The Man Behind the Scars(26)

She was driving him slowly insane. And the worst part was, on some level, he was actually enjoying it.

"I see you dressed to lend your hand to the ongoing construction," he drawled when she drew near. "How thoughtful."

"There are very few mirrors in this house," she replied, seemingly  unbothered by his ironic tone. "I am forced to toss things together and  hope for the best. You have only yourself to blame if you do not care  for the result."

He had forgotten about the mirrors, he thought. He had the urge to look  in one so rarely, he'd forgotten that he'd removed almost every last one  of them from the house. Too many ghosts in the damned things, he'd  found. He saw only the explosion and the terrible aftermath. He heard  only the screams, not all of them his own.                       
       
           



       

"I hate mirrors," he said, realizing only after he spoke that his tone was clipped and dark.

"This outfit is meant to be my form of encouragement and support," Angel  replied at once, merrily, smiling brightly at the building supervisor  who reddened under the force of all that shine. As well he should, Rafe  thought when she turned that same smile on him. It banished the dark,  the ghosts. It made him want to lick her all over, as if she was made  entirely of the sweetest, richest cream. "Are your spirits not lifted?"

"My spirits, certainly," he murmured in a low voice when the supervisor  stepped away, out of earshot. "And many other parts of me."

"I'm sure I don't understand your meaning," she said demurely, with a  quirk of her wicked mouth that indicated that, again, she was playing  with him. Playing. With him. No matter how often she did it, it never  failed to surprise him. He wondered why he found her so entertaining.  He, who never found anything in the least bit entertaining, and hadn't,  really, since he'd left Pembroke Manor as a broken, unwanted boy of  sixteen to join the military academy that had made him a man.

"Put your hands on me the way we both know you want to," he suggested,  not caring that he was standing out in public. That he was no doubt  being watched, even now. She made him cease to care about everything  except her-which should have given him pause. But it didn't. "The  meaning will come to you, I'm sure."

But she only aimed that maddening smile at him, and then turned her  attention to the clatter of the reconstruction going on in front of  them. Rafe ordered himself to calm down, though he was starting to think  that was well nigh impossible when in her presence. She slid her hands  into the back pockets of those skintight jeans, which thrust her breasts  forward against the delicate material of her top, and very nearly made  him groan aloud.

"Is it going well?" she asked, utterly oblivious to the torture he was  in. Or, perhaps, not quite as oblivious as she seemed, he thought, when  she slid him a sideways look. He felt it like electricity, shuddering  through him. Heaven help him, how he wanted her. "I'm afraid I can't  tell. All I see is the scaffolding, and a whole host of tired-looking  men stamping to and fro with very loud tools."

He bit back a smile, amazed, as usual, that one even attempted to appear.

"It is going well," he told her. "The loud tools are a good sign. You'll want to worry when it's silent out here."

He followed her gaze to the skeletal beginnings of the new east wing,  the physical manifestation, he often thought, of his new beginning here.  Of this new chapter in the history of the earldom and his dysfunctional  family. One that might erase what had gone before-all those dark years  he'd survived somehow while watching the rest of his family succumb to  their demons, one after the other. One that had more to do with  protecting and caring for the estates and all those who worked them, and  less to do with bleeding those same estates for every penny, as Oliver  had done with so much reckless entitlement. If it had not been for  Rafe's stern discipline and careful stewardship of the relatively small  inheritance he'd received from his father, and the personal holdings  from his grandmother that she'd signed over to him before her death,  Pembroke Manor might well have had to have been sold off. Chopped up  into pieces, no doubt, and ruthlessly developed, like everything else in  the whole of the United Kingdom these days.

He had not let that happen. He would not let that happen.

He would rebuild this house as a monument to the childhood he'd lost  when his father died. To the boy he'd been so briefly back then. To what  he might have been had he not become … this.

"Why do you love this place so much?" she asked, very much as if she could read his thoughts.

He should not have been surprised by another incisive question from her.  He should have been used to it by now, surely. But he still found  himself taken back, and frowned at the scaffolded ruin before him as if  it would help him construct an answer.

"Do you mean that you do not?" he asked quietly. It wasn't a fair  question, loaded as it was with all of his own personal history, and  that of his family, stretching back through the generations. But he  didn't rescind it.

"I can appreciate it, of course," she said. Carefully, he thought. He  could not see her marvelous, expressive eyes behind those dark glasses,  and he did not care for it-for being shut out. It occurred to him to  worry at how completely he wanted her-how comprehensively-but he shoved  it aside. "I can see that it is very beautiful, and very old, and I have  the normal level of admiration for stately houses and historic  estates." She shrugged, and tilted her head slightly as she regarded  him. "But that is not what you feel, is it? For you, it goes much  deeper."                       
       
           



       

"This is my home," he said simply. He crossed his arms over his chest  because he wanted to put his hands on her, and that would not be wise,  not out here in public. Not when he wanted it-her-far more than he  should. "It was my father's pride and joy, and his father's before him,  and so on, since the first small hall was built here sometime in the  early fifteenth century. Though they say my branch of McFarlands have  been living in this part of Scotland since the start of Scottish  history, as far as anyone can tell. I want to honor all of that."

It was his form of penance, too, for having played his part in the  destruction of this place. For having contributed somehow to all that  had gone on here. He could not help but think that if he'd been better,  if he'd irritated his mother and brother less, perhaps none of this  damage would have happened. He would never know. But he could rebuild.

"You never say you were happy here," she pointed out, something almost  wistful in her voice then, reaching parts of him he'd thought he'd  excised long ago, the parts that still remembered, with such clarity,  those long, quiet walks in the woods with his father. The childhood he  wanted so desperately to honor somehow. "You never mention any happy  memories at all. Only duty and your heritage and other such things. Have  you ever noticed that?"

"I will be happy when the manor is restored," he said after a moment,  something large and unwieldy moving through him, despite his best  efforts to clamp it back down.

"Will you?" she asked, and he could have sworn her voice was sad.

Temper cracked through him then. Or so he told himself. Temper was far  easier to understand than this other thing that seemed to tie him up in  knots, that forced him to feel any number of things he'd prefer to  ignore completely. That he'd spent years ignoring, in fact.

"Do not waste your time making up sad stories about me to make me more  palatable," he told her, far harsher, perhaps, than was necessary. "I  keep telling you that this is no fairy tale, Angel. No kiss will turn me  into Prince Charming."

"Clearly," she replied pointedly, without seeming the least perturbed by  his tone, which only served to irritate him further. As did her light  little laugh. "Maybe we should talk about your obsession with fairy  tales then. You bring them up a lot. Do you read them nightly? Should I  be careful when eating shiny red apples in this house?"

Rafe was well aware that he was picking a fight with her-that he wanted  an explosion-and he even knew why. If tempers flared, so, too, would  this repressed, contained passion that was making his life a misery. He  wanted it to explode. He wanted it to incinerate them both. He wanted to  force her to put her damned hands on him and rescue them both from this  interminable waiting.

It was not the first time in his life he'd wished he was slightly less self-aware.