man who watched him. “I want a puppy but Mum says not yet ‘cause we’d have to leave him by himself and he’d be lonely all day, but another lady has a shop too, and she’s got a little dog and her dog sleeps on a cushion in the shop with her and it’s happy all day.”
And then, thank heavens, another customer came in and Marisa said evenly, “Off you go, Keir.”
With obvious reluctance Keir headed away, but not before giving Rafe a swift smile and saying, “Goodbye, Mr Pev’ril.”
Rafe watched until he was out of hearing before transferring his gaze to Marisa’s face. “A pleasant child.”
“Thank you,” she said automatically, still spooked by the speculation in his hard scrutiny. “Can I help you at all?”
“No, I just came in to tell you I’m now very high in my sister’s favour. When I told her you had painted the picture she was surprised and wondered why you hadn’t signed it. We could only make out your initials.”
She couldn’t tell him the last thing she wanted was her name where someone who knew her—or David—might see it. So she smiled and shrugged. “I don’t really know—I just never have.”
He appeared to take that at face value. “She asked me to tell you that she loves it and is over the moon.”
Marisa relaxed a little. “That’s great,” she said.
“Thank your sister from me, please.”
“She’ll probably come in and enthuse about it herself when she’s next up, so I’ll leave that to you.” His matter-of-fact tone dismissed her, reinforced by his rapid glance at the clock at the back of the shop. “I have to go, but we’ll meet again.”
Not if I see you first, Marisa thought uneasily, but managed to say, “I’m sure we will.”
Parrying another hard glance with her most limpid smile, she tried to ignore her jumping nerve-ends as she moved away to deal with another customer, who’d decided to begin Christmas shopping.
Surprisingly for an afternoon, a steady stream of shoppers kept her so busy she had no time to mull over Rafe’s unexpected visit or the even more unexpected attention he’d paid to her son.
Or her reckless—and most unusual—response to him. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she’d slept entwined in his arms, heart to heart, her legs tangled in his, her skin warming him …
Get out of my head, she ordered the intrusive memories.
Later, after they’d got home, she hung out a load of washing, trying to convince herself that her apprehension was without foundation. A wistful pain jagged through her as she watched Keir tear around on the bicycle that had been her father’s final gift to him.
It was foolish to be so alarmed by Rafe Peveril. He was no threat to her or—more important—to Keir.
Because even if her ex-husband was still working for the Peveril organisation, she no longer needed to fear David. Not for herself, anyway … She was a different woman from the green girl who’d married him. She’d suffered and been lost, and eventually realised that the only way she’d survive was to rescue herself.
And she’d done it. Now she had a life and the future she’d crafted for herself and her son. She’d let no one—certainly not Rafe Peveril—take that from her.
Yet for the rest of the day darkness clouded her thoughts, dragging with it old fear, old pain and memories of will-sapping despair at being trapped in a situation she’d been unable to escape.
Because there was the ugly matter of the lie—the one that had won her freedom and Keir’s safety.
Unseeingly, Rafe frowned at the glorious view from his office window, remembering black-lashed eyes and silky skin—skin that had paled that afternoon when Marisa Somerville had looked up and seen him. Her hands, elegant, capable and undecorated by rings had stiffened for a few seconds, and then trembled slightly.
A nagging sense of familiarity taunted him, refusing to be dismissed. Yet it had to be just the random coincidence of eye colour and shape. Apart from those eyes, nothing connected Marisa Somerville to the drab nonentity who had been married to David Brown.
Marisa was everything poor Mary Brown wasn’t.
He let his memory range from glossy hair the colour of dark honey to satiny skin with a subtle sheen, and a mouth that beckoned with generous sensuality.
A sleeping hunger stirred, one so fiercely male and sharply focused it refused to be dismissed.
So, Marisa Somerville was very attractive.
Hell, how inadequate was that? he thought with a cynical smile. His recollection of a body that even her restrained clothes hadn’t been able to subdue prompted him to add sexy to attractive.
It hadn’t been simple recognition that had shadowed that tilted, siren’s gaze. His frown deepened. He considered himself an astute judge of reactions and in any other situation he’d have guessed Marisa’s had come very close to fear …
Only for a second. She’d recovered fast, although a hint of tension had reappeared when her son had entered the shop.
Possibly what he’d seen in Marisa Somerville’s face was nothing more than a feminine resistance to the basic, sexual pull between a fertile woman and a virile man—a matter of genes recognising a possible mate—a pull he’d also felt.
Still did, he realised, drily amused by his hardening body.
That certainly hadn’t happened in Mariposa, when he’d met Mary Brown. She’d looked at him with no expression, shaken his hand as though forced to and immediately faded into the background. What had lodged in his mind had been the dislocating contrast between fascinating eyes and the rest of her—thin, listless, her dragging voice, sallow skin and the lank hair of pure mouse scraped back from her face into a ponytail.
Rafe looked around his office, letting the warmth and practicality of the room soak into him.
This room represented the essence of his life; five generations of Peveril men and women had sat behind the huge kauri desk and worked to create the superbly productive empire that had expanded from a wilderness to encompass the world.
He hoped one day a son or daughter of his would occupy the same chair behind the same desk, with the same aim—to feed as many people as he could.
His father had set up an organisation to help the Mariposan government introduce modern farming practices, but after his death Rafe had discovered a chaotic state of affairs. That first, fact-finding trip to Mariposa had been the impetus to impose a proper chain of control, a process that involved total restructuring as well as hiring a workforce he could trust.
He made an impatient gesture and turned to the computer. He had more important things to think about than a possible—if unlikely—link between Marisa Somerville and the wife of one of his farm managers.
Yet he couldn’t dislodge the memory of that flash of recognition and the fleeting, almost haunted expression in Marisa’s eyes.
Although Rafe
