faster.’
He was doing it again—saying her mother had married for money. ‘You’re disgusting, do you know that?’
‘Why? Because I’m telling you the truth?’
Marianne called him a name—one that made his eyes widen. ‘It’s not the truth, just your distorted version of it. I can’t help it if your father is a bitter old man who has poisoned your mind as well as his.’
‘Don’t talk about my father like that.’
Marianne reared up at the hypocrisy, her voice flying up the scale. ‘Your father? Your father! I’ll say what I like after your insinuations about my mother. She was a wonderful woman, the best, and never in a million years would she have married my father simply because he was going to inherit a business and a big house. She wasn’t like that.’
Her fury strangely seemed to calm him. His voice lower than it had been a moment ago and without the growl to it, he said, ‘Calm yourself, woman. You’re overreacting.’
Marianne didn’t think about what she did next; it was pure instinct. The sound of the slap echoed in the close confines of the car and immediately the handprint of her fingers were etched in red on his tanned face. She stared at him in the silence that had fallen, inwardly horrified at what she’d done but determined not to let him see it. She had never struck another person in her life.
Seconds ticked by. ‘Feel better?’ he drawled coldly.
She raised her chin. If she had tried to answer him she would have burst into tears and that was not an option.
‘I can see we are going to have to agree to disagree about certain elements in the past.’ He raised a hand to his face, flexing his jaw from side to side, one eyebrow raised. ‘That taken as read, at least we now have all the cards on the table, so to speak.’
Marianne gathered herself together with some effort. Cards on the table? Hardly. If Rafe Steed and his father bore such an immense grudge about the past, then why the proposal regarding Seacrest? It didn’t add up. Her voice as chilly as his had been, she said, ‘Why are you and your father buying my home, Mr Steed?’
He made a show of relaxing back in his seat but Marianne was sure it was just that—a show. He was as tense as she was inwardly, she knew it.
His blue eyes narrowed against the sunlight streaming in through the window, he said quietly, ‘I’ve told you why the offer has been made. My father and I are in the hotel business and have converted several suitable properties in the States. I think it would be healthy for him to have a project here rather than having to concentrate on his illness away from family and friends. He liked the idea of obtaining the house when I put the idea to him.’
‘Because you both feel you’re getting one over on my father?’ she asked baldly, deliberately not mincing her words. ‘Acquiring Seacrest would mean you’d secured the main thing which had persuaded my mother to marry my father, the way you see it, surely? Isn’t that so?’
He surveyed her indolently for a moment or two. ‘What a suspicious little mind you have, Miss Carr.’
‘What a nasty little mind you have, Mr Steed.’
‘I understand from Tom and Gillian that you are very like your mother.’ It wasn’t laudatory. ‘In looks, personality—everything.’
‘I hope so.’ Her head was high and her eyes steady.
‘She must have given the same appearance of fragility while being as—’ he paused, obviously changing his mind about the next word before he continued ‘—strong as an ox beneath that delicate exterior.’
He had been going to say something unpleasant. Marianne’s gaze never wavered as she said, ‘My mother was a very strong woman, as it happens. She was also gentle and sympathetic and loving. You needn’t take my word for that, ask anyone. But, on second thoughts, no, don’t. It doesn’t matter what you think. Not one iota.’
Hard-eyed, he said, ‘And mine was equally loved, so how do you think it makes me feel, knowing she never had the marriage she should have had?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Steed. But that was your parents’ business and no one else’s, not even yours. From what you’ve told me, your mother married your father knowing about his past and how he felt so she knew where she stood. If they were unhappy—’
‘I never said they were unhappy,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘I think they were very happy in their own way.’
‘But it didn’t measure up to what you demanded they should feel about each other? They were supposed to have been the one and only loves in each other’s lives, is that it?’
She watched as a veil came down over the blue eyes, making his gaze unreadable. ‘There is no point in discussing this any further.’
She had never met a man who could get under her skin like this one. The arrogance—the sheer arrogance of thinking he could dismiss her after what he’d accused her mother of. ‘I disagree. You started this and you can jolly well do me the courtesy of answering. And don’t think you can hold the carrot of Seacrest dangling in front of my nose to make me agree black is white, because that won’t work. I’d rather lose Seacrest completely than compromise on what I’ve said to you. Do you understand?’
He glared at her. ‘Don’t talk to me as though I were ten years old.’
‘Then don’t act like it.’ She drew in a shuddering gasp of air, feeling as though someone had punched her in the solar plexus and desperately trying to firm her wobbly bottom lip. She would rather die than let him see how he’d devastated her.
She heard him swear softly under his breath and the next moment a large, crisp white handkerchief was placed in her hands. She reacted as though it were scalding-hot, shoving it back at him as she said, ‘I’m perfectly all right, thank you.’
‘Look, I didn’t mean to say all that, but you’re so…’
‘So what?’ Adrenaline was rushing in and it couldn’t have been more welcome after the last few seconds of being in danger of losing control and bursting into tears. ‘So like my mother? Well, I’ll take that as a compliment if you don’t mind.’
‘For crying out loud!’
The irritation in his voice was acute and, as Marianne fixed her eyes on her hands, she willed herself to calm down. He was a pig of a man and she hated him, but what upset her most was the knowledge that she could never agree to the proposal to work with him and his father and keep Seacrest now. Desolation as deep as the Cornish sea claimed her and she sat in silent misery as she forced her racing heart to steady.
Rafe had jerked to face the dashboard, his hands gripping the steering wheel and his countenance as dark as thunder. Out of the corner of her eye, her gaze fell onto his hands. They were powerful and very masculine, his fingers long and strong and a light dusting of black hair coating the backs of his hands. He wore no rings but what looked like an extremely expensive watch sat on his left wrist. His nails were short and immaculately clean. She liked that in a man.
Hauling her thoughts back from the path they were following, she asked herself why on earth she was thinking about Rafe Steed’s hands at a moment like this. Shock, most probably. The mind retreating
