She reached for the door, pulling it open. ‘I guess the only bright spot is that it’s lucky we had this conversation now, before we went through that farce of a marriage.’
The door slammed shut, Rafe’s hand and his weight behind it. ‘What the hell are you saying?’
She stared up at him, surprised he’d moved so fast. Unsurprised at his anger. He’d still expect her to marry him come hell or high water. What did it take to make him realize nothing could make her settle for a loveless marriage? ‘What do you expect? You don’t leave me with much choice. I can’t marry you, Rafe, babies or no. I can’t stay here with a man who can’t love. I won’t be my mother all over again.’
‘Who’s asking you to? You said yourself that your mother loved your father. It doesn’t have to be that way for us. That’s what I’m trying to prevent.’
She laughed then, a release so unexpected that it left her almost dizzy in its wake, dizzy and so close to tears she could feel the moisture seeping through. ‘But that’s the problem, Rafe, it’s already too late. Because I … I love you.’
Stunned didn’t come close to expressing the way Rafe felt. She couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t be.
Dio! He wheeled around, both hands clutching at his temples, tangling into his hair, searching for answers he couldn’t find. It was the last thing he wanted to happen. It was the worst thing that could have happened.
‘I don’t believe you.’
I don’t want to believe you.
‘You think right now I care what you believe?’
‘Yet you say you love me.’
‘Do you think I want to? Do you think I went looking for love with a man who practically dragged me kicking and screaming into a marriage I didn’t and still don’t want? What kind of masochist do you think I am?’
He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. All he knew was that something was wrong, his convenient marriage slipping beyond reach, sliding towards a disaster he’d never seen coming.
A disaster he’d been trying to avoid ever since he’d been a child.
‘Don’t waste your time on love.
Don’t lose your heart.’
He couldn’t love and, damn it all, she wasn’t supposed to love him.
He looked up at her, at her face of porcelain-like skin, at her hair kissed gold by the sun, her eyes wide with questions he knew he’d never be the one to answer. And inexplicably he ached with that knowledge, the gears in his chest crunching and grinding together.
And he didn’t have the faintest idea of how to stop them.
‘You must go,’ he said, his voice a coarse whisper, while in his mind the tear-streaked face of his mother played, kissing him goodnight the nights she’d managed to stay up longer than he did, the scent of perfume more and more giving way to the fumes of alcoholic despair. He didn’t want that fate for Sienna, but neither could he bear to witness it here, where he couldn’t give her what she needed. ‘Get out now, before it’s too late!’
She hovered uncertainly, her eyes shining, or was that merely his?
‘Rafe,’ she said, putting out a hand to him. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this. Can’t we talk about it? There must be a way, has to be a way.’
‘There is no way!’
‘But your babies. One day we will share children, maybe even the heirs Montvelatte needs. You’re not thinking straight.’
‘Send me the first-born son!’ he yelled, the pulse in his head pounding like drums. ‘You can keep the other.’
She reeled back as if he’d physically thrust her aside. ‘Rafe. I’m sorry.’
‘No, you’re not! You’ve been trying to figure out a way to get out of this marriage from day one. And now you’ve finally hit on the perfect plan. You knew I could never do to a woman what my father had done to my mother. I’d told you what he’d done! What better way to secure your release.’
‘Rafe, it’s not like that. Listen to me. I love you.’
‘And for the last time, I don’t want your love! Get out. Go! I never want to see you again.’
Blinded by tears she could no longer control, Sienna somehow stumbled out of the room, blundering past curious staff, who called out to her in concerned voices, past the palace guard that had held her hostage that first day and now stood by to let her flee.
Outside the wind tugged at her hair, the sky an ominous shade of grey, but she took no notice, running full pelt for the one person she knew might help her. The one place where escape lay waiting.
It was still there, the small pick-up truck just driving off. Any minute the JetRanger and her lifeline to the outside world would be gone. She screamed out, but her words were carried away on the wind, and the pilot climbed into the cabin and pulled his door shut.