Читать книгу Rags To Riches Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Rebecca Winters - Страница 50

BY THE time the doorbell went the following afternoon Sarah hoped that she had risen above her physical weakness of the day before and reached a more balanced place. In other words sorted her priorities. Priority number one was Oliver, and she bracingly repeated to herself how wonderful it was that his father would now be there for him, willing to take on a parental role, whatever that might be. A full and frank discussion of that was high on her agenda. Priority number two, on a more personal level, was to make sure that she kept a clear head and didn’t get lost in old feelings and memories.

She opened the door to a casually dressed Raoul.

‘Oliver’s in the sitting room, watching cartoons,’ she said, getting down to business straight away.

Raoul looked at her carefully, and noted the way her eyes skittered away from his, the way she kept one hand on the doorknob, as though leaving her options open just in case she decided to shut the door in his face. In fact she had only half opened the door, and he peered behind her pointedly.

‘Are you actually going to let me in, or do you want me to forge a path past you?’

‘I just want to say that we’ll really need to discuss … um … the practicalities of this whole situation …’

‘As opposed to what?’

‘I’ve been thinking, Raoul …’

‘Dangerous,’ Raoul said softly. She was in a pair of jeans and a tight tee shirt that reminded him a little too forcibly of the mysterious physical hold she still seemed to have over him. He had spent the night vainly trying to clear his head of images of her.

‘I’ve been thinking that we should have as little to do with one another as possible. I don’t want anything to happen between us. Been there, done that and have the tee shirt. The important thing is that you get to know Oliver, and that should be the extent of our relationship with one another.’

‘And have you told him who I am?’

Sarah was startled and a little taken aback at the speed with which he had concluded a conversation she had spent hours rehearsing in her head. Had she hoped that he would at least try and knock down some of her defences? Had she erected her Keep Off sign in the expectation that he might just try and steamroller through it? Had she secretly wanted him to steamroller through it?

‘Not yet,’ she said crisply. ‘I thought it best that you two get to know one another first.’

‘Okay. Well, there’s some stuff I’d like to bring in.’

‘Stuff? What kind of stuff?’

He nodded to his car, which was parked a few spaces along. ‘Why don’t you go inside? I’ll be a few minutes.’

‘You haven’t bought him presents, have you?’ she asked suspiciously, but when she tried to step outside to get a closer look, he gently but firmly prevented her.

‘Now, how did I know that you would disapprove?’

‘It’s not appropriate to show up with an armful of gifts the very first time you meet him!’

‘I’m making up for lost time.’

Sarah gave up. You couldn’t buy affection, she conceded, but perhaps a small token might help break the ice. Oliver had had no male input in his short life so far aside from her own father, whom he adored. She had been too busy just trying to make ends meet to dip her toes in the dating pool, and anyway she had not been interested in trying to replace Raoul. To her way of thinking she had developed a very healthy cynicism of the opposite sex. So Oliver’s sole experience of the adult world, to a large extent, had been her.

He was in the process of trying to construct a tower of bricks, with one eye on the manic adventures of his favourite cartoon character, when Raoul appeared in the doorway. In one arm there was a huge box, and in the other an enormous sack.

There was more in the boot of the car, but Raoul just hadn’t had the arms to bring it all in. Now he was glad that he hadn’t. Oliver appeared to be utterly bewildered, and Sarah … Her mouth had fallen open in what could only be described as an expression of horror. Couldn’t she say something?

Feeling like a complete fool for the first time in as long as he could recall, Raoul remained standing in the doorway with what he hoped was a warm smile pasted to his face.

‘Oliver! This is … this is my friend, Raoul! Why don’t you say hi to him?’

Oliver scuttled over to Sarah and clambered onto her lap, leaving Raoul trying to forge a connection by introducing a series of massively expensive presents to his son.

An oversized remote controlled car was removed from the box. The sack was opened to reveal a collection of games, books and stuffed toys which, Raoul assured a progressively more alarmed Sarah, had come highly recommended by the salesperson at the toy shop. He stooped to Oliver’s level and asked him if he would care to try out the car. Oliver, by way of response, shook his head vigorously, to indicate very firmly that the last thing he wanted was to go anywhere near the aggressive silver machine that took up a fair amount of their sitting room space.

The games, books and stuffed toys garnered the same negative response, and silence greeted Raoul’s polite but increasingly frustrated questions about playschool, sport and favourite television programmes.

At the end of an agonising forty-minute question and no answer session, Oliver finally asked Sarah if he could carry on with his blocks. In various piles lay the items that Raoul had bought, untouched.

‘Well, that was a roaring success,’ was the first thing Raoul muttered venomously under his breath, once he and Sarah were in the kitchen, leaving Oliver in the sitting room.

‘It’s going to take time.’

Raoul glared at her. ‘What have you told him about me?’ ‘Nothing. Just that you were an old friend.’ ‘Hence the friendly way with in I was greeted?’ His own son had rejected him. Over the years, in his inexorable upward march, Raoul had trained himself to overcome every single setback, because every setback could be seen as a learning curve. He needed to speak French to close a deal? He learnt it. He needed intimate knowledge of the gaming market to take over a failing computer company? He acquired sufficient knowledge to get him by, and employed two formidable gaming geeks to do the rest. He had built an empire on the firm belief that he was capable of doing anything. There were no obstacles he was incapable of surmounting.

Yet half an hour in the company of a four-year-old had rendered him impotent. Oliver had been uninterested in every toy pulled out of the bag and indifferent to him. There was no past experience upon which Raoul could call to get him through his son’s lack of enthusiasm.

‘Most kids would have gone crazy over that toy car,’ he imparted in an accusatory tone. ‘At least that’s what the salesperson told me. It’s been their biggest seller for the past four years. That damned car can do anything except carry passengers on the M25. So tell me what the problem was?’ He glared at her as she serenely fetched two glasses from the cupboard and poured them some wine. ‘The boy barely glanced in my direction.’

‘I don’t think it was such a good idea to bring so many toys for him.’

‘And how do you work that one out? I would have been over the moon if I had ever, as a kid, been given one new toy! So how could several new, expensive, top of the range toys fail to do the trick?’

With a jolt of sympathy that ran contrary to every defence mechanism she had in place, Sarah realised that he really didn’t have a clue. He had drawn from his own childhood experiences and arrived at a solution for winning his son’s affections—except he hadn’t realised that there was more to gaining love and trust than an armful of gifts.

‘Do you know,’ Raoul continued, swallowing the contents of his glass in one gulp, ‘that every toy I ever played with as a child had come from someone else and had to be shared? A remote controlled car like the one languishing in your sitting room would have caused a full-scale riot.’

‘That’s just awful,’ Sarah murmured.

‘Now you’re about to practise some amateur psychology on me. Don’t. You should have told me that he liked building things. I would have come armed with blocks.’

‘You’re missing the point. You need to engage him. Like I said, he’s used to only having me around. He’s going to view any other adult on the scene with suspicion. What happened on birthdays? Christmas?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘With you? Didn’t you get birthday presents? What about Father Christmas?’

Raoul looked at her with a crooked smile that went past every barrier and settled somewhere in the depths of her heart.

‘I don’t see what this has to do with anything, but if you really want to know Father Christmas was tricky. Frankly, I don’t think I ever believed in the fat guy with the beard. My earliest memory is of my mother telling me when I was three years old that there was no such person. Thinking about it now, I suspect she didn’t want to waste valuable money on feeding that particular myth when the money could have been so much better spent on a bottle of gin. Anyway, even at the foster home there wasn’t much room to hold on to stories like that. Father Christmas barely rated a mention.’ He laughed without rancour. ‘So—you’re going to give me a lesson on engagement. If Oliver has no time for anything I bought for him, then how do we proceed?’

‘Are you asking for my help?’

‘I’m asking for your opinion. If I remember correctly, you have never been short of those …’

‘Why don’t you go out there and build something with him?’ she suggested. ‘No. I’ll get him to bring his bricks in here, and the two of you can build something on the kitchen table while I prepare supper.’

‘Forget about cooking. I’ll take you both out. Name the restaurant and I’ll ensure the chef is only too happy to whip up something for Oliver.’

‘No,’ Sarah said firmly. ‘This is what normal life is all about with a child, Raoul. Spaghetti Bolognese, familiar old toys, cartoons on television, reading books at night before sleep …’ Except, she thought, suddenly flustered by the picture she had been busy painting, that was the ideal domestic situation—one in which two people were happily married and in love. It certainly wasn’t their situation. As she had told him—and she had meant every word of it—they had no relationship outside the artificial one imposed by circumstance.

‘Okay. I’ll bring Oliver in and you can start chopping some onions. They’re in the salad drawer in the fridge. Chop them really small.’

‘You want me to cook?’

‘Well, to help at any rate. And don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten how to cook. You used to cook on the compound.’

‘Different place, different country.’

‘So … you just eat out all the time?’ Sarah asked, distracted.

‘It’s more time-efficient.’

‘And what about with your girlfriends? Don’t you want to stay in sometimes? Do normal stuff?’

The questions were out before she had the wit to keep her curiosity to herself, and now that she had voiced them, she realised that it had been on her mind, poised just beneath the surface, ever since she had laid eyes on him again. In fact, thinking about it, it was something she had asked herself over and over again through the years. Had he found someone else? Had another woman been able to capture his interest sufficiently for him to make the commitment that he had denied her? He hadn’t loved her, but had he fallen in love with someone else? Someone prettier or cleverer or more accomplished?

‘Not that it’s any of my business,’ she added, and laughed airily.

‘It is now. Haven’t you said that yourself? No women in Oliver’s presence … Rest assured that the only woman in my life at the moment is you …’

‘That’s not what I was asking and you know it, Raoul!’

‘No. You’re just curious to know what I’ve been getting up to these past few years. There’s nothing wrong with curiosity. Curiosity’s healthy.’

‘I don’t care what you’ve been getting up to!’ It was a lie. She cared. Who were these women he had dated? What had he felt for them? Anything? Had he preferred them to her? She was mortified just thinking about that particular question.

‘I haven’t been getting up to anything of interest,’ Raoul replied drily. ‘Yes, there have been women. But I’ve deterred them from doing anything that involved pots, pans, an apron, candlelight and home-cooked food.’

‘Oh, Raoul, you’re such a charmer.’ But a tendril of relief curled inside her. She squashed it. ‘Now, I’m going to fetch Oliver.’

‘Hey, what about you? Don’t I get the low-down on your life? No man at the moment, but any temptations? Do you cook your spaghetti Bolognese for anyone else aside from Oliver?’

His voice was light and mildly amused, and he wondered why he felt so tense when it came to thinking of her with another man. He, after all, had never been and would never be a candidate when it came to marriage and rings on fingers. He was now a father, and that was shocking enough, but that was the only derailment to his carefully constructed life on the cards as far as he was concerned.

‘Maybe …’

‘Maybe? What does that mean?’ The amusement sounded forced. ‘Am I in competition with someone you’ve got hidden in a cupboard somewhere?’

‘No,’ Sarah admitted grudgingly. ‘I’ve been too busy being a single mum to think of complicating my life with a guy.’ She sensed rather than saw the shadow of satisfaction cross his face, and continued tartly, ‘But, as you’ve pointed out, life is going to get much easier for me now. It’s going to make a huge difference with you around, playing a role in Oliver’s life. I won’t be doing it on my own. Also, it’ll be nice not having to think about money, or rather the lack of it, all the time—and it’ll be fantastic having a bit of time to myself … time to do what I want to do.’

‘Which doesn’t mean that you’ve now got carte blanche to do whatever you like.’ Raoul didn’t care for the direction in which this conversation was now travelling.

‘You make me sound like the sort of girl who can’t wait to pick someone up!’

She was wondering what right he had to lay down any kind of laws when it came to her private life. Raoul Sinclair didn’t want his life encumbered with attachments. True, he had discovered that some encumbrances were beyond his control, but just as he had never contemplated committing to her, so he had never contemplated committing to anyone. It was small comfort. He might think that it was perfectly acceptable to lead a life in which he and his son were the only considerations, but it was totally unfair to assume that she felt the same way. He might want to pick up women and discard them when they were no longer of any use, but she needed more than that. For Raoul, a single life was freedom. For her, a single life would be a prison cell.

‘I’m not going to suddenly start scouring the nightclubs for eligible men,’ she expanded, with a bright, nervous laugh, ‘but I will be able to get out a bit more—which will be nice.’

‘Get out a bit more?’

‘Yes—when you have Oliver.’

‘I don’t think we should start projecting at this point,’ Raoul said deflatingly. ‘Oliver hasn’t even spoken to me as yet. It’s a bit premature to start planning a hectic social life in anticipation of us becoming best friends. Let’s just take one day at a time, shall we?’

‘Of course. I wasn’t planning on going clubbing next week!’

Clubbing? What did she mean by that? Other men? Sleeping around? While he kept Oliver every other weekend?

He pictured her dressed in next to nothing, flaunting herself on a dance floor somewhere. Granted, the women he went out with often dressed in next to nothing, but for some reason the thought of Sarah in a mini-skirt, high heels and a halterneck top set his teeth on edge.

‘Good. Because it won’t be happening.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Think about it, Sarah. Oliver doesn’t even know that I’m his father. Don’t you think that he’ll be just a little bit confused if your friend, who has mysteriously and suddenly appeared on the scene from nowhere, starts engineering outings without you? You’re the constant in his life. As you keep telling me. For me to have any chance of being accepted we have to provide a united front. We have to get to a point where he trusts me enough to leave you behind now and again.’

‘Exactly what are you trying to say, Raoul?’

‘That you have to scrap any crazy notions of us having nothing to do with one another. You’re living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that’s going to work. The whole bedtime story, spaghetti Bolognese thing is going to have to involve both of us. Of course it’ll be a damn sight easier when you get out of this place and move somewhere more convenient. And less cramped. On the subject of which—I have my people working on that.’

There were so many contentious things packed into that single cool statement that Sarah looked at him, staggered.

‘When you say involve both of us …’

Raoul flushed darkly and dealt her a fulminating look from under his lashes.

‘I don’t know the first thing about being a parent,’ he told her roughly. ‘You’ve witnessed my sterling performance out there.’

‘I didn’t know the first thing about being a parent either,’ Sarah pointed out with irrefutable logic. ‘It’s just a case of doing your best.’

The thought of doing things with Raoul and Oliver, a cosy threesome, was enough to bring on the beginnings of a panic attack in her. Already she was finding it difficult to separate the past from the present. She looked at him, and who was she kidding when she told herself that she was no longer attracted to him? Raoul was in a different place, and would be able to take her on board as just a temporary necessity in his life, easily set aside once he had what he wanted: some sort of ongoing relationship with his son. But she was aghast at the prospect of having him there in her life. How on earth was she ever going to get to that controlled, composed place of detachment if she was continually tripping over him in the kitchen as he attempted to bond with his son over fish fingers?

Perhaps he had exaggerated, she thought, soothing her own restless, panicked mind. He was still smarting from Oliver’s less than exuberant reception of him. Right at this very moment this was the only plan he could see ahead of him, and Raoul was big on plans. He would not be taking into account the simple fact that when children were involved plans could never really be made. In a day or two he would probably revise his ideas, because she very much doubted that he wanted to spend quality time with her in the picture.

‘And the whole house issue …’ she continued faintly. ‘You have your people working on it?’

‘Here’s one of the things I’ve discovered about having money: throw enough of it at a problem and the problem goes away. Right now they’re in the process of drawing up lists of suitable properties. I will be giving them until the end of next week. So,’ he drawled when she failed to respond, ‘are we on the same wavelength here, Sarah?’

‘I can’t just move into a house you happen to choose. I know you probably don’t care about your surroundings, but I care about mine …’

‘Don’t you trust me to find somewhere you’d like?’

He’d used to be amused at her dreamy, whimsical ideas. From where he had stood there had been little use for dreams unless you had the wherewithal to turn them into reality, and even then he had never made the mistake of confusing dreams with the attainment of real, concrete goals. What was the point in wishing you could own a small island in the middle of the Pacific if the chances of ever having one were zero? But her dreams of cottages and clambering roses and open fires had made him smile.

‘True, the thatched cottage with the roses and the apple trees might be a little troublesome to find in London …’

Sarah blushed, unsettled by the fact that he had remembered her corny youthful notion of the perfect house. Which she recalled describing in tedious detail.

‘But I’ve got them working on the Aga in the kitchen, the garden overlooking water, and the fireplaces …’

‘I can’t believe you remember that conversation!’

She gave a brittle laugh, and went an even brighter shade of red when he replied softly, ‘Oh, there’s a lot I remember, Sarah. You’d be surprised.’

He didn’t miss the flare of curiosity in her eyes. She might have made bold statements about not wanting anything to do with him, about shoving that kiss they had shared into a box at the back of a cupboard in her head, where she wouldn’t have to confront it, but every time they were in each other’s company he could feel that undercurrent of electricity—a low, sizzling hum that vibrated just below the radar.

‘Well, I don’t actually remember all that much,’ Sarah responded carelessly.

‘Now, I wonder why I’m not believing you …’

‘I have no idea, and I don’t care. Now, if you wouldn’t mind getting to work on those onions, I’ll go and fetch Oliver.’

She disappeared before he could continue the conversation. When he looked at her like that she would swear that he could see right down into the very depths of her. It was an uncomfortable, frightening sensation that left her feeling vulnerable and exposed. Once she had gladly opened up to him—had told him everything there was to know about herself. She had taken him at face value and turned a blind eye to the fact that while she had been falling deeper and deeper in love with him, he had pointedly refused to discuss anything that involved a future between them. He had taken everything she had so generously given and then politely jettisoned her when his time on the compound was up.

Raoul was a taker, with little interest in giving back. When he looked at her with those lazy, brooding eyes she could sense his interest. Some of his remarks carried just that little hint of flirtation, of deliberately treading very close to the edge. He had possessed her once, much to her shame. Did he think that he could possess her again?

She returned with Oliver to find him at the kitchen counter, dutifully chopping the onions as instructed.

Oliver had brought in a handful of his blocks, and Sarah sat him on a chair and then called Raoul over. She made sure to keep her voice light and friendly, even though every nerve in her body tingled as he strolled towards them, a teatowel draped over one shoulder.

‘Blocks … my favourite.’

She had sat at the table, next to Oliver, and now Raoul leaned over her, his strong arms trapping her as he rested his hands on the table on either side of her. Sarah could feel his breath whisper against her neck when he spoke.

‘Did you hear that, Oliver? Raoul loves building things! Wouldn’t it be fun for you two to build something for me? What about a tower? You love building towers! Do you remember how high your last tower was? Before it fell?’

‘Twelve blocks,’ Oliver said seriously, not looking at Raoul. ‘I can count to fifty.’

‘That’s quite an achievement!’ Raoul leaned a little closer to Sarah, so that the clean, minty smell of her shampoo filled his nostrils.

She shifted, but had almost no room for manoeuvre. Her eyes drifted compulsively to his forearm, to the fine sprinkling of dark hairs that curled around the dull matt silver of his mega-expensive watch.

‘Why don’t you sit down, Raoul?’ she suggested stiltedly. ‘You can help Oliver with his tower.’

‘I don’t need any help, Mum.’

‘No, he really doesn’t. I sense that he’s more than capable of building the Empire State Building all on his own.’

Oliver glanced very quickly at Raoul, and then returned to the task in hand.

Sarah heard Raoul’s almost imperceptible indrawn breath as he abruptly stood back, and when she turned to look at him he had removed himself to the kitchen sink, his expression one of frustrated defeat.

‘Give it time,’ she said in a low voice, moving to stand in front of him.

‘How much time? I’m not a patient man.’

‘Well, I guess you’ll have to learn how to be. Good job with the onions, by the way.’

But she could feel his simmering impatience with the situation for the rest of the evening. Oliver was not so much hostile as wary. He answered Raoul’s questions without meeting his eye and, dinner over, finally agreed to go outside with him to test drive the car which had been abandoned in the sitting room.

Through the kitchen window, Sarah watched their awkward interaction with a sinking heart.

She had planned on sitting Oliver down and explaining that Raoul was his father once a bond of trust between them had been accepted. To overload him with too much information would be bewildering for him. But how long was that going to take? she wondered. Raoul was obviously trying very hard.

She watched as Oliver sent the oversized car bouncing crazily into the unkempt bushes at the back of the tiny garden, losing interest fast and walking away as Raoul stooped down to deliver a mini-lecture on mechanics.

The consequences of him missing out, through no fault of his own, on those precious first four years hit her forcibly. Another man, with experience of growing up in a real family, might have had something to fall back on in a situation like this. Raoul had no such experience, and was struggling to find a way through his own shortcomings.

She abandoned her plans to have him read something to Oliver before bed, which was their usual routine. Instead, she told him to wait for her in the kitchen while she settled Oliver.

‘You can help yourself to … um … whatever you can find in the fridge. I know dinner was probably not what you’re used to …’

‘Because I’m such a snob?’

Sarah sighed heavily, ‘I’m just conscious that we’re … we’re miles apart. When we were working out in Africa there wasn’t this great big chasm separating us …’

‘You need to move on from the past.’

‘You haven’t moved on from yours!’

‘I’m not following you?’

‘You thought you could buy Oliver with lots of presents because that’s what your past has conditioned you to think! And then you got impatient when you discovered that it doesn’t work that way.’

‘And you can’t move on from the fact that—okay … yes—I dumped you!’ Raoul thundered. ‘You want to find something to argue about—anything at all—because you’ve wrapped yourself up in a little world comprised of just you and Oliver and you can’t deal with the fact that I’m around now! Dinner was disappointing because it was stressful! I didn’t know how to deal with him.’

Hell, Oliver had played with his food, spread most of it on the table, and had received only the most indulgent scolding from Sarah! His childhood memories of mealtimes were of largely silent affairs, with rowdy behaviour at the table meriting instant punishment.

‘I don’t know how to deal with him.’

Dumbfounded by that raw admission, Sarah was overcome with regret for her outburst. He was so clever, so all-knowing, that she hadn’t really stopped to consider that now he really was at a loss.

‘I’m … I’m sorry, Raoul. I shouldn’t have said that stuff about your past …’ she mumbled.

‘Look, we’ve found ourselves in this situation, and constantly sniping isn’t going to get either of us very far.’

Mind made up, Sarah nodded in agreement. ‘I’ll take him up for a bath … Yes, you’re right … it’s difficult for both of us …’ She managed a smile. ‘I guess we both need to do some adjusting …’

She returned forty-five minutes later and looked as fresh as a daisy. He felt as though he had done ten rounds in a boxing ring.

‘I think he’s really beginning to warm to you!’ she said cheerfully.

Raoul raised his eyebrows in an expression of rampant scepticism. ‘Explain how you’ve managed to arrive at that conclusion?’ He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head with a short, dry laugh. ‘There’s no need to put on the Little Miss Sunshine act for me, Sarah. I may not know much when it comes to kids, but I’d have to have the IQ of a goldfish not to see that my own son has no time for me. You were right. All those toys were a complete waste of time and money.’

‘You’re just not accustomed to children. You don’t know how they think. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine you being a kid at all! Oliver enjoys pushing the boundaries. Most children do, Raoul. He’ll fiddle with his food until I have to be firm, and he’ll always go for just another five minutes or one more story or two scoops of ice cream, please.’

‘Whatever happened to discipline?’ Raoul scowled at her laid-back attitude.

‘Oh, there’s a lot of that. It’s just knowing when to decide that it’s really needed.’

She looked at Raoul thoughtfully. The man who could move mountains had discovered his Achilles’ heel, and she was sure that he would never ask for her help. He was stubbornly, maddeningly proud. To ask for help would be to admit a weakness, and she knew that was something he would find it very hard to do.

But helping him was the only solution—and, more than that, helping him would give her a psychological boost, even out the playing field.

‘Okay, well, he’s now thrilled with the car. Tonight I’ll pack away all the rest of the stuff you brought for him. I can bring bits out now and again as treats.’ She folded her arms and braced herself to take control with a guy who was so used to having the reins that he probably had no idea relinquishing them was a possibility.

Raoul sat back and clasped his hands behind his head. He had thought for one crazy moment, when he had laid eyes on her again, that time hadn’t changed her. He had been wrong. This was no longer the blindly adoring girl who had yielded to him with such abundant generosity. There was a steely glint in her eye now, and he realised that he had seen it before but maybe hadn’t really recognised it for what it was. The molten charge between them was still there, whether she wanted to admit it or not, but along with that was something else …

Raoul felt a certain fascination, and a surge of raw, powerful curiosity.

‘Am I about to get a ticking off?’ he drawled, his eyes roving lazily over her from head to toe in a way that made it difficult for her not to feel frazzled.

‘No,’ she said sweetly. ‘But I am going to tell you what you need to do, and you’re going to listen to me.’ She smiled a bit more when she saw his frown of incomprehension. ‘You like to think you know everything, but you don’t.’

‘Oh? You’re going to be my teacher, are you?’

‘Whether you like it or not!’

Raoul shot her a slow, dazzling smile. ‘Well, now,’ he said softly, instantly turning the tables on her, ‘it’s been a while since anyone taught me anything. You might find that I like it a lot more than you expect …’