LITMIR.BIZ

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was only too happy to stand in.’

      He felt ungrateful but he’d found it impossible not to compare Naomi’s practised social skills with Lara’s more instinctive ones... Oh, there was no doubt that the woman could work a room and she never said the wrong thing, but then her smile was never genuine either and her laugh never uninhibited or too loud.

      Not that there had been much to laugh about today, he thought sombrely, but Lara had not just given the impression of listening to the long-winded reminiscences of the elderly friends of his grandfather’s, she had listened. It didn’t matter who had been talking; he was pretty sure that mostly she didn’t have a clue who they were—or how important. At one point he had seen her spontaneously grab his godfather and hug the man!

      Just after Lara had slipped away the elderly but still-influential Greek shipping magnate had taken Raoul to one side and shaken his hand, telling him that he was lucky indeed in his wife: ‘A keeper, my boy, but if I was thirty years younger you’d need to watch your back!’ he’d chortled.

      For a man who would have preferred to walk in front of a bus than get married again, this arrangement with Lara was actually suiting him. Plus, the sex was incredible.

      He wished they could extend the arrangement, but he had come to see the real Lara, to know her, and she deserved more...

      Lara deserved better than him.

      Closing the open French doors on a breeze that had sprung up, he missed Lara’s flinch at the mention of the other woman’s name.

      ‘Has she gone?’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Naomi.’

      He nodded, making a mental note to have a tactful word—she had been dropping around a little too much lately.

      ‘You should have stayed in bed.’

      ‘Were you happy?’

      There was a hushed, husky vehemence in the abrupt question that made him look at her sharply, sensing suppressed emotions that showed their physical presence in the restless twisting of her long fingers. Something was going on in that beautiful head and he didn’t have a clue what it was. He allowed frustration to mask the protectiveness that made him want to take her in his arms.

      ‘Was I happy when?’

      ‘People say that you had a perfect marriage.’

      ‘Do they?’

      ‘Did you love her...your wife? Were you happy?’

      In a voice edged with steel he cut across her. ‘You’re my wife.’ The word had always carried with it negative connotations...yet there had been times when he had said it recently when he had felt...proud...?

      The interruption didn’t stop her; she’d gone too far and she had to know. ‘You know what I mean.’

      He turned his head and directed a flat stare at her face. ‘No.’

      ‘I was asking—’

      ‘I know what you were asking.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘I was answering. No, I was not happy, well, for about five minutes, but once I woke up, or grew up, or both, I was not.’

      ‘If you were unhappy why didn’t you just get a divorce?’ And marry the woman you apparently love so much but can’t have?

      His mouth twisted into a parody of a smile as he turned to face her, dragging off the tie that was still looped around his neck as he did so. ‘In a perfect world I would have, but the world...’ he let the tie slip through his fingers and fall to the floor ‘...and life,’ he continued harshly, ‘are not.’

      ‘I don’t understand.’

      ‘Of course you don’t.’

      How could she? There were no dark depths to Lara—she was the diametric opposite to Lucy, who on the surface had seemed so wholesome and sweet but the moment she was crossed revealed herself to be spiteful and vindictive, a person who thought the world revolved around her.

      ‘Then explain.’

      Well, he certainly hadn’t learnt from his mistakes with Lucy—he had taken Lara at face value, and ignored the sweet, vulnerable angel beneath the beautiful but hard shell.

      He’d clung stubbornly to the image, but each day together had eaten away at it until he couldn’t pretend any more.

      Understand... How could she? Lara had a conscience and empathy; she had no desire to see those who thwarted her suffer; she didn’t need a constant, exhausting supply of attention and admiration or react with vicious spite when she didn’t receive the praise she felt she was entitled to.

      ‘Please, Raoul, I want to understand.’

      The court-enforced appointments with the therapist following the hushed-up ‘incident’ that had left Lucy’s hairdresser with a black eye had been illuminating but not in themselves helpful.

      At the end he’d known all about borderline personality disorders and malignant narcissists, but as Lucy had refused to accept she had a problem it had meant little in reality.

      * * *

      ‘When I was married Jamie was never officially out. When he was still a student Jamie fell for a man who was...in a position of power, a married man, and they had a long-term affair. If the truth had emerged this man’s career, his marriage, his life would have been over. One night Jamie started to talk. We’d been to dinner, had a few drinks... Lucy was very sympathetic.

      ‘So when I told her that it was over she told me that if I filed for divorce she would out Jamie and his lover, that she would give interviews to every scandal sheet and tabloid she could find.’

      Lara was appalled. She simply couldn’t get her head around anyone who wanted to hurt other people. ‘Your brother...’

      ‘Didn’t know.’ He rubbed a hand across his forehead. ‘The irony was, a month after she was killed in the crash he and his lover broke up; the next month he met Roberto.

      ‘Lucy was the heroine in her own life story. Every story heroine needs a villain and for her that was me. To understand Lucy you have to realise that she did not just need to win, she needed to take everything away from everyone else, turn their friends against them, strip them of pride; her lust for revenge was utterly insatiable.’

      Lara shook her head, finding it impossible to reconcile the angelic image in her head with the...evil he spoke of.

      ‘The deal,’ he explained in the same flat voice, ‘was that we stay together...the public act was part of her punishment; she liked to see me helpless. She enjoyed flaunting her affairs, telling me she had aborted my child...laughing...’

      Lara had sat dry-eyed and composed through the remembrance service; even when Raoul had paid his moving tribute to his grandfather she had kept the tears at bay. But now they flowed. ‘Oh, God!’ she sobbed. ‘How could she, how could anyone...be so...? A baby...’

      ‘She sent me a scan photo for my birthday, inside a daddy card.’

      Lara pressed a hand to her mouth to hold the cry of horror inside. Like everyone else, she had looked at Raoul and seen the aura of power that he wore like a second skin, the cynicism, the edge of ruthless determination.

      Now she saw the idealistic young man he had been before his first wife, the man he had been before he had been subjected to emotional torture by the person he had thought he loved. Her heart ached for him, the man he was and the man he could have been, had the evil woman not torn away his belief in goodness and love.

      Would he ever heal?

      Raoul felt an unfamiliar helplessness as he watched the silent tears fall down her face.

      ‘It is in the past and gone,’ he said abruptly. ‘I am the man I am now, and it’s better that I stay alone. I know not every woman is like Lucy, but I can’t

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