‘Morning,’ she muttered almost inaudibly, her hazel eyes focused on Imogen’s face. ‘So, what do we have left to do today, Immi?’
‘Perhaps you can give me a guided tour of the stud that Imogen is apparently too busy to manage today,’ Raoul put in, something in his lazy drawl scraping uncomfortably over nerves that were far too close to the surface of Imogen’s skin. And Ciara’s too, it seemed.
It was definitely an appeal for help that Ciara turned on her now—a plea to be rescued from heaven knew what—but it obviously had something to do with Raoul Cardini. Just what had frightened her sister so badly? Could it be that Raoul had come here not just for the business deal he had described, but perhaps for something to do with Ciara’s past? Perhaps to do with the reason her job as a nanny had ended so rapidly, which her sister had refused to reveal to her? Imogen wished she’d had more time to get to know Ciara properly before the threat of total ruin had brought this wedding on them.
‘There’s plenty still to do,’ she managed over-breezily. ‘We have to sort out that hemline on your bridesmaid’s dress...’
Imogen had made the right move. Immediately some of the tension left her sister’s face and she almost smiled.
‘And you promised Geraldine you’d help her with the name cards for the table.’
Raoul would never know just what a fiction that one was. Adnan’s mother was totally in charge of every preparation for the reception and she would give anyone who tried to intervene very short shrift indeed. But the glance of gratitude from Ciara made the lie worthwhile. Her sister was already turning towards the door, looking like a rabbit that had just been released from a trap,
‘I hope you have a good day, Mr Cardini,’ Imogen tossed in his direction, not quite having the nerve to meet his stony glare, though she hoped her rather breathless tone could be taken for airy and unconcerned. ‘I’ll ask one of the grooms to give you the tour, if you like.’
The tour of the part of the business they’d be happy to show him, and not the one he’d obviously been angling for. The one that wouldn’t let him pry into secrets that were none of his business. So far they’d managed to hide just how bad things were; she didn’t want Raoul finding out more.
‘Oh, don’t bother.’
That lazy voice was back but she could catch the thread of steel that ran through it like a warning rumble of thunder before a storm broke.
‘I’m sure I can manage on my own. You can find out the things you most want to know that way.’
It was meant to sound casual, indifferent, but there was so much more in his voice. The growing storm was coming nearer, dangerously so. She would have to find out just what was happening with Ciara and figure out how she could proceed from there. And she’d have to make sure that, whatever Raoul had in mind, he didn’t get a chance to put it into action.
This sleek, elegant man with the closely cropped black hair, the burning golden eyes above lean, bronzed cheeks and the arrogant tilt to his proud head was so very different from the man she had met on that magical holiday. The young, carefree, raw and sexy Raoul with the suntanned skin, bare feet and over-long hair was the man she had fallen in love with. The man who had broken her heart. Then his friend Rosalie had warned her that Raoul was not all he seemed, but she’d been so deep in love she’d ignored it. Or at least hadn’t listened to it properly. So she’d been stunned to find that her own teasing nickname for him was the very one that was used in the international business world to describe his ruthless, cold-blooded determination to make a profit.
The Corsican Bandit was the man she was dealing with now. Because of that, she was going to have to tread carefully. And her sister’s arrival had reminded her that there was more than her own future at stake.
‘Enjoy your day!’ she said over-brightly, praying it didn’t sound as fake to him as it did to her own ears. ‘Come on, Ciara, we have lots to do!’
Moving to the open doorway, Raoul stood, eyes narrowed, feet firmly planted wide apart, as he watched the two women walk away across the lush green field towards Blacklands House. He wouldn’t have known the two women were sisters if he hadn’t been told, he reflected. Ciara was shorter, with more rounded curves, and her hair was a glorious red-gold. Just Pierre’s type, damn him.
‘She’s so young, Raoul, and so lovely.’ Marina’s words echoed in his head. ‘And twenty years younger than me—it’s no wonder he’s entranced. I wish I’d never given her the job as nanny!’
Deep in his pockets, his hands clenched into tight, aggressive fists. The image of Imogen and her sister walking so close together, arms linked without a care in the world, it seemed, brought back a bitter remembrance of that photograph in the papers.
The Scandalous O’Sullivan Sisters. His breath hissed in between clenched teeth.
Yesterday had been just the start. A preliminary survey to get the lie of the land. Tomorrow he would put his plan into operation and he would set himself to bring down the O’Sullivan family, one by one.
Starting with Imogen.
IT WAS FAR worse than she had thought. Imogen had tried to imagine all sorts of things that Raoul might have against her sister, but never this. Her blood ran cold. It was bad enough to think that Raoul Cardini had appeared out of her past, to be the spectre at her wedding feast, but to realise that her younger sister too was caught up in the dark shadows he had brought with him made her nerves knot in her stomach.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before now?’
‘I couldn’t,’ Ciara admitted, and Imogen was shocked to see how white she looked. ‘I didn’t really know you when all this happened.’
That was her mother’s fault, Imogen reflected, feeling the raw scrape of bitterness on her soul. Lizzie O’Sullivan had abandoned her marriage when she’d run off with her much younger, much more glamorous lover. Arturo had never wanted children, but Lizzie had persuaded him to take her toddler daughter with them. She had always struggled to get close to Imogen whose bookish, studious nature was nothing like her mother’s. Besides, the elder girl had inherited her father’s love for horses and the stud that provided their livelihood, while her mother loathed and feared the great, enormous beasts. Determined to break off all ties with the family she had left behind in Ireland, Lizzie had never even told Ciara that she had a sister—and to hide it she had adopted Arturo’s name for the family.
The memory of the long years not knowing anything about her little sister still had the power to hurt Imogen. When Lizzie had finally resurfaced, abandoned by her lover and left without the financial support she had looked to him for, it was to demand her right to one half of the O’Sullivan ‘fortune’. A fortune that had dwindled dangerously while their father Joe had taken his hands off the reins and let the stud run down desperately. Her mother’s demands had threatened to bring bankruptcy crashing down on their heads, but Joe had been determined to pay her off to get her out of his life, even though it had taken every last penny and put the stud even further into debt. That was why Imogen had finally agreed to Adnan’s businesslike suggestion of a marriage of convenience between them.
The one good thing that had come out of her mother’s reappearance was that it had brought the sisters back in touch with each other. Only then had Imogen discovered that Ciara and her mother had been estranged for some time and that her sister had been working as a nanny in Australia, but the job had come to an end and she was now living in London.
At last, Imogen had finally made contact with her again and they had arranged to meet up. It had only been in the time she’d spent away from Blacklands and the stresses of her father’s gambling addiction that she’d noticed her period was late. A pregnancy test had confirmed her fears.
Imogen