Читать книгу 12 Gifts for Christmas - Джулия Кеннер, Джулия Кеннер - Страница 7

“I DON’T care what lies you think I’ve told you,” Lucy said bravely.

Rafi almost admired her. Almost.

“And it doesn’t matter anyway,” she continued. “I’m still leaving you. I should have done it a long time ago.”

She looked so small. So fragile. Her arms were crossed over her chest as if she were holding herself together by sheer force of will. Her coffee-colored eyes were huge and dark beneath her pale blond curls, giving her the look of an innocent. That was her deepest deception, the one that he had believed so fiercely no matter what those closest to him—including all of his staff and Safir—had told him when he’d first fallen under her spell. No matter what proof they’d claimed to have of her manipulative ways.

Until that phone call three months ago when she had revealed the truth in that hollow, shameless way, and he had been more devastated than he could remember ever being before.

Sometimes he thought he still was.

Rafi stepped away from his wife before he did something he would regret. Like taste her again. Hadn’t that been what had caused all this trouble in the first place?

He was a man who prided himself on his rigid code, his steely commitment to his duty. He lived for his name, his honor, his family and the responsibilities that were his by virtue of being the oldest male Qaderi of his generation. His cousin Adel might have been the current king’s chosen successor, but Rafi was charged with making sure the future king’s family maintained its wealth and power, the better to serve and support Adel when he ascended the throne. Rafi considered it an honor.

More than that, he was a man hewn of the very mountains of Alakkul itself, like his ancestors before him. Many empires had tried—and failed—to take this little valley, to use it for their own ends. But Alakkulians did not bend. They did not break. Rafi felt the truth of that like the very blood that ran through his veins, marking him, defining him.

And then one day he’d glanced up at a cocktail waitress in a club in Manchester, England, and lost his head. Lost himself. It was those damned eyes, soft and vulnerable, over a mouth that made him hard every time he looked at it. Even now.

And what a pretty mess she’d made of him, hadn’t she?

“I know it’s important to you to believe the worst of me,” she said, her voice clipped, color flooding her porcelain cheeks. “After all, how better to excuse your own appalling behavior?”

“My behavior?” Temper pounded through him, threaded with that desire for her that never left him, no matter how much distance he put between them. He bit out a laugh. “I’m sure that in your mind, your deceit and betrayal is as nothing.” He held her gaze until her skin reddened. “Unfortunately for you, Lucy, I live in the real world.”

He realized they were too close when his hands found their way to her upper arms, holding her there. He let go as if electrocuted. But he could not dismiss the beguiling satin feel of her skin as easily. He let his eyes travel over her.

It took a moment, but the difference in her appearance filtered through. She looked … perfectly appropriate. Her messy curls were tamed into a chignon, which only drew his attention to her mouth. The dress itself was exquisite, tailored to showcase her femininity without broadcasting her sensuality.

He felt a pang in the vicinity of his chest, but thrust it aside. She had been all bold colors, garish and exotic, when he’d brought her here. Hadn’t that been what had lured him in when he’d met her, in the midst of all that British rain? Her artless delight. Her simplicity.

But, of course, that had all been a lie, too. Hadn’t it? He shouldn’t mourn its loss. He should be pleased that his uncultured wife had bettered herself in his absence and now more closely suited the image of what his wife should be. So why did he want to thrust his fingers into her hair and shake it from its bonds, see it wild and free?

“Are you in costume?” he asked, without knowing he meant to speak. He indicated her clothes with a jerk of his chin. “You almost appear to be what you are not. The dutiful wife appropriate to my station.”

She flinched as if he’d slapped her and he felt as if he had, vile and low. Hot, red heat washed over her face, and her full lower lip trembled, but she did not bow her head. She did not look away from him, though he saw the hurt in her brown eyes. Rafi hated himself. But that never seemed to be enough to tamp down the poison inside of him, the great swell of bitterness and rage at what she’d done to him. He feared it defined him.

“You delight in being cruel,” she said, her words too careful, as if they cost her. “But I am not going to stand here and be your punching bag. I wanted to tell you I was leaving you to your face, assuming I ever saw it again, and now I have.” She pulled in a shaky breath, and her mouth twisted slightly. “Goodbye, Rafi.”

He let her walk away from him. He was barely aware of the room around them, so inured was he to the trappings of the Qaderi wealth and consequence. The ancient, sumptuous tapestries that cascaded down the walls were lost on him; they served only to frame Lucy in reds and golds as she moved over the deep carpet, past the magnificent four-poster bed that rose like an edifice in the middle of the room.

He watched that mesmerizing sway of her hips, and could not help but admire the perfect hourglass lushness of her body, her voluptuous curves. She had mesmerized him back in Manchester, and she bewitched him now.

She was a wild magic, this woman, and he had lost everything because of her. His self-respect. The politically advantageous marriage he’d been plotting for years. His standing in his particular Alakkulian circle of high-ranking ministers and power brokers, all of whom had expected better from Rafi Qaderi than a shotgun wedding to a woman like her. In some parts of Alakkul, it might as well still be the twelfth century—and to those of his countrymen, some of whom graced the halls of power for all that they were hidebound, a cocktail waitress might as well be a scarlet-painted whore. Even his own staff had been appalled that he could fall so low.

She had ruined him. But the greater sin was that he had let her.

“I appreciate the high drama of this performance, Lucy, I truly do.” He did not bother to raise his voice. She stopped walking, though she did not turn around. “But it is wasted on me. I fly back to Germany in the morning.” He shook his head. “Assuming your great emergency does not conveniently strike in the dark of night, of course.”

She did turn then. He had the strangest notion that she was someone else for a moment—the woman she was pretending to be, all elegance and affront, staring at him from across the lavish room as if he had gravely disappointed her. Again. It was no doubt the incongruity that made him feel something perilously close to shame.

“I am not playing games, Rafi.” Her voice was quiet, but he heard the faint tremor in it.

Why should that affect him? And yet something moved through him, acid and heavy, that felt too much like regret.

“My flight to Manchester leaves tomorrow,” she said, still in that cool, detached tone. “I’ve hired a car to pick me up and take me to the airport in the city. Soon it will be as if I was never here at all.”

“It is far too late for that, much as we both might wish it otherwise,” he said, and he almost did regret the coldness of his tone and the way she visibly steeled herself against it, as if she expected nothing more from him. “But I have no intention of letting you go, Lucy.”

“You have no choice—” she began, that hectic color working over her pale skin again, and he should not have taken such satisfaction in that.

“There will be no separation, no divorce, no hint of scandal at all,” he said softly, watching her brace herself against each word. “This is the marriage you wanted, Lucy. The one you worked so hard to achieve. I suggest you enjoy it. We are both stuck in it for the rest of our lives.”

She only stared at him for a moment, her expression unreadable, and then she turned and left the room.