Page 129 of For Love or Money
‘My teeth were terrible,’ she said and he laughed. That was true, but it was still an evasion. It seemed her confessional moment was over, the juiciest revelations still left unspoken.
‘But I saw that picture of you. You were really pretty.’
‘Still not pretty enough. And only after an awful lot of effort. My make-up was trowelled on in that photo.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Rafe said quietly. ‘I’m sorry that happened to you.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ she said. But she had to blink back tears, touched by his concern.
‘Tell me something else.’
She swallowed her last bite of pizza and lay her head back against the bed, thinking. ‘How about I show you something?’ She pulled her pyjama top and bottoms apart a little, revealing the small silver scar low on her stomach.
Rafe frowned, reaching out a finger as if he was going to touch it. But he didn’t. ‘What happened?’ he asked, his hand hovering over the scar, tracing it in the air.
‘My ex-boyfriend stabbed me,’ she said, dropping her hands so it was covered again.
‘Jesus!’ Rafe reared back, eyes wide with shock.
‘Well, he tried to.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘He didn’t do a very good job of it. It’s kind of a funny story, actually.’
‘Sounds hilarious,’ Rafe said dryly.
‘He barely cut me really. Turned out he wasn’t suited to a life of knife crime.’
‘Thank God,’ Rafe breathed.
‘I’d just broken up with him, and he was very angry about it.’ She frowned, remembering. ‘Turned out he thought all along he was doing me a favour and I was really lucky he could be with a freak like me. He didn’t think I’d ever leave him, because who else would have me. So he was furious when I broke up with him. He felt ... humiliated, I guess, that he’d ever been with me.’
She felt Rafe’s eyes on her and wondered what sort of grotesque deformities he must be imagining.
‘Anyway, lucky for me it turned out he was squeamish about blood. He barely nicked me, and he already looked kind of shocked at what he’d done, like he hadn’t expected the knife to actually go in. The minute he saw the blood, he went white as a sheet, and then he just ... keeled over.’
‘Hefainted?’
‘Yep. Went down like a tree. I made a run for it while he was still unconscious. That was the last I ever saw of him.’
‘Did you report it? Have him arrested?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I just wanted to get as far away from him as possible and never have to deal with him again.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘It didn’t quite work out that way, though,’ she said bitterly. ‘He had worse up his sleeve.’
‘Worse thanstabbingyou?’
‘Well, much more effective at messing my life up anyway,’ she said. ‘But that’s a story for another day. Maybe.’ She drained her glass and put it down. ‘Okay, your turn. Truth or dare?’
‘Truth,’ he said. ‘It seems only fair.’
‘Okay, then. Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows.’
He looked down at his glass, frowning broodily. ‘I don’t want you to marry Dad,’ he said finally, looking up.
Despite herself, Stella flinched. She recovered quickly, anger pushing aside the hurt. She’d thought they’d got closer, that they were on their way to being friends. In the past few weeks, she’d felt that Rafe liked her and cared about her. And then he had to say something nasty like that. ‘You haven’t made any secret of that,’ she said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her tone.
‘No, I guess not. But the reason – that’s something no one else knows. At least, I don’t think they do.’
‘Oh, I think we all know why. Because you think I’m a heartless mercenary, right?’ she said, her tone brittle.
He shook his head. ‘Wrong. Maybe I did think that at first. But that was before I knew you.’
