‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say.’ Rafe’s gaze skittered away and Eden sighed.
Why was she even bothering to fight a battle she knew she would lose? In the year that she had spent with Rafe, Fabrizzio Santini had barely acknowledged her presence, and, as she only ever met him at the racetrack, where nerves were stretched and the tension thrumming, his rudeness towards her went unnoticed, by everyone but her. Later, when she had rushed to the hospital after Gianni’s accident, Fabrizzio had bluntly informed her that she would not be welcomed by any of the Santini family. She had been Rafe’s whore, he told her, and she had served her purpose; Rafe had moved on.
Suddenly she felt bone weary. Her relationship with Rafe had happened a long time ago and, as Fabrizzio had pointed out, Rafe had moved on, life had moved on and the fact that her heart was trapped in a time warp was no one’s fault but her own. ‘There’s no point in rehashing the past,’ she said quietly. ‘Let’s just accept that it was good while it lasted.’
‘So good that you have never been able to forget it.’ He was so close that she had to tip her head to look into his eyes and to her shame, his burning gaze caused an answering heat to flood through her veins.
‘Your arrogance never fails to take my breath away,’ she snapped, mortified that her voice sounded so husky and unsure when she had been determined to be cool and controlled.
‘Not arrogance; it’s the truth, for both of us. I have never forgotten you, or what we had together.’
She would not be lured by the sweet seduction of his words, Eden assured herself, fighting the quiver of response that ran the length of her spine. ‘We had sex,’ she stated bluntly, watching as his mouth curved into a knowing smile.
‘And in the years that we’ve been apart I’m damn sure you’ve had sex with hundreds of other women. Do you think I didn’t notice the groupies that used to hang around the track, waiting for you to beckon?’
‘None were as good as you,’ he assured her, his black eyes gleaming with amusement, and something else. ‘And as for taking your breath away…’
She had been focusing so hard on his words that for a few seconds she didn’t realise his intentions, and he made good use of the time to pull her into his arms, his mouth coming down on hers with a force that rendered her helpless. It was no gentle caress, no subtle persuasion in acknowledgement of the years apart, but a brutal assault on her senses, fierce and hot, demanding a response she was unable to deny.
It was like finding heaven after a very long journey, Eden thought numbly, and she wondered how she had survived this long without him. The stroke of his tongue as he probed between her lips splintered the last vestige of her control and as she opened her mouth she heard him groan with a mixture of triumph and growing hunger. His fingers threaded through her hair, holding her fast, while his other hand roamed the length of her body, down her spine, over her hips and finally up again to the curve of her breast. Eden revelled in his touch and her arms crept up around his neck, but when she felt his fingers slide beneath her T-shirt, she stilled. Patience had never been Rafe’s strong point and in the heat of passion he had frequently ignored buttons and fastenings and simply ripped her clothes off. Reality intruded and with it the realisation that she was in Rafe’s arms, the one place she had vowed she would never be again.
As if sensing her withdrawal, he lifted his head, his eyes hard and cold, and shame engulfed her as he gripped her wrists and removed her arms from around his neck in a gesture of mocking distaste.
‘You always were an easy lay,’ he murmured lazily and Eden spun away from him, blinded by tears of rage at her own weakness, her hip bone coming into sharp contact with the windowsill.
‘Get out,’ she ordered, unable to bring herself to look at him as she ran towards the stairs, ‘before I call the police and have you charged with harassment. I don’t want or need your forgiveness and, despite your arrogant assumption that you’re God’s gift to women, I don’t want you.’
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ Nev asked when Eden walked into his estate agency the following morning.
Having spent a sleepless night during which murder and Rafe Santini had featured highly in her thoughts, the last thing she needed was more problems, and she frowned. ‘Tell me the worst.’
‘The flat on the CobTree estate is no longer available to rent.’
‘But it was practically agreed,’ Eden cried, unable to disguise her panic. ‘I’ve got to be out of the cottage by the weekend.’
‘I know,’ Nev murmured sympathetically. ‘The owners phoned this morning to say they’d received an offer from a buyer that they can’t refuse.’
‘Oh, God.’ Eden rubbed her brow wearily. ‘What am I going to do? Cliff said I could move in with him and Jenny if necessary but now the baby has arrived and I don’t want to add to their problems.’
‘There is one possibility that’s cropped up,’ Nev told her and she stared at him expectantly.
‘You mean a property that I can afford has come onto your books? Is it in Wellworth?’
‘Very much so—it’s the Dower House, undoubtedly the most attractive property in the village.’
‘With a rent to match,’ Eden said dismally as hope receded. ‘Anyways, I thought you’d already found new tenants.’
‘I have, and the business group that has signed the year’s lease has asked me to find a housekeeper. I spoke to the chief executive, Hank Molloy,’ Nev continued.
‘The company he works for is a global organisation and they want the house as a British base for their top executives. Mr Molloy says he’s hoping to bring his grandchildren over from Texas at the end of the summer and it’ll probably be used at Christmas, but for much of the time the house will be empty. He wants to install a resident housekeeper to keep the place ticking over.’
‘But I already have a job on the Gazette,’ Eden said slowly, ‘and I’m a hopeless cook.’
‘You wouldn’t have to do any cooking, just a bit of laundry, overseeing the cleaning contractors, that sort of thing. It could be the answer to your problems, Eden, not to mention mine. Hank Molloy is an extremely brash American who wants everything done yesterday and when I told him I might have someone suitable in mind he faxed over a contract.’
‘So would I be employed by Mr Molloy’s company?’ Eden queried.
‘Yes, but the contract seems fine; the only sticking point I can see is that you’d have to agree to give three months’ notice should you want to leave.’
‘That’s hardly a problem; I’m not going anywhere in a hurry,’ Eden murmured drily. ‘It sounds too good to be true—I can’t help thinking there’s a catch.’
‘Talk to Mr Molloy yourself,’ Nev urged as he punched several digits into his phone and handed it to her. ‘Let him reassure you that everything’s above board.’
Hank Molloy spoke at the pace of a speeding train but after their conversation Eden felt happier about signing the contract. She felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders and smiled warmly at Nev. ‘You’re a star; I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘For a start you can agree to have dinner with your favourite estate agent,’ he teased, and she hesitated for a moment. Nev was a great guy but she wasn’t interested and it would be unfair to let him believe they could be anything more than friends. On the other hand it was only dinner, she argued with herself.
She’d been so tense since Rafe had turned up to disrupt her emotional stability and she needed something, anything to banish him from her mind.
The Dower House was a listed building that dated back to the eighteenth century.
A spacious six-bedroom house set in several acres of Oxfordshire countryside, it had been expertly renovated and refurbished and Eden had fallen in love with it the minute she’d walked through the door. The position of housekeeper was the most incredible piece of luck, she mused as she climbed the central staircase to the pretty guest bedroom she had chosen. She still couldn’t help th
inking there must be a catch and she wondered when Hank Molloy would visit. She hoped Nev was right and she wouldn’t be expected to cook because she was hopeless in the kitchen and could very well find herself out of her new home.
The night was sultry. A thunderstorm had been brewing all day and when she threw open her bedroom window the air was hot and ominously still. The last few days had been tiring, what with packing up her parents’ furniture and moving her own possessions into the Dower House, yet she dreaded going to bed. Inactivity gave her time to think and her thoughts turned with relentless inevitability to one man, her fractured dreams haunted by memories of the closeness she and Rafe had once shared. It had been an illusion, she angrily reminded herself. The feeling that he was her other half, the keeper of her soul, had been a figment of her imagination, cruelly shattered the night he’d found her and Gianni by the pool.
Forget him, she told herself. He had doubtless already dismissed her from his mind and was probably on the other side of the world with his Swedish blonde—or her replacement. The emotion in her heart twisted. She reached for the packet of painkillers the hospital had prescribed, her leg was aching—not surprising when it was held together with a series of metal pins. Usually she was able to ignore the dull pain, but tonight she wanted the sanctuary of oblivion and a good night’s sleep.
A few hours later she opened her eyes as a brilliant flash lit up the room. The thunder was a low, angry growl that wasn’t really loud enough to have woken her and she lay in the darkness, wondering why her skin prickled, her ears straining for the other faint sound she had heard.
An intruder or an overactive imagination? she queried silently, when the definitive thud of the front door closing sounded up the stairs. Sleep was impossible until she’d set her mind to rest but the faint glimmer of light visible from beneath the living-room door caused her heart to pound, and her palms were clammy with sweat as she tiptoed down the stairs. Cursing the fact that she’d left her mobile phone in her bedroom, she acknowledged that her only option was to slip out of the front door and run down the lane to the nearest house for help, but she was in her pyjamas and now it was raining. Suddenly the living-room door swung open and she gasped and grabbed the nearest potential weapon.
‘It seems an odd time for flower arranging,’ came a familiar husky drawl. ‘What on earth are you doing, cara?’
‘What am I doing?’ For all of thirty seconds, words failed her as she set the heavy-based vase back on the dresser. She felt incredibly stupid but relief quickly gave way to sheer fury and she glared at Rafe. ‘You don’t know how close you came to having this vase smashed over your head.’
From her tone Rafe surmised that she wished she’d carried out the planned attack. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair a tumble of gold silk on her shoulders and despite her voluminous pyjamas he was swamped with a mixture of desire and tenderness as he studied her furious face.
‘You seem to be making a habit of walking into my home uninvited,’ she snapped.
‘How did you get in? Don’t tell me the front door was open because I know I locked it.’
In reply, he dangled his door key in front of her and she stared at it, her puzzlement obvious. ‘Actually, it’s my home,’ he corrected mildly and she drew a sharp breath.
‘Since when was your name Hank Molloy?’
‘Hank is the chief executive of a subsidiary company of the Santini Corporation who arranged the lease of this house. I understand you’re my housekeeper—welcome on board.’
Sneaky didn’t cover it; Machiavellian was nearer the mark. She’d known there had to be a catch and patently he was it. He was studying her with indolent amusement, all powerful, dominant male, his black jeans and leather jacket emphasising his height and raw sexual magnetism, and it took all her reserves of willpower to resist his pull.
‘I assume you have a good reason for what is almost certainly a fraudulent act—tricking me into signing that contract,’ she qualified, and he gave a slow smile.
‘Several.’
‘Do you care to explain them?’
‘A practical demonstration would be more illuminating.’ He closed the space between them in a heartbeat, his hand cupping her nape to angle her head so that he could plunder her mouth at will. Resistance was impossible when her senses were drugged by the seductive musk of his cologne. The heat from his body enfolded her, his arms drawing her in against the solid wall of his chest and she could feel his heart thudding furiously beneath her fingertips. He kissed her until her lips were swollen, until she was boneless and totally pliant in his arms, and only then did he ease back a fraction, brushing his mouth gently over hers while she clung to him, desperate to prolong the moment before she would have to admit that her defences had crumbled at the first attack.
‘Why are you hounding me?’ she whispered when he released her and she wrapped her arms defensively around her body. ‘What do you want from me?’
The answer was simple but she wasn’t ready to hear it, he acknowledged grimly, her air of vulnerability and the tremulous quiver of her lips causing him a momentary attack of conscience. Perhaps he should let her go, walk away and forget the closeness they’d once shared, the joy, but he’d tried keeping his distance and four years on she still dogged his every waking thought.
‘I’m hardly hounding you, cara mia; you’re in my house, sleeping in my bed—figuratively speaking, that is,’ he added when she looked as though she would explode.
‘Do you honestly expect me to believe that my position here as housekeeper is sheer coincidence?’ she demanded bitingly, and he shrugged.
‘Hell, no; it took a lot of planning and I still couldn’t be certain that when your eager estate-agent friend was asked to find a suitable housekeeper at short notice he would appoint you. He might just have easily given the position to his elderly receptionist, and I have to admit I wouldn’t have greeted her so enthusiastically.’
His eyes glinted with amusement as he studied her flushed face and she was torn between the desire to hit him and to burst into tears. She’d forgotten how he loved to tease her, forgotten his easy sense of humour and the laughter they’d shared, and she didn’t want to remember any of it now.
‘I’m sure Gloria will be an excellent replacement,’ she told him coolly, ‘because I have no intention of staying here with you.’ Swiftly, she ran from the room, tore up the stairs to her bedroom and pulled her suitcase from under the bed. She was in the process of piling her clothes into it when he appeared in the doorway, but she ignored him, her movements jerky and uncoordinated as she tried to fasten the zip.
‘You know it’s raining?’ he queried mildly.
‘I don’t care.’ The storm had worked itself up to a crescendo, the rain smashing against the window. ‘I’d sooner go out in a hurricane than spend one more minute under the same roof as you.’ He was blocking the doorway, an immovable force, but she pushed against his chest anyways, needing to get away from him before she did something stupid like beg him to kiss her again. ‘What part of “I don’t want to give our relationship another chance” do you not understand?’ she shouted, but even that didn’t provoke the loss of temper she was expecting.
‘This part,’ he said softly, and this time his lips were gentle, his kiss so full of tender compassion that the tears behind her eyelids escaped and slid down her cheeks. He had cupped her face with both his hands and stilled fractionally when he felt wetness on his fingers, but he didn’t lift his head, just deepened the kiss, coaxing a response she was powerless to deny.
When he’d done she stepped back, her eyes dark with a mixture of desire and confusion. How could one kiss evoke such a stark hunger for more and, God damn it, what had happened to her pride? ‘Let me go,’ she pleaded huskily but he merely smiled.
‘I’m the one who’s going. I fly to Canada tomorrow and after the Grand Prix I’m returning to Italy and then on to Bahrain. You signed a contract that stipulated you would give three months’ notice should you want to lea
ve,’ he reminded her.
‘At the weekend one of my top executives arrives in Oxford to oversee the takeover of the factory the Santini Corporation recently bought out. Bruno and his wife and four children are looking forward to staying in an English country house, especially as they’ve been assured that a resident housekeeper will be on hand to assist them.’
His tone was amiable but Eden sensed the steel resolve behind his words and her fingers tightened around the handle of her suitcase. ‘Nev will find someone else to look after the Dower House,’ she argued. ‘I refuse to be manipulated by you, Rafe. You might have been able to boss me around before but the spell’s broken; I’m not in awe of you any more and I won’t jump to your bidding whenever you click your fingers.’
‘But you have nowhere else to go,’ he pointed out, his jaw rigid, and she could see he was fighting to control his temper.
‘I’ll find a flat. If the other one hadn’t fallen through at the last minute I wouldn’t be here now.’ She paused as an incredible thought struck her. ‘The flat on the Cob Tree estate—you couldn’t have…Tell me you didn’t…?’A couple of hundred thousand pounds was loose change to him but surely he hadn’t bought the flat to prevent her from renting it?
‘It’s a nice little investment,’ he admitted idly, ‘although the location isn’t great.’
‘You bastard, Rafe, I won’t let you do this to me. I don’t even know why you’re bothering. Is it some misplaced desire to get your own back, to punish me for a sin I didn’t commit?’
He towered over her, the hard planes of his face and the rigid stance of his body faintly menacing. He was used to having his own way and hated to be thwarted. ‘I believe that what we had, what we could have again, is worth fighting for,’ he told her fiercely, ‘and I don’t care if I have to play dirty to get what I want.’
‘Which is what, precisely?’
‘You, back in my bed, where you belong.’
For one crazy moment she hovered on a pinnacle of indecision as capitulation beckoned, and then the mist cleared and she shook her head.
His Private Mistress Page 5
