LITMIR.BIZ

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taken a room at the guest house for the night in order to give the newlyweds their privacy. All that was left for him to do now was bid farewell to the rest of the guests as they departed and then he too could leave, secure in the knowledge of a wedding relatively well handled.

      He stayed by the door, seeing people out. Simone did the same, her graceful, charming presence a direct threat to his sanity and his strength of will. Finally, there was no one else left to say goodnight to apart from a handful of guests who’d moved to the bar and were keeping Inigo busy. Rafael figured them for gone, one way or another.

      Which left him and Simone. She stood on the step, with darkness at her back and soft yellow light from the restaurant illuminating her exquisite face and turning her gown into a glowing, golden sheath.

      ‘It’s not over, you know,’ she said quietly, and whether she spoke of the reception, their relationship or the truce he’d agreed to was anyone’s guess, but she was right on all counts.

      ‘I know,’ he said gruffly. Would she resist if he reached for her and drew her into the shadow of the night? Would she offer him her mouth? He tried to block the memory of that mouth and the things it could do. Such a clever, busy mouth.

      Simone’s gaze turned dark and knowing and he knew before she spoke that she was about to acknowledge the beast that hungered inside him and invite it out to play, and she shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t.

      ‘You should go back inside,’ he murmured.

      ‘You mean before I do something stupid?’

      ‘Yes.’

      She moved towards him swiftly, right up until the part where she set her lips to his and nipped at his lower lip with her teeth. That bit happened excruciatingly slowly.

      It took a second, or maybe a minute, before he could trust himself to breathe. He could feel his control slipping, slipping through his fingers, and the harder he tried to hold onto it, the faster it disappeared.

      ‘Go. Now.’ His words cut at her and drove her to step away from him, as they were meant to.

      ‘I won’t offer again,’ she said in the language of their youth.

      A single snarling thought reared up from the dark places inside him, but he kept it to himself as she turned away and headed back inside.

      She wouldn’t need to.

      Simone farewelled the guests at the bar, collected her evening bag, and, with the last remnants of her poise, made her way to the kitchen to thank the chef and the wait staff for their services. She had every intention of slipping out the kitchen’s back door alone after that, but the chef had other ideas, stolidly insisting that a pair of his waiters walk her across the garden to her guest room.

      ‘My room is two hundred metres away,’ she protested laughingly. ‘I’m hardly going to get lost.’

      ‘It’s dark,’ said the gallant chef. ‘You need an escort and if not my waiters then one of them can go and find Rafael. He can walk you across.’

      ‘Have you and Inigo been plotting?’ she said suspiciously.

      ‘Inigo doesn’t plot,’ said the chef, with a jowly grin. ‘He orchestrates. And here he is now, with your escort in tow. Never misses a beat.’

      ‘Inigo says I should walk you across to your room,’ said Rafael when he reached her.

      ‘It’s very dark,’ said Inigo.

      ‘And very late,’ added the chef. ‘You never know what you might find in the garden at this time of night. Territorial wombats…’

      ‘Ten-foot wallabies,’ said Inigo.

      ‘Spider webs!’ said the chef as if this would clinch the deal. ‘We couldn’t possibly send you on your way to the guest house alone.’

      ‘Inconceivable,’ said Inigo. ‘Don’t you read Agatha Christie? Fortunately, Rafael was just leaving. And might I just add, doesn’t he look divine this evening?’

      Rafael winced. Simone couldn’t help the smile that crossed her lips or the encouragement of Inigo that sprang from them. ‘Yes, indeed. Very handsome.’

      ‘The breadth of shoulder,’ said Inigo, warming to his subject. ‘That face!’

      ‘Any time you’re ready,’ murmured Rafael.

      ‘Wait!’ said Inigo, scanning the chef’s collection of kitchen-shelf dessert liqueurs and reaching for the Frangelico. He handed it to Rafael. ‘Nightcap.’

      ‘Nice touch,’ said the chef. ‘Although I’d have given him the Cognac.’

      ‘There’s the nicest secluded garden nook, about halfway to the house,’ said Inigo. ‘Perfect for—’

      ‘Move,’ said Rafael and Simone hastily complied and headed for the door.

      A chorus of farewells followed their departure, the kitchen door closed behind them, and night air wrapped around them, cool and dewy after the warmth of the day.

      ‘You don’t have to—’

      ‘Stop,’ he said sharply. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

      Simone stopped. Searched for conversation that would assure him that she’d not embarrass him with yet another unwanted advance. ‘Have you been in contact with Etienne de Morsay again?’

      ‘Yes. I put him off. Gabrielle was adamant about not wanting him to come here.’

      ‘Really? Did she say why?’

      ‘No.’ Rafael ran an impatient hand through his hair. ‘Not exactly. Nothing that made sense, at any rate. I’m meeting him in Sydney tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll get some answers then.’

      Simone chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. ‘Did you ask Luc about him?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘You should have.’

      ‘He was a little preoccupied, Simone.’

      ‘Though he still had time to make wine, eat a manly breakfast and muster cattle before heading out to get married.’

      ‘Exactly.’

      Simone hitched up her gown a fraction to keep it off the grass. Bridesmaid gowns weren’t really designed for grass.

      ‘Princess,’ he murmured.

      ‘Practical,’ she corrected smoothly.

      ‘It suits you,’ he said reluctantly. ‘The gown. The colour. Whatever you’ve done with your hair.’

      ‘Was that a compliment?’

      ‘Yes.’ Rafael glared at her.

      Simone glared back. ‘Thank you.’

      This time, he looked away. ‘I never really realised before tonight, exactly how much I asked you to give up for me,’ he said after they’d walked in silence for a while.

      ‘You mean my position in European society?’ Simone judged the risks involved with continuing with this line of conversation. The risk of further quarrelling was high. The chance of her and Rafael resolving their issues was low. She went ahead and plunged into the heart of things anyway. ‘I’d have given it up in a heartbeat for you, Rafael. But I had my father and Luc to consider as well, and in the end I couldn’t abandon them. They needed me.’

      ‘More than I needed you?’

      She’d wanted this, Simone reminded herself grimly. This clearing of the air, never mind that the mirror he held up to her actions revealed her in an ugly light.

      ‘You needed to escape the chains that bound you to Caverness. You burned to make your own way in life, and you have. What had I to offer you, Rafael? Tell me that? An unbreakable link to a place you

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