home!’
‘I was more than happy to go stay in a hotel.’
‘You accepted my hospitality and you used it to get what you wanted out of me! I can’t believe I was stupid enough to actually think that you were a man of integrity.’
‘Sleeping with you was never part of any plan.’ Art shook his head and dropped down on the sofa, legs apart. She walked towards him and stood in front of him with her arms folded. ‘You doubt me?’ he growled, staring at her, and even in the height of this scorching argument, when she was burning with rage, those fabulous dark eyes still had the power to do things to her body. Rose’s lips thinned.
‘Do you honestly believe that I could make love with you the way I have if I wasn’t seriously attracted to you?’
Hot colour flooded her cheeks. Rose remembered the intensity of their lovemaking, the flaring passion in his eyes. She remembered the way he had touched her, his fingers as they’d explored her body and the urgency of those times when he just couldn’t wait to have her.
No, he hadn’t been faking that. Somehow that was something she just knew. He’d come here on a mission but going to bed with her had never been part of the plan. Should she feel better for that? Maybe, but then, with a bitter twist, she also remembered the way she had felt about him and her stupidity in actually thinking that there might have been more to what they had than just a romp in the sack.
It was always going to be just a romp in the sack, had she but known, because she had always just been an enjoyable add-on to the main reason he was there, a pleasant side dish but never the main meal.
Humiliation roared through her, stiffening her backbone and settling like venom in her veins.
How on earth could she have been so stupid? She, of all people! Always cautious, always watchful...how could she have thrown herself in the path of a speeding train and actually thought that it would be okay?
‘You need to leave,’ she said coldly.
‘I was honest with you.’ Art rose to his feet, a towering, dominant presence that made her step back in alarm.
He sucked the oxygen out of the room, left her feeling as though she needed to gasp for air, and the strength of her reaction terrified her because she knew that, mixed in with the rage, the hatred and the bitter disillusionment, was something else...something she didn’t want to put her finger on.
‘And now that I’m weeping with gratitude at your terrific display of honesty, are you going to renege on all the things you said you’d do for the village?’
‘Dammit, Rose!’ Art roared. ‘I could have just disappeared. Instead, I came clean. Why can’t you cut me some slack?’ He stepped towards her, ignoring her crab-like shuffle away from him, until he had cornered her without her even realising it was happening.
She collided with the wall and he placed both hands squarely on either side of her so that she had nowhere to run.
‘I didn’t come here to—’ he looked away and clenched his jaw in frustration ‘—mess you or anyone else around.’
‘You came here to get on our good side so that we would get off your case and make things easier for you!’
‘Where’s the crime in that? I purchased the land going through all the proper channels. Okay, yes, I admit I figured that life would be a lot smoother if I didn’t have to steamroller my way through protesters waving placards, but I can’t think of many big, bad wolves who would have given a damn about the protesters or their placards.’
‘You could have done the decent thing and been honest from the start!’
‘You would have had the sheriff run me out of town before I got the first sentence out.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Isn’t it?’
Rose flushed. She could breathe him in and it was doing all sorts of crazy and unacceptable things to her nervous system.
‘I thought,’ Art said heavily, ‘that this would be fairly straightforward. How hard could it be to talk sense into a group of people who were never going to win the war? I never banked on really engaging with anyone here and I certainly never entertained the idea that...’
Rose tilted her chin and stared at him in hostile defiance. ‘That what? That you’d break that code of yours and start sharing space in a kitchen with a woman?’
To think that she had actually entertained the idea that having him do all that domesticated stuff might be an indication of feelings that ran deeper and truer than they had both originally predicted.
‘Something like that,’ Art muttered, glancing away for a few taut seconds before returning his dark gaze to her face. ‘You’re hurt and I get that,’ he continued in a low, driven voice.
Rose raised her eyebrows. She was keeping it together by a thread, determined not to let him see just how devastated she was, but it was so, so very hard, especially when he was standing so, so very close to her, when, with barely any effort, she could just reach out and touch that body she had come to feel so much for. Too much.
‘Thanks. I feel so much better for that,’ she said with thick sarcasm.
‘I’m no good for you.’ He gave her a crooked smile and pushed himself away, although he remained standing in front of her.
‘No, you’re not,’ Rose said shortly.
‘You deserve a far better man.’
‘I do.’ She tossed her hair and for a few seconds her expression changed from anger to on-the-edge-of-tears disappointment. ‘I always knew that guys with money were unscrupulous and I proved myself right.’
‘I refuse to get into a debate about this. I don’t think your fellow locals will agree when they find themselves the recipients of some spanking-new additions to the village. I don’t think they’ll be gnashing their teeth and shaking their fists and cursing my generosity.’
‘You can wave money around but that doesn’t make you an honourable man. It doesn’t mean that you’ve got any sense of...of spirituality.’
‘I didn’t think you were paying too much attention to my fascinating lack of a spiritual side when we were in bed together.’
‘How dare you bring that up?’ The silence that greeted this was electric. Her nostrils flared and her pupils dilated and every pore in her body burned with humiliation because the warmth between her legs wouldn’t let her forget the shameful truth that she still found him unbearably sexy even though she absolutely loathed him for how he had played her.
She breathed deep and closed her eyes and wasn’t aware that he was reaching out until he was. Reaching out to lightly stroke the side of her face.
‘You still want me,’ he murmured and Rose glared at him furiously. ‘You still want me and you can’t deny it.’
Rose opened her mouth to utter an instant denial of any such thing. How dared he? Her skin burnt from where he had touched her. How dared he?
‘Are you going to lie?’ Art asked in a low, sexy undertone. ‘You can’t possibly stand there and accuse me of being a monster of deceit only to lie about something that’s so obvious.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ she said on a sharply indrawn breath. ‘So what if I’m attracted to you? You’re an attractive man. But I will never be tempted to act on that attraction again, not that the situation is ever likely to arise.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t fault you for being honest and telling me from the start that you weren’t going to be sticking around. Fair enough. But you hurt me with your deceit, whether that deceit was intended or not. I’ll never, ever forgive you for that.’
Art’s lips thinned.
‘Forgiveness