‘I’d just lost Piers,’ Shaan answered lamely. ‘And Rafe had lost M-Madeleine.’ She couldn’t even say the other woman’s name without stumbling sickeningly over it. ‘As he said, why not console each other…?’
‘Oh, very cute,’ Jemma angrily derided. ‘The scheming rotter!’ Her eyes began to flash. ‘Didn’t he bother to consider what an arrangement like that
was likely to do to you after what you had just gone through with Piers?’
‘We both went through it,’ Shaan corrected. ‘And h-he’s been very good to me,’ she added defensively—though why she was defending him after what she had seen today, she didn’t know or understand. ‘I can’t believe he would do anything to deliberately h-hurt me.’
‘So why are you sitting here right now—hurting so badly you can barely cope?’ Jemma mocked all of that tightly.
‘Don’t…’ Shaan whispered, lowering her dark head.
‘Don’t?’ Jemma repeated. ‘I’d like to throttle the devious life out of him, the underhand bastard.’
‘He can’t help loving her, Jemma,’ Shaan choked out thickly.
‘Oh, no?’ She mocked that too. ‘So if Piers happened to walk in here right now, you would feel justified in falling into his arms, would you?’
No; Shaan shook her bowed head. ‘Not Piers,’ she whispered. But if Rafe should walk in here….
‘Oh, no,’ Jemma breathed, beginning to catch on at last. ‘You fool, Shaan,’ she muttered. ‘You damned bloody fool…’
And fool just about said it, Shaan accepted bleakly. She was a fickle, blind, gullible fool.
‘Here.’ The brandy glass appeared in front of Shaan again. ‘Drink some more of this.’
She was trembling again, she realised as the glass chattered against her teeth.
‘So, what are you going to do now?’ Jemma asked her quietly.
I don’t know, she thought, and closed her eyes again—then wished she hadn’t when she saw Rafe’s expression just before he’d kissed Madeleine.
It had been pained. It had been racked by an angry, helpless, useless frustration. And it split Shaan’s heart in two, because it had been the look of a man who was angrily aware that his love was unrequited.
She recognised it because she knew the feeling, and it hurt—hurt like hell.
Yet what right did she have to be sitting here feeling hurt and betrayed when she’d always known where Rafe’s true feelings lay? It wasn’t Rafe’s fault that she had done the stupid thing and fallen in love with him.
He hadn’t asked for love from her, had he?
But he had insisted that both Piers and Madeleine were kept out of their marriage, she grimly reminded herself. And him being with Madeleine was a betrayal of the trust she had placed in him to keep his side of that vow.
‘Are you going to leave him?’
Leave?
Panic swept through her. A terrible, terrible panic that filled her with a sickening horror that turned her flesh to ice.
Oh, God help me! she prayed, when she realised just how far she had fallen. ‘I can’t think now,’ she whispered, pushing trembling fingers to her burning eyes. ‘I need some time—some space to—’
‘What you need, Shaan—’ Jemma cut in with a blistering impatience ‘—is to get those damned blinkers off! Wasn’t it bad enough when you wore them all the time Piers was around, without you doing the same thing with his thankless brother?’
Shaan’s head came up. ‘W-what do you mean?’ she gasped at the angry outburst.
Jemma glanced away, her eyes flashing with a bitter disdain that literally shook Shaan to her very core. ‘Piers made a damned mockery out of you from day one,’ she bit out tightly. ‘Everyone else could see it—see those charming smiles of his and that easygoing manner was all just an act. But you, you fell for it all like the trusting little fool you are, and got well and truly hurt for it! Now you’ve been doing the same damned thing with his brother!’ she sighed out angrily. ‘So do yourself a favour, Shaan,’ Jemma finished huskily, ‘and get out from under it all before the damned Danvers brothers really tear you apart!’
Too late, Shaan thought tragically. They’ve already torn me apart.
‘What do you think they were doing, coming out of that hotel in the first place?’ Jemma questioned suddenly.