Happily Ever After...: His Reluctant Cinderella / His Very Convenient Bride / A Deal to Mend Their Marriage. Sophie Pembroke
the lights play on her hair and face, Raff could only agree.
‘We have some very generous—and very rich—patrons,’ he said, trying to drag his thoughts back to the business at hand. ‘I hadn’t even thought about this side of our work. I spend the money, not raise it. I need to talk to Grandfather about allowing them to use Rafferty’s for something in the future. We could certainly donate food and staff or raffle prizes.’
And the people he knew could give even more. Helping with the last stages of the fundraiser had been an eye-opener, just not a particularly welcome one.
Raff knew he did a good job out in the field, but anyone with a good grasp of electrics, mechanics and project management could do that. He had other uses that were far more unique: entrée into some of England’s richest and most influential echelons and, although he himself didn’t value those connections, he knew that no charity could run on good intentions alone. Ensuring the donations came in was a vital role.
But would it be as satisfying? Or would it be a gilded cage just like the one he was working so hard to escape from?
‘Is everything set up?’ Clara was as cool and collected as ever, on the surface at least, but when he took her arm he felt the telltale tremble.
‘Ready to go,’ he promised her. ‘My mission tonight is to get all these people to remember why they’re here and part with as much money as possible.’
And throw the gauntlet down. Show his grandfather that this was where he belonged—and this was where he was staying, no matter what. Only he didn’t feel the same burning need to get back out into the field. It helped, of course, that he had been helping to set up the fundraiser, interacting with colleagues, seeing a new side of the charity’s work. But it was more than that.
Clara. Everything he didn’t want or need in his life. She needed stability and commitment and a father for her daughter, not a travelling jack of all trades whose idea of a perfect day with family meant a day by himself. And yet, and yet...
Somehow she had got under his skin. More than attraction, more than lust. He respected her, admired her strength—but it was those glimpses of carefully hidden vulnerability that really hooked him in. He knew how much she hid it, despised any display of weakness. But she had trusted him enough to lean on him, cry on him, allow him to shoulder her burdens for a short time.
From Clara that was a rare and precious gift. But was he worthy? And was he capable of accepting all that she had to offer?
* * *
‘They certainly do a lot of good.’ Raff’s grandfather had been slowly softening throughout the evening, his initial scepticism disappearing when he saw his table companions and the carefully prepared meal that had been specially provided for him. If he still cast a longing look or two at the bottles of very expensive wine that littered the table, he had at least stopped complaining and was sipping the despised mineral water with martyred compliance.
‘I had no idea about the sheer scale of their work,’ Clara agreed. ‘Nor just how desperate things can be. I’ll never complain about waiting for a doctor’s appointment again.’
Raff and his colleagues spent their lives making sure that people all over the globe, people who lived in poverty, who had fled their homes, who had seen their world turned into warzones still had access to medicine, to doctors. To hope.
He could have taken the easy option, the job provided for him, the family money, enjoyed all that London had to offer the young and the rich. In a way she wished he had; it would be so easy to keep her distance from that man. Much harder to stay away from the man sitting next to her, even though there was no way there could ever be any kind of happy ever after between them.
But in the few days since the meeting with Byron something had changed. They were easier with each other, more intimate. Hands brushed, lingered, eyes met, held. Nothing had happened, not again, but the promise of it hung seductively over them.
Butterflies tumbled around her stomach, a warm tingle spreading through her at the thought.
‘I’m sorry.’ Raff finally managed to gracefully extricate himself from the conversation he was embroiled in. ‘I’ve been neglecting you all evening.’
‘That’s okay.’ After all, she was being paid for her time.
Not that Clara felt she could charge a penny for tonight; she would ask Raff to donate her fee back to the charity.
Raff pulled a face. ‘I’d much rather be talking to you, but I have been promising myself that as soon as the dancing starts I am all yours.’ His eyes were full of promise and a shiver ran through her despite the heat in the overcrowded room.
‘You didn’t say anything about dancing,’ Clara protested. ‘I can barely walk in these heels, let alone dance.’
‘Don’t worry.’ His expression was pure wicked intent. ‘I won’t let you fall.’
‘You better not. When are you on?’
‘In a few minutes. Wish me luck?’
Clara put one hand on his cheek, allowing herself the luxury of touch, rubbing her palm along the rough stubble. ‘Good luck,’ but she knew he didn’t need it. If he managed to get one hundredth of his charm across then he would have the guests clamouring to outbid each other.
The presentations had been spread out throughout the evening. A welcome speech before canapés, then, after the starters, two of the nurses gave an evocative talk that brought their exciting, dangerous and very necessary work alive. A surgeon’s visceral yet compelling description of the challenges she faced was an uneasy filler between the main course and pudding.
No one else seemed to notice the incongruity between their surroundings, with the conspicuous display of wealth and luxury, and the poverty and need so eloquently conveyed. Clara saw women wiping tears, the diamonds on their hands and wrists worth more than the total the charity was trying to raise.
‘We need to make sure everyone is suitably worked up before the auction,’ Raff whispered. ‘They’ll all be well fed and watered. We want them to go home with their consciences as sated as their stomachs!’
Just the nearness of him, though he was barely touching her, that lightest of contact, sent tremors rippling up and down her body. For so long she had been shut away in a box of her own design, not allowing herself to do or to feel. Constraining herself to the narrowest of lives. And it had worked. She hadn’t been hurt, hadn’t messed up.
But she hadn’t felt either. Hadn’t felt this bitter-sweetness ache. That awareness that overtook everything so that all she could see was him; she could feel nothing but his breath on her cheek, sending waves of need shuddering through her.
Clara took a deep breath, trying to regulate her hammering pulse, remember where they were, what he was about to do. ‘So it’s up to you to seal the deal?’
He grimaced. ‘I wish they’d put me on first. Logistics isn’t exactly the sexiest subject. They’ll be eying up the petits fours and coffee and be in a post-dinner slump by the time the auction comes around.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Clara reached for his hand and squeezed it, trying to quell the absurd jump every nerve gave as her fingers tangled with his. ‘If anybody can make logistics fascinating, you can. Go get them.’
Raff turned and looked at her and for one long moment the tent fell away, the people fading away to nothing but a murmuring backdrop to the scorching intensity of his gaze. ‘You think?’
‘I do.’ And she did. This was a new side to the confident, nonchalant playboy—but then wasn’t that playboy just a façade? A mask he wore well but a mask nonetheless. And the more Clara saw the passionate, principled man behind it, the more she wanted to retreat, to run away.
She’d thought playboys were her downfall. She’d been wrong. She had survived Byron, left him with her head held high and her heart only slightly cracked. But a man who cared, a man