The Man Behind the Scars(35)

"Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to tell you I loved you in  the first place?" she demanded. "I cried, Rafe-and I never cry. The one  thing I always promised myself was that I'd never fall in love, that I'd  never give someone that much power over me-"

"Angel," he said in a low voice that seemed to reach into her, finding  her most vulnerable places and wrapping around them and demand, "don't  you understand? All I've ever had are those ghosts, that poison. You  terrify me too."

She didn't want to understand. She wanted to disappear. She wanted  things to be easy again. She wanted to be anywhere but in the middle of  all this painful truth telling. Anywhere but near this man, the only  person alive who had ever seen her like this. No mask. No pretty words.  Not even showing off her body to distract him. Nothing at all but Angel.

She couldn't take it.

"Go to hell," she raged at him, and then she turned around again,  mindless and panicked, and simply ran. She dropped her bag at some  point, and she didn't care. She dodged through the crowds in the  concourse, weaving her way around them, running as if it was her life  that depended on it now. She knew without a doubt that it did, and she  didn't even know why.

She burst through the grand doors of the station and out into the  street. Only then, in the pouring rain, did she come to a stop. She  simply stood there and let the rain fall all over her, soaking her,  while she gasped for breath. And somehow she was not at all surprised to  find Rafe standing next to her, holding her bag, not even breathing  hard.

"Run wherever you like," he said, his voice tight, his eyes intense. "As  long as you feel you must. It doesn't matter. I will always find you."

"As if you'd want to find me!" she tossed at him, incredulous. And  something else beneath it, something she ignored. "Why don't you find  someone else?"

"I want you," he said. Implacable. Sure. "I married you."

"I can't do this," she said, tears mixing with the rain, and she  couldn't bring herself to care. "I can't live like this. I never should  have approached you-"

"But you did," he said, some fierce note in his voice that she didn't  fully understand, though her body heard it and warmed. "And here we  are."

"It's your fault!" she accused him. "It was just a crazy idea. I never  would have gone through with it! But you were so … " She shook her head,  wishing she could clear it, but nothing seemed to work. Not since the  day she'd met him, if she was honest. "I never really meant for any of  this to happen."

"While I can't regret a single moment of it," he said. He shifted, this  strong, powerful man, as if he was uncertain. As if she meant that much  to him. But how could she believe that? He sighed, slightly. "I don't  want to be a ghost anymore."

She turned toward him, searching his face, looking for something she  wasn't even sure she would recognize if she found it. That great red  rage left her in a sudden rush, along with that driving, instinctive  need to run, and she wasn't at all certain what was left. But she  couldn't seem to look away from him as the rain came down in sheets all  around them, over them.

"I have been alone all my life," he said gruffly. "I lost my father too  young. My mother and brother excelled at cruelty. They enjoyed it. The  only friends I ever truly had were in the army, and they all died in  that explosion." His mouth tightened, and shadows twisted through his  dark eyes. "I survived, but I was covered in scars. Suddenly my outsides  matched what I'd always thought was already on the inside." He looked  away for a moment, as if he was battling something, and then met her  gaze again, his own fiercely probing. Furious-but not, Angel understood,  at her. Perhaps none of this had ever been aimed at her. "My mother  only told me she loved me when she was playing one of her games," he  said softly. "She thought it was funny if she could get me to believe  her, even for a moment."                       
       
           



       

"Rafe … " she whispered, her throat tight, her heart seeming to somersault  behind her ribs. Something in her shifted then. The fear fell away, the  hurt seemed to subside, and all that was left was that same old  feeling, that sharp urge to protect him, somehow, even from this, his  own past.

Maybe she had loved him all along.

"You are the first person I've ever known who is more beautiful inside  than out," he said, his eyes so dark, so very dark, and Angel felt it  inside of her. "I don't know why you love me," he continued in the same  low voice, twisting in and around the rain that fell upon them, and her  heart began to pound. "I don't know if I've already ruined it. All I've  ever seen in me are these scars, long before they showed on my face.  Ugly, incapacitating scars, in and out, that make me wholly unfit for  the company of others. I don't know why you approached me, and I can't  think of a single reason why you would stay."

She couldn't speak. He raised his hand, cautiously, and when she didn't  flinch away, he slid it over her jaw to cup her cheek, leaning down  close, as if the rain that fell on them was some kind of blessing. As if  it held them there, in a kind of embrace, cocooning them. Washing away  all the harsh words, all the pain. The past. Their families. All their  shields and armor, masks and hiding places.

Clearing the way, somehow, for whatever came next. Making space for  their strange marriage, their rocky start. Making it feel new. Right,  somehow.

"What I know is that you are like sunlight to me," he said, his voice  ragged, but sure, and his eyes warming to quicksilver as he looked at  her. "You make me want to come out of the dark, Angel. You make me want  to believe that I can."

She felt that dangerous spark of hope ignite within her, but this time,  she let it glow. She felt it turn into a fire, then grow into a blaze.  And then it began to spread. And spread.

And she let it.

"You can," she whispered, almost overcome with the heat of all that hope.

She was lost again, but this time with him. In him. Where she belonged.  Where she would stay. No masks. No scars. Just them. She smiled then, a  real smile, and after a moment he returned it.

"I am skeptical," he whispered, and she could hear the pain in his  voice, the monster he believed himself to be, the fear. It made her  heart ache. She concentrated instead on the matching gleam of hope she  could see in his dark gray gaze, and she knew, somehow, that it would be  okay.

That they would make this work, make it real. Together.

"I am not," she said. She turned her face into his palm, and kissed his  hand. Loving him, pure and simple. Forever. She smiled wider. "I'll show  you."

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt of A Secret Disgrace by Penny Jordan!





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CHAPTER ONE

"YOU say it was your grandparents' wish that their ashes be buried here, in the graveyard of the church of Santa Maria?'

The dispassionate male voice gave away as little as the shadowed face.  Its bone structure was delineated with strokes of sunlight that might  have come from Leonardo's masterly hand, revealing as they did the exact  nature of the man's cultural inheritance. Those high cheekbones, that  slashing line of taut jaw, the hint of olive-toned flesh, the proud  aquiline shape of his nose-all of them spoke of the mixing of genes from  the invaders who had seen Sicily and sought to possess it. His  ancestors had never allowed anything to stand in the way of what they  wanted. And now his attention was focused on her.

Instinctively she wanted to distance herself from him, to conceal  herself from him, she recognized, and she couldn't stop herself from  stepping back from him, her ankle threatening to give way as the back of  her pretty wedged shoe came up against the unseen edge of the  gravestone behind her.