JAKrentz - The Pirate, The Adventurer, & The Cowboy (62 page)

"It's the truth. I don't intend to marry you. I've never said I would marry you. Marrying you would be an extremely dumb thing for me to do."

The glittering outrage in his eyes was unnerving. Rafe took a single step closer. Margaret took a prudent step backward. A horse in a nearby stall wickered inquiringly.

"I didn't bring you down here to set you up as a mistress and you know it," Rafe said between his teeth.

"Don't use that word."

"What word? Mistress? That's what you're suggesting we call you, isn't it?"

"No, it's not." Margaret scowled angrily. "That's your mother's word. I explained to you last night, people like her and my father come from another generation."

"You also said that deep down you didn't think we were all that different from them," Rafe shot back. "What the hell did you think you were doing last night if you weren't agreeing to come back to me?"

She lifted her chin. "Last night I decided that we might try resuming our affair."

"That's real generous of you. The only problem is that we don't happen to have an affair to resume."

She glared at him in open challenge. "Is that right? What do you call us sleeping together for nearly two months last year?"

"Anticipating our wedding vows."

Margaret stared at him, open-mouthed. She did not know whether to laugh or cry. Rafe looked perfectly serious, totally self-righteous. "You're joking. That's what you called our affair? How quaint. But there never was a wedding, so what does that make the whole business? Besides a big mistake, I mean?"

"There's damn well going to be a wedding."

"Why?" she asked bluntly.

"Because you and I belong together, that's why. And you know it, Maggie. Or have you forgotten last night already?"

"No, I haven't forgotten it, but just because we're good together in bed does not mean we should get married. Rafe, listen to me. I've tried to explain to everyone that I would make you a lousy wife. Why won't anyone pay any attention to what I'm saying?"

"Because you're talking garbage, that's why."

Margaret sighed heavily. "This is impossible. We're getting nowhere. Talk about a communication problem. I'd better leave—the sooner the better."

Rafe reached out and caught her arm as she would have turned away. A fierce determination blazed in his eyes and his voice had a raw edge to it. "You can't leave. Not now. I spent six months in hell trying to pretend you didn't exist and another six months figuring out ways to get you back. I'm not going to let you go this time."

"You can't stop me, Rafe. Oh, I know I let you coerce me into coming down here. But we both know you can't make me stay against my will. And the truth is, there's nothing I can do here, anyway. I've seen for myself that my father is happy with your mother. I would hurt him by trying to interfere. And if he wants to sell Lark Engineering to you, that's his business. It's clear you're not trying to cheat him out of the firm."

"I didn't bring you down here so that you could protect your father. We both know he can take care of himself. I got you down here so that we could start over again, Maggie, and you know it. Furthermore, if you're honest with yourself for once, you'll admit that's why you used that ticket so damn fast once I'd given you a good enough excuse."

He was right and that jolted her. She had known all along that her father could take care of himself, even against the likes of Rafe Cassidy. Everyone involved had politely let her pretend that she had rushed down here to rescue Connor but everyone knew the truth.

"This is extremely humiliating," Margaret said.

"If it makes you feel any better, take it from me you don't know what I was going through yesterday morning at the airport waiting to see if you were on that flight. I was afraid to even call your apartment in Seattle in case you answered the phone. How's that for proof that you have an equal ability to make me feel like an idiot?"

The intensity of his words shook her. She bit her lip and then reached out hesitantly to touch his hand. When he glanced down she withdrew her fingers immediately. "Rafe, it won't work. We might have managed a long-distance affair. For a while. But we'll never manage a marriage. Your mother was right all along."

"Stop saying that, damn it. She was wrong and she admits it. Why do you keep quoting something she said a year ago as if it were carved in stone?"

"Because she was right a year ago. You're a driven man when it comes to business or anything else you decide you want. This morning she told me more about why you're driven but that doesn't change anything. It just helps explain why you are the way you are."

Rafe swore in disgust. "She gave you some tripe about me being somewhat, uh, aggressive in business because I had to work so hard to rescue Cassidy and Company, didn't she? Julie says that's her current theory on my behavior."

"Well, yes. And you're not
somewhat
aggressive, Rafe, you're a real predator. What's more, you get downright hostile when someone steals your prey the way you think I helped Moorcroft do last year."

"Look, maybe I'd better make one thing clear here. My mother likes to think I'm the way I am— I mean, was—because of what happened after Dad was killed. But the truth is, I was like that long before I took over Cassidy and Company. Dad knew it. Hell, I was born that way, according to my father. Same as he was."

Margaret nodded sadly. "You didn't change so that you could salvage the company, you managed to salvage the company because you were already strong enough and aggressive enough to do it."

"But things are different now. I've changed. I keep telling you that. Give me a chance, Maggie."

"Last night I thought I could."

"You call having an affair with me giving me a chance?" he demanded incredulously.

She nodded. "It was a way to try again. A way that left us both free to change our minds without breaking any promises. It would have given us time to observe each other and reassess the situation"

"Hell." He ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of pure frustration. "I don't need any more time, Maggie. I've been reassessing this damned situation for months."

"Well, I do need time."

"This isn't just a question of my work habits, is it?" he asked shrewdly. "The truth is you aren't going to forgive me for what happened between us last year, are you?"

"You've never asked me to forgive you, Rafe." She smiled bleakly. "You're much too proud for that, aren't you? Oh, you very generously forgave me, but you don't think you need to be forgiven. It's all black and white to you. You were right and I was clearly in the wrong."

"You made a mistake. Conflicting sets of loyalties, as I said. You were under a lot of pressure at the time and you got confused."

"So confused I'd do it again if I had to. I didn't like being used, Rafe."

His jaw tightened. "I did not use you."

"That's not the way I saw it. You knew I was working for Jack Moorcroft when you started dating me, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but damn it…"

"I, on the other hand, did not have the advantage of knowing you were a business rival of his. I didn't even realize you two knew each other, let alone were fierce competitors. You kept that information from me, Rafe."

"Only because I knew you'd have a problem dating me in the beginning if you knew the whole truth. I didn't want to lose you by telling you Moorcroft and I were after the same prize. You'd have felt guilty going out with me. And if you'll recall, I never tried to pump you for inside information."

"You let me talk about my job," she accused. "You let me tell you about the projects I was working on. You showed so much interest in me. I was so terribly flattered by that interest. It makes me sick to think how flattered I was."

"What was I supposed to do? Tell you not to talk about your work?"

"Yes. That's exactly what you should have told me.

"Be reasonable, Maggie. If I had tried to explain just why you shouldn't talk to me about your job, you'd have very quickly figured out who I was. I couldn't let that happen."

"Because you needed the inside information in order to beat Moorcroft to Spencer."

"That's a lot of horse manure," he told her roughly. "I didn't tell you to shut up about your work because I'd have lost you if I had. If it makes you feel any better, you can rest assured I had all the information I needed to beat Moorcroft to the punch from other sources. Nothing you told me made any difference in my plans."

"Oh, Rafe."

"You want the flat honest truth? Moorcroft's the one who got the advantage out of our relationship. You ran to him that morning and warned him I was after Spencer. Thanks to you, he was able to move his timetable ahead fast enough to knock me out of the running. I was the one who lost out because I was sleeping with a woman who felt her first loyalty belonged to another man."

Margaret looked up at him appealingly, longing to believe him and knowing she should not. "Rafe, is that the full truth? Really? You didn't use any of the information I accidently gave you?"

His mouth twisted ruefully. "It's the truth, all right. If you'd known everything in the beginning, you'd have assumed I'd started dating you because of your connection to Moorcroft and you'd have backed right off. Don't try to deny it. I know you. That's exactly how your brain would have worked—exactly how it did work when you finally discovered who I was."

Margaret felt cornered again. He was right. She would have been instantly suspicious of his motives if she'd known who he was back at the beginning. "And you really didn't need inside information from me?"

"I already had most of it. Nothing you told me was particularly crucial one way or the other. In fact, if you'll stop and think about it, you'll recall that you didn't talk all that much about your job. You mostly talked about the career in writing that you were working on. I heard all your big plans to work two more years in the business world and then quit to write full-time."

"I wish I could believe that." She clasped her hands in front of her, remembering her terrible feeling of guilt at the time. "I felt like such a fool. I felt so used. I went over and over every conversation we'd had, trying to recall exactly what I'd told you. I knew I had to go straight to Moorcroft, of course. He had trusted me. I had to make up for what I'd done to him."

"You didn't do one blasted thing to him," Rafe roared. "I was the one you screwed."

She frowned in annoyance. "You don't have to be quite so crude about it."

He spread his hands in a disgusted movement and made an obvious grab for his self-control. "Forget it. I'm sorry I mentioned my side of the story. I know you aren't particularly interested in it. You're only concerned with your side."

Tears welled in Margaret's eyes. She blinked them back as she sank down onto a bale of hay and tried to think. "It was such an awful mess at the time," she whispered. "And when I tried to do the right thing by warning Moorcroft about you, you turned on me like a…a lion or something. All teeth and claws. The things you said to me… You ripped me to shreds, Rafe. I wasn't certain for a while if I was ever going to recover."

"You weren't the only one who felt ripped up." Rafe sat down beside her, elbows resting on his knees, his big hands loosely clasped. He stared straight ahead at a pretty little gray mare who was watching the proceedings with grave curiosity. "I wasn't sure I was going to make it, either." He paused for a moment. "My mother says it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me."

"She said
what
?"

"She said I needed a jolt like that to make me pay attention to something else in life besides business." His smile was ironic. "Believe me, after what happened last year, you had my full attention. I couldn't stop thinking about you no matter how hard I tried. I've put more energy into getting you back than I've ever put into a merger or a buy-out."

Margaret thought she really would cry now. "Rafe, I don't know what to say."

He turned his head, his eyes glittering with intensity. "Say you'll give me a chance, a real chance. Let's start over, Maggie. For good this time. Give me the next two weeks and be honest about it. Don't spend the time looking for excuses and a way out."

The love for him that she had been forced to acknowledge to herself last night made Margaret lightheaded. She looked into his tawny eyes and felt herself falling back into the whirlpool in which she had nearly drowned last year. "You are a very dangerous man for me, Rafe. I can't go through what I went through last time. I can't."

He caught her chin on the edge of his hand. "You're not the only one who wouldn't survive it a second time. So there won't be a second time."

She searched his eyes. "How can you be so certain?"

"Two reasons. The first is that we learned something from that fiasco. We've both changed. We aren't quite the same people we were last year."

"And the second reason?"

He smiled faintly. "You aren't working for Moorcroft or anyone else, so the pressures you had on you last time don't exist."

"But if they did exist?"

Rafe's smile hardened briefly. "This time around your commitments are clearer, aren't they? This time around you'd know your first loyalty belongs to me."