The Right Bride? (22 page)

For the second time that day, tears flooded Karyn’s eyes. Leaning against the wall, she fought them back. She had to accept the hard truth of her sister’s relationship with Rafe. She had no other choice.

It was only Fiona who was important here, she thought fiercely. Not Rafe. She simply couldn’t afford to let Rafe ruin the growing bond between herself and her sister.

Oddly enough, as the days passed, Karyn was helped in this resolve by Rafe. He flew to Paris one day, to Prague another. He rarely rode with them, and never joined them in the pool, pleading the pressures of work. At mealtimes, he was a charming, witty conversationalist who might just as well have been a chance acquaintance.

Karyn should have been happy with this state of affairs. Instead, against all logic, she was infuriated.

On the fifth evening, she and Fiona couldn’t resist the flushed evening sky and went for a ride on the moors after dinner. When they got back, Karyn collapsed into one of the chairs on the patio, running her fingers through her tousled curls. “That was wonderful.”

Fiona sat down beside her. Taking off her hard hat, she said with unusual hesitancy, “Karyn, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you…”

“Go ahead.”

“We’ve talked about so much—but not about your husband. You never even mention his name.”

Karyn said shortly, “I don’t like talking about him.”

“I know it was only a year ago that he died…you must still miss him dreadfully.”

As Karyn leaned over to rub dust from her riding boots, mumbling an indistinct reply, Fiona persisted, “What did he look like? Was he a vet, too?”

“He was an accountant with an international firm. Tall, blond and handsome,” Karyn said with an attempt at lightness.

“You must have a photo of him?”

“I don’t need one,” Karyn said. “Fiona, I’m sorry. You mustn’t take this personally—I don’t talk about him to anyone.”

“I just hope he was good to you,” Fiona said fiercely. “My only standard of comparison is Rafe—I don’t know what I’d do without him, I depend on him for so much.” She sighed, tugging the ribbon from her braid and shaking out her long hair. “It only takes one look from Rafe and my father settles right down. Money talks, I suppose.”

“Then I’m very glad you’ve got Rafe,” Karyn said. She could have asked in just what capacity Fiona did have Rafe,
for that, too, was a subject they’d never talked about. But didn’t she already know the answer? “I think it’s time for a shower.”

“Me, too. What a drag—it takes forever to wash my hair.” Fiona gave a wicked grin. “Maybe I’ll cut it short, like yours.”

“That’d get your mother’s goat.”

Karyn followed Fiona upstairs, going into her own room and staring out the window. Today Rafe had gone to London; she had no idea when he’d be back.

Restlessly she turned on the radio, wishing Fiona had never brought up the subject of Steve; even miles from home, memories of him had the power to disturb her. Then, as she looked around for the book she was reading, she realized she’d left it downstairs in the drawing room. Still dressed in her jodphurs, she headed for the back stairs.

Rafe was standing at the bottom of them. As her heart gave a great jolt in her chest, her socked foot slipped on the smooth wood. She stumbled, grabbed for the railing, missed it and fell forward, her knees banging against the next step. So fast she didn’t have time to think, Rafe charged up the stairs and put his arms around her; her face was jammed into his chest. “Are you okay?” he demanded. “Did you hurt yourself? Karyn, answer me!”

Her own arms had gone around him in sheer reflex. Beneath her palms, through the thin cotton of his shirt, Karyn could feel the taut planes of his back, the hard curve of his spine. His heart was pounding under her cheek; his breath stirred her hair. Wasn’t this closeness what she’d been desperate for? She wanted to stay here forever, she realized dazedly, and raised her head. “I—I’m fine. Silly of me to slip, I guess you startled me—I thought you were in London.”

“I came back early…” His voice died away. His gaze
bored into hers as his hand rose to stroke a strand of hair from her cheek. His fingers weren’t quite steady, each of them leaving a streak of fire on her skin. Unmasked, naked desire flared in his eyes, as vivid and dangerous as fire.

For the briefest of moments she yielded to that desire, her lashes drifting to her cheeks and her lips parting. Then, with a tiny sound of distress, Karyn shoved against Rafe’s chest. Almost simultaneously, he pushed her away as hard as he could. Losing her balance, she gripped the banister, and from somewhere dredged up the shadow of a smile. “It won’t help if we both fall down the stairs.”

He was shaking his head like a man who’d just been struck a crippling blow. Or a man waking from a dream and finding himself in a harsh reality not of his choosing. “Hell’s teeth,” he muttered, “I swore that wasn’t going to happen again.”

He surged to his feet, pulling her with him, then holding her by the shoulders a careful distance from his body. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Her left knee hurt abominably. “This is unbearable—whatever it is that happens when I get within ten feet of you,” she whispered. “Don’t bother denying it, I know it happens to you, too.”

“There’s no point in denying it. I’m pulled to you every time I see you, I can’t get you off my mind night or day—I wish to God we’d never met.”

Because of Fiona, she thought wretchedly. Fiona, whom she already loved, and had unwittingly betrayed once again in that brief embrace on the stairs.

But wasn’t there more, she thought with a sudden chill of her blood. Wasn’t Rafe’s charisma, his sheer sexuality, all too reminiscent of Steve? An icy hand clamped itself around her heart. Steve had swept her off her feet. Was she going to allow the exact same thing to happen again, this
time with Rafe? “You can’t wish we’d never met any more strongly than I do,” she said in a stony voice.

“Okay, so we’ve got that much straight,” Rafe said harshly. “We wish we hadn’t met and we lust after each other. But we’re not going to do one damn thing about it. If you hadn’t fallen on the stairs, we—”

“So now it’s my fault?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you were thinking it.”

“For God’s sake, Karyn, I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do! You think I like feeling this way every time I look at you? What’s between you and me is an aberration. It’ll pass. It’s got to.”

“Who are you trying to convince, myself or you?”

Her cheeks were pink with temper and her lips, those delectable lips, were pressed firmly together. “Both of us,” he said with a wintry smile.

She said flatly, putting her suspicions into words, “There isn’t any chemistry between you and Fiona. Not one spark.”

“You let me worry about that,” he grated, dropping his hands to his sides as though contact with her was poisonous. “Where’s Fiona?”

“In the shower. She uses enough water for ten people, that’s one thing I’ve learned about her.” Recklessly Karyn pressed her point. “When you hug each other, it’s almost as though you’re brother and sister.”

“We’re the best of friends,” he snapped. “Have you got a problem with that?” How could she know? She’d assumed Steve was her friend as well as her lover, and had learned otherwise all too soon and with devastating consequences. Karyn bit her lip. “But if there isn’t any passion—”

“Passion’s overrated. I went that way once, and she
ripped the heart from my body. So I swore off it. As for Fiona, she’s too innocent to know the difference.”

Karyn said raggedly, “What you feel for me—is that passion?”

His jaw tightened; he looked like a man being tormented. “There’s no point in even talking about it.”

He was right. But when he was standing so close to her that she could feel herself sinking into the dark blue of his irises, desire made nonsense of reason. Aching to touch him, longing to lift her lips to his and taste him, she burst out, “How can you be Fiona’s lover if there isn’t any passion between you? I just don’t understand how you can do that.”

“Her lover?” he repeated blankly. “What the hell do you mean?”

Karyn’s temper flared. “The usual. Two people who make love. In bed. What did you think I meant?”

“Fiona and I have never gone to bed together.”

“Rafe, I saw her going to your room one night.”

“Fiona hasn’t been anywhere near my bedroom.”

“Don’t lie to me! The way you kissed me that night under the trees, thinking I was Fiona—”

Clipping off each word, Rafe repeated, “I am not and never have been Fiona’s lover.”

Karyn gaped at him. “Then why are you going to marry her?”

“Who says I’m going to?”

“Douglas.”

Rafe swore under his breath. “He told you that?”

“The day he came to see me at the inn, he said an announcement was imminent.”

“Have you said anything to Fiona?”

“No!”

“Thank God for that.”

“Oh, let’s keep Fiona in the dark,” Karyn flared. “After all, we’re only talking about her life and her happiness.”

Rafe said tautly, “Douglas wants Holden blue blood and Holden money in the family, and isn’t above using a little leverage to get them. But he picked the wrong man to push around.”

“So are you going to marry Fiona?” Karyn persisted, her chest tight.

Rafe jammed his hands in his pockets. “I told Douglas I’d think about it.”

“If you have to think about it, you’re sure not in any danger of succumbing to passion.”

“Since when did you become the expert?”

She flinched. Hadn’t her marriage proved she wasn’t even remotely an expert? “I asked you a straightforward question about marrying Fiona,” she retorted. “Yes or no—either answer will do.”

“How about minding your own business?”

She had no part in his life. That’s what he was saying. Torn between fury and an agony that would overwhelm her were she to let it in, Karyn muttered, “I’ll be delighted to stay out of your business. But don’t you dare hurt Fiona!”

“I have no wish in the world to hurt Fiona.”

What more was there to say? Striving for normality, Karyn asked, “Were you coming upstairs to look for one of us?”

“You, as it happens…I came to tell you that Clarissa and Douglas are giving a formal dinner party next week to welcome you into the family.”

Karyn’s jaw dropped. “They are?”

“Don’t ask how I did it,” Rafe said, his smile almost genuine. “Just turn up.”

To spend the evening watching Rafe and Fiona side by side? With Douglas and Clarissa eying her every move?
Karyn said tersely, “If you think I’m going to Willowbend after the way Douglas treated me, you’re crazy.”

“It’s an olive branch, Karyn. Take it and be glad. Besides, you’ll get to meet my parents.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t like other people controlling my life. Back off, Rafe.”

“You’ll need an evening gown. You and Fiona could go shopping together.”

“You don’t get it, do you? I have a life at home, a job I have to get back to—I can’t wait around until next week.”

“Extend your holidays. Three or four days won’t make any difference.”

“I don’t own the clinic,” she said nastily, “I just work there.”

“Then I’ll—”

He broke off as Fiona’s bedroom door opened and Fiona called out, “Karyn? Shall we raid the kitchen for tea and biscuits?”

“I haven’t had a shower yet,” Karyn called back, “so give me ten minutes.” Then she turned back to Rafe, lowering her voice. “Don’t you dare tell Fiona about the dinner—because it’s not going to happen.”

She hurried back up to her bedroom, giving Fiona a distracted smile. “Rafe’s back, why don’t you go and say hello to him?”

Then she went into the bathroom and turned on the water full blast. Hot water. She was under no illusions that cold water would be of any use whatsoever.

Fiona and Rafe had gone outside to sit on the patio under Karyn’s window, where Fiona was trying to untangle her wet hair. “I’ve had such a wonderful time with Karyn, Rafe. I’m really getting to know her—I can’t thank you enough for bringing us together.”

Fiona made a beautiful picture as she combed out her hair in the last rays of the setting sun, a picture that left Rafe totally unmoved. Then she flipped her hair back so she could see him. “Well, except for one thing. Any mention of her husband and she spooks like a frightened pony.”

“It’s only a year since she was widowed.”

“I think the hurt went so deep she can’t talk about him.”

But not so deep that she couldn’t kiss me, Rafe thought savagely. The thought of Karyn in another man’s arms, sharing another man’s bed, nearly drove him out of his mind: not an insight he could share with anyone, especially not Fiona. “Perhaps she will when she’s spent more time with you.”

“Perhaps,” Fiona said uncertainly. “Anyway, while she’s in the shower, why don’t we rummage in the kitchen for some of those chocolate-almond cookies, she loves them.”

So when Karyn wiped the steam from the bathroom window, she saw Fiona and Rafe walking side by side across the garden. Knowing exactly what she was going to do, she wrapped herself in a towel and picked up the phone in her bedroom.

The secretary at the clinic answered, sounding as though she was across the room rather than across the ocean. Quickly Karyn asked for her boss. When he picked up the receiver, she said, “Dennis, it’s Karyn. I was thinking I might come home a few days early, how would that fit in the schedule?”

“No kidding? Karyn, it’d be a godsend. Jim and Rita are both down with flu and the rest of us are trying to cover. Come as soon as you can, it’d be fine with me. Did you find your sister?”

Karyn gave him an edited version of events, rang off, called the airline and was lucky enough to get a cancella
tion for the very next evening. She booked a seat on the train, threw on some clothes and went downstairs to find Fiona and Rafe in the drawing room, with its gleaming cherrywood furniture and single vibrant Picasso. Fiona held out a plate of almond cookies coated in rich Belgian chocolate. “These are for you,” she said. “Though if you felt like sharing them, I’m sure I could choke down a couple.”

Feeling absurdly guilty, Karyn took one. “I’ll have to take some of these home with me,” she said lightly. “I called the clinic and they’ve had a flu outbreak. So I changed my flight and I’m going home tomorrow.”