A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance. Kate Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ an appalling error of chance...

      ‘You’re not coming back to the house!’

      ‘Oh, but I am.’

      That brought her spinning round, needing to see his face. The deadly smile was still there in his voice but there wasn’t a trace of it in his expression.

      ‘No way. I mean...why are you here at all?’

      There it was. The question she should have asked from the start. The one that, she now realised, she hadn’t dared to ask because she’d feared the answer.

      Now the smile was not just in his eyes but very definitely curling the edges of that obscenely sexy mouth. At least, it was obscene for Imogen to consider anything about this man sexy. That was what had caught her in the first place, trapping her in the coils of his dark sensuality, taking her life out of her hands and putting it into his, to torment and break as he wished.

      ‘Your father invited me, of course.’

      The deadly nonchalance with which he tossed the words at her made her stomach tighten.

      ‘Dad? You’re kidding!’

      That was just too much. She actually laughed in a blend of shock and relief, at the realisation that this simply could not be true. How could he ever be here for the wedding? How could he have been invited when no one but her knew him well enough to offer him an invitation? She sure as hell had never let anyone know that for a brief space of time he had once been such an important part of her life. Her short-lived summer love affair and its bitter consequences would neither have concerned nor interested her father.

      ‘Do I look as if I’m joking?’

      He looked supremely confident, totally at ease, and with not a trace of amusement on his carved features.

      ‘My father would never invite you here. And definitely not for this wedding.’

      ‘Why not?’

      There was the flash of challenge in those golden eyes now, clashing with the disbelief in her own stare.

      ‘Not good enough, is that it? You think, ma belle, your father would not want to invite a simple olive farmer to his daughter’s wedding of the year?’

      ‘Oh, come on!’

      She had to cover up her reaction to that casual ‘ma belle’, needing to hide the way it had the bite of acid. Once she had loved to hear him call her that, had gloried in a new-found sense of feeling beautiful in his eyes. But now the bitter memory of how quickly she had gone from being ma belle to a mere nothing, a plaything tossed aside and abandoned on the beach where they had first met, curdled in her stomach.

      ‘We both know you’re no simple olive farmer and you never were.’

      That had been the pretence he had hidden behind when they’d met. He’d let her believe he was a hard-working farmer who was delighted to meet this young Englishwoman on holiday and spend time with her. His friend Rosalie had been the one to warn her that there was more to Raoul Cardini than that. But even she had never revealed the full story. It was only when Imogen had got home and, still nursing the hurt in her heart, had been unable to resist looking up the beautiful island of Corsica on the Internet that she had found the truth that had rubbed salt deep into the wounds his rejection had inflicted on her.

      ‘I don’t think the Cardini olive oil empire could ever be described as just farming!’

      What had she said? It was only the truth, after all, but it was as if she had flung some vile insult into his face so that his head went back, bronze eyes narrowing, beautiful mouth clamping tight, turning his lips into a hard, thin line.

      ‘Not just the olive oil empire,’ he said. ‘At least get your facts right.’

      ‘Of course there’s more, isn’t there? More you didn’t trouble to tell me. Did you think it wasn’t worth me bothering my head about?’

      She flicked her eyes at him, there and away again fast, wanting him to see that she really couldn’t give a damn about anything else he hadn’t revealed to her. At one time, discovering the fact that, like her family, he was a dedicated breeder of fine horses might have brought them together. But the time to care about the lies he had told, the secrets he had kept from her, was long gone. The memory of the one secret she had kept from him burned in her soul, threatening to destroy her if she let it free.

      ‘Your father thinks it is. That’s why he agreed to a deal I proposed. And he wanted to mix business with pleasure.’

      Could he make that last word sound any more toxic? She knew something was very wrong—it had to be. How could her father have agreed to a business deal when there was nothing left of the family business? If there had been any other possibility then she wouldn’t be here, living through her last days of freedom before she walked down this aisle with Adnan Al Makthabi. The marriage was supposed to save the Blacklands Stud from complete ruin. It was supposed to ensure they didn’t have to sell off the few remaining horses, including the magnificent stallion Blackjack.

      The cost of the stallion had crippled their already overly strained finances, the loan her father had insisted on taking out to pay for him depleting further an already empty bank account and adding thousands to the interest repayments. But at least Adnan and his family wanted Blackjack—perhaps more than they wanted Imogen herself.

      ‘He suggested I come now and share in the celebrations. And he offered me a room in Blackland House for the week so we could discuss the deal at the same time.’

      He made it sound perfectly reasonable, natural even, but the nasty twisting sensation in Imogen’s stomach told her it couldn’t possibly be that way. Her father couldn’t discuss any sort of ‘deal’—he had nothing to offer! From the date of her wedding, he wouldn’t even own the stud—or Blackjack.

      ‘So tell me—what did you use to buy my father’s interest?’

      She’d gone too far with that. Dangerously so. She could see it in the way a muscle ticked in his cheek, the glare that had turned the warm colour of his eyes to ice in the space of a heartbeat.

      ‘I don’t buy my business partners. Ask your father. You might not want me here but, believe me, your father does. He invited me to stay and be a guest at your wedding—so, naturally I said yes. I wanted be here to watch you plight your troth to your perfect bridegroom.’

      Raoul spat the words at her before he spun on his heel and marched away, down the aisle and out of the church. The staccato sound of his angry footsteps echoed through the silent interior of the church until the heavy wooden door slammed loudly behind him.

       CHAPTER TWO

      THE SUN WAS burning away the fine dawn mist that had clouded the distant hillsides as Imogen turned the bay mare and reluctantly headed back to the stud. The long, solitary gallop on her favourite horse had been a welcome time of peace and quiet in the bustle of the weekend. Time to reflect and draw breath before considering what her next move might be where Raoul Cardini was concerned.

      Because of course Raoul was the real problem she had. The preparations for the wedding were well in hand, everything would have been fine if it СКАЧАТЬ