The Trouble With Coco Monroe
Page 28
Why hadn’t she thought of asking him for support?
First Step wasn’t all about her. It was about vulnerable people who needed help.
But she couldn’t help the suspicion that he was again playing on her emotions.
It wouldn’t be enough for him to be involved in her work.
This was Rafael.
He’d want all of her or none of her.
“Just because you had sex with me doesn’t mean I’m making a lifetime commitment to you,” she yelled.
“I think that was we had sex. And we had more than sex, baby. We made wild, passionate love.”
He’d said he was in love with her, so why was she so scared of him, of herself?
Because she always, always worked to a plan. She needed a goal, needed to see the path clearly ahead. No way was she going to give herself completely to a man, especially this man. Oh, her heart might be lost, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to listen to her head.
“It won’t work between us.”
“Yes, it will.”
He was railroading her into a decision, into an admission she didn’t want to make.
Sheer panic gripped her throat. “I don’t want to get married.”
“So you’ve said. I agree.”
That stopped her cold.
“What do you want?”
“I want you in my life.”
Okay.
She could do that.
But only on her terms.
Her brow creased as she thought it through.
“Would you consider living with me. See how it goes?”
She knew her tone was diffident, as if she didn’t believe a long-term relationship would work between them.
But was she willing to give it a try?
Yes, she was.
Coco knew there was nothing worse than living with regret.
Dark eyes never left hers.
“Well, well, well,” he drawled in a way that made her palm itch to slap him. “There’s an offer a man doesn’t receive every day. Can I think about it? It’s a big step for me.”
She didn’t know what she’d expected from him.
A happy dance for joy?
An, ‘I can’t wait’ perhaps?
But certainly not a, ‘Can I think about it?’
Battered pride had her chin lift even as a horrible feeling of vulnerability made her want to burst into tears.
And she’d rather die before she did that in front of Rafe.
“Just forget it.”
Now he grinned in a way that made her eyes narrow into slits.
“Oh no you don’t.” He moved into her space.
The look for her in those dark eyes had her stomach do a steady, continuous flip, and a thousand butterflies took wing.
“I...”
Without taking his eyes from hers, he took her in his arms.
The scent of a warm, strong male had her body responding, a hypnotic melting of her bones.
The look in his eyes, raw desire, possession, had liquid heat burning deep in her belly.
“Are you certain I am what you want?”
His voice was deep and dark like treacle, a slow pouring of arousal into her veins.
At the moment she was certain of nothing.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
“Touch me, kiss me,” she whispered.
Rafe’s mouth, so sensual, so perfect, arched into a smile.
He was so beautiful, so strong, yet caring, and gentle.
Her pulse thundered in her ears.
His lips whispered across hers, feather light, warm, and so wonderfully familiar.
Then his forehead touched hers.
“Yes, I’ll move in with you. I’m not the easiest man in the world to live with, Coco. But I will never let you down.”
His lips took hers and hot licks of arousal pulsed deep in her belly.
Oh God, what was he doing to her?
The muscles low in her belly clenched too tight, a burning need teasing her breasts, her thighs. The ache was both sweet and terrible.
He pulled back.
Her gaze locked with his.
“Ethan is sending the helicopter for us. It’s over, Coco.”
Was it?
She’d just asked Rafael Cavendish to move in with her, and he’d agreed.
What the hell had she done?
Chapter Forty
Waiting for Coco to finish packing, Rafe stretched out on a couch talking to Charles Monroe.
“I won’t change my mind on this, Charles. She’s a bit shook up at the moment, but she’ll bounce back.”
Coco’s father’s booming voice in his ear made him grin. “This little escapade has taken ten years off my life. It’s time she settled down. I want a grandchild. And I don’t care what you have to do, son. You do it with my blessing.”
If Coco ever got wind that her father was happily scheming and playing matchmaker between them she’d go fucking mental.
“Don’t count your chickens. I might have a foot in her door, but you know what she’s like. Stubborn. But don’t worry, she’ll marry me. And I plan to keep her so busy with babies she won’t have time to worry about First Step.”
Riveted to the spot, the sound of Rafe’s happy laugh echoed too loud in Coco’s disbelieving ears.
On bare feet she turned, padded back to her bedroom, sank to the bed.
To anchor her to a world gone mad, she placed her hand on top of the packed suitcase.
Choice, personal or otherwise was simply not on the agenda with her father.
And it appeared it wasn’t on the agenda with Rafe, either. Her heart might tell her that she loved him. But her head screamed that Rafael Cavendish was again colluding with her father to take away her choice.
It didn’t matter if she’d fallen in love with him again.
It didn’t matter if he believed he loved her.
Because she simply could not trust him.
Pulling a thin sweater over her vest, she thrust her feet into soft leather pumps.
Her brain replayed the conversation she’d overhead again and again as her whole body trembled with fury.
Pulling the satellite phone out of her backpack she quickly raced down the stairs, out of the house to find a signal.
By the time she keyed in the correct number her hands were shaking and her heart was thundering in her ears.
Rafe had broken her heart for the last time and she was going home.
But she wouldn’t run from him, not this time.
This time she would finish whatever was between them once and for all.
Coco strode through to the sitting room and Rafe’s dark head came up.
For a crazy moment the big smile that broke on that wonderful face made her wish she’d never heard his conversation with her father, wished she hadn’t listened, hadn’t found out the truth.
Being able to live with herself was a key part of what made her who she was. And she’d be damned if she was going to live with a son-of-a-bitch who could not be trusted.
Her eyes met and held his.
“I heard the words you used to describe our time together to my father, ‘But don’t worry, she’ll marry me. And I plan to keep her so busy with babies she won’t have time for First Step.’” She took a heaving breath as Rafe went too pale and very slowly got to his feet. “What the hell is wrong with you? How dare you make a decision about what I’m doing with my life? Have you heard nothing I’ve said? You and my father live in a weird sort of parallel universe. Neither of you learn and you’ll never, ever change. Be honest for once. Did you tell my father that we’re lovers?”
He opened his mouth, closed it with a snap.
And gave a jerky nod.
She felt sick with what she needed to ask him next but her father was a tricky operator. She knew as far as he was concerned Rafe would be perfect son-in-law material.
“You had my father’s blessing to seduce me. Didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t like that, Coco. Please...”
But she read the truth.
It was like that.
It was exactly like that.
He didn’t love her, not in the way she needed to be loved by him.
Rafe saw her as a possession, not as a real flesh and blood person.
He certainly didn’t respect her work or her dreams or her needs and desires.
How could she have been so blind?
How could she have been so stupid?
She gasped as something inside her broke.
The pain was almost more than she could bear.
Her voice was no more than a whisper,
“I opened my heart to you. I opened my body to you. I trusted you.” She cleared her throat, lifted her chin, and all the while her eyes held his.
Now he groaned, thrust his fingers through his hair.
“You need to let me speak.”
Her heart was hammering so hard against her ribs she was amazed he couldn’t hear it.
“Shut up! During my work with First Step I’ve come to recognise there are many types of abuse. Physical, psychological, domineering, controlling behaviour. It terrifies me to even consider that my father ticks some of the boxes under the heading of controlling. And that you tick a couple under controlling and dominant.”
He went so utterly still with wide-eyed shock she realised it might have been smarter to approach the subject without anger. But she’d opened Pandora’s box. It was too late to push the issue back inside. Far too late.
He simply stared at her. “I cannot believe you’ve just said that. Not only about me, we’ll deal with that in a minute, but about one of the best, the finest man I know.”
Silence.
Heart thundering in her ears, Coco felt ill even thinking it, but like were attracted to like.
“You’re not his daughter. And what interests me is that you’ve immediately taken his side without listening or hearing me out.”
He shook his head. “You’re scaring me. How does he abuse you?”
Tears caught the back of her throat.
And she forced herself to open up the gaping wound deep inside her soul.
“He subjugates me. Even humiliates me under the cover of humour. He puts me down. Makes me feel somehow less than. What does that sound like to you?” But before he could respond she continued, “If you think about it from my point of view for once, you can’t deny the truth of what I’ve said.”
“He loves you.”
“Yes. But that love comes with conditions. And so does yours.”
He went bone white.
“Excuse me?”
Heart beating so hard against her ribs, in her ears, Coco caught the outrage in his voice and the fury in his eyes, but she refused to back down.
“You think about it. Think about the possessive behaviour. You’re mine, you said. Think about what you said to my father, She’s stubborn. She’ll marry me, have my babies, forget about First Step.” Her breath sawed out and in from a too tight throat. “Well I can tell you right here and right now that’s never going to happen.”
“You’re taking everything out of context. You didn’t hear the whole conversation,” he roared.
“And now you’re raising your voice. Aggressive, dominant behaviour,” she yelled back.
His finger shot out. “Don’t you engineer psychobabble crap against me. That’s bullshit and you know it, sister.”
“Is it? If I told you that the man who tried to kill me used those exact words. He loved me. He needed me. I was his. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. In his emails he hated my friends, other men I went out with. He wanted me to have his babies. See a pattern emerging? And when I ignored him, got a goddam restraining order against him, he got angry.”
Dark eyes flashed with pain, with disbelief.
And now his skin had gone ashen.
“How fucking dare you? I don’t know you anymore.”
That was true enough.
He’d never known her, not really.
But God, she felt feverish she was shaking so much.
“No. You don’t know me. Like my father you don’t really see me. You never have done and you never will do.”
“So we’re finished. End of. Is that what you’re saying?”
Silence.
She held up her satellite phone.
“I’ve just phoned Bronte. It appears Nico is in hot water.”
Rafe took a heaving breath, those dark eyes burned into hers.
“Nico knows nothing of what I did to get Sergei Kandinsky off our back. He’s done didly squat except help us.”
Now her chin lifted.
“He didn’t tell his wife that her friend was in trouble. He kept secrets, told lies. She’ll have his balls for that.”
“Christ, Coco. I was only keeping you safe.”
“Yeah,” she shot back. “But who was keeping me safe from you?”
He flinched as if she’d struck him.
Then he turned, stalked over to the French window, looked out.
Silence.
And the earth dropped away for Coco.
By saying nothing, he’d damned himself.
He couldn’t look at her.
Coward.
Thrusting his hands through his hair, why the hell couldn’t he think? Rafe turned to look at her.
“You need to let me explain, Coco.”
But he knew, even as he spoke the words, she was in no mood to listen to him.
“I don’t need to do anything. I told you how I feel about being manipulated, but you don’t get it. I want a man who’s big enough and man enough to be his own person. Not someone who when my father says jump, the response is, ‘How high?’” Now her eyes went like ice over steel. “You’re not good enough for me, Rafael. You never were.”
Chapter Forty One
The beep, beep of a car horn sounded outside followed by the slam of a car door and then quick footsteps.
Bronte Ferranti entered.
Dealing with one pissed off woman was bad enough.
Having two looking at him as if he was dog dirt on the sole of their shoe made Rafe stifle a groan.
Coco was trundling her case across the hallway and he made a move to help but the way her eyes pinned his made him think again.
Fuck it.
Bronte didn’t say a single word.
She just moved into Coco and held her in a tight hug.
“We’ll talk in the car,” Bronte told her.
And he just stood there like a pussy and let them go.
The girls hefted the luggage into the trunk, got into the black Range Rover and drove away.
Rafe was so fucking angry with her, with himself, he couldn’t think straight.
How the hell had he messed this up so spectacularly?
One minute he’d been riding high and the next he’d fallen flat on his face.
There was no way Coco had heard all of the conversation, she couldn’t have.
She couldn’t have heard how he’d resigned from Monroe Industries, how he was setting up his own security company.
She’d heard what she firmly believed was damning evidence that he was a spineless, dickless bastard who’d lied and manipulated and controlled her for his own gain.
It was plain she’d never believe him.
She certainly didn’t respect him and he wondered now if she ever would.
So what did she expect him to do now?
Just slither away like a snake on his belly because the going got tough?
By the way she’d looked at him she did think that.
She expected him to let her down.
And how fucking insulting was that?
Words were never going to work with Coco. Never had. Never would.
Actions were the one thing Coco Monroe understood.
Well, he’d give her
actions all right.
The sound of another car parking made him groan loud and long.
It was Nico Ferranti and Jacob Del Garda.
Nico jumped out. Since he was wearing one of his Italian power suits, Rafe realised he’d come straight from Ludlow Hall.
And Nico didn’t look happy.
Jacob reversed, turned the car and drove off.
Nico strode through the entrance door, let it bang behind him.
Now he stood in front of Rafe, long legs spread and hands fisted on his hips.
“Want to explain to me why my wife has just blow torched my ear on the phone?” he growled in a way that had Rafe slump onto a couch, close his eyes and press his fingertips on his eyelids.
He seriously didn’t need this.
“I messed up,” he admitted, and heaved a deep sigh of pure male frustration.
He couldn’t get those terrible things she’d said, accused him of, out of his head.
By the time he opened his eyes, Nico had taken off his suit jacket, loosened the knot of his tie and was rolling up his sleeves.
Christ, he was a big bastard.
And Rafe wondered if those fists were getting ready to pound on him.
The Italian seemed to read his mind because although those dark eyes remained cool, his white smile beamed.
“You are in love with Coco,” Nico said in a tone of voice that made it a statement of fact rather than a question.
Was it so obvious?
“She’s driving me fucking crazy.”
Nico shook his head, moved through to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and grabbed a couple of beers.
He popped the tops and strolled back, handed him a bottle.
“Thanks,” Rafe said. “Bronte gave me the sticky eye.”
He rolled the ice-cold bottle over his hot forehead.
God, he needed to think, needed to figure a few things out.
And he’d need to fix it with Coco.
He loved her.
And he’d fallen too hard, just like in all the best romances.
Souls joined.
Laughter shared.
Long, challenging conversations.
God, he’d adored those.
Lonely no more.
Well, he was alone again.
And something like raw panic burned in his belly.