Free The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress by Penny Jordan Page B

changed. She could almost feel the coldness now emanating from him, replacing what had previously been close to a shared openness about the importance of the garden. Now that was gone, and when Raphael swung back towards her, his expression shielded by the shadows, his voice was hard with warning as he told her, ‘According to your project notes, you’ve allowed three months for clearing the site.’
    Charley nodded her head.
    ‘I want to see that work done in two months, not three.’
    ‘That can’t be done,’ Charley protested. The intimacy they had shared earlier was over, she recognised, and Raphael was once again a man who was making it plain exactly how he felt about her and her ability to do the job he would no doubt have preferred to give to someone else.
    ‘Anything can be done if one goes about it in the right way.’ And that included finding a way to stop his senses from being so aware of her and his body from aching for her, Raphael reminded himself inwardly. ‘As I have already told you,’ he informed Charley, ‘I expect my orders to be followed and carried out. There is no room on this project for a project manager who cannot achieve what needs to be achieved. If you feel you cannot do that…’
    He was challenging her—setting her targets that could not be achieved because he wanted to get rid of her.
    Well, she would show him.
    ‘Very well,’ she told him. ‘But it will be expensive.’ Now she was the one challenging him—to pay up or back down.
    ‘Half as much again as you have already allowed for the cost of bringing in the extra manpower, but worth it for what it will save in time,’ Raphael agreed with a dismissive shrug, before adding warningly, ‘However, what is in question is not whether or not I am prepared to incur additional costs where I think it necessary but whether—or not—you are up to the task of managing this project.’
    Charley had had enough. What had happened to their earlier harmony and the belief she had had thenthat he was prepared to give her a chance? They shared a recognition of just what the garden must once have been. Or had she just imagined it? Because she had wanted to connect emotionally with him? Charley’s heart thudded into her ribs. That was nonsense. He meant nothing to her. It was the job that was important. Nothing else.
    Was it? So why was she feeling so hurt and rejected, so sharply reminded of the way she had so often felt as a child, when her parents had compared her looks unfavourably to those of her sisters, making her aware that she was not good enough and that they wished that she was different—just as Raphael obviously didn’t feel that she was good enough, and wished that the project was being managed by someone else.
    It was such a blow after the intimacy and understanding she felt they had shared that Charley couldn’t stop herself from bursting out, ‘You want to get rid of me, don’t you? You want me to fail. You want to bully me into saying I can’t cope, just as my boss wants to bully me into handing in my resignation so that he can give my job to his daughter. Well, much as I’d love to oblige you both, and set myself free from the necessity of having to put up with you, I can’t and I won’t. I need this job, and I need it because, as I have already told you, without the money I earn from it my sisters and I could lose our home. Because of that I will manage this project successfully—no matter how hard you try to push me into leaving.’
    Raphael turned away from her again. He was loath to admit it, but there was an element of truth in her accusationthat he wanted to get rid of her. And not just because he doubted her ability to handle the project successfully. No, it was the effect she was having on him physically as a man that was the prime cause of his desire to get her out of his life. Raphael wasn’t used to his body, his senses, challenging the rules he had made for the way he lived his life. The reality was