Almost as if she’d just thrown down a challenge, her mind began to replay that ugly scene from twelve months ago. While she’d been shut away in this same room, taking a shower, Raoul had calmly walked into the bedroom she’d shared with André and
had left the stack of documents on her bed, then gone to his own bedroom to await the outcome.
She’d known why he had done it. Only an hour before he had propositioned her, and she had slapped him down with the coldest little refusal she could use.
The papers had been his retaliation. So she’d read them, with a sickened disgust at how low Raoul had been prepared to go in his quest to cause trouble between her and André. Then she’d walked into Raoul’s room to tell him what he could damned well do with his papers of lies.
But it hadn’t turned out like that. Raoul had been clever; he had known exactly what he’d been doing when he’d lured her into his bedroom that night. Tall like André, dark like André, but younger, more like her own age, and with a mean streak a mile wide that he was oh, so careful never to show André.
‘Oh, come on, Sam,’ he murmured dryly. ‘We all know you’re a hot little thing. Even my macho brother never knows whose bed you’re sleeping in when he’s away.’
‘That’s a lie,’ she said, going white at the poisonous suggestion. Then, ‘Don’t do that!’ she snapped when his hands came up to touch her. She knocked them away and started backing up.
He smiled a lazy smile. ‘But you’re family,’ he murmured tauntingly. ‘And we all know how big brother likes us all to get our even share. It makes him feel good and in control. “You want money, Raoul? Sure you can have money. You want a car? Sure, here’s the cheque. You want to live in my house? Sure, live in my house; make yourself at home, what’s mine is yours.”’
‘Think again if you dare to believe he was including me in that,’ she told him coldly.
‘And why not you?’ he jeered. ‘Those deeds of ownership on the Bressingham tell you exactly where you stand in big brother’s plan of things. You were a very un-hostile takeover, Samantha.’ He spelled it out cruelly. ‘Came with the fixtures and fittings. One feisty wife. Pain-in-the-neck flirt. Install her in family home. Use at will.’
‘God, you’re a nasty piece of work, Raoul.’ She retaliated. ‘I own the Bressingham!’ she declared angrily. ‘It came to me in my father’s will!’
‘Did it?’ He sounded so sure of himself. So absolutely positive that he was right, it started her doubting her own mind right there and then. ‘Did it actually say, “I hereby bequeath my precious daughter the Bressingham Hotel and enough money to return it to the proud place it used to be”?’
He knew it didn’t; she began to shake. Her father’s will had merely stated that everything he possessed would go to her. André had taken care of the rest. And why not? She trusted him with her life, never mind her father’s business affairs. She had been so grief stricken. So lost without the man who had been her mentor and her hero from the day she’d been born. She hadn’t even known he was ill. He’d kept so much from her.
Had that included letting André buy the Bressingham?
Now she could see her own face as it must have looked that night in Raoul’s bedroom. See the slow dawning of a realisation that Raoul could be right take the colour from her face. And if he’d been right about one thing, he could have been be right about the others. Maybe she had come with the deal. Maybe André had married her because her father had insisted that the Bressingham must remain with the Bressingham family.
Beginning to shiver again, she reached out to switch on the shower, then dropped her robe to the floor so she could begin peeling off her wet swimsuit. She didn’t want to remember any more, but her mind decided otherwise. As she stepped beneath the shower’s hot spray, the rest of the dreadful scene began to fill her head.
Raoul trying to touch her, her slapping his hands away, him enjoying the minor skirmish, smiling, taunting her with words and gestures until she could barely breathe as panic began stir. He was big, he was strong; she had been no match for him. What followed had been a horrible experience that had continued as a frantic struggle on Raoul’s bed—when André had walked in on them.
And that is about as far as I want to go with this, she told herself on a sick little shudder. What she really needed to do was get to away from here—right away, she decided, on a sudden upsurge of panic that had her stepping quickly out of the shower. She needed to give herself some time and space to get her head together. Because, right now, she didn’t know who she was, what she was, or even why she was!
André knew when he saw her coming down the stairs that he had a big problem on his hands. He had been standing here in the hall waiting for her, half expecting to see her wearing a cold mask instead of a face. But it was worse than that. She was dressed in stark, mourning black, and was carrying that damned suitcase she had brought with her from the Tremount.
Samantha was about to bury their marriage.
‘Going somewhere?’ he questioned silkily.
She didn’t bother to reply. Neither did she make eye contact as she attempted to walk straight past him as if he wasn’t there.
His hand snaked out, wrenching the suitcase from her. It brought her to a stop on a sharp little gasp. He was very happy to watch the anger flare in her blank green eyes. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.
‘No,’ she refused. ‘I have nothing I want to say to you.’ And she kept on walking—without the suitcase. Head up, body stiff, only that small limp to ruin her cold, stiff exit. It was almost a shame to spoil it, he acknowledged. But he was going to talk, he determined grimly. She was going to talk!
‘Have you ever heard that old saying, if I had my time over, I would play that scene differently?’ He fed the words coolly after her. ‘Well, this is your chance, cara,’ he said. ‘Don’t miss this rare opportunity you’ve been handed by playing the scene the same way again.’
Watching her pull to a stop, he felt the tight sting of triumph. She might hate the very thought of it, but she knew he was right. ‘I can’t talk about it all now,’ she murmured unevenly. ‘I need time to—’
‘Time,’ he grimly cut in, ‘is something you’ve been wasting for twelve long, miserable months.’
‘Okay!’ She spun on him so abruptly that, even though he had been deliberately provoking her into it, he didn’t expect the speed with which she decided to take him on. ‘You want to play the scene a different way?’ she challenged. ‘So let’s play it a different way!’
And if he’d thought her cold a moment ago then she certainly wasn’t now. She was burning with anger, with bitterness and a hatred that tried to sear off his skin.
‘You walked in here that night, took one look at what was going on in that locked room upstairs, and instantly blamed me for it!’