The Man Behind the Scars(24)

"I didn't take you for the sort who enjoyed a morning constitutional,"  Rafe said, his voice colder than the air around them as he moved toward  her in that way of his that made her think of the word prowling. "As it  involves the outdoors and the countryside."

He was even more closed off today than usual, Angel saw, shut down and  remote, and she felt that deep sorrow for him reverberate within her  chest, fusing with the want and the need and making a mockery of  everything she'd told herself.

The truth was that she wanted him far more than she wanted to protect herself. When had that happened? But there it was.

"I'm opposed to it in principle and in fact," she agreed. She searched  those stony eyes, looking for the Rafe she knew, but he was a cold,  watchful stranger once again, hidden securely away behind that stiff  soldier's stance and that grim mouth. And even so, he came close enough  that she had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. Close enough  that she could have reached out and touched him, if she dared. She  raised her eyebrows. "I was running away, obviously."

"So soon?" His voice was bitter, his eyes dark. But he did not sound at  all surprised, which rankled more than it should. "I thought you were a  bit more stubborn than that."

Angel smiled, though it felt thin. She wanted to touch him. She wanted  to reach out and slide her hands beneath the black coat he'd thrown on  over his usual uniform of casual jumper and jeans, to feel the heat of  him. Even after everything that had happened, she wanted him.

Maybe, she thought in no little despair and as much panicked confusion,  she always would. Maybe it had been too late for her from the start-from  the moment she'd clapped eyes on him at that ball.

"It's lucky that you are possessed of a large estate," she said  casually, as if there was nothing between them but some sparkling  conversation. "My urge to run away disappeared in the time it might have  taken me to hail a taxi. But all you seem to have here are ten thousand  trees and views of the loch, so here I am. Plan thwarted."

He didn't respond to her lighter tone. He didn't crack even his  bare-bones version of a smile. If anything, his gaze only darkened as he  looked at her, and she had the distinct impression of barely leashed  ferocity, burning off of him in waves.

"I can't think what could have put you over the edge," he bit out, his  voice scathing, as if he could not manage to hold it back or keep it  cool. "It must have been dire indeed, to launch you from your bed at so  uncivilized an hour, and force you out into the depths of nature."

He was daring her, provoking her, and it made her hurt for him. For her.  For this terrible situation between them-this cold-blooded  marriage-that she knew, somehow, she could never fix. Could never, ever  make right. Not really. Not for the first time, she wondered what might  have become of them if she had never mentioned money when she'd met him.  If he had never offered to be her savior. Where would they be now?

But that was one more thing she'd never know.

Something like a sob welled up within her, but she shoved it back down.  She reached over and took his face in her hands before she could think  better of it, letting her right palm caress the scars that swept over  the left side of his gorgeous face, feeling it like a blow when he  flinched. But she didn't move her hands, not even when he covered them  with his own, as if he meant to pull hers away. His gray eyes gleamed a  shade of silver she'd never seen before-pain, she thought, that means he  is in pain-and she didn't look away.

"I saw you first," she said, knowing somehow that this was the greater  vow, these quiet words in a chapel made of the woods and the water, with  the watchful mountains in the distance. Whether he ever knew it or not.  She did. "I saw your dark eyes and your quiet strength, and it took my  breath away."                       
       
           



       

"You saw that I had the look of a wealthy man," he said, his voice  clipped and cold. But there was an arrested sort of look in those dark  eyes now, and he did not pull away. He did not break the connection.

"That too," Angel agreed, and it was the sad truth, wasn't it? She'd  have to learn how to live with what that meant for them. And in any  case, it didn't matter here. Now. She gazed up at him. She let herself  feel all those huge and terrible things she refused to name. And she  smiled at him, a real smile, one that tried to do nothing at all but  smile.

No mask. Only the stark truth she had yet to admit to herself, written  all over her face, whether he saw it or not. She could feel it.  Transforming her. Leaving her more vulnerable to this man than she had  ever been to anyone, and ever would.

It was dizzying. It was terrifying. But she kept going, spurred on by  something that felt far bigger than her own terrors, her own fears.

"And it was only after that, Rafe," she whispered, his scars warm  beneath her hand, and his own palm hot above it, her eyes glued to his  and her face, her heart, wide open, "that I noticed that you were  scarred."

For a taut stretch of time, glittering and breathless, they only gazed  at each other, and then his grim mouth moved, curving into something as  sad as it was bitter. His hands were warm against hers, his eyes so very  cold. Lonely, she thought. It made her ache.

"Ah, Angel," he said, his voice hoarse, scratchy with all that pain she  was afraid she'd never understand. Not really. Not if he wouldn't let  her. "The scars are the least of it."





CHAPTER EIGHT

THEY settled into a pattern in the weeks that followed that shattering morning.

Rafe had only stared at her for a long while, the tension like a vice  around them both, his hands clenching slightly around hers, as if he  fought off demons she couldn't see in the air between them while his  eyes ran the gamut from a dark, stormy gray to liquid silver. They had  eventually returned to the manor house, Angel far more confused by her  own behavior than she wanted to admit. She'd accepted how very little  she really wanted to go anywhere. She'd had her chance, hadn't she? If  Angel had been less practical, more sentimental, she might have been  tempted to note that they seemed to be conducting a kind of courtship as  the days slipped by and they danced their highly charged sort of  attendance upon each other-on the wrong side of the altar, to be sure,  but a kind of courtship all the same.

But she didn't think about that, and she certainly didn't think about  what it all might mean, because that, she told herself firmly, would be  truly mad, and what she was doing was … something else. Something she  could not let herself name.

They ate together in the mornings in that same small dining room, which  boasted tall, graceful windows overlooking the loch and the brooding  mountains to the east, so that it filled with bright morning sunshine on  fine mornings. Or, more properly, Rafe ate the sort of hearty breakfast  Angel associated with farmers and laborers, while Angel tried not to  think about the ungodliness of the hour as she fortified herself with  huge, steaming mugs of the best coffee she'd ever tasted.

She stopped asking herself why she got up so early in the morning,  simply to sit with this man as he prepared for his day, quite as if  theirs was a real marriage in every respect. She discovered that she  never really liked her answer. It was no more and no less than the  coffee, she decided. She preferred that explanation.

"You look as if you have achieved some kind of religious ecstasy," Rafe  said one morning in an odd voice, as if he was taken back. Angel  started, and realized she'd let her eyes drift closed as she sipped at  the aromatic, dark brew. She smiled at him, then directed her attention  to the thick ceramic mug between her palms.

"I believe I have," she said with a happy sigh. "I think you must import  this coffee directly from the heavens. There can be no other  explanation."

"Kenya actually." He sat back in his chair and was, she realized  belatedly, studying her, a gleam in his dark eyes that struck her as  particularly, decidedly male. It made that ever-present heat flame anew  within her, making her skin seem to shrink against her bones. "My  great-grandfather bought a small coffee plantation there at the start of  the last century. I've always thought the coffee magnificent, but I'm  aware I'm biased."

Angel stared into her mug, willing her body to relax, to fight that fire  that only ever burned hotter between them, and never went out entirely.

"It's never simple with you, is it?" she asked. "You've never just  nipped down to the local coffee shop for their special blend and thrown  it in a carafe like a normal person. It has to be from the family coffee  plantation, in Kenya of all places, to be suitably exotic." But she  smiled as she looked at him, her brows arching high. "Any other little  details like that you've forgotten to tell me? A palace or two tucked  away somewhere, hardly worth mentioning? A small chain of islands in the  Caribbean? Anything?"