Never Say No to a Caffarelli

Rafe blamed Clarissa Moncrief. Raoul had proposed the night before the accident and she had readily accepted. Rafe didn’t believe for a second she loved Raoul or that Raoul had loved her, but that wasn’t the point. She had ended their engagement with a chilling disregard for his feelings.

Rafe was determined to get Raoul out of this slump of self-pity. He was in the process of tracking down a specialist he’d read about in an article online, a young English woman called Lily Archer who had worked with the young daughter of a wealthy sheikh who had suffered a horse riding accident. Halimah Al-Balawi had made a stunning recovery that had defied the doctors’ prognosis. Rafe was determined to engage Miss Archer’s services no matter what it cost and no matter what resistance his brother put up. Raoul could be stubborn when things didn’t go his way, but Rafe had a gut feeling Lily Archer was just the person to sort him out.

But before Rafe went back to be with Raoul he had one other thing to sort out. He hadn’t heard from Poppy, but then he hadn’t expected to. He had made things pretty clear to her. But it niggled at him that he could have handled things a little better. He had been caught off-guard in Paris. He had shut down as soon as he’d heard about his brother’s accident. It was how he always handled things, by closing off all distractions and concentrating on the task at hand.

But seeing how Clarissa had walked so callously out of his brother’s life had pulled him up short. He hadn’t liked what he had seen when he examined himself. How had Poppy felt to be dismissed like that? How could he have done that to her?

The lights were on in the dower house as he pulled up. He saw Poppy moving about the kitchen as he walked up the path to the back door. She was wearing her flowery apron and her hair was tied up on top of her head. There was a streak of flour over one cheek as she carried a tray of something to the oven.

The dogs must have heard him, as they started their maniacal barking, and Poppy immediately stiffened, put the tray back down on the bench and turned to see him through the window near the back door. Her face turned as white as the flour on her cheek, but then she seemed to compose herself. Her mouth tightened as she took off her oven mitts and, placing them on the counter, came over to open the door. ‘Yes?’

Rafe knew he deserved a cool welcome but this wasn’t like the Poppy he knew. ‘Hi. I saw your light on.’

‘I do that after dark,’ she said. ‘It’s expensive, but I’m covering all my costs now that I’m following your business plan. No more freebies. No more credit. No more being taken advantage of. Wish I’d done it earlier.’

Rafe gave her a twisted smile. ‘Good for you.’

She was like a stranger, a cold, distant stranger who didn’t smile, whose toffee-brown eyes didn’t light up when she saw him. Even the dogs seemed to sense the change, for they were not jumping around him vying for his attention but standing well back, eyeing him suspiciously. Pickles was giving him that beady look again, as if to say, “I knew I couldn’t trust you”.

‘I should’ve called to tell you I was coming,’ Rafe said.

‘Why?’ She gave him a hardened look. ‘So I could roll out the red carpet for you?’

He frowned. ‘No, it’s just that I wanted to explain why I left you in Paris like that.’

‘You don’t need to explain it. I totally got it, Rafe. You didn’t need me any more. You wanted to be on your own so you could concentrate on your brother. How is he?’

‘He’s out of hospital,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping to take him to his villa in Normandy once he’s cleared from rehab.’

‘There’s been nothing in the press.’

‘No, we’ve been trying to keep things pretty quiet. But I’m not sure how long that will last.’

A silence chugged past.

Rafe couldn’t believe how hard this was. He had been expecting... What had he been expecting? He felt out of his depth, out of balance, disoriented. She was so unreachable, so tightly contained, he felt like an invisible wall was around her.

‘I’ve come to a decision,’ Poppy said. ‘You can buy the dower house. I don’t want it any more. It should never have been separated from the manor. They belong together.’

Rafe blinked to reorient himself. ‘How much do you want?’

‘Twenty-five percent above market value.’

He let out a slowly measured breath. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’

‘I had a very good teacher.’