Brilliant dark eyes shimmered in tawny challenge. ‘I never lose.’
‘You can’t always have what you want. Yes, you can wheel and deal, and make things very difficult for me, but you can’t force me to sell.’ Harriet dealt him a truculent appraisal. ‘My word, were you planning to break the news of this outrageous loan over dinner?’
‘I’m not that crude.’ His intonation was as even, calm and crisp as hers was argumentative. ‘We could still discuss this over dinner, and reach a mutually beneficial resolution.’
Her eyes fired as bright a blue as gentians. ‘When your only proposition is that I sell my home to you, we have nothing to discuss. I suggest you think in terms of a compromise.’
‘There’s room for negotiation, but not compromise.’
‘OK…gloves off, then.’ Harriet drew in a stark, sudden breath and dragged her gaze from the gleaming mesmeric hold of his, scolding herself for that momentary loss of focus. ‘The contract my cousin signed with your company could be used in the public domain, to cause you considerable embarrassment. Before you assure me that public opinion means nothing to you, think of the local dimension.’
Rafael regarded her with cool impassivity. ‘Is it possible that you are threatening me?’
‘I’m merely telling you that I will fight back with whatever weapons I can muster.’ Harriet was rigid. ‘Do you want it said that you used your power, your cash and your cunning lawyers to hoodwink a woman of pensionable age into signing an unfair contract? And that you then used it to deprive me of my inheritance?’
‘That would be a very false representation of the facts. Miss Gallagher made the first approach to Flynn Enterprises, and she was astute enough to use my desire to acquire her property as a bargaining tool to win preferential treatment. In addition, a solicitor was engaged at my company’s expense to advise her.’
As he finished speaking a slow tide of guilty pink blossomed below Harriet’s skin; she was painfully aware of the blackmail tactics she was utilising to fight her corner. Quite deliberately, however, she suppressed her finer sensibilities—which, she was convinced, were a distinct handicap in Rafael Cavaliere Flynn’s radius.
‘I take your point, but can you prove those facts?’ she enquired, slamming the door fully shut on her sense of fair play and on her conscience. ‘As I’m sure you’re aware, newspaper stories do have a sad habit of concentrating only on the more scandalous angles. Even if a retraction is printed afterwards, people tend to remember what went before better.’
‘And you say I do business like a gangster?’ Rafael murmured in a silken tone of dark appreciation, for this confrontation was developing along lines that he could never have foreseen. She was neither crying nor pleading nor appealing to his better nature.
It was rare for someone to surprise Rafael’s expectations, but Harriet Carmichael had succeeded. There she stood, all five foot four inches of her: her conservative black wool jacket and knee-length skirt were the last word in old-fashioned clothing to a male who had spent several weeks with a woman who displayed as much naked flesh as possible at every opportunity. Black lashes screening his reflective gaze, he viewed her with interest tinged with reluctant amusement, for he could barely credit that she had the nerve to threaten him. He wondered how long he would wait before he called her bluff. She thought the very worst of him and made no bones about that reality. Since he had few illusions about himself, and minimal concern about how the rest of the world viewed him that should not have bothered him. Yet, inexplicably, her automatic assumption that he would naturally sink to meet her lowest expectations annoyed the hell out of Rafael.
‘I’m not giving up my home…I love it,’ Harriet told him defiantly. ‘I changed my whole way of life to come to Ireland and I’m staying put.’
‘Then you’re planning to repay the loan in full?’ Rafael decided that it was time to bring her down to ground level again.
Harriet turned very pale. ‘I presume I can have some time to explore my options?’
‘Four weeks maximum—and that’s a gift.’ His response was swift. ‘Try to be realistic. With what I’m prepared to pay for your inheritance you can pick a site, bring in an architect and rebuild a replica of your current home somewhere else in the neighbourhood.’
‘But I treasure the family connection, and I very much doubt that I could hope to find anything that would equal the beauty of my present surroundings. I’ll be in touch, Mr Cavaliere Flynn.’
Her slender back stiff, Harriet walked away.
‘It’s Rafael.’
‘Fake bonhomie just irritates me.’
His beautiful mouth took on a ruthless curve as he strode past her to pull open the door for her exit. ‘Bad manners do it for me.’
Her face flamed to her hairline; there was no denying that he excelled in the courtesy department. She tipped her head back and collided unwarily with glittering dark eyes that had enough of a charge to make her heart skip a startled beat. ‘As you’re planning to bankrupt me or make me homeless, the civilities seem rather superfluous.’
‘Don’t you think you’re being a touch melodramatic about this?’ Rafael slowed his long powerful stride to her pace as he accompanied her through the echoing entrance hall.
‘I doubt very much that my home means as much to you as it does to me.’
‘My late mother played in the folly as a child. Her father told her it was her duty to bring it back into the estate.’ An almost imperceptible shadow tightened his lean strong face. ‘That unattractive view was a constant reminder that she had failed.’
Harriet was mesmerised by the bleak, forbidding flash of emotion he could not conceal. His was a dark and dangerous temperament, she sensed, full of a passion rigorously controlled and rarely allowed expression. Yet that one fleeting glimpse of the powerful undercurrents that drove him gave her more of a flavour of his true nature than anything that had gone before.
‘You’re staring,’ Rafael told her, his own attention sliding down to the peachy pouting softness of her lips.
The silence sizzled.
She was aware of nothing but him. ‘So are you.’