Poppy wished she had Chloe’s confidence but she knew Rafe was a lone wolf when i
t came to handling difficult things. It had taken a lot for him to tell her about his concerns with the accountant who had been defrauding him. He had told her even less about his childhood, but she suspected it had been desperately lonely, and that he had been given far too much responsibility for a ten-year-old boy when his parents had died. It had left its mark on him. He was used to dealing with things on his own. He didn’t want anyone to see the heavy toll it took on him.
Wasn’t that why he had pushed her away?
He felt responsible for his family. He wasn’t used to sharing that with anyone.
He worked ridiculously punishing hours to keep his and the family’s business at the top of its game. She sensed his inner drive was not so much about a desire to be super-successful, but more to compensate for the emptiness he felt at being left an orphan so young.
Was it too much to hope that he would one day see that he didn’t have to do it on his own? That he could share the load with someone who cared about him and his happiness?
Of course it was.
She couldn’t go on with this idealistic way of viewing the world that everything would turn out in the end. Life was hard at times and she had to be hard to cope with it.
It was time to toughen up.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RAFE DROVE DOWN to the manor three weeks later. He had a pounding headache; he was tired from not having slept properly since he had found out about his brother’s accident. Raoul was a lot better physically—the concussion he’d sustained had gone and his right arm that had been broken was healing well—but it was obvious he was having difficulty accepting his spinal injury. He’d had surgery to decompress the spine but the doctors were still a little cagey about how good his overall recovery would be.
When Rafe had left the private rehab unit Raoul had been transferred to, his brother had been sitting in his chair staring blankly out of the window. He had barely spoken a word since he’d left the hospital. It was devastating to witness. Rafe couldn’t bear to see his vibrant brother slumped so sullenly and listlessly in that wretched chair.
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.