by Kate Walker
‘No—don’t say any more. I’m dealing with everything. Raoul and I...’
Her voice trailed off, dropping into silence as she blundered into the hard, solid form of Raoul Cardini standing right in the middle of the room.
‘Imogen!’ he exclaimed, his voice a bark of reproof.
‘Are you sure about that whisky, Cardini...?’
To her horror, that question came from her father, overly cheerful and still some way down the corridor, looking for someone to share his nightcap.
‘Oh, Immi!’ Ciara’s voice clashed with his but hers was a sound of shock and consternation.
Even as she caught her sister’s stunned exclamation, Imogen heard her father’s voice again, closer now. Desperately she struggled to brush back her tangled hair, sweep it out of her eyes and focus on the scene that was before her.
‘Imogen?’
That was her father who was inside the door now, one hand on Ciara’s arm, the other reaching up to cover his mouth as if to hold back further expressions of total disbelief.
It was bad enough being caught by her father and sister like this, on the night before her wedding in another man’s bedroom, in her nightclothes with her hair in disarray... But as her thoughts reeled, and she wondered how to explain the situation without making it any worse, her eyes cleared and she saw that it already was far worse. The worst.
It was not just her father who had come into the room. Someone else had been drawn by Ciara’s voice. Someone else was out in the corridor, his tall frame blending into the shadows, his battered leather jacket giving him away at once.
‘Imogen! What the hell is going on?’ thundered a voice that could only belong to a savagely shocked and furious Adnan Al Makthabi.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘F-FATHER...’
It was all Imogen could manage, even that one word being almost beyond her. What was impossible was actually looking into the corridor, after that one brief, horrified glance that had met with the blazing glare of the man who was supposed to be her bridegroom tomorrow.
Or was that today? The clock out in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs was already beginning to strike midnight, the deep, booming notes reverberating up the stairwell towards them.
‘Don’t you know it’s bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the actual wedding...?’ Raoul drawled cynically.
Which wasn’t very far from the mark. Her brain was whirling in a lethal combination of shock and disbelief, thought processes shattered. Her eyes wouldn’t focus either so she couldn’t actually see Adnan’s face, only her sister’s white, stunned expression and her father’s features drawn in appalled disbelief.
‘What wedding?’ Adnan tossed at her, hard enough to cut through the air in the room and making it difficult to breathe.
‘Our—’ She swallowed audibly. ‘Obviously our wedding...’
‘Nothing obvious about that from where I’m standing.’
‘But Adnan...’
Everyone else had frozen into silent figures in the room. But then just as she tried to move forward, past Raoul, she found that she was grabbed, her arm gripped in a punishing hold that pulled her back against a warm, powerful, masculine form.
It was the feel of the heat of his skin against her now exposed back, the thud of his heart underneath the hard frame of his ribcage that shocked her into silence. She had forgotten—how could she have forgotten?—that, while she was wearing only the half-on, half-off nightdress with her robe falling down her back, Raoul was half-naked, barely covered by the white towel knotted at his narrow waist. Pressed up against him like this, the scent of his clean skin overlaid with the tang of lemon from his shampoo curled around her from behind, enclosing her in a sensual haze, scrambling her thoughts even further.
‘Adnan...’ she tried again, but the burning image of what he must be seeing dried her throat so that no further words would come out.
She was grateful for the blurring of her vision so she couldn’t see the anger, the betrayal, in his face. The wedding might not have been any sort of love match, but Adnan was her friend. He had also offered to help her out of the hard place in which her father had dropped her and the rest of her family. He deserved better than this.
‘This isn’t what it seems,’ she managed miserably, then, forcing a new strength into her voice, ‘Tell them, Raoul.’
Tell them, Raoul. The man who held her registered that. It had come out like a command. She might as well have accompanied it with a snap of her fingers. Obviously, she expected him to obey.
Equally obviously, that was the last thing he planned right now.
For one thing, he had never jumped to any woman’s command and he didn’t intend to start now. For another, one which was starting to become much more important, the feel of her pressed up against him like this was scrambling his thoughts. He had forgotten how it felt to be this close to her. To feel the soft, warm silk of her skin against his. The black fall of her hair slithered over his shoulders, his chest, delicate strands of it catching against the evening’s growth of beard and tangling in the stubble. And her neat behind was pressed close up against him, his erection against the cleft between her buttocks.
The effect on him would be obvious if she moved. And that would clearly only make things so much worse. Not that he gave a damn if it ruined Imogen’s chances. Wasn’t that what he had come here for in the first place?
‘No need for it to be explained,’ he drawled, pulling Imogen back against him as she tried to move away towards her fiancé.
If Al Makthabi was still her fiancé after this. Surely the other man would thank him for freeing him from marriage to a woman who was only after him for his money?
‘This is exactly what it seems.’
He spoke over Imogen’s gasp of outraged indignation, tightening his grip warningly on the arms she tried to pull away from him. He caught her tiny murmur of discomfort and immediately loosened his grip just a touch. Not enough to let her break away, but enough not to bruise that soft white skin that was making it hellishly difficult to concentrate on what he was saying.
What he really wanted was to tell them all to get to hell out of here, to press his mouth against the fine line of her exposed neck, kiss it, let his tongue slip out to taste it, press nibbling little bites...
Hell, no!
Brutally, he dragged his mind back from the wanton path it seemed determined to follow, the shockingly sensual little wriggle that Imogen gave against him revealing without words that she was aware of the effect she was having on him. The battle he was fighting to control his most basic feelings roughened his voice so it sounded harsher than he had intended.
‘Imogen came to see me—we knew each other before, didn’t we, chérie?’
‘No!’
Imogen couldn’t believe what was happening, what he was saying. How could he possibly be calling her darling when it was so far from any sort of truth? Particularly when it was hissed in her ear like the voice of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
‘Oui, ma chère.’
Long fingers stroked down her arm, making her writhe in uncontrolled response. A tiny, abandoned moan escaped her, sliding out before she could bite down hard on her lower lip to hold it back. How could this be happening?
But she couldn’t suppress the red alert flaring in all her senses; couldn’t bring that yearning memory under control. Behind her, Raoul’s strength supported her, his heat surrounded her, his mouth drifted across her neck at the point where her pulse throbbed in desperate, uncontrolled response. Even now, with no trace of privacy in the room. With her father, her sister... Oh, dear heaven—Adnan!
To her horror, she found herself closing her eyes in response then frantically forcing them open. And wishing she’d never done that when she caught the raw savage rage in Adnan’s eyes, the snarl of fury that twisted his mouth.
‘You were lovers.’
It was thrown straight into her face and there was no way she could avoid it. It
was as if the ground had opened up beneath her, throwing her down, deep down into hell, and she couldn’t possibly escape. She couldn’t deny it either. To do so would be to lie to Adnan and she couldn’t do that. She owed him the truth if nothing else.
Rough and raw, she dragged in a painful breath to give her the strength to speak. At the same time, unexpectedly, she felt the change in Raoul’s grip, the new way he was holding her. Still tight, but somehow stronger, supporting rather than restraining her.
‘Yes...’ she sighed, sad and low. ‘Yes, we were.’
Raoul hadn’t expected that. She sensed it from a new tension in the long body against which hers was pressed. He clearly hadn’t expected her to speak the truth. But what else could she do? She had valued Adnan’s friendship for so long. She couldn’t wrong him now.
The words fell into icy silence. The only sound in the room was her own heart thudding heavily in her ears, the blood pulsing along her veins. There was the tiniest sensation of Raoul’s breath, warm and soft on her neck, and shockingly it felt like a touch of comfort in a world where everything had turned black.
‘But...’ She tried to start again but her voice had no strength and no one could hear her whisper because of the snarl of icy fury from Adnan that covered it.
‘You’re welcome to her.’
The words were tossed into the room, cold, stark, totally indifferent. And they were directed at Raoul, flying past her as if she no longer existed.
She didn’t exist any more—not for Adnan. She had no doubt about that. If she needed any further proof, it was there in the way he turned on his heel and strode away, angry footsteps echoing down the corridor.
She tried to tug herself away from Raoul’s hold.
‘Let me go!’ she cried, turning her head to direct it at his cheek.
But that was a terrible mistake. It brought her face so close to his that the scent of his skin warmed her senses; and, when she cried out her rage, her lips actually grazed the stubble covering the rich, olive skin of his jaw. She could taste him against her tongue and the rush of memory almost took her legs from under her. She would have sagged against him if it weren’t for the sudden tightening of his grip, the strength of his muscles supporting her.
‘Let me go!’
‘Not if you’re going after him.’
‘Going after him? Don’t be stupid! Did you hear what he said? Do you think he’d want me now?’
She twisted round in Raoul’s arms, needing to face him, then immediately wished she hadn’t. The movement brought her hard up against him, her pelvis crushed against his so she couldn’t be unaware of the swollen evidence of his arousal beneath the inadequate concealment of the towel. The heat of it, the burning sensation, froze her in total shock.
‘Let me... I’ll go after him...’
It was Ciara who spoke, turning and running out the door, following where Adnan had marched away just moments before. Imogen heard her dashing along the corridor, down the stairs, and then her steps faded into silence.
‘No point,’ she tried to respond, but no one was listening. Outside, there was the roar of the powerful engine of Adnan’s car and the spurt of gravel under the wheels as he sped away.
‘Immi...’
She had forgotten her father was there.
Joe O’Sullivan’s stunned expression was just too much for her battered and bruised mind to take in. Her senses were assailed by the strength of Raoul’s arms around her, the rise and fall of his powerful ribcage as he breathed, the dark glint of watchful golden eyes. If she inhaled, she took in his scent; if she moved her head, she felt the scrape of his bristled chin. And all the time there was that hot, hard, demanding pressure into the cradle of her hips, reminding her of wilder times, dangerous days when she had lost herself in the strength and fire of this man’s passion.
‘Oh, Immi...’
The sound of her name from her father again barely reached her through the whirling confusion in her thoughts. It also had a fraying edge on the word, one sadly she knew all too well. Joe O’Sullivan had been celebrating his daughter’s upcoming wedding—and his own prospective freedom from fear and debt—just a little too well. As she blinked away the sense of apprehension in her own eyes, she saw Raoul look down at her, dark and intent, his focus fixed on her and nowhere else.
‘Get out,’ he said, cold and stark.
For a moment, Imogen thought his words were addressed to her and she lifted her head to try to look around. Then immediately wished she hadn’t. The movement brought her eyes round to the mirrored door in the huge, old-fashioned wardrobe that stood against the far wall, with her image reflected in it. And the sight of that reflection brought the heat rushing up her body, scorching through every cell.
Was that what Adnan had seen? If it was then it was no wonder he had walked out without a single glance back, their arrangement, their friendship shattered in a moment. He must have seen that wanton-looking woman in another man’s arms, her hair tossed and tangled down her back, the make-up she had forgotten to take off in her haste to talk with Raoul smudged under her eyes. The robe had been dragged apart and hung halfway off one shoulder, the thin strap of her nightgown following it to drape partway down her arm.
No wonder Adnan had stalked away. No wonder he had turned his back on her—and the future they had hoped to secure for Blacklands. Guilt tore at her conscience and blended fiercely with fury at the way Raoul had behaved, the way he’d trapped her here like this with her father.
‘Dad...please,’ she begged, unable to turn and look at him, unable once again to drag her gaze away from Raoul’s burning eyes. The hypnotic hold he had on her was far stronger than the muscular grip that held her so close. ‘Go now.’
‘But Immi—what about the wedding? What—?’
‘Go.’ It was Raoul’s voice, flat and emphatic, no room for argument. ‘Go now.’
‘Dad—please do as he says.’
If she could hear the pleading note in her father’s voice, then surely Raoul could too. Or was that just because she knew what was behind it? How much had depended on her wedding, and how much would be ruined now that Adnan would never go through with the event.
‘Go!’ Raoul repeated, his tone darkening dangerously.
Imogen didn’t have to look back over her shoulder to see her father’s expression. She could sense it in the quality of his silence. The bristling defiance was combined with an underlying fear and the need to protect himself from the consequences of his own irresponsible actions. It had been there in his face, in his tone, when she had told him that she was going to marry Adnan. He’d known he shouldn’t be asking this of her, but he hadn’t been able to hold back the relief at the thought that there was a chance of being rescued from the desperate situation he had found himself in. It was no wonder he was in this mess; he was fine with the horses he knew and loved—but financial problems and the real world were way beyond him. He had never been a strong man emotionally, which was why she had never told him about her pregnancy and its tragic end.
‘If you’re sure, Immi. Well, you might put some clothes on, young man!’
With this last attempt at defiant challenge, Joe turned on his heel and left, the speed of his departure betraying how glad he was to be on his way.
It was that final retort that proved to be too much for Imogen. Suddenly, the appalling sense of tension that had been twisting in her stomach since the moment of Ciara’s arrival snapped, shattering her composure and taking her sense of control with it.
‘Put some clothes on!’ she gasped, fighting the wave of near-hysterical laughter that overtook her. Her eyes closed, her head bent as she struggled with the giggles that swept through her. ‘Y-young man!’
‘It is some time since I was called that.’
Raoul’s tone was wry. The tiny touch of humour, totally unexpected in his voice, was too much, too full of memories to cope with, breaking her in a very different way. Imogen stiffened and pulled back against his hold and away fr
om the warmth and strength of his body. It was only when she put that space between them that she recognised how, weakly and dangerously, she had given in to the sense of comfort that being held had brought. A lying, deceptive sense of comfort, because Raoul’s arms offered no safety. Instead, he was the real source of menace, the true threat to her peace of mind.
How could she have been weak enough to let herself even think of surrendering to that malign temptation? The shock must have rattled her brain more than she’d imagined.
‘Dad was right—you should put some clothes on,’ she said sharply. ‘If you think I’m going to talk to you with you looking like that...’
‘Why?’ It was wickedly cool and smooth, curling round her like perfumed smoke. ‘Am I distracting you?’
Totally. The sight of so much beautiful skin, the haze of black hair that shadowed the muscular chest tracing a path down towards the point where it disappeared under the immaculate white towelling that was fastened around his narrow waist, was too much of a reminder of the way it had felt to have his hard body, the heated thrust of his manhood, pressed against her. It sent the blood rushing through her body and thundering inside her head.
‘Not at all,’ she managed with a pretence of carelessness. ‘But I think we’ve caused enough scandal for tonight. And if we’re going to talk...’
‘Are we?’ Raoul pushed a lean hand through the crisp, damp strands of his hair as he raised one dark brow interrogatively. ‘What do we need to talk about?’
‘Well...’
She’d spoken without thinking. Stupidly, it seemed. Raoul had managed to turn her whole life upside down and inside out. He’d sent her fiancé away in a black rage, breaking their engagement. He’d ruined the prospect of the wedding that was supposed to be happening tomorrow—today, she realised as she remembered she’d heard the chime of midnight. The wedding that was supposed to have saved them all. It was only now she recognised that somewhere, naively, deep down inside, she’d allowed herself to think that perhaps he might do something to help.
