Crime Of Passion(32)

‘But to tell him that’ In distress she turned away.

‘He didn’t have to believe it,’ Steve said defensively.

But Georgie understood exactly why Rafael had believed those lies. Rafael was fundamentally a very honourable man. He had known that Steve loved her, seen them kiss, been forced to witness her close ties with her stepbrother. No, she didn’t blame Rafael for believing, she blamed herself for being so bound up in her love that she had been blind to what was happening around her. And ironically, four years ago, Rafael had actually protected Steve by choosing not to face her with what he had been told. Why?

Why had he continued to protect her from the truth about Steve? Rafael had known how much the truth would hurt, and hurt it had and did, but perhaps not to the degree which Rafael had assumed. The intervening years had eroded her close ties with her stepbrother.

‘I’m sorry,’ Steve said. ‘I just couldn’t face it coming out. I got over you. It’s behind me—’

‘But you still didn’t want me to be with him—’

‘I’m never going to like the guy, Georgie. What do you expect? What do you think it was like for me standing by on the sidelines watching the two of you together?’ he asked with remembered bitterness. ‘I’m not proud of what I did, but I didn’t think he had any intention of marrying you. He put the weapon in my hand when he told me he’d seen us kissing, and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t resist using it.’

Dully she nodded, for she could dimly understand that.

‘Look… I’m off. I’d be distinctly de trop at the wedding,’ Steve muttered with a grim smile. ‘Maybe I’ll make it for the first christening… OK?’

‘There isn’t going to be a wedding,’ Georgie reminded him in a shaky voice.

Making his stiff and painful passage back towards the helicopter he had arrived in, Steve turned his head. ‘Georgie…the fight was a male thing, if you know what I mean, and you shouldn’t have interfered.’

‘It was disgusting!’

‘But oddly enough I feel better.’ Steve grimaced at her look of disbelief. ‘It’s like it’s finally finished now and, since I’m feeling generous, I’ll give you another reason why he took until now to tell you what I did… and why he just walked away. I think he’s scared.’

‘Scared? Rafael?’ Georgie parroted.

‘Scared that once you knew how I used to feel about you, that fondness you once had for me,’ he explained wryly, ‘might just warm up into something more meaningful.’

Georgie froze, and turned an abstracted glance on him as he headed for his transport out. But all she had sought to do was stop the fight, naturally not wanting to see the two men come to blows. Then, she hadn’t known just how powerful a motivation lay behind Rafael’s need for physical vengeance. And then, afterwards, Rafael had said, ‘The loser takes all,’ when she had rushed to Steve’s aid, believing Rafael to be the main aggressor and therefore underserving of her attention. Maybe she should have kicked Steve while he was down, she thought hysterically. In Rafael’s presence she had not condemned what Steve had done…she had still been too shocked.

She hurried back to the house and was shattered to discover Teresa in her bedroom, laying out her clothes on the bed to pack them.

Teresa sighed, and shook her head. ‘Ees very hard to understand this on, off, on, off wedding.’

Her heart in her throat, Georgie ran Rafael to earth in the drawing-room where he was standing moodily surveying an ancestral portrait with a large drink in one hand.

‘Oops…gosh… I didn’t think what I was saying when I said the wedding was off.’ Georgie leapt in and tested the water straight off.

‘I will put no pressure on you to remain,’ Rafael retorted harshly.

‘All right, if that’s the way you feel about it…’ Georgie drew herself up to her full height, her chin tilting, and then drew in a deep, shivering breath. ‘Well, actually, it’s not all right because I’m not going—not unless you tell me that you want me to go.’

‘You have your mind of your own.’ Hooded dark eyes flicked her a forbidding glance. ‘Where is he now?’

‘Steve? Probably airborne by now. He reckoned he would be unwelcome at the wedding but he might just make it for the first christening,’ Georgie dared.

Rafael’s jawline clenched. ‘I forgot about that possibility.’

‘Fancy that, and just a few days ago, that was all you could think about!’ Georgie reminded him helplessly.

‘No doubt that is why you insist that you are not leaving,’ he drawled in the same unyielding tone.

‘Franky, no. Whether or not I might be pregnant hasn’t even crossed my mind and it wouldn’t influence my feelings either way,’ Georgie stated with perfect truth. ‘It isn’t a good enough reason to get married.’

‘Then what have we to discuss?’

Georgie went white. Steeling herself, she had been trying to work up to telling him how she really felt about him. No more lies, no more half-truths to save face, she had told herself, no more room for misunderstandings. Pride urged her to agree the point and go with dignity, as she had not done four long years ago. But now she knew that, then, Rafael had undoubtedly been far kinder to her than most men would have been in the same situation. He had not thrown Steve’s sordid revelations in her face and she still marvelled at that restraint.

‘Rafael… I am very sorry that Steve lied like that—’

‘It is not your place to apologise for him… or is it?’ he growled, glittering golden eyes on her with almost physical force. ‘Do you now defend him for what he did, even though it was your reputation he destroyed?’

‘No…I don’t defend him at all. I think it was a revolting thing to do and I was very shocked, but it happened four years ago,’ Georgie stressed tautly, her violet eyes clinging to his hard, set features. ‘And I can’t get as worked up about it as you can because I didn’t know about it when it really mattered. I also thought that we had overcome the past…but it seems I was wrong!’

‘Your sole concern was for him out there—’

‘And you’ve accused me of being childish,’ Georgie suddenly launched at him, her voice nonetheless shrill with distress, for she wasn’t getting through to Rafael. He had withdrawn to some remote place, outraged and offended. ‘That was before I knew what you were fighting about and I thought Steve had been knocked out. You hate him and I can understand that now—’

‘How can you understand what I feel? How can you possibly understand?’ Rafael suddenly shot at her in savage surge. ‘Thanks to him, I lost the woman I loved four years ago and, thanks to him, I have lost you again!’

‘You haven’t lost me.’ Georgie licked her dry lips.

‘I do not want you without love. It wouldn’t work.’ Rafael stared down broodingly into his half-empty glass, his strong features strikingly taut. ‘I am already bitterhow much more bitter would I become, thinking of what we once had and lost? I cannot pretend that what we have is enough, when I would always be wanting what you could not give me,’ he bit out with raw emotion. ‘So, go while I am in this sane state. I do not want a broken marriage between us and I see no way of us ever overcoming the past.’

Sentenced to stillness by the savage edge to his emotional delivery, Georgie was afraid in that welter of bitter words, she had somehow misinterpreted what she had heard. Her heartbeat was racing madly behind her ribcage. ‘Rafael,’ she said weakly.

‘I feel resentment now, even though I have no entitlement to it,’ Rafael continued darkly. ‘You were the victim, not I. It was not you who lied, not you who were stupid enough to swallow his lies, and I was the one who walked away, so what right do I now have to demand more than you are capable of feeling? You desire me, and you have a naturally sunny and affectionate disposition and, for many men, that would be enough. But is is not enough for me. If I cannot have it all, I am better off with nothing.’

Tears swam in her eyes and she wrinkled her nose to hold them at bay. She had never seen him so worked up and, characteristically, he was looking solely on the dark side, apparently unable even to consider the idea that she might, after all, be capable of giving him what he insisted he needed. She cleared her throat. ‘Are we talking about love?’

His beautifully shaped mouth tightened and she realised that pride had permitted him to talk all the way round the subject as long as the fatal word was not actually mentioned. ‘What else?’

A surge of joy filtered through Georgie, restoring the colour to her cheeks, chasing off the strain from her vibrant face. ‘Oh, well, if that’s all, you’ve been unusually modest in your assumptions. And I would have said you were not the modest type—’

‘What are you talking about?’ Rafael demanded, with no diminution in his grim bearing.

‘Let me give you this scenario, Rafael. You spirit me out here with the worst of gothic intentions. How hard did I try to escape? Why did I go to bed with you? Why did I finally agree to marry you? Why was I prepared to stay with you even though you might lose everything?’ Georgie questioned with a helpless smile, although she had intended to keep him hanging to the end. ‘And, if you’re as clever as I think, you ought to be coming to one of two possible conclusions. Either I’m as limp as a wet dishcloth or I’m crazy about you.’