It was on the tip of Rafe’s tongue to ungallantly remind her that decision hadn’t been initiated entirely by a nostalgia for the rural idyll of their childhood. He restrained himself and instead poked a finger against his own substantial chest.
‘What do you call this, a hologram?’
‘I call it visiting royalty.’ She performed a low mocking bow, blissfully unaware that the gaping neck of her loose nightshirt gave him an excellent view of her cleavage and more than a hint of rosy nipples.
‘Got the latest girlfriend in tow again? Going to impress her with the family crypt or maybe the family ghost?’
Her soft, teasing chuckle suddenly emerged as she misread the reason for the dark tell-tale stain across the angle of his high cheekbones.
‘Or is that the problem—she isn’t here? A frustrated libido would explain why you stalked in here with a chip a mile wide on your shoulder. Smouldering like something out of a Greek tragedy…I’m right, aren’t I? The girlfriend couldn’t or wouldn’t come…?’ she speculated shrewdly.
At least theorising insensitively about someone else’s problems stopped her thinking—if only in the short term—about her own!
Now he had a pretty good idea what was under the shirt thing it was even less easy to stop thinking about it. ‘Is it that obvious I’ve been flung aside?’ he bit back.
‘Like an old sock?’ she chipped in helpfully.
There didn’t seem much point indulging Rafe’s inclinations towards drama; she’d had enough of that with Chloe. He thought his life was a mess, he should try wearing her shoes—not that they’d fit, she conceded, comparing his large, expensively shod feet with her own size fours.
It was hard to feel sympathetic when the worst thing likely to happen to Rafe Farrar was a bad haircut! She gave his thick, healthily shining dark hair an extra-resentful glare.
‘It didn’t take a psychic to see you came here spoiling for a fight!’
Despite his growing anger, Rafe couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of her accusation. ‘I knocked on the right door, then, didn’t I?’
‘You didn’t knock, you just barged in…’ Quite as abruptly as it had arisen, the aggression drained from Tess. Feeling weak, she gave a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘Maybe I just got tired of being patronised…? Has someone really given you the push?’ Her wondering smile was wry. It hardly seemed credible.
‘You find that possibility amusing?’
She found the possibility incredible. ‘You must admit that it does have a certain novelty value. Look on the bright side…’
‘I can’t guarantee I won’t throttle you if you go into a Pollyanna routine,’ he warned darkly.
‘I’m trembling.’
Rafe’s jaw tightened as he encountered the sparkling mockery in her eyes. He found himself grimly contemplating how hard it would be to make her tremble for real…and he wasn’t thinking of scare tactics! What he was thinking of scared him a little, though. If he was going to vent his frustration on anyone, it couldn’t be Tess!
‘It might actually do you some good,’ she mused thoughtfully. ‘You’re way overdue a dose of humility,’ she explained frankly.
Looking at him properly for the first time, Tess saw that he actually did look pretty haggard in a handsome, vital sort of way. She couldn’t recall ever seeing that hard light in his eyes before. The price of partying at all the right night spots?
‘Then I’ll give you a real laugh, shall I?’ he flung the words angrily at her. ‘The woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with—have children with—has decided not to leave her husband!’
Tess’s startled gasp was audible in the short, tense silence that followed his words.
‘Does that have the required degree of character-enhancing humility to suit you?’
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU were going out with a married woman?’ Tess didn’t know what made her feel most uncomfortable: the part that Rafe had been messing with a married woman, or the part that said he’d been contemplating wedding bells and babies.
‘You want to have babies…?’
Rafe, regretting his unusual episode of soul-baring the instant the self-pitying words emerged from his lips, dragged an angry hand through his hair as Tess, after visibly recoiling from him as though he had a particularly nasty disease, started staring at him with the expression she obviously reserved for moral degenerates. He resisted the impulse to unkindly point out she was no saint herself!
‘I don’t think I’ve got the hips for it.’ He didn’t understand why this sarcastic response should make her flinch.
‘And just for the record I didn’t know she was married until it was too late.’ He didn’t know why the hell he was explaining himself to her.
‘Too late for what?’
Rafe scowled at her dogged persistence. ‘Too late not to fall in love!’ he bellowed.
He saw her soft wide lips quiver and a misty expression drift over her almost pretty features. Oh, God, not sympathy…please…he thought with a nauseated grimace.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I need to sit down, and from the look of you so do you.’
Tess looked askance at the guiding hand on her arm but decided not to object; she found that she did need to sit down too. She made no immediate connection between the half-empty mug of wine still clutched in her hand and the shaky quality of her knees.
Rafe was relieved to find that Tess’s spring-cleaning efforts hadn’t extended as far as the small oak-beamed sitting room. He pushed a sleeping cat off the overstuffed chintzy sofa and sat down with a grunt. The grunt became a pained yelp as he quickly leapt up. A quick search behind the cushion recovered the item responsible for his bruised dignity.
He held aloft the culprit, a battered-looking three-wheeled tractor.
‘I searched everywhere for that earlier,’ Tess choked thickly, taking the toy from his unresisting fingers and nursing it against her chest.
‘Are you crying…?’ Rafe wondered suspiciously. He didn’t associate feminine tears or even more obviously feminine bosoms, of which he’d had that unexpected eyeful, with Tess, and he was getting both tonight. It intensified that vague feeling of discomfort.
Tess sharply turned her slender back on him and stowed the toy away in an overflowing, brightly painted toy chest tucked in the corner of the room. Scrubbing her knuckles across her damp cheeks, she turned back.
‘What if I am?’ she growled mutinously.
A nasty thought occurred to Rafe. ‘Ben is all right, isn’t he?’ he asked sharply. A picture of a dribbly baby came into his head and he felt an unexpected twinge of affection. ‘I mean, he’s not ill or anything…?’
It occurred to him, as it perhaps should have done sooner if he was the friend he claimed to be, that it must be hard bringing up a baby alone. He couldn’t be a babe in arms any longer, he must be—what? One…more, even…?
‘Ben’s fine…asleep upstairs.’ The tears were starting to flow again and there was zilch she could do about it, so Tess abandoned her attempt at pretence of being normal or in control—of her tears ducts, her life…anything!