‘You are totally transparent. But I don’t play those games, Faith, I told you that when we first met. I was with you. I didn’t want anyone else.’
The fact that he’d read her so easily should have bothered her but she was too lacerated by his use of the past tense to care. ‘Women want you—’
‘I’m an adult, not some hormonal teenager,’ he said curtly. ‘Do you think I jump into bed with every woman who looks at me?’
Obviously not, or he’d never get any work done.
Faith tried to breathe evenly. ‘I just thought—’
‘I know what you thought,’ he snapped. ‘And for your information I have never brought another woman here. This is convenient accommodation, not a love nest. When I’m here, I’m working.’
Wishing she hadn’t exposed so much of herself, or her feelings, Faith looked away. ‘This is so difficult.’
‘You’re the one who made it difficult.’
‘You expect my trust but you don’t give it in return.’ She turned to him. ‘What did I ever do to make you believe that I’d lie to you? And lie about something so enormously important?’
He stilled, his face ashen beneath his tan. ‘You cannot walk around Buenos Aires wearing one of my shirts.’
So he was going to stampede right over the issue, then. Her legs gave way and she plopped onto the sofa. ‘I didn’t have any luggage.’
‘You left Argentina with nothing?’
She wanted to turn the conversation back to the subject that he’d abandoned but her woman’s intuition warned her that it was best left. If Raul was avoiding it, then he was avoiding it for a reason.
And suddenly she wanted to understand that reason.
Only now was it occurring to her that she was being punished for someone else’s sins.
‘When I left, I was upset, Raul.’ In fact she’d been in such a state when she’d fled to the airport that it was fortunate her passport had been in her handbag or she wouldn’t have gone far. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Evidently.’ The mockery in his voice was sharp as a blade. ‘As you evidently weren’t thinking when you stepped in the path of a taxi. You don’t need luggage, cariño, you need protection. From yourself.’
‘That’s not true. And I wouldn’t have taken any luggage, anyway.’ She bit her lip. ‘I didn’t want to take anything that was yours.’
‘You were mine,’ Raul said with lethal emphasis, his thick dark lashes veiling the expression in his eyes. ‘You were mine. And unlike you, I take incredibly good care of my possessions.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘I’M NOT your possession, Raul.’
Raul watched her and wished he’d had the foresight to send out for some clothes for her. At least then he might have stood a chance of being able to concentrate.
He’d never considered a plain white shirt to be sexy, but Faith managed to turn it into something that could have become a top seller in a sex shop.
It wasn’t the shirt, he decided grimly, it was the woman.
Faith would have looked sexy dressed in her grandmother’s clothes.
And she was looking straight at him, her green eyes wide and intelligent. ‘Talk to me, Raul,’ she urged softly, all the fight suddenly leaving her. ‘Tell me why you’re thinking like this. Is there something I need to know? Did someone hurt you? Did someone betray your trust?’
She’d changed tactic in mid-fight but this alternative, gentler assault was infinitely more deadly than the fierce blast of her temper.
She was getting close. Too close. Closer than any woman had ever dared tread before.
‘We’ve been talking non-stop,’ he said coldly, retreating mentally and physically from the question he saw in her eyes.
‘Maybe we haven’t been talking about the right things.’
Swiftly, he sidestepped an issue he had no intention of exploring further. ‘You betrayed my trust.’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Why would you even think that?’
‘Because you went to astonishing lengths to drag me into this marriage.’
‘That is not what happened!’
‘Then what did happen, Faith? Why are we standing here, as husband and wife, because I sure as hell don’t know!’ His words thickened, his usually faultless accent tinged with a hint of his South American heritage.
She stood in front of him and he could actually see her slim legs shaking. In fact she was shaking so badly that for a moment he wondered whether she might actually collapse. Her face had lost every last hint of colour and she looked as though she were in shock. ‘We’re here because I thought it was what you wanted. You proposed, Raul. You asked me to marry you.’
‘Because you gave me no other option! Have you listened to anything I’ve said over the past ten months?’ With a supreme effort of will, he kept his voice level even though the temptation to vent his wrath was extreme. ‘Right from the beginning I made it clear to you—no marriage, no babies. If that’s what you had planned then you should have been with another man.’
But even as he uttered the words he knew them for a lie. He would never have let her go to another man.
‘I didn’t have anything planned. I didn’t plan any of this!’ Some of her spirit returned. ‘I came to your wretched estancia because the job was interesting and I wanted to see something of South America. All you were to me was a name. A guy who knew about horses!’
Watching her trembling and shaking in front of him, Raul frowned. ‘Calm down.’ She looked impossibly fragile and he watched with a mixture of concern and exasperation as she grew more and more agitated, her slender hands clasping and unclasping by her sides.
‘Don’t tell me to calm down! How can I possibly calm down when you’re accusing me of planning as though I’m some sort of s-s—’ she stumbled over the word ‘—scheming woman, out to trap you. I’m not scheming. I never planned or plotted. I had an accident! It happens to millions of women every day! And it wasn’t just my fault! You were there, too! You’re very quick to blame me, but I wasn’t alone in this. I didn’t have sex by myself. You were there, Raul, every time. You were there in our bed every night. You were there in the shower, in the stables, in your office, in the fields—wherever I was, you were. I didn’t do this by myself!’
Her passionate diatribe conjured up images of such disturbing clarity that it took him a moment to formulate a response. ‘You assured me that you were protected.’
‘Well, it seems that nothing is foolproof. I’ve thought about it and thought about it.’ Faith swallowed. ‘I
