CHAPTER THREE

      IT WAS the memory of that smile, so unexpected and curiously infectious, lighting up that scarred face and making it something new, that Angel found herself playing over and over in her head as she headed back home to London and reality.

      That and the kiss that never failed, even in retrospect, to make her uncomfortably warm.

      It was simple surprise, she told herself—at the depth of her own response. It was nothing more than surprise that he’d had so much passion in him, and that she’d met it. And how could it be anything else, when the only thing between them was money? His money. Her need of it.

      And your body, a dark voice whispered inside of her. Isn’t that always the way this kind of arrangement goes?

      “Here is my contact information,” Rafe had said, all distance and business, in the car he’d summoned to take them back to their respective hotels after Allegra’s engagement party had come to an end. He had jotted down a few quick lines on a card he’d pulled from somewhere. Angel had found herself admiring the bold, male handwriting, scrutinizing it as if it might give her some clue about the man. He’d handed the card to her when he was finished, his gaze once again dark and grim, no hint of that brief, flashing smile left anywhere on his ruthless face. As if she’d imagined it. She’d begun to wonder if she had.

      He’d refused to take her details at all. Not even a mobile number.

      “You may find that once you are back in London, and the royal Santina champagne has worn off, that you are less interested in going through with this after all.” His gaze had been level. Matter-of-fact. Somehow, that had made it worse.

      “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she’d said, stung. More offended, perhaps, than the situation warranted. After all, he was just being appropriately cautious—which perhaps she should have been herself. But in the dark, close confines of his car, she’d felt nothing but that current of reckless determination, driving her on, making this happen. Because it had to. Surely that was the only reason. Surely it was reason enough. “But I’m not drunk.”

      “We’ll see,” he’d said, and his expression had been very nearly bleak then, and had made something turn over inside of her. “I wouldn’t hold it against you if, upon reflection, you decide that you must have been.”

      She’d flushed, with something she’d told herself was temper. Simple temper, nothing more. “I’m not drunk,” she’d said again, distinctly. “But you can pretend I am, if that gives you the escape clause you clearly want.”

      “Ring me when you arrive in London,” he’d said softly as the car glided to a stop outside her hotel. His gaze had challenged her. Dared her. And made her, somehow, unutterably sad. “Or don’t.”

      Angel, naturally, had rung immediately, still fueled by that same temper. When the plane had landed in Heathrow and again when she’d reached her flat. To prove the point, she’d assured herself expansively, but to herself or to him?

      “Oh, dear,” she’d said into his voice mail the second time, when she was safely home and just as determined, filled with something perilously close to righteous indignation. “It appears that two days later and without the champagne, I still want the marriage, just as I suspected I would. But I should tell you, Rafe—” and she admitted to herself, sitting there in her dark flat where no one could see her, least of all him, that she liked the way his name felt in her mouth “—that unlike you, I will hold it against you if you change your mind. Just to be clear.”

      And she did want this. Him. Of course she did. He was the answer to all of her prayers, she reminded herself fiercely and repeatedly. She would be rich and a countess to boot! All of her problems would be solved! Not bad for a wild fantasy on a plane ride and a single dance at an engagement party, she told herself. Not bad at all.

      And if there’d been a gaping sort of hole inside of her, far too black and bitter for her to look at directly, she’d ignored it. Fiercely and repeatedly.

      “I’m afraid I have urgent business I must attend to for the rest of the week,” Rafe told her in that stern, aristocratic voice when he finally returned her calls, right when she was starting to believe that perhaps she’d fantasized the whole thing after all. Just made it up to take away the pain of Chantelle’s latest and greatest betrayal, the way she had when she was a little girl—telling herself stories to make her nights alone less frightening while Chantelle was out with “friends”. “I’m afraid I did not factor the possibility of a fiancée into my schedule.”

      That word. Fiancée. It made a chill sneak down her back and she wasn’t sure why. What she was sure about was that she didn’t want to know.

      “Are you sure this isn’t simply a test?” she asked, keeping her voice light.

      She knew it was. She knew he was still making certain. Making absolutely sure that she’d meant every single word she’d said in that ballroom. Making her question herself and decide if this was what she wanted. If he was what she wanted.

      Not to mention, deciding such things for himself. After all, he was bringing far more to this devil’s bargain than she was. It was difficult to imagine, standing by herself in the middle of a flat in a neighborhood she doubted he’d ever visited or could locate on a map, why a man like him—an earl, of all things—would bother. There had to be any number of willing would-be countesses scattered about the country, no matter what he thought. Angel couldn’t possibly be his only option, the way he was hers.

      She hated how that made her feel. So … needy. Desperate. Two things she’d never felt before, not about a man. There was nothing about the feeling—itchy and unpleasant—that she liked.

      She moved restlessly around her small, serviceable flat, her gaze skipping over all the detritus of this life she’d been so desperate to call her own, that she was now equally desperate to get rid of. All the books she’d hoarded, kept away from Chantelle’s hoots of derision as she’d called Angel Lady Muck—each of them an escape, a fantasy, the education she’d denied herself. Surely wanting to leave the life she’d made, whatever might have become of it, spoke of deep deficiencies in her character. It had to. But then, what part of her behavior over the past few days did she think offered a counterargument?

      “Not at all,” he replied coolly, snapping her back into the conversation. “But it is, of course, a period for reflection and research. I suggest you avail yourself of it.”

      “Reflection and research?” she echoed, and then laughed. Keep this light, she reminded herself. Easy. She ran her fingers over the spine of one of her favorite books, an old classic involving titled gentlemen, intricate revenge plots and all manner of epic adventures. “I think you’ll find I’m an open book. Written in very simple and easy-to-read sentences.”

      “But I am not,” he replied, with what might have been dark humor, had he been another man. There was a pause, and she wondered where he was. What he was doing. What sort of room he stood in, having this bizarre conversation with a woman he hardly knew. Did he regret this already? Did she? Why couldn’t she tell her own feelings where this man—this situation—was concerned? “You may live to wish you’d taken this more seriously, Angel.”

      “Yes, yes,” she said dismissively, her voice far more blasé than she actually felt. “Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Etcetera. I promise to think hard and