The Man Behind the Scars(4)

Rafe couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled at a society event,  even before he'd had this face of his to bear stoically and pretend  didn't bother him. He couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled at  all, come to that. But something closer to a smile than he'd felt in  ages threatened the corners of his mouth, and more surprising than that,  for a moment he considered giving in to it.

"I was in the army," he said. He watched her absorb that with a small  nod and a narrowing of her lovely eyes, as if she was fitting him into  some category in her head. He wondered which one. Then he wondered why  on earth he should care. "There was an ambush and an explosion."

He hated himself for that-for such a stripped-down description of  something that should never be explained away in an easy little  sentence. As if two throwaway words did any justice to the horror, the  pain. The sudden bright light, the deafening noise. His friends, gone in  an instant if they had been lucky. Others, much less lucky. And Rafe,  the least lucky of all, with his long, nightmare-ridden, scarred agony  of survival.

It was no wonder he never looked in the mirror anymore. There were too many ghosts.

He didn't intend to give her any further details, so he should not have  felt slightly disappointed that she didn't ask. But she also hadn't  turned away, and he found that contrary to all of his usual instincts  where beautiful women at tedious, drink-sodden society events were  concerned, however few he'd attended in recent years, he didn't want her  to.

"I'm Angel Tilson," she said, and offered him her hand, still smiling,  as easily as if she spoke to monsters every day and found  it-him-completely unremarkable. But then, he reminded himself sharply,  she could only see the surface. She had no idea what lurked beneath.  "Stepsister to Allegra, the beautiful bride-to-be."

Angel, he repeated in his head, in a manner he might have found  appallingly close to sentimental had she not been standing there in  front of him, that teasing smile still crooking her lips, her blue eyes  daring him. Daring him.

He had the strangest sensation then-as if, despite everything, he might  just be alive after all, just like everybody else. And that same intense  desire seemed to move through him then, setting him on fire.

"Rafe McFarland," he said, and then, more formally, "Lord Pembroke.  Distant cousin to the Santinas, through some exalted ancestor or  another."

He took her hand and, obeying an urge he did not care to examine and  could not quite understand, lifted it to his lips. Something arced  between them when their skin met, his mouth against the soft back of her  hand, something white-hot and wild, and for a moment it was as if the  Palazzo Santina fell away, as if there was no well-blooded crowd playing  the usual drunken games all around them, no strains of soothing music  wafting through the air, nothing at all but this.                       
       
           



       

Heat. Light. Sex.

Impossible, Rafe thought abruptly.

He let go, because that was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do.  Her smile seemed brighter than the gleaming chandeliers high above them,  and he couldn't seem to look away. She was much too pretty to be  looking at him like this, as if he was the man he should have been. The  man he'd pretended to be, before the accident.

As if he wasn't ruined.

Perhaps, he thought darkly, she was blind.

"Lord Pembroke," she repeated, as if she was tasting the title with her  lush little mouth. He felt a flash of appreciation for the earldom in an  area he had never before associated with it. "What does that mean,  exactly? Besides the fancy title and all the forelock tugging I assume  goes with it? A stately home and an Oxbridge education, with guest  appearances in Tatler to whet the appetite of the commoners from time to  time?"

He liked her. It was revolutionary, but there it was. He hardly knew what to make of it.

"It means I am an earl," he said, with rather too much pompous emphasis,  he thought, suddenly deeply tired of himself. But it was who he was. It  had been all that he was for longer than he cared to admit, even to  himself, even before he'd inherited the title-when he'd had only the  sense of its import and the abiding respect for it that his wretched  older brother had sorely lacked. He shook off the ghost of Oliver,  Seventh Earl of Pembroke and drunken disgrace to the title. He wished he  could shake off Oliver's legacy of debts and disasters, cruelty and  sheer viciousness, as easily. "I have responsibilities, and little time  for the tabloids, I'm afraid."

"That would be a yes then, on the grand old estate and Oxbridge and all  the rest," Angel said, still teasing him, not appearing in the least bit  cowed by his dark tone. "And I suppose you're also filthy rich. Doesn't  that usually go hand in hand with nobility? A bit of compensation for  the heavy load of the peerage and generations of privilege and so on?"

He didn't deny it, and she laughed as if he'd said something delightful. He almost felt as if he had.

"I don't know about filthy rich." He considered. He wondered why he  didn't find this entire topic distasteful, as he should. As he imagined  he would under any other circumstances. But he didn't, and he knew the  reason he didn't was looking at him with far too blue and direct a gaze.  He wanted to touch her. He wanted to see if she was real. Among, he  admitted in some grudging surprise, other things. "But there are several  centuries' worth of grime, I'd say. Certainly dirty enough for anyone."

She laughed again, and he became a stranger to himself in that moment,  as he actually contemplated joining in. Impossible, he thought again.

"It's your lucky day, Lord Pembroke," she confided, leaning in closer  and tapping her champagne flute against his chest. He felt it like a  caress. She looked at him, and something dark moved across her pretty  face, something too like grief there and then gone in her expressive  eyes. "I happen to be interviewing candidates for the position of  wealthy husband, and you fit the bill."

And suddenly it all made sense.

This, Rafe thought, everything going very still inside of him, he understood perfectly.





CHAPTER TWO

"YOU want to marry into money," he said, his voice cold, as if she had confirmed something he'd already suspected about her.

Angel wished she could tell what he thought of that-or even of her  unapologetic way of presenting it. But his dark expression was  impossible to read, and she wondered if her stomach could twist any  further, and harder, and if it did … would she simply be sick? Right here?

She couldn't believe she'd actually said that. So baldly. So brashly.

But this was the plan. The only one she had, and so what if it had  sounded much better in her head? She had no choice but to follow  it-because no matter how humiliating this moment was and no matter how  much she hated herself and would, she thought, loathe herself  forevermore, she could not currently pay her mother's debts. There was  no way. So this was what she'd come to. This terrible game while this  affecting, compelling man only looked at her, his gray eyes cold and  stern, and she wanted to be someone else-anyone else-more than she'd  ever wanted anything.

Good luck with that, she thought darkly, and kept going.

"I do," she said, and shoved aside the part of her that wanted to drown  in the shame, the tidal wave of embarrassment. That kind of  second-guessing was for other women, perhaps, but not for her.

"Bold as brass, you are," her mother had always said, pretending to  compliment Angel when she had really meant to compliment herself,  because Angel so greatly resembled her. And now more than ever, Angel  thought viciously.                       
       
           



       

She waved her champagne glass languidly, indicating the ballroom all  around them and the party that carried on, all appropriate voices and  hushed royal splendor behind them, though she never dropped his gaze. "I  will."

Angel watched some kind of quiet storm move through his dark gray eyes  then, and discovered she was barely breathing. But she was still  smiling, damn it. She was afraid that if she stopped, she might have to  investigate the self-loathing and the sheer, dizzying whirl of something  too close to terror beneath it. This man was not at all what she'd  imagined when she'd comforted herself with visions of a wealthy husband  to solve all my problems, just like Allegra on the plane ride to  Santina. Just as she hadn't imagined that she would feel something like  that jolting, electric thrill that had sizzled through her when he'd  touched her. What was that?

"Ah," he said, his voice even lower than before, but still with that  same effect on her. And, she thought, faintly condemning. Or perhaps she  was only hearing the echo of her own, now-buried shame. "And why do you  need a wealthy husband?"