Happily Ever After...: His Reluctant Cinderella / His Very Convenient Bride / A Deal to Mend Their Marriage. Sophie Pembroke

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СКАЧАТЬ next to her, even though there was no way there could ever be any kind of happy ever after between them.

      But in the few days since the meeting with Byron something had changed. They were easier with each other, more intimate. Hands brushed, lingered, eyes met, held. Nothing had happened, not again, but the promise of it hung seductively over them.

      Butterflies tumbled around her stomach, a warm tingle spreading through her at the thought.

      ‘I’m sorry.’ Raff finally managed to gracefully extricate himself from the conversation he was embroiled in. ‘I’ve been neglecting you all evening.’

      ‘That’s okay.’ After all, she was being paid for her time.

      Not that Clara felt she could charge a penny for tonight; she would ask Raff to donate her fee back to the charity.

      Raff pulled a face. ‘I’d much rather be talking to you, but I have been promising myself that as soon as the dancing starts I am all yours.’ His eyes were full of promise and a shiver ran through her despite the heat in the overcrowded room.

      ‘You didn’t say anything about dancing,’ Clara protested. ‘I can barely walk in these heels, let alone dance.’

      ‘Don’t worry.’ His expression was pure wicked intent. ‘I won’t let you fall.’

      ‘You better not. When are you on?’

      ‘In a few minutes. Wish me luck?’

      Clara put one hand on his cheek, allowing herself the luxury of touch, rubbing her palm along the rough stubble. ‘Good luck,’ but she knew he didn’t need it. If he managed to get one hundredth of his charm across then he would have the guests clamouring to outbid each other.

      The presentations had been spread out throughout the evening. A welcome speech before canapés, then, after the starters, two of the nurses gave an evocative talk that brought their exciting, dangerous and very necessary work alive. A surgeon’s visceral yet compelling description of the challenges she faced was an uneasy filler between the main course and pudding.

      No one else seemed to notice the incongruity between their surroundings, with the conspicuous display of wealth and luxury, and the poverty and need so eloquently conveyed. Clara saw women wiping tears, the diamonds on their hands and wrists worth more than the total the charity was trying to raise.

      ‘We need to make sure everyone is suitably worked up before the auction,’ Raff whispered. ‘They’ll all be well fed and watered. We want them to go home with their consciences as sated as their stomachs!’

      Just the nearness of him, though he was barely touching her, that lightest of contact, sent tremors rippling up and down her body. For so long she had been shut away in a box of her own design, not allowing herself to do or to feel. Constraining herself to the narrowest of lives. And it had worked. She hadn’t been hurt, hadn’t messed up.

      But she hadn’t felt either. Hadn’t felt this bitter-sweetness ache. That awareness that overtook everything so that all she could see was him; she could feel nothing but his breath on her cheek, sending waves of need shuddering through her.

      Clara took a deep breath, trying to regulate her hammering pulse, remember where they were, what he was about to do. ‘So it’s up to you to seal the deal?’

      He grimaced. ‘I wish they’d put me on first. Logistics isn’t exactly the sexiest subject. They’ll be eying up the petits fours and coffee and be in a post-dinner slump by the time the auction comes around.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Clara reached for his hand and squeezed it, trying to quell the absurd jump every nerve gave as her fingers tangled with his. ‘If anybody can make logistics fascinating, you can. Go get them.’

      Raff turned and looked at her and for one long moment the tent fell away, the people fading away to nothing but a murmuring backdrop to the scorching intensity of his gaze. ‘You think?’

      ‘I do.’ And she did. This was a new side to the confident, nonchalant playboy—but then wasn’t that playboy just a façade? A mask he wore well but a mask nonetheless. And the more Clara saw the passionate, principled man behind it, the more she wanted to retreat, to run away.

      She’d thought playboys were her downfall. She’d been wrong. She had survived Byron, left him with her head held high and her heart only slightly cracked. But a man who cared, a man who carried the weight of the world on his broad shoulders? That was a far scarier prospect.

      ‘I think you can do anything,’ she said. ‘Including make every person here spend three times more than they budgeted for.’

      ‘That’s my aim.’ The words were jokey but his face was deadly serious. ‘Ready to clap nice and loudly?’

      ‘That’s my job.’

      ‘I’ll make sure I give you a good reference.’

      Was it her imagination or did disappointment pass fleetingly over his face at her words? That would be ridiculous, Clara told herself sternly. They both knew what this was. This was a business arrangement. A glitzy, intimate contract maybe but a contract nonetheless. Money was changing hands, favours were being done. That was all.

      ‘Okay, then.’ And he was gone, the eyes of half the women in the room following the tall figure as he strode across the marquee.

      Clara sank back in her chair, an unaccountable feeling of melancholy passing over her. What had he wanted her to say? She didn’t know; she was no good at this. Had swapped flirting for nappies and never quite got her groove back.

      ‘This means a lot to him.’

      She jumped. For a moment she’d forgotten where she was, that she was surrounded by people. ‘I’m sorry?’

      Charles Rafferty was looking up at the stage where his grandson stood, talking to the computer technician. Raff was relaxed, laughing, totally at home.

      ‘I knew he had this ridiculous hankering to be a doctor—it was because of his father’s illness, of course, that’s why I persuaded him to switch to business; besides, I needed him. But his heart was never in it. When he said he was off to work for these people I thought that a bit of time and freedom would sort him out. That he’d come back to me.’

      She had no idea what to say.

      Raff was responsible for people’s lives every day. He didn’t cut them open, administer the medicine, nurse them, but he made that possible. He worked in impossible conditions in impossible countries for an impossibly tiny wage.

      And he loved it. It was good that his grandfather was seeing that, acknowledging it.

      ‘He doesn’t want to let you down,’ she said, aware what a lame response it was.

      ‘No.’ The older man looked at her, really looked at her for the first time in the weeks since they had met. And for once there was no trace of a sneer on his face. Just hollow loss. ‘He’s aware of his family responsibilities. I made sure of that. He was only eight when his father had the stroke, when it was obvious his father would never recover. Only eight when I anointed him as my heir.’

      ‘And Polly?’ Okay, she was going beyond anywhere she had any right to go. СКАЧАТЬ