The Man Behind the Scars(19)

"Has it been that long?" Her tone was dry. "As promised, the pleasures of the country are vast indeed. I didn't even notice."

"You have been nowhere to be found," he pointed out, fascinated to hear  something more than polite inquiry in his own voice. How novel. "Are you  hiding, Angel?"

"Of course not." Her eyebrows arched, her blue eyes that unreadable,  darker hue as they met his. "Do I have something to hide from?"

Rafe moved further into the room, enjoying the way her gaze tracked his  movements as if she couldn't help herself, and taking far too much  satisfaction in the convulsive little swallow that moved in the column  of her throat. He stopped when he reached her chair, then bent down to  pick up the book that lay nearest him on the wide leather arm. He  glanced at the title-a selection of poems from the Elizabethan age-and  set it back down, oddly disconcerted.

"I did not realize you were such a great reader," he said.

It surprised him to find her here. It had been the last place he'd  looked when, today, he'd finally decided to go searching through the  rambling old house for some sign of her. He couldn't say why he still  felt as if it didn't make sense that she should be here. Or why she  looked entirely too bland and innocent, as if he'd caught her at  something she shouldn't have been doing.

"I am attempting to figure out who you are through your library," she  said in her breezy way. She set down the book she'd been reading and  waved lazily at the nearest wall, where shelves ran floor to ceiling and  were packed with all kinds of books, of different shapes and sizes, a  controlled chaos of words in, Rafe knew, at least six languages. He had  vowed he would read them all, one day. By his reckoning he was very  nearly halfway through.

"By my books you will know me?" he asked quietly, his gaze moving over  the familiar shelves, seeing the spines of books he had pored over, and  others he was still waiting to discover.

She smiled as she always did, but her eyes were wary when he looked at  her again. "Something like that. Can you be found here, do you think?  Are your secrets hidden between the pages somewhere?"

Rafe thrust his hands into his pockets as that wild desire for her  spiked inside of him, hard and hot. It was that or put them on her-sink  his fingers into that wild, recalcitrant hair all choppy about her face,  run his hands over the curves that were perfectly visible no matter  that she sat curled around herself-and he was sure that if he started  down that road, he would not stop. Perhaps not ever.

"This library was a particular passion of my grandfather's," he said  instead, frowning at the wall of books before him, where ragged  paperback volumes stood next to extraordinary editions of books long out  of print, with early editions of well-known classics on the other side.  "He believed that reading was the point, not the collection itself,  which was considered a fairly revolutionary viewpoint at the time." He  eyed her then. "If you locate any secrets in these books, I imagine they  will be my grandfather's."

"I just like to read," she said in an odd sort of voice, as if, he  realized slowly, she was offering her confession. "Anything and  everything. I always have."

Angel unfolded herself from the chair, coming to her feet and then onto  her toes, stretching in a way that made Rafe tense-and then harden even  further as desire swamped him. As if she had been designed to test him  she threw her arms over her head, her breasts jutting out, her back  making a mouthwatering arc. She was dressed much like he was, in denim  jeans and a jumper to keep off the chill of spring in this drafty old  house, but the jumper she'd chosen seemed to lick over her curves,  begging him to touch, to taste-

She was torturing him. And she wasn't even trying.

He knew better than to want. Especially like this. Especially this  woman, who was not here for this, for him. Why couldn't he remember  that? Why had he spent these past two weeks fighting the urge to possess  her as if she would ever really be his in that way? As if he would ever  allow it?                       
       
           



       

This was the wife he had bought, he reminded himself with a certain  ruthless impatience. Even if-when-he did take her to his bed, how would  he know which of her responses were real and which he'd purchased? He  wouldn't. He couldn't. And instead of that sickening him as it should,  Rafe found that the longer this woman was in his life-under his roof-the  less he cared why or how she came to his bed. He only cared about when.

He was such a fool.

"What if this had all burned down with the rest?" she was asking,  unaware of his thoughts, pivoting where she stood to take in the rest of  the great room, his grandfather's grand folly. The massive globe sat in  the center of the library, requiring two hands to move it if one wished  to peer at the map of a world that was no more, lost to time and the  ravages of history, nations fallen and lands reclaimed, reconquered. A  relic. A throwback. Not unlike its current owner. "I can't imagine  losing so many books. I have only a few, really, but I treasure them."

"Luckily, this room never held much appeal for my brother," Rafe said  dryly. It was an understatement-and it was why this had always been his  refuge. Maybe that was why he felt unsettled by her presence here. It  was, in many ways, his sanctuary. He felt her gaze on him, but when he  turned to her, she was studying the books again. "He was the one who  burned down the east wing," he continued gruffly. "Had he done so  deliberately, he might very well have used the books as kindling, but it  was an accident."

"I'm so sorry," she said after a moment. Too long a moment. Rafe sighed.

"Don't be." He couldn't imagine why he was discussing this. But he kept  going, for reasons he could not fathom. "Oliver was remarkably  unpleasant, even when he was a boy. It was not enough that he was the  heir, he wanted to be the only child as well. He went to particular  lengths to right what he saw as the great wrong of my birth." He let out  a sound that even he knew was far too dark to be a laugh. "And that was  when my father was still alive, and in control. And long before Oliver  started drinking and became truly nasty."

Why was he telling her this? And why not tell her the real truth-that  had taken all these years and Oliver's death for Rafe to accept? That  there had to be a reason that Oliver treated Rafe the way he had, a  reason that their mother had encouraged it. There had to be something in  him that brought that kind of meanness out in them. He had been ruined  even when he was a boy. But he couldn't bring himself to tell Angel  that. He couldn't bear for her to know that particular truth.

"What did he do?" she asked, tilting her head slightly as she looked at him.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Everyone likes to claim they were picked on by their older siblings,  don't they?" she asked in that deliberately offhand way of hers that  made him feel lighter, no matter the subject. Even this one, which he  had never found even remotely light. "Everyone loves to make themselves  the martyr of their own story. And some people may be, of course. But  there are others who think a single scuffle for the last biscuit one  summer when they were eleven is more than enough justification for a  lifetime of excuses."

She eyed him then, as if she expected him to confess to exactly that,  and once again he found himself fighting the urge to laugh. It was  unexpected and as shocking to him as the fact he'd told her anything  about Oliver in the first place.

"Sadly," he said, his voice low, more to disguise his reaction to her  than any indication of a matching mood, "Oliver was not the sort to  scuffle for a biscuit. That would have been too straightforward. He  preferred to mask his worst traits from any kind of parental eye and  strike when least expected."

Angel eased herself back down to the chair, this time to perch herself  on the empty arm, giving Rafe ample opportunity to wonder what had come  over him. He'd had fevers that had affected him less than this woman.  Whole wars, in fact.

"That's a bit like my mother then," she said. A strange expression moved  over her lovely features, obscuring them for a moment. It was not until  it was gone that Rafe realized what it was, why he recognized it even  before he identified it. Pain. He knew it all too well. "She's always  neck-deep in a scheme, and it's never what you think she'll do-never  quite what she's done before. Though, inevitably, it will cost you. It  always does, one way or another."

Something moved in the air between them, heavy and bright. Rafe felt his  need for her like a pulse, coursing through him like blood. Only  thicker. Sweeter. Hotter.