but I'm not interested in taking your inheritance from you.'
'But you want the money.'
'Yes, but not for the reasons you think,' she said.
Rafaele looked into her grey-blue eyes and wondered if she was being straight with him. He wasn't used to trusting people, but he found he wanted to trust her. She was getting under his skin in a way he had never believed possible.
He hadn't thought a kiss could reveal so much. He had kissed a lot of women in his time, but no one had affected him quite as Emma did. The shy hesitancy of her responses had been totally enthralling. He could still taste her sweetness in his mouth. He could still feel the soft press of her slim body against his; it had left a branding outline on his flesh.
His desire for her was even now pulsing through his blood. He could feel it charging through his veins, making him hard at the thought of sinking into her velvet warmth. He had never wanted a woman more than this one. She awakened every primal desire in his body. Her sensual allure was totally bewitching, which was no doubt why his father had fallen under her spell.
But he wasn't a fool like his father. He would have her on his terms and his terms only, even if it took him every bit of the next twelve months to achieve it.
'What do you want the money for?' he asked.
'It's for my sister, Simone.'
He frowned. 'Your sister?'
She nodded. 'She lost her husband when my niece was a baby. She has never dated anyone else until recently, but it turned out to be a total disaster. He left her with massive debts. He fraudulently used her name for a loan with a dodgy creditor who was making some nasty threats about repaying it.' She gave a jagged little sigh and continued, 'I sent the money I got when I married you to her.'
Rafaele kept his eyes on her. 'It all seems rather convenient, does it not?' he said. 'It seems to me that my father's death came at rather a good time for you and your sister.'
Her grey-blue eyes flared with shock or was it anger? He couldn't quite make up his mind. 'Are you suggesting I did something to hurry up your father's death?' she asked.
'You stood to gain by it, though, did you not?'
Her face paled. 'I told you, I had no idea what was in your father's will. This is your home, Rafaele. I think deep down your father wanted you to have it.'
'He went a strange way about it,' Rafaele growled.
'Yes, but sometimes the things we have to work the hardest for are the things we end up valuing the most,' she said. 'Perhaps your father was trying to tell you something.'
'My father was always trying to tell me something,' he said bitterly. 'Like how I was the one who should have died that day, not Giovanni.'
Emma stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. 'Surely he didn't say that?'
He gave her a grim look. 'He did not need to. It is true. I should have been the one to die.'
She put a hand to her chest. 'Oh, Rafaele...'
'I was the older brother, I was supposed to protect him, but instead I killed him.'
Emma felt her stomach give a sudden lurch. The atmosphere between them had changed. She hesitantly pressed him for more details. 'W-what happened?'
His eyes looked soulless and bleak. 'I was teaching Giovanni to play cricket...It was his turn to bat. I didn't think I had thrown the ball too hard, I was always so careful, but somehow it hit him on the temple and he fell like a stone.'
Emma gasped. 'No one could blame you for that. No one,' she insisted hoarsely.
'Perhaps some would say I was just a child myself and could not be held responsible,' he said. 'But I did not see it that way and neither did my father. I spent the next eight years apologising for my existence. Every time my father looked at me I saw the hatred and disappointment on his face.'
Emma felt her heart tighten at what he had gone through. She could see the pain etched on his face, the deep grooves at the side of his mouth and the almost permanent lines on his forehead making her realise he was not the shallow, selfish man she had first thought. He was a deep and complex man, a man who had been cruelly hurt by the