to get his money’s worth, didn’t he?
She had absolutely no reason at all to feel hollow inside, she told herself fiercely. Every night when she was home alone in the flat that looked dingier by the day, and every morning as she sat in the back of a car so expensive its price had made her gag slightly when she’d looked up similar models online. She had signed up for this. This was what this kind of arrangement looked like. It was all very thorough. It made sense.
This was, at the end of the day, exactly what she wanted.
Wasn’t it?
She saw him, finally, almost ten full days into the tests and contracts and explanation of clauses. Angel walked through the high-ceilinged foyer of the distractingly elegant town house, leaving for the day after having spent hours signing away her rights to any and all fortunes that Rafe might or might not settle upon the children they might or might not produce in the course of their marriage, which might or might not last any significant amount of time. Over and over again, on all the necessary copies. Just as she’d done every day so far, in one form or another.
He did not speak. He only stood in the arched doorway to what she’d been told was a reception room of some kind. She might not have seen him at all, so completely still was he, and so fully did he blend into the darkness of the unlit room behind him. But she felt an odd shiver skate down the back of her neck. She turned her head, and just like before in the ballroom of the Palazzo Santina, there was nothing at all but his cool gray gaze.
She stopped walking. She slowly pivoted. Without meaning to move, she took a step closer to him, then caught herself. He stood there in the doorway, watching her, more solid than she remembered, as if he stood firm and commanding on the ground. As if he demanded no less than that from the air he breathed. Ruthless, she thought, and had no idea where that word had come from. When had she ever seen him be anything but kind, if, perhaps, severe? No matter how he hinted he might be otherwise?
It was that pervasive sense that she was in danger, the frantic pulse in her veins, the low curl of adrenaline that set up a kind of humming beneath her skin, that made him seem so much larger than life. So much darker, so much bigger, as if he could dwarf the world with his cold gray eyes alone.
“I had started to wonder if you were a figment of my imagination,” she said, speaking before she knew she meant to, automatically adopting that airy tone, as if the very sternness of his ruined face demanded it. “It never really occurred to me that there were so many practical matters to attend to. You always imagine it’s just straight from the romantic dance to the happily ever after, don’t you? No ten days of contracts to sign, just a cheerful song as the credits roll.”
He didn’t appear to move so much as a muscle. And still it was as if he moved closer, towered over her. She swallowed, hard.
“Have you convinced yourself this is a romance, Angel?” he asked in that dark way of his, that seemed to settle into her bones and shift like some kind of flu through the rest of her. Hot. Cold. And back again. “I fear you have set yourself up for a grave disappointment.”
She smiled. She had the strangest feeling that if she didn’t, if she showed even the faintest hint of the confusion or panic inside of her, he would call this all off. And she didn’t want that. It was amazing how much—how strongly and how deeply—she didn’t want that. Far more in this moment, she realized in some surprise, than before.
“If I had,” she said, so casually, as if she felt nothing at all but a lazy sort of passing interest in this conversation, “the past ten days would certainly have cured me of it, wouldn’t they? I assume that was the point.”
Another long, dark pause. His brows lowered. That grim mouth was set in an implacable line. Angel could not seem to stop reliving the feel of it against her own. She thought, suddenly, with a flash of searing heat, of their wedding night. Would they have one, in the traditional sense? Did she want to? Would she feel this man against her so soon? In her? Why did the prospect make her feel short of breath?
“It may not seem so to you,” he said gruffly, “but I am seeking to protect you as much as me.”
“I am the woman who marched up to you at a ball and asked if you’d be so kind as to let me marry you for your money,” Angel replied, letting her smile deepen, shoving the lurid images of a possible wedding night aside. She let her smile grow infectious. Very nearly merry. She didn’t understand the part of her that longed—there was no other word for it, to her confusion—for him to return it. “I don’t think I really need protection from you. From myself and my insane little scheme? Very possibly—yet here you are going along with it against, I am sure, all legal advice.” She raised her brows. “Maybe I should ask your battalion of attorneys if you need protection from me. I suspect they think you do.”
Rafe had thought of very little but this woman.
He was a busy man. He came to London as seldom as possible—he hated this dirty, sprawling city as much as his disreputable brother had loved it, with all of its ceaseless noise and all of those pitying, prying eyes—which meant he had to cram as much business as he could into the short span of time he was actually in town.
But business was nearly impossible to conduct when all he could think about was Angel. That clever gleam in her too-blue eyes and the answering, knowing sort of curve to her wicked mouth. That perfectly curvy body that today made a pair of denim jeans into a blessing, clinging to her hips and outlining her beautifully shaped legs. It took him long moments to drag his attention to the drapey sort of black sweater she wore, the sort that usually seemed to require endless fiddling and arranging. Not that Angel was doing either. She merely watched him.
He worried that she saw far too much. Or not nearly enough. He couldn’t decide which was worse. She was marrying him for his money, and he was marrying her because she’d done such a good job of pretending he was not the monster he knew full well he was. And because he could not seem to help but want her—so much so it consumed him. It ate at him.
It made him wish that things were different—that he was different. It made him hope.
He’d expected her to back out of this, as any sane person would. And every day she did not—he hoped a little more. And that hope was more dangerous to him, more treacherous and insidious, than anything else could be. He knew it.
But he could not seem to stop it.
“I am more than adequately protected,” he said shortly. Far more shortly than was necessary. “As the number of attorneys present in your sessions should indicate, I have no intention of losing my family’s wealth and consequence. For any reason.”
“And certainly not to a gold-digging tart like me,” she said in that dry yet amused way, though her blue eyes were suddenly unreadable. “I hope you found the results of my physical examination to your liking.”
He knew there was a reprimand there. He could sense it, despite her light tone of voice and her easy, open expression.
“Do you expect an apology?” he asked softly.
“Not at all,” she said at once, though he didn’t quite believe her. But she smiled in that way of hers, that made him want to respond in kind, that made him feel things he was determined he could not feel. That he certainly shouldn’t allow himself to feel. “I was presented with your relevant medical records this morning. Allow me to congratulate you on your good health, Lord Pembroke. Long may it last.”
“If you want an apology,” he said evenly,
