would I do that?’ He gave her a guileless half-smile. ‘It was a great cup of coffee.’
‘You won’t win this, you know.’ She drilled him with her glittering gaze. ‘I know you probably think I’m just an unworldly, unsophisticated country girl, but you have no idea how determined I can be.’
Rafe felt his skin prickle all over with delight at the challenge she was laying before him. It was like a shot of a powerful drug. It galvanised him. And as for unsophisticated and unworldly... Well, he would never admit it to his two younger brothers, but he was getting a little bored with the worldly women he associated with. Just lately he had started to feel a little restless. The casual affairs were satisfying on a physical level, but recently he’d walked away from each of them with an empty feeling that had lodged in a place deep inside him.
But, even more unsettling, a niggling little question had started keeping him awake until the early hours of the morning: is this all there is?
Maybe it was time to broaden his horizons. It would certainly be entertaining to bring Miss Poppy Silverton to heel. She was like a wild filly who hadn’t met the right trainer. What would it take to have her eating out of his hand? His body gave another shudder of delight.
He could hardly wait.
‘I think I should probably warn you at this point, Miss Silverton, that I’m no pushover. I play by the rules, but they’re my rules.’
Her chin came up at that. ‘I detest men like you. You think you’re above everyone else with your flash cars and luxury villas in every country and yet another vacuous model or starlet hanging off your arm, simpering over every word that comes out of your silver-spooned mouth. But I bet there are times when you lie awake at night wondering if anyone loves you just for who you are as a person or whether it’s just for your money.’
He curled his lip mockingly. ‘You really have a thing about well-heeled men, don’t you? Why is success such a big turn-off for you?’
She gave him a scoffing look. ‘Success? Don’t make me laugh. You inherited all your wealth. It’s not your success, it’s your family’s. You’re just riding on the wave of it, just like your party-boy, time-wasting brothers.’
Rafe thought of all the hard work he and his brothers had had to do to keep their family’s wealth secure. Some unwise business dealings his grandfather had made a few years ago had jeopardised everything. Rafe had marshalled his brothers and as a team they had rebuilt their late father’s empire. It had taken eighteen-hour days, working seven days a week for close to two and a half years to bring things back around, but they had done it. Thankfully, none of Vittorio’s foolhardiness had ever been leaked to the press, but hardly a day went by without Rafe remembering how terrifyingly close they had been to losing everything. He, perhaps a little more than Raoul and Remy, felt the ongoing burden of responsibility, to the extent that he had earned the reputation in the corporate world of a being a rather ruthless, single-minded workaholic.
‘You are very keen to express an opinion on matters of which you know nothing,’ he said. ‘Have you met either of my brothers?’
‘No, and I don’t want to. I’m sure they’re just as detestable and loathsome as you.’
‘Actually, they’re vastly nicer than me.’
‘Oh really?’ She raised her brows in a cynical arc.
Rafe leaned indolently against the sandstone pillar, his arms folded loosely across his chest, one of his legs crossed over the other at the ankle. ‘For instance, they would never leave a young lady standing out here on the steps without inviting her in for a drink.’
Her eyes narrowed in warning. ‘Well, if you’re thinking of asking me in, then don’t bother wasting your breath.’
‘I wasn’t.’
Her expression faltered for a nanosecond but then she quickly recovered her pertness. ‘I’m quite sure I’d be a novel change from the women you usually invite in for drinks.’
He swept his gaze over her lazily. ‘Indeed you would. I’ve never had a redhead before.’
Her cheeks coloured and her mouth tightened. ‘It’s not red. It’s auburn.’
‘It’s very beautiful.’
Her gaze flashed with venom. ‘If you think flattery is going to work with me, then think again. I’m not going to sell my house to you no matter how many insincere compliments you conjure up.’
‘Why are you so attached to the place?’ Rafe asked. ‘You could buy a much bigger place in a better location with the money I offered you.’
She gave him a hard little look. ‘I don’t expect someone like you to understand; you’ve probably lived in luxury homes all your life. The dower house is the first place I’ve ever been able to call home. I know it’s not flash, and that it needs a bit of work here and there, but if I sold it would be like selling part of myself.’
‘No one is asking you to sell yourself.’
Her brows arched up again. ‘Are they not?’
Rafe held her gaze for several beats. ‘My plans for the manor will go ahead with or without your cooperation. I understand the sentiments you expressed, but they have no place in what is at the end of the day a business decision. You would be committing financial suicide to reject the kind of offer I’ve made.’
Her posture was stiff and defensive, her eyes slitted in hatred. ‘You know nothing of my financial affairs. You don’t know me.’
‘Then I will enjoy getting to know you.’ He gave her a smouldering look. ‘In every sense of the word.’
She swung away with her colour high and stomped back down the steps. Rafe watched her disappear into the distance with a smile on his face. One way or the other he was going to win this.
He would stake money on it.
* * *
Poppy was still fuming when she got back to her house. Her three little dogs—Chutney, Pickles and Relish—looked up at her with worried eyes as she stormed through the gate. ‘Sorry, guys,’ she said bending down to give them all a scratch behind the ears. ‘I’m just so cross I can hardly stand it. What an arrogant man! Who does he think he is? As if I’d fall for someone like him. As if I’d even think about sleeping with him.’
Well, maybe it was OK to think about it a teeny weeny bit. There was no harm in that, was there? It wasn’t as if she was going to act on it. She wasn’t that type of girl. Which kind of explained why her ex-boyfriend was now shacked up with another woman.
Poppy knew it was ridiculously old-fashioned of her to have wanted to wait a while before she consummated her relationship with Oliver. It wasn’t that she was a prude... Well, maybe a bit, given she’d been raised by her grandmother, who hadn’t had sex in decades.
The trouble was she was a soppy romantic at heart. She wanted her first time to be special. She wanted it to be special for the man who shared it with her. She’d thought Oliver Kentridge was going to be that special man who would open up the world of sensuality to her, but he had betrayed her even before they’d been dating a couple of months.
Poppy couldn’t say her heart had been broken, but it had definitely been heavily bruised. Men were such selfish creatures, or at least that was how it had seemed in her life so far. Her well-heeled but wild playboy father had deserted her mother as soon as she had told him she was pregnant. And then, to rub more salt in the wound, within weeks of Poppy’s birth he had married a wealthy socialite who stood to inherit a fortune to prop up his own. Her mother had been devastated by being cast aside so heartlessly and, in a moment of impulsivity, no doubt fuelled by her hurt, had turned up at his high-society wedding with her ‘child of scandal’, as Poppy had been called. The press attention had only made her mother’s suffering worse and horribly, excruciatingly public. Poppy had frighteningly clear memories from during her