‘How many knights have you met to date?’ Rafe drawled.
Unforgivably, the tone was one of amusement. Drawing on all her considerable will-power, Marianne forced any anger out of her voice and matched her tone to his. ‘Not too many.’ She could do the this didn’t matter a jot scenario, too. She’d rather die than admit she was still trembling from the sensations his mouth and hands had wreaked.
‘I’m sorry, Marianne. It won’t happen again, OK?’ His voice was cool and smooth now. ‘I’m not usually so crass, believe me.’
She did. That kiss had told her Rafe was nothing if not experienced and supremely accomplished in the lovemaking department. Eternally thankful the darkness was hiding her flushed cheeks, she said lightly, ‘Think nothing of it. I won’t.’ And put that in your pipe and smoke it, Rafe Steed. ‘Now, do you want to come to the house and phone for a taxi?’
‘No need. I told you, I only had a couple of whiskies. I’ll continue my walk back if you’re sure you are OK.’
‘I’m fine.’ And I hope you fall off the path into the sea. No—no, she didn’t. But perhaps a twisted ankle or something similar would cause a dent in that infuriating self-confidence.
She saw the black bulk that was him move and then heard a scrambling noise, and when he next spoke his voice came from the top of the wall. ‘I’ll be in touch when I hear from my architect then. We want to progress things as quickly as we can so all this can be finished with.’
Quite. ‘You’ve got my number in London,’ she said coldly.
‘Goodnight, Marianne.’
‘Goodnight.’ She heard him drop down on the other side of the wall and then the sound of his footsteps disappearing along the cliff path. ‘And good riddance,’ she whispered childishly, wrapping her arms round her middle as she shivered suddenly.
Once back in the house, she made herself a mug of hot chocolate for the comfort factor and carried it up to her room with a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits.
The mirror in the en suite bathroom showed a woman who had definitely been very thoroughly kissed. Her eyes were wide and dazed, her lips swollen and her cheeks burning. After splashing cold water on her face for a minute or two, she went and pigged out on the chocolate biscuits, eating the whole packet and finishing off with the mug of hot chocolate. It helped—a little. At four o’clock she had a long warm bath, generously doused with an expensive bath oil, and at five o’clock she packed for London and did her make-up.
Crystal was always an early riser and she looked up in surprise from stirring porridge on the stove when Marianne strolled into the kitchen at six-thirty. ‘I was going to wake you with a cup of tea shortly. I know you want to get away early. Sleep well?’
‘Not the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.’ Understatement of the year.
Crystal nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s all this with Rafe Steed, that doesn’t help. Still, at least when his father’s here he won’t need to be around. We perhaps won’t see him hardly at all after that. Tom says he’s very much in charge in the States and it’s a full-time job for anyone. Quite a little empire, apparently.’
Marianne nodded. She found she wanted to know more about Rafe Steed and yet she didn’t, which made no sense at all.
‘Did you know he’s been married?’ Crystal asked as she bustled about setting tea and toast in front of Marianne. ‘Didn’t last too long, apparently. Tom said he wouldn’t talk about it, so goodness knows what went on.’
Married? She hadn’t bargained for that. And divorced. Well, well, well. Perhaps that explained the cynical twist to his mouth. ‘Poor woman, that’s all I can say,’ Marianne said flatly. ‘Getting mixed up with someone as heartless as Rafe.’
‘Well, we don’t know he was to blame,’ Crystal put in reasonably.
Marianne bit into a slice of toast, chewed and swallowed. Was she being unfair? Probably. Suddenly she didn’t recognise herself any more and it was all his fault. Wret
ched man. Much as she loved Seacrest and Crystal and the area in which she had been born and brought up, she found herself wishing she could disappear back to London for good. Something was telling her the next few months were not going to be easy in all sorts of ways.
He wanted his head examined. Rafe sat in the breakfast room of the small hotel he was staying in, staring moodily at his cup of coffee. How could he have been so monumentally stupid as to make his presence known to her last night? And, having done so, what had possessed him to further compound the error of judgement by kissing her? And not just a chaste comforting peck either; he could have got away with that and still retrieved something from what was a disaster.
His waitress arrived with his cooked breakfast. He glanced down at the plate and felt momentarily cheered. It was swimming with grease and the bacon had been frazzled to cinders, whereas the sausages still looked worryingly pink. Not much competition from this place then. If Seacrest couldn’t do better than this they wouldn’t deserve to pick up the custom. If there was one thing Steed hotels prided themselves on it was their attention to good food, be it an establishment sleeping twenty or two hundred.
Pushing the plate to one side, he buttered a slice of toast and spread it with a rather mediocre blackcurrant preserve, his thoughts returning to the problem which had given him a sleepless night. Marianne Carr. He didn’t know what had drawn him to the beach below the house last night but that wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d damn well stayed there. But, oh, no, he’d had to walk home via the cliff path.
Swigging the last of the coffee, he poured himself another cup. And once he’d heard her, what could he do but try to assist? He couldn’t have just walked on. He wouldn’t have left an animal in that state.
Face it, buddy. The voice in his head was relentless. Since the first time you set eyes on the woman you have been fighting an overpowering need to take her in your arms and kiss her senseless. And he didn’t know why she fascinated him like she did. OK, she was lovely, but he knew lots of beautiful women and most of them didn’t look at him as though he were the devil incarnate. Not that he could blame the present state of affairs on Marianne, he admitted irritably. He had set out to make sure she knew he had got the measure of her—and her mother—from their first meeting. No way was history going to repeat itself—that was what he had been determined on. His father might have been made a fool of by Diane Carr but he was a different kettle of fish. He knew what was what. He had learnt it a good while ago. Give a woman your heart and she would treat it like dirt, fit only to be trampled under her dainty little feet.
For a moment the image of Fiona, wrapped in the arms of her lover, flashed on the screen of his mind. It had been a good party, he had been enjoying himself until he had taken a walk in the host’s garden to clear his head from the smoky, cloying air within the house. And he had fallen over them—literally. They had been too occupied in what they were doing to hear his approach and he had been thinking of his and Fiona’s conversation in the car on the way to the party. He didn’t want to put off having children any longer, he had insisted, and there was no reason for her to give up seeing her friends and having a social life—her normal excuse when he’d attempted to discuss having a family. He could work from home some of the time and share caring for their child and he was quite happy to hire a nanny, too.
It had been much later, in the midst of a divorce battle which had turned very ugly, that he’d discovered she had never intended to have children. She’d seen him as a meal ticket and an introduction into the wealthy golf and bridge set, and had been prepared to buy her place with her body and her lies. And he’d fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. The affair with the guy at the party had apparently been going on for some months and he hadn’t been the first since their marriage six years before. Nevertheless, she had taken him to the cleaners without a shred of remorse. So much for women being the gentler sex. He smiled sourly.
But all that had been almost seven years ago. He had married at twenty-two and been divorced at twenty-nine, but since then he had made up for lost time. And he made no apology for it. Nor for the fact that he was not going to put himself in the position where betrayal could be an option again.
Reaching in his pocket, he drew out his mobile phone and punched in Victoria Blackthorn’s number. No more walks on the beach. No more stolen moonlit kisses. He had his feet on the ground again. This brief…madness was terminated herewith.