he was. The only woman he’d ever exposed his scarred but steadfast soul to.
It hadn’t been enough.
His love for her. His dreams of a future together if only she would believe in him, and be with him. His confidence in her love for him.
It hadn’t been enough.
Simone had stayed on at Caverness, Rafael had stormed away in anger and in grief, and, God, it hurt to look back. Don’t look back. Don’t ever look back.
He closed his eyes and willed sleep to come.
There was nothing there he wanted to see.
MORNING came too soon for Simone.
‘No,’ she murmured when Rafael shifted restlessly beside her. A half-asleep protest as she opened her eyes and realised the advent of the day. She closed her eyes tightly and rolled onto her stomach as she reached for the pillow to fill the space Rafael had just vacated. ‘No.’
‘Shower,’ he said huskily. ‘Care to join me?’
‘No.’ And then with one eye cautiously open…‘Maybe.’
His smile was lazy. His eyes were bold. ‘Suit yourself.’
He left and closed the bathroom door behind him. The shower came on. The sheets came off. Simone had never been one to linger in bed when a challenge had been issued. She recalled with a tiny smile the firm hardness of every bit of Rafael’s lean and luscious body.
Challenge had most certainly been issued.
She almost chickened out as she stood on one side of the glass shower door with Rafael and a cascade of steaming water on the other. And then the door slid open and a hand reached for her and dragged her inside and that was the end of that.
‘You’re very decisive,’ she murmured. ‘It’s irritatingly appealing.’
He smiled a devil’s smile as he pinned her against the cubicle wall. ‘I know. Come with me today. To Sydney. I’ll get someone else to drive your hire car back.’
She wanted to. Badly. But caution had arrived with the day. Bedding Rafael had solved none of the issues hovering between them. Okay, maybe it had solved one, but the rest remained in place.
‘The meeting with Etienne won’t take long,’ he said next. ‘You could come along, and then afterwards I’ll show you Sydney.’
She slid from his grasp, stalling for time, as she stood beneath the spray. ‘Will you show me where you got your tattoo?’
His eyes grew shadowed. ‘No.’
‘Turn around,’ she ordered next, and pushed and prodded until she had Rafael where she wanted him, with his head flung back and his arms raised, hands resting on the tiles as water ran in rivulets down his back, over the words and the picture she’d striven so hard to forget.
‘I hate you for this,’ she murmured, tracing the darkened words that flowed across his back with the tips of her fingers, before finally pressing her mouth to the ink that graced his shoulder blade. ‘I love you for it too.’
Pleasure and pain. More pleasure than pain as he turned and thrust his hand into her hair and kissed her hard. They wouldn’t make it out of the shower before he took her again, she knew that much already.
She wouldn’t make it through the day without sacrificing her heart. She knew that too.
‘Show me your Sydney, then,’ she murmured as the last of her resistance to this man was crushed beneath the feel of his hands on her. ‘I’ll give you this day.’
They made it to Sydney with half an hour to spare before Rafael’s meeting with Etienne. By the time they’d parked the car underground and Rafael had caught her and kissed her as she got out of the car, and they’d made it to the lifts and into the foyer of the hotel, and found the washrooms and freshened their appearances, they only had five minutes to spare.
Being five minutes early to a meeting with a reigning monarch who wanted to offer you a plum commission wasn’t such a bad thing, she assured Rafael laughingly, before asking him yet again if he thought she would be in the way.
‘I’ve never met the man before, Simone. He’s known you since childhood. You won’t be in the way.’
Etienne had chosen to meet Rafael for lunch in the restaurant attached to the hotel. He stood as they approached him. A big, spare-framed man, immaculately attired in a dark suit and shirt. A man with a handsome face and a brilliant blue gaze that fixed on Rafael and never wavered.
Simone stopped abruptly, sucker punched into immobility.
Comprehension dawned.
Etienne’s knowledge of Rafael’s achievements. Gabrielle’s insistence that Etienne stay away. Not from the vineyard, but from Rafael. ‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head. ‘No.’
Rafael had stopped too, his eyes on her, puzzled and questioning. ‘Simone? What is it?’
‘Rafe—’
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t…I can’t…’ She shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t…’
‘Shouldn’t what?’ His words echoed her unspoken ones.
‘Let’s just forget this meeting and go,’ she implored him.
‘Go where?’
‘Anywhere!’ Anywhere but towards Etienne de Morsay, who was currently heading towards them. ‘Rafael, please. I’m…I’m feeling unwell. Please, let’s just go.’
Rafe slid his hand beneath her elbow and frowned. ‘How unwell?’
The lies were making her sick to her stomach. Her distress must have shown on her face.
‘Okay,’ he said hurriedly. ‘A room. We’ll get you a room where you can lie down. Let me make our apologies to de Morsay.’
‘No!’
‘No to what?’
Simone was fast making a spectacle of herself. Rafael looked to be fast losing patience. Etienne was fast approaching. Maturity fled as she reverted to childhood and tugged urgently on Rafael’s arm. ‘Run,’ she said pleadingly. ‘Rafael, run.’
And then Etienne was holding out his hand and Rafael was taking it, shaking it, as blue eyes met blue and Simone watched in white-knuckled silence. And then Rafael was making their apologies and saying that she was unwell and two sets of concerned blue eyes were upon her and Simone looked from one to the other and prayed to the gods that this was all just a dream and knew that it was not.
‘Here,’
