loser—any man who let this woman walk away deserved the definition. ‘Do you ever think ahead? At what point did it seem like a good idea?’
‘How is your offer better?’ she choked back, eyeing him with dislike. Where did he get off lecturing her?
His lips flattened into a hard line. ‘Were you hoping to hook him?’ he speculated.
‘Hook?’ she echoed. Does he think I need reminding of what an idiot I was?
‘Was marriage what you were after?’ he cut back, coldness seeping into his voice as other features superimposed themselves over her vivid face.
Lucy, his cold, calculating wife, had not done anything as extreme as save herself for him. She hadn’t needed to... He felt a stab of familiar contemptuous self-disgust aimed more at his romantic, easily manipulated younger self than Lucy and her mind games.
‘If I was out to catch a rich husband—which, by the way, went out with pearls and twinsets—I’d have chosen someone significantly richer than Mark.’
The furious flash of eyes like emeralds burnt away that other face and as she lifted her rounded, determined chin Raoul knew he had earned the dislike blazing in them.
Lara Gray was easy enough for a child to read! Not only could she not hide her feelings, she broadcast every emotion she felt on her beautiful face.
‘It wasn’t a judgement,’ he said quietly.
She gave a snort. ‘Not much!’
‘If it’s any comfort I think you got off pretty lightly. It can take some people a lot longer to realise the person they fell for doesn’t really exist outside their own imagination.’
‘Speaking from experience, are you?’ she mocked, finding it totally impossible to imagine that situation.
He pushed his empty cup away from him, the action allowing him the time to smooth out his expression. ‘Well, it wasn’t all bad. Look, last night we had a good time.’
Lara struggled to fight her way out of the images that flickered relentlessly through her head.
He said, ‘I made you forget.’
Where she began and he ended.
‘And you returned the favour.’ The dark glitter in his eyes was mesmerising.
The butterfly kicks had been a struggle to handle but now her stomach dissolved.
‘So what do you think?’
She blinked like someone waking up and choked out, ‘It was sex and it was one night.’ She shook her head and loosed a shocked, incredulous laugh. ‘What you’re suggesting...beyond being certifiably insane—’
‘Could work. I’m not asking for you to sign over your life.’
‘Isn’t that what marriage usually entails?’
‘Have you read the divorce statistics? The contract I am suggesting would only last for...’ he paused, the muscles around his jawline quivering before he voiced the grim reality ‘...my grandfather’s lifetime, which according to the doctors is around six months, that or...’ He stopped, cancelling the unnecessary codicil in his head: until we want it to.
He didn’t like the vagueness of it, the sense that it was not within his control. No, there had to be a definite cut-off point.
His problem was thinking past the hunger she had shaken loose in him, a hunger he’d not felt, well, ever. Right now he felt as if he’d never be able to get enough of her. But inevitably he would; six weeks, six days...even this consuming passion had a sell-by date. It would not last as long as his grandfather, but, while it did, finding the sort of escape he had last night held a lot of appeal.
‘He doesn’t expect to see his grandchild, but being able to think there will be one will make his last days... It will give his life a purpose. Do you understand?’
Lara tried a change of tack, knowing that she was doomed to lose any argument that hinged on him not being the perfect lover and her not wanting more of what he’d shown her last night.
‘I understand you’re going to lie to your grandfather and you want me to help you.’
‘You’ve never lied?’
She flung him a resentful glare. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘This is business. I’m not expecting six months of your life for free. You admit that you are going to be out of work...?’
She chewed on her lower lip. ‘Probably,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘But that doesn’t change anything.’ Except my bank balance, she thought gloomily.
‘You’re right, there are always jobs for people with the right skill sets and qualifications,’ he agreed blandly.
‘I look on this as an opportunity to go back to school.’
‘I like your glass-half-full attitude, but of course university fees are not cheap and you have to live, pay the bills...or you could give me the next six months and walk away with enough money to put yourself through college without going into debt.’
He mentioned a sum that would do a lot more than that.
‘It would be wrong.’ But it would really be a solution to the situation she found herself in...
‘Why? Who would be harmed?’
‘You’re paying me for sex. That makes me feel like—’
‘The sex is optional,’ he said, hoping he would not live to regret the gesture, but as risks went it was barely registered.
Raoul knew about sexual chemistry but just breathing in the fragrance of her skin ignited a hunger in him that broke new ground. And he knew it was mutual. Lara Gray didn’t have the ability to hide her own responses. And, yes, it was a massive turn-on to know that he could make her quiver without even touching her.
The idea that they could live as man and wife and keep sex out of the equation was the equivalent to throwing a lit match into a pile of dry leaves and expecting nothing to happen.
‘If you chose to sleep in another bedroom, so be it.’
‘And you’d be all right with that?’
His grin flashed at the note of pique in her voice. ‘No, I wouldn’t, but it wouldn’t be a deal breaker.’
‘I couldn’t do it. I’d have to pretend that I’m...I’m...I’m—’
‘Madly in love with me,’ he inserted helpfully. ‘That’s precisely why it will work. You can’t hide your feelings.’
‘If you think that one night in your bed makes me in love with you you’re seriously deluded!’
Her vehemence drew a dry smile from him. ‘If I thought you were in love with me that would be a deal breaker. I have no need of love.’ The contemptuous curl of distaste
