LITMIR.BIZ

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can’t believe this. It feels like some kind of … of … nightmare … I don’t mean that. I just mean … you’re so different …’

      Raoul chose to ignore her choice of words. She was in a state of shock. So was he. ‘Okay, so maybe you didn’t find the man of your dreams … but there must have been someone …’ he mused slowly. ‘Why else would you have abandoned a career you were so passionate about? Hell, you used to say that you were born to teach.’

      Sarah raised moss-green eyes to his and he felt himself tense at the raw memory of how she’d used to look up at him, teasing and adoring at the same time. He had revelled in it. Now he doubted that any woman would have the temerity to tease him. Wealth and power had elevated him to a different place—a place where women batted their eyelashes, and flattered … but teased? No. Nor would he welcome it. In five years he had not once felt the slightest temptation to dip his toes into the murky waters of commitment.

      ‘Did you get involved with some kind of loser?’ he grated. She had been soft and vulnerable and brokenhearted. Had someone come along and taken advantage of her state of mind?

      ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘You must have been distraught to have returned from Africa ahead of schedule. I realise that you probably blame me for that, but if you had stuck it out you would forgotten me within a few weeks.’

      ‘Is that how it worked for you, Raoul?’

      Pinned to the spot by such a direct question, Raoul refused to answer. ‘Did you get strung along by someone who promised you the earth and then did a runner when he got tired of you? Is that what happened? A degree would have been your passport, Sarah. How many times did we have conversations about this? What did he say to you to convince you that it was a good idea to dump your aspirations?’

      He didn’t know whether to stand or to sit. He felt peculiarly uncomfortable in his own skin, and those wide green eyes weren’t helping matters.

      ‘And why cleaning? Why not an office job somewhere?’

      He looked down at his watch and realised that it was nearing midnight, but he was reluctant to end the conversation even though he queried where it was going. She was just another part of his history, a jigsaw puzzle piece that had already been slotted in place, so why prolong the catch-up game? Especially when those huge, veiled, accusing green eyes were reminding him of a past for which he had no use?

      If he politely ushered her to the door he was certain that she would leave and not look back. Which was clearly a good thing.

      ‘You can’t trust people,’ he advised her roughly. ‘Now perhaps you’ll see my point of view when I told you that the only person you can rely on is yourself.’

      ‘I’ve probably lost my job here,’ Sarah intoned distractedly.

      She had seen him look at his watch and she knew what that meant. Her time was coming to an end. He had moved onwards and upwards to that place where time was money. Reminiscing, for Raoul, would have very limited interest value. He was all about the future, not the past. But she had to plough on and get where she needed to get, horrible though the prospect was.

      ‘I couldn’t countenance you working here anyway,’ Raoul concurred smoothly.

      ‘What does this place have to do with you?’

      ‘As of six this evening—everything. I own it.’

      Sarah’s mouth dropped open. ‘You own this?’

      ‘All part of my portfolio.’

      It seemed to Sarah now that there was no meeting point left between them. He had truly moved into a different stratosphere. He literally owned the company whose floors she had been scrubbing less than two hours ago. In his smart business suit, with the silk tie and the gleaming hand-made shoes, he was the absolute antithesis of her, with her company uniform and her well-worn flats.

      Defiantly she pulled off the headscarf—if only to diminish the image of complete servility.

      Hair the colour of vanilla, soft and fine and unruly, tumbled out. He had cut his hair. She had grown hers. It tumbled nearly to her waist, and for a few seconds Raoul was dazzled at the sight of it.

      She was twisting the unsightly headscarf between her fingers, and that brought him back down to earth. She had been saying something about the job—this glorious cleaning job—which she would have to abandon. Unless, of course, she carried on cleaning way past her finishing time.

      He’d opened his mouth to continue their conversation, even though he had been annoyingly thrown off course by that gesture of hers, when she said, in such a low voice that he had to strain forward to hear her, ‘I tried to get in touch, you know …’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      Sarah cleared her throat. ‘I tried to get in touch, but I … I couldn’t …’

      Raoul stiffened. Having money had been a tremendous learning curve. It had a magnetism all of its own. People he had once known and heartily wished to forget had made contact, having glimpsed some picture of him in the financial pages of a newspaper. It would have been amusing had it not been so pathetic.

      He tried to decipher what Sarah was saying now. Had she been one of those people as well? Had she turned to the financial news and spotted him, thought that she might get in touch as she was down on her luck?

      ‘What do you mean, you couldn’t?’ His voice was several shades cooler.

      ‘I had no idea how to locate you.’ Her heart was beating so hard that she felt positively sick. ‘I mean, you disappeared without a trace. I tried checking with the girl who kept all the registration forms for when we were out there, and she gave me an address, but you’d left …’

      ‘When did all this frantic checking take place?’

      ‘When I got back to England. I know you dumped me, Raoul, but … but I had to talk to you …’

      So despite all her bravado when they had parted company she had still tried to track him down. It was a measure of her lack of sophistication that she had done that, and an even greater measure of it that she would now openly confess to doing so.

      ‘I came to London and rented a room in a house out east. You would never have found me.’

      ‘I even went on the internet, but you weren’t to be found. And of course I remembered you saying that you would never join any social networking sites …’

      ‘Quite a search. What was that in aid of? A general chat?’

      ‘Not exactly.’

      Sarah was thinking now that if she had carried on searching just a little bit longer—another year or so—then she would have found him listed somewhere on the computer, because he would have made his fortune by then. But she had quickly given up. She had never imagined that he would have risen so far, so fast, and yet when she thought about it there had always been that stubborn, closed, ruthless streak to him. And he had been fearless. Fearless when it came to the physical stuff and fearless when it came to plans for his future.

      ‘I wish I had managed to get through to you. You never kept in touch with your last foster home, did you? I tried to trace you through them, but you had already dropped off their radar.’

      Raoul stilled, because he had forgotten just how much she knew about him—including his miserable childhood and adolescence.

      ‘So you didn’t get in touch,’ he said, with a chill in his voice. ‘We could carry on discussing all the various ways you tried and failed to find me, or we could just move on. Why did you want to get in touch?’

      ‘You mean that I should have had more pride than to try?’

      ‘A lot of women would have,’ Raoul commented drily. She turned her head and the overhead light caught her hair, turning it into streaks of gold and pale toffee.

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