Rafael almost laughed. What would she say, he wondered, if she knew that the truth about him could have been sold for a small fortune?
‘I asked,’ she said slowly, ‘whether that was what happened to you. There has to be some reason why you feel and behave the way you do.’
He swallowed a bitter laugh. Oh, there was.
But what would a woman like Grace Thacker do with the information? No doubt use it to secure the loan she needed to continue with her corrupt little business.
Suddenly transported back to his childhood, he glanced around the forest but it held no fears for him now. No dark memories. In fact, it had been his sanctuary. He’d made it that way.
‘Why do I behave the way I do? Because I’m a man, and that’s the way men think.’ Infuriated by her determination to suck information out of him, Rafael couldn’t keep the impatience out of his voice and heard her sharp intake of breath.
‘I just can’t believe that you’re as cold and insensitive as they say you are.’
‘Well, I am.’ His tone simmered with raw aggression as a black rage descended on him. ‘Remember that before you ask personal questions that I have no intention of answering.’
Wondering what had possessed him to consider walking through the rainforest with Grace for company, Rafael ground his teeth and turned away from her but not before he saw the silent question in her eyes.
Women, he thought as he strode up the ancient path at a punishing pace.
The sooner they reached the fazenda, the sooner he could expose the game she’d been playing and end this farce. And then he’d send her home.
Grace walked in silence, keeping her eyes on the path so that she didn’t miss her step in the rough, slippery terrain.
But her mind wasn’t on the physical challenge that the rainforest presented. It was on the kiss—that amazing, astonishing kiss that had awakened her previously dormant body from sleep to a state of almost overwhelming excitement. But the confusion caused by that steamy, erotic encounter in the humid, leafy jungle was eclipsed by the conversation that had followed.
And now she wished—how desperately she wished—that she’d kept her mouth shut.
Perhaps he was right that sex was better without conversation because words had tainted the fragile perfection of the moment.
Words—the most deadly weapon given to human beings.
She, of all people, knew the damage that words could do and yet she’d thrown them out carelessly, with no thought to the wounds they might cause.
And now she was filled with nothing but regret and self-recrimination.
She wished she hadn’t asked if he was going to extend the loan because he’d obviously interpreted her question as a signal that she’d sleep with him if he gave a positive answer.
But most of all she wished she hadn’t asked the question about his marriage. It had been personal and inappropriate, she could see that now, but there had been something about his bitter remarks and the rigid tension in those broad shoulders that had made it impossible for her not to ask. Impossible for her not to reach out to him as she would have reached out to any human being in such intense pain.
And the pain was there, she was sure of it.
When he’d stridden back down the path towards her and the expression on his face had been so
black and threatening that, for a wild, panicky moment, she’d known she’d gone too far. And she’d been afraid.
Afraid for herself.
Afraid for him.
And then she’d seen his eyes. And what she’d seen there wasn’t violence but bitterness, pain and cynicism and her fear had turned back into concern and compassion.
What had caused the darkness that she so clearly saw in him?
What memories haunted his nights and kept him locked to the safe, inanimate computer screen?
And why had he kissed her?
No matter what derisive comment he made about women’s attitude to sex, she wasn’t so naïve and foolish that she’d interpreted their hot jungle encounter as anything other than physical lust. She knew that chemistry existed, even though she’d never experienced its explosive force before today. She understood that sex could happen without love. She understood all those things. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t believe in love.