us, you mean?”
“Exactly. Just without our reasons.”
Rafael shrugged. “Regardless of any other transgressions they may or may not have committed, I’m only acting as judge, jury and executioner in the crime pertaining to me.”
Richard gave a conceding head tilt. “Your prerogative. But you’re the man who never misses or forgets a thing, and Eliana isn’t a name you hear every day. Didn’t it ring a bell?”
A million bells could have rung and he wouldn’t have heard them. He’d been that far gone under her spell.
“The only way it didn’t is if she gave you a nickname.”
“She did, but told me her real name almost at once.”
“Did she tell you those as soon as you met?”
“There was no chance for that until much later.”
Richard made a satisfied gesture. “There you go.”
He frowned. “There I go what? What difference does it make if she told me her name at first or later?”
“Timing is the difference. Later you were submerged under her spell and no longer able to add one and one.”
Just what he’d been thinking, even if his view of her spell’s nature and Richard’s were worlds apart.
“How could you possibly assign devious intent to her actions when this whole thing has been a total coincidence?”
Richard looked at him as if his IQ had dropped a hundred points. “I can because she’s Ferreira’s daughter, the woman who works with him, and whom he brought here instead of his senior partners to use as bait for you. And it would have worked spectacularly, if not for the tiny detail they’re oblivious of—who you really are, and that you’re the one reeling him in.”
He waved Richard’s incriminating theories away. “That’s preposterous. You know I’m the one who sought her out and that she didn’t even know who I was.”
Richard’s lip curled. “She knew enough about you to cast a spell in your general direction and wait for you to reveal yourself by going after her.”
He gaped at him. “You actually believe such nonsense?”
Richard shrugged. “The world, especially this part of it, is full of inexplicable things. Just like this compulsion that came over you when she walked in.”
“That’s called attraction. That’s supposed to be an inexplicable magic, at first at least. Then I touched her, talked to her, and all was explained. To me, she’s...perfect.”
It was Richard’s turn to gape at him. “See that? That’s not you talking. I’m starting to think a curse breaker is in order.”
“We’ve progressed from spell to curse? What we shared...”
Richard gave a harsh snort. “Dear Lord—shared? You’ve had what with that woman? Three, four hours?”
“Time is irrelevant when something is that powerful.”
Richard shook his head, regarding him with a mixture of dismay and disparagement. “Seems I’ll have to dig deep to find someone who specializes in such potent curses. And there I’d hoped hers was broken when you took off with that redhead. What did you do with her anyway?”
“What redhead?”
Richard stared at him. “You really don’t remember her?”
Suddenly, he vaguely recalled something. A woman talking while he’d heard nothing but the cacophony of his own thoughts, saw nothing but Eliana across the ballroom. Then the woman was clinging to him and dragging him out of the ballroom. Once outside, he’d shaken her off without a word and stormed to his study from another path that didn’t traverse the ballroom.
“No wonder you don’t remember that temptress who was wrapped around you. You were still wrapped around Ferreira’s daughter’s pinkie even as you walked away from her.”
It had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. He’d felt as if his heart was being dragged out of his body with every step he took away from her. Then he’d reached the ballroom’s threshold and had been unable to go farther. Every cell in his body screamed to get away, but screamed louder to stay close, to not lose sight of her. Everything inside him still rioted, demanding that he return and spirit her away to their promised night....
“Lower the volume, mate.” At his start, Richard smirked. “I can hear you thinking of going back for her. But before you go any further down that road, let me underscore that she’s the daughter Ferreira lavished his love on while he deprived you of your family and them of you. He sent you to hell where you could have been killed after untold abuse. You can’t let that daughter interfere with your revenge on him.”
He knew that, but it was all too much to take in....
Richard snapped his fingers. “Snap out of it, mate.”
“Get your hand out of my face, mate.” Suddenly, his fury was back at maximum. “And you actually thought I’d walk away from Eliana and take that woman to bed? Just like that?”
“I would have. But then you’re not me. You’re no longer you, for that matter.” Ice-cold deliberation entered Richard’s eyes. “But this Ferreira’s-daughter thing can work in your favor.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Think about it. What have you learned about her?”
Rafael glowered at him. If he thought he was going to share anything that had happened between them...
Then he realized. Richard was asking about Ferreira’s Eliana, not his.
He exhaled heavily, recalling the details he’d archived in his mind as extraneous about Ferreira’s then-unknown only daughter. “She was born in the States, and her mother, an Anita Larsen, was an American born to Scandinavian parents.” He now understood it was that amalgam of ethnicities that had produced her unique beauty. “Her parents named her Eliana, believing that God had answered their prayers when she was born, after her mother had two early miscarriages....”
He’d said almost the same thing when he’d commented on her name, but hadn’t made the connection then when he should have.
Yet, if he had, would it have made a difference? Would he have aborted their intimacies? Could he have? Or had it already been too late from the moment he’d laid eyes on her?
At Richard’s go-on gesture, he exhaled again. “She attended university in San Francisco, double majored in business management and child psychology, already has an MBA in the first and is earning another in the second.” Which was exactly what she’d told him minus her exact specialties. And he hadn’t had a inkling of realization. “But why are you asking? You must have found all this out yourself.”
“I did. But you’re not mentioning the relevant part. That Ferreira’s wife died, leaving him their
