LITMIR.BIZ

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be able to stop myself falling in love with you.’

      Raoul didn’t react. He just levered himself out of bed in one fluid motion and began to collect the clothes he had dropped on the floor when he had not quite made it out of the door earlier.

      ‘As you’re a god among men...a—’

      ‘Cut it out, Lara.’

      She smiled and added sourly, ‘Unfortunately no sense of humour, so that’s it, I’m afraid. I’d never fall in love with a man who can’t laugh at my jokes.’ Or for that matter a man she knew every woman he encountered imagined naked. To marry that sort of man you’d need either impregnable self-confidence or a lack of imagination.

      ‘I could never love a woman who—’ He looked into the clear green eyes laughing up at him and his half-smile vanished.

      There was nothing else to add. He could never love a woman. Love had almost destroyed him once; love was never going to enter into this or any other relationship he had.

      He had been uneasy about the sense of connection he sometimes felt until he realised this was down to the fact that, since Lucy, his time with women had been counted in nights whereas he had been sharing a bed and his body with Lara for three months. Another three and she would vanish from his life.

      Lara sensed his withdrawal. He did that so often—the sudden mood change, the broody silences—she’d stopped reacting to it.

      ‘You’ve lost a button,’ she said, watching him fasten his shirt and thinking he’d need a sense of humour or a stiff drink when she finally told him her news.

      He dragged back his dark hair with an impatient hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m late.’

      She smiled. Late was good; late was a legitimate excuse for not telling him.

      ‘So, Friday...?’ She managed to say it as if not seeing him for four days were no big deal, but the truth was she missed him—or, as Raoul would have no doubt explained, she missed the sex.

      The first twenty-four hours of their married life had pretty much set the pattern of the days and nights to come: he would leave on Sunday evening or Monday morning and come back Thursday or Friday.

      Lara recognised she was pretty much the classic mistress, just with a ring and the social recognition that went with that. Social recognition meant she got treated with respect, which in turn meant she could have lunched out every day, had she chosen to, and was regularly asked to lend her name to any number of charities and good causes.

      At first she had refused, until she’d realised she was in danger of becoming the woman who only came to life when the man in her life deigned to share her bed. He shared nothing else though, which, as she frequently told herself when bitterness crept in, was a good thing.

      She couldn’t let herself develop any feelings for him beyond lust; she could not allow herself to feel things that would make her hurt when the arrangement reached its inevitable and sad conclusion.

      She’d grown fond of Sergio, which was fine because she was allowed to be fond of him.

      ‘No.’

      Her eyes lifted to discover he was standing by the door. Lara shook her head. ‘No?’

      ‘I’m not going away this week.’

      ‘Why not?’

      His eyes slid from hers. ‘I have a meeting with grandfather’s oncologist later in the week.’

      ‘Oh, right.’

      ‘I should be h—back early.’

      Now she was familiar with Raoul’s work ethic and his relentless stamina, Lara was able to translate ‘early’ as somewhere between twelve and one a.m.

      Too late to hit him with her bombshell.

      Oh, she was delaying the inevitable, but why not? What was the hurry? Considering his attitude it was small wonder that she was dreading delivering the speech. She had tried a dozen versions, but nothing worked.

      Maybe she should settle for a simple, ‘I’m sorry,’ because now it couldn’t be just sex.

      There was a baby.

      After he left, she went back to the bathroom and pulled out the pregnancy-testing kit she’d hidden under some toiletries. She’d bought six and this was the last one left.

      Her last hope.

      Only there was no hope—she knew that even before she saw the line appear on the strip.

      She spent the morning with Sergio. Roberto joined them mid-morning and they spent time going through albums, looking at snapshots of Raoul and Jamie when they were boys. In all the photos she had seen, Raoul’s elder brother looked like a softer, fairer version of him—Raoul without the hard edges or dark outlook.

      Though in the one that had got to her Raoul had had no edges. Nothing much more than a toddler, he had stood beside Jamie, staring not into the camera but up at his brother with an expression of childish adoration on his face.

      The poignancy of it had filled her throat with tears that she couldn’t hold back. It was her hormones, she knew that, but the two men with her had tactfully pretended not to notice her emotional reaction as she’d excused herself and left the room, leaning against a wall in the hallway before she gave in to the gulping sobs that shook her body.

      By lunchtime she felt so tired she couldn’t keep her eyes open so, after playing with the food laid out for her, she went to lie down.

      She only intended to close her eyes but when she woke the clock told her she had slept for three hours. She’d missed her riding lesson.

      She splashed some water on her face in the bathroom and, brushing back her hair, rubbed her pale cheeks to put some colour back into them before she went through to the bedroom.

      Her heart stopped when she saw Raoul, who was hanging his jacket around the back of a chair. He looked up as she entered, his eyes darkening when he saw her.

      ‘You’re here...now... I thought...’

      ‘I thought you’d be out...you look...’ Raoul reached out, clamped an arm around her ribs, and pulled her into his arms. His kiss was bruising and hungry, driving the breath from her lungs. ‘Sorry about that, it’s just I’ve been thinking about it all day.’ He smoothed a copper strand from her cheek and kissed her again, more softly this time, his skilled lips gently moving across hers.

      With a groan of reluctance he pushed her away from him and, heading towards the bathroom, growled, ‘Hold that thought,’ over his shoulder. ‘I’ve been shut in an office with broken air conditioning trying to soothe senior management fears that I’m about to sack everyone just for the hell of it.’

      * * *

      Lara sat on the bed listening to the shower, wondering how he was going to react to the news. Not well was a given. Feeling dizzy with anxiety, she walked across to the chair and picked up his jacket, intending to hang it up properly. Raoul’s phone slid onto the carpet and as she bent to pick it up she asked herself what she was scared of the most—becoming a mother or his reaction to the news he was to be a father.

      For goodness’ sake, Lara, just deal with it, because it really isn’t going to go away.

      A hint of defiance crept into her face as she looked at the phone, remembering all the times the shrill, teeth-clenching ringtone had proved there was always something more important than her in his life. With a determined little grimace she switched it off and guiltily slid it back into his pocket.

      A moment later Raoul walked in, his dark hair slicked with water and his golden-toned skin gleaming like polished bronze against the dark towel he had looped low on his narrow hips.

      Lara lurched from panic mode into weak-with-lust mode even before he reached her. The towel vanished as he laid her on the bed and slid a hand under her shirt over the warm skin of her narrow

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