She felt Raif’s words as if they were tiny cuts across her heart. “Then that’s all I needed to know.”
“But that’s not all,” he persisted. “It might have started that way—back in the park, at the very beginning—but it isn’t how I feel now. Not about you, Shanal.”
“How can I believe you?” she asked desperately, tears filling her eyes and obscuring her vision. “Let’s be honest, Raif. For years we’ve been sparring with one another. We’ve never seen eye to eye and it’s not as if we were ever friends. I’m the fool. I should have questioned your willingness to help me in the first place.”
And really, what did it matter whether she believed him or not? Staying with him wasn’t an option, even if he truly wanted her to. She had only one choice available to her: she had to go back with Burton. That crushing sense of how inescapable her situation was now consumed her. She pulled away.
“I have to go. He won’t wait forever.”
“Let him leave then.”
“I can’t.”
She forced herself to turn away from Raif and walk toward the car. Burton got out as she approached and strode around to the passenger side to hold the door open for her.
“Looks like history repeats itself,” he taunted. “And yet again, I win the girl.”
Nine
Raif watched as the BMW drove away, his body a mass of bunched muscle still tensed in shock. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. That Shanal had chosen Burton over him. Burton’s parting jeer echoed in his head, and a red film of rage crossed Raif’s vision. The man was toxic. He’d twisted the truth of what had happened in the past—surely Shanal had to see that.
So why had she chosen to return to him? There had to be more to it. She was an intelligent woman and she had to see that things didn’t add up with Burton. The man always had an agenda, always had to be on top—by fair means or foul.
Even when they’d been at private school together he’d been competitive, but that had been nothing compared to how competitive Burton had become as they’d grown into adulthood. Nothing was sacred anymore. Burton had crossed the bridge between good-natured rivalry and the out and out need to win at any cost long before they’d finished high school. Raif had felt the rifts in their camaraderie—for they had never truly been friends—years ahead of the issue with Laurel.
But none of that meant anything right now, he thought as he watched the taillights on the BMW flick once before it turned and disappeared from view. All that mattered was that the woman who’d blown his mind and his body into new realms had walked away from him for good.
Raif strode back to the houseboat. There was nothing keeping him here now. He needed to get back downriver and home. As he shoved off and headed back toward the lock he considered everything that had happened in the past four days. It had been such a short time and yet it felt like so much longer.
After passing through the lock and setting his course, Raif let his mind mull over the final confrontation. Though he hadn’t heard everything they’d said to each other, there’d been an undercurrent between Shanal and Burton. He’d felt it as if it was a tangible thing. Their body language had not been that of lovers, that was for sure. In fact, when he thought back to the church—to before that moment when Shanal had dropped her bouquet, given Burton back his ring and headed for the door—Raif had noticed already the sense of triumph in Burton’s posture. As if Shanal was a prize he’d won, rather than the woman he loved and wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
Raif knew Shanal deserved more than that in her life partner. In fact, he’d always believed she wanted more than that, too. Even Ethan had said the same after that botched business when he’d asked Shanal to marry him, as part of his misguided efforts to avoid admitting his own feelings about Isobel a couple years back. If Shanal was the kind of woman who was just after what money could bring her, or even if she simply wanted a marriage that brought practical benefits and made logical sense, she’d have accepted Ethan’s offer with alacrity, not laughingly but lovingly turned him down. And Ethan was her best friend—someone she always looked at with warmth and affection, even if there was no heated passion between them. There had been no warmth or affection in her expression when Shanal looked at Burton.
Raif thought about the niggle he’d had a day or so ago, suspecting there was way more to this than met the eye. His instincts hadn’t let him down before and he had no reason not to trust in them now. And even if he was wrong about Shanal and what she really wanted, he needed to know the truth, for his own sake. If he was right, and he fully expected to be, somehow he’d convince her to walk, hell, run away from Burton again. And this time, he’d hold on to her and keep her safe forever.