Free The Thorn in His Side by Kim Lawrence Page B

down at the passage he had pointed to. ‘Is all this mystery stuff really necessary?’ She picked up the papers and waved them at him. ‘Why can’t you just say what is so …?’
    A word on a fluttering page caught her attention and Libby stopped mid-sentence, snatching the page in question free of the binder.
    ‘How … how is this possible? The house … What—’ she demanded in a quavering voice ‘—is this?’ She lifted her gaze, her eyes brushing his before dropping back to the paper.
    ‘It is an agreement drawn up between my grandfather and a development company signed, sealed and just awaiting the signatures. Unfortunately for Aldo he died before he had a chance to call in the loan he gave your father, which had always been his intention.’
    Pale as paper, Libby shook her head in a negative motion of rejection. ‘No!’
    The muscles along Rafael’s strong jaw tightened as he drew in a shuddering breath through flared nostrils. Her refusal to abandon her belief in his grandfather’s integrity and her readiness to assign the worst possible motives to him evoked a seething frustration.
    Libby’s fingers trembled as she turned a page, and she gasped when she saw the figure that leapt out at her. ‘But it’s not worth that much—nowhere near,’ she protested as she breathed through a wave of nausea.
    Rafael met her startled gaze and provided a simple explanation for the staggering amount on the page.
    ‘With planning permission for an out-of-town shopping complex a formality, it is worth that much … almostcertainly more. My grandfather had an over-inflated opinion of his ability but any half-decent businessman would have got a better price.’
    Libby, white-faced and shaking with the impact of these revelations, struggled to take on board this information. The home she had loved was to be turned into a shopping centre?
    ‘They want to knock down our house?’ If this was true, did Rafael plan to follow through with this diabolical scheme? ‘But this
can’t
be right. Your grandfather was helping Dad—he was his friend.’
    ‘My grandfather never put friendship ahead of profit in his life. When he offered your father a loan he knew that he would be unable to repay it and your father didn’t examine Aldo’s motives too deeply because he wanted an easy way out, and not one that required any sacrifice or work on his part. He is a lazy man who inherited a healthy business and ran it into the ground. He enjoyed seeing his name on the letterhead that appears to have been the limit of his enthusiasm.’
    ‘My father put his family ahead of his work.’ Unlike some of her friends’ fathers, her dad had always been there; he never worked late.
    ‘Your father put
everything
ahead of his work.’
    Libby, shaking her head, lowered her gaze.
    There was some sympathy in his eyes as he studied her downbent head. ‘You know what I’m saying is true.’
    Libby compressed her lips and felt guilty as hell because he was right; she had recognised that there was a grain of truth in his accusations. ‘At least my dad wasn’t a crook!’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘And he’snot a callous bastard like you.’
    ‘Oh, my grandfather never did anything illegal.’Aware that the charge of callousness had been aimed at him, Rafael did not attempt to deny the charge.
    Her eyes shot wide. ‘And you think that makes it all right? How proud your grandfather must have been of you. A regular chip off the old block,’ she jeered.
    Unprepared for his reaction to her words, Libby physically recoiled from the lick of white-hot rage she glimpsed in his compelling deep-set eyes. But more disturbing than this was the low, almost feral sound that was dragged from Rafael’s throat. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
    ‘I was nothing to him, and he was less than nothing to me.’ Nostrils flared, he snapped his fingers expressively.
    Conscious that she had inadvertently hit a nerve, Libby knew the sensible thing