ‘We can just go on the way we were and—’

A nerve clenched along his lean jaw. ‘No, there is no question of us going on as we were.’

Libby caught her trembling lip between her teeth. ‘That’s it, then.’ As her shimmering blue gaze moved across the hard planes and sculpted contours of his face Libby experienced a sudden violent surge of rebellion. She couldn’t give up on something this good—not without a fight.

‘No, that’s
not
it!’

He arched a brow. ‘It isn’t?’

‘You
should
want me, Rafael Alejandro. I’m a good person and I’m good for you, and one day you’ll regret sending me away,’ she charged huskily. ‘Do you hear me?’

The blaze died from her eyes when, as suddenly as it had flared, the defiance burning inside her drained away. Her body slumped in defeat like a puppet whose strings had been severed. She looked at the accusing finger she had stabbed into his chest; it had made as little impression as her words.

‘Nobody is going anywhere.’ Rafael caught the finger she waved at him and, pulling it to his lips, kissed it, then applied the same treatment to each fingertip, then the palm of her hand, holding her eyes as he did so. ‘Say it again!’ he growled.

The autocratic demand made her blink. ‘What?’

Rafael slid his hands down her shoulders and hauled her casually towards him. ‘You heard me,
querida.’

The fiercely tender glow in his eyes stole her breath away. ‘What do you want me to say?’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘Say you love me. I want … I
need
to hear you say it.’ His implacable golden stare burned into her.

Libby couldn’t tear her fascinated gaze from the nerve throbbing in his lean cheek. Her head was spinning. Was this really happening?

‘I love you, Rafael.’ She cleared her throat and added in a louder voice, ‘I love you, I really do … I—
’

The rest of her impassioned declaration was lost in the warm recesses of his mouth. Having her warm vital body in his arms, her arms curled around his neck, feeling her soft breasts plastered up against his chest, all the things he had been aching for, snapped the frayed threads of Rafael’s control.

A moan was wrenched from deep inside the vault of his chest, but a second later he pulled back breathing hard.

‘What just happened?’ What was happening?

‘If you do not know I am definitely losing my touch.’

‘You’re not.’

The feeling in her voice raised a smile, but a moment later it was gone and Rafael was staring at her with a fixed bone-stripping intensity that made Libby feel dizzy.

‘You don’t mind—about me … you know?’

Her awkward shrug raised a tender smile from Rafael, whose eyes had not left her face for a moment.

‘I …’ He stopped and said abruptly, ‘I missed you.’ Coward, said the voice in his head.

It was an accusation he could not deny. Was he ready to take that leap of faith and say the word that changed everything?

The word that meant dropping walls he had spent a lifetime building, walls that Libby had been removing
brick by brick since she had exploded so dramatically into his life. Libby’s influence had infiltrated every aspect of his life and heart shining light into all the dark corners and, he realized, freeing him from the self-imposed limits.

Libby blinked. ‘You only saw me this morning.’ Her eyes fell. It had been the first time she had woken up in his arms. She had hated the subterfuge necessary to allow her to stay the night, but it had been worth it. Of course in the end ironically the lies had been wasted; her family knew.

At least she wouldn’t have to lie the next time and invent excuses—always supposing there was a next time? Rafael’s reaction to her rash declaration of love had not been what she had expected, but it had not been as she had secretly hoped either. Her head ached with the effort of trying to work out what was happening.

‘I want to see you every morning.’

Libby stared at him, a look of astonishment frozen on her face. ‘Are you asking me to move in with you?’

‘I’m …’ With a frustrated groan he gathered her to him. ‘No, I’m not asking you to move in with me.’ He felt her stiffen in his arms and begin to pull away. ‘No!’ he said and tightened his grip. ‘I am not doing this well.
Dios,
but you are beautiful!’

She looked at his face, his golden skin glistening with the moisture that dusted it, and felt dizzy with lust and love. ‘You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, Rafael.’

Rafael looked startled by the fierce declaration and then smugly pleased.

‘What I have been trying to say … what I came here to say is … come …!’

A totally bemused Libby responded to the imperious
command and allowed him to take her hand and drag her back to the bench she had been sitting on to eat her lunch. Ignoring the two young women who were now sitting on one end, Rafael pushed her down onto the wooden seat.

Libby watched, her bewilderment growing as he unfolded the seal of his lunch bag and tipped the contents in his palm before extending his hand to her.

‘I’m not actually hungry, Rafael.s’ Then she saw the small velvet case sitting in his palm and her throat dried, allowing nothing but a small whimper to escape.

Unable to allow herself to abandon caution, believe the message the joyous pounding of her heart was beating out, she shook her head slowly from side to side.

‘What,’ she asked, her voice barely more than a throaty whisper as she forced the words past the
aching lump in her throat, ‘is that?’

Rafael dragged a frustrated hand across his sable hair. He had always understood that women instinctively knew about such things. ‘Open it and see,’ he urged.

‘Open it!’ echoed the girl sitting the other end of the bench before her companion hushed her.

Libby’s hand was shaking as she took the box from his palm. Slowly, hardly breathing, she opened it. Her eyes widened to their fullest extent when she saw the square cut sapphire surrounded by equally impressive diamonds sitting in the velvet bed.

Watching her, every clenched muscle and stretched nerve ending in his body taut and screaming for release, he waited for her to react.

‘If you don’t like it I can …’

Her eyes flew to his face, the sparkle in them putting the sapphire she took carefully from the box to shame. ‘It’s beautiful, Rafael.’

‘Marry me, Libby.’

Libby’s hand went to her mouth.

A sigh lifted Rafael’s chest. ‘Say something!’ he pleaded. Then, thinking better of the instruction, added, ‘But not if it’s no, Libby, don’t say no.’ He took her hand and slid the ring on it. ‘Take the ring, take me, Libby.’

At the other end of the bench someone began to clap and a voice said, ‘For God’s sake, say yes!’

All Libby heard was the pain in his voice and she hated it. She leaned forward and framed his beautiful face between her hands. ‘I want to say yes,’ she admitted. ‘I’m totally crazy about you, but I’m scared …’ she whispered.

‘I’m not, for the first time in my life I’m not scared, Libby, and you did that for me.’ He took her hands from around his face and brought them to his lips. ‘I’d turned my weakness into virtue. I took pride in not needing anyone,’ he admitted with a self-contemptuous shake of his head. ‘I was afraid to give anything of myself, afraid of being hurt, then you came along, so brave, so loving …’ His smouldering glance moved across her tear-stained face. ‘You gave me so much and I took … Let me give now, Libby.’ He watched her luminous eyes fill with tears and said, ‘Let me give you my heart.’

A broken sob left her throat. She knew how much this had cost; she knew about his deep-seated fear of rejection.

‘Yes, Rafael, I will marry you.’

L
IGHT
shone through the shuttered Georgian windows of the bedroom Libby had slept in the previous night. Like the rest of the rooms she had seen in the beautiful country house that Rafael had taken over for the wedding, it was filled with sweet-smelling flowers and furnished with taste and style.

Her only complaint with the accommodation was that she had spent the last night in the large bed alone. Rafael, who proved to have some surprisingly traditional views on the subject, had absented himself from the room despite her protests. Admittedly he had softened the blow when he had promised her it would be the last night they would ever be spending apart.

‘I cannot function without you beside me.’

Recalling the raw sincerity in his voice made Libby’s eyes fill with emotional tears.

She could not believe how good her life was; perfect—well, almost. The almost brought a shadowed sadness to her blue eyes. The only cloud on Libby’s horizon was the conspicuous absence of her family on her wedding day.

Every attempt she had made to contact them had been ignored, and the only response she had received to
the wedding invitations and the covering letter begging them to come had been a noisy silence.

For Rafael’s sake she had put a brave face on it, knowing that he continued to feel responsible for the situation. She had told him she was sure that they would come around eventually, but as the days had passed her optimism was becoming more forced.

Libby pushed away the dark thoughts and, picking up the skirt of her long gown off the polished wood floor in one hand, she moved towards the open door to join her friends.

At the last moment she paused and turned back to glance for one last time at her reflection in the antique cheval mirror.

She barely recognised the young woman standing there looking back at her. She touched the beaded bodice of the exquisite dress she wore, glad now that she had allowed her better judgment to be overruled by Susie, who had flown over from New York the previous week to be her bridesmaid.