The Last Heir of Monterrato

‘What did it feel like, Rafe?’

‘It is not an experience I would recommend.’ He scraped his chair back sharply, and immediately began to gather up the things on the table. ‘Shall I make some coffee?’

He was trying to get away from her, and from any sort of discussion about the accident. But Lottie stopped him.

‘In a minute.’ Reaching forward, she rested her hand on his forearm, feeling the warmth of his skin, the way his muscles flexed beneath her touch. ‘There’s no rush.’

As she increased the pressure on his arm she became acutely aware of their skin-on-skin contact, the feel of the dark hairs that were raised beneath her fingertips, before the arm was moved away and folded beneath his other, defensively in front of him.

‘What did you feel when you realised that the parachute wasn’t going to open?’

Rafael glowered at her. ‘What do you think I felt?’

‘I don’t know—that’s why I’m asking you.’ Stubbornly, she refused to give up.

‘Disbelief, horror, panic. Take your pick. There wasn’t much time for the existential stuff.’

Still the sarcastic flippancy.

‘Did you lose consciousness as soon as you hit the tree?’

‘Yes.’ He let out an exasperated sigh, seeing that she wasn’t going to let this drop. ‘I didn’t know anything about it until I woke up in a hospital bed, thinking what a bloody fool I was.’

‘A fool? I thought you would be feeling pretty darned lucky.’

‘Well, that as well. But realising what I had done to myself—the permanent damage, I mean. It could have all been avoided.’

‘But you weren’t to know—about the parachute, I mean.’

‘No. But if I hadn’t been jumping from aeroplanes in the first place...’ He stopped, as if realising he was giving too much away. ‘Anyway, I’m done with all that stuff now.’

Lottie stared at him from beneath the sweep of her lowered lashes. ‘You say that now. I bet once you have completely recovered you will be throwing yourself into the path of danger again, every chance you get.’

‘Is that what you thought I did?’ He looked at her with cold surprise.

Lottie felt herself weaken under his penetrating gaze. ‘Kind of. Let’s face it—you were always skiing down some mountain or scaling up it or flinging yourself from it. Especially...’ she paused ‘...especially after Seraphina died.’

‘You make it sound like some sort of death wish.’

‘That’s a bit extreme. A diversion tactic, maybe, a form of escapism.’

‘Escaping from what?’

‘I would have thought that was obvious. From me, from our marriage, from Seraphina’s death.’

‘Che assurdità!’ He turned away, muttering something furious in Italian under his breath. ‘As usual your amateur psychology has brought you to completely the wrong conclusion. Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got some work to do.’

Leaving the plates where they were, he gave her a curt nod before striding from the room, his pride and dignity hurrying to keep up with him.

* * *

Was she right? Of course she damned well was. Closing the door to his study, he leant back against it, screwing his eyes shut against the realisation. That was what riled him more than anything—why he hated getting into any so-called conversation with Lottie. The way she wheedled things out of him, picked at subjects that he wanted left alone, attempted to uncover truths that had to stay well and truly buried. Why had he even got into that stuff about giving up action sports?

Even if it was true.

He had spent more and more time doing extreme sports over the past few years, turning it from an escapist hobby into an obsession, a way of purging himself. He had told himself he needed something to ease the pressures of running the principality, and there was some truth in that. There had been plenty of times when the massive responsibility had weighed heavily on him and flinging himself off a mountain, as Lottie had so charmingly put it, had given him some release. Pushing himself harder and harder had felt good—addictive, even,—and he’d consoled himself that it was done in the name of a good cause as he had raised huge sums of money for charity.

But there had, of course, been another reason. The one that Lottie had homed in on, jabbing at it like a dentist probing a bad tooth. He knew that the real reason he’d pushed himself harder, further, to take more and more extreme risks, had been because of the adrenalin rush it gave him. And the reason he’d needed that adrenalin was because it had been the only thing that had given him a temporary respite from his feeling of loss. The loss of his baby, his marriage, his wife.