Читать книгу The Sheikh Who Loved Her: Ruling Sheikh, Unruly Mistress / Surrender to the Playboy Sheikh / Her Desert Dream - Kate Hardy - Страница 13

HE LEFT Lucy to take her shower. He kissed her outside her room, brushing silky strands of hair away from her flushed face. For a moment when he released her her eyes were bright with hope, but then she understood. Pressing her lips together, she quietly left him.

He’d stood outside her closed door without moving before taking the stairs two at a time to his own apartment on the top floor. There was no point in wishing things could be different when he was chained to destiny.

Lucy had set the tradition for canapés and an aperitif before dinner. He settled for a coffee and a croissant in town. He chose an anonymous café none of his friends frequented. He needed space. He needed time to think, but whichever way he played it one thing was non-negotiable. He had to make a clean break from everything in his past in order to give his future to Isla de Sinnebar. He shouldn’t be thinking about Lucy at all, let alone thinking about her in terms of taking her with him—

Forget it!

He pushed his chair back so violently the other customers turned to stare. He paid the bill and clattered outside in his ski boots to harness himself first to his skis and then to the challenge of the mountains where no troubling personal thoughts could intrude.

But they would.

Lucy already meant more to him than he, in fairness to her, could tell her. She always would. She had won his heart in no time flat, and when it came to things he had to give up to be the type of leader he intended to be, she was turning out to be the biggest sacrifice of all.

She was back in uniform, having showered, dressed and cooked dinner. Tom had asked her to hold everything for an hour as Mac had gone out again to ski. That news only added to everything Mac hadn’t said to her outside her room. Fast sex was all part of his race to the finish. She could sense the fact that Mac would be leaving soon, though he was chatting to his friends now he was back as if an aperitif of hot, heavenly sex was an everyday occurrence for him.

Perhaps it was, Lucy reflected, handing round the canapés. Perhaps she was the one who needed a reality check to see those looks he kept flashing her way were just that—concerned looks. He didn’t want her burning dinner, after all.

The meal was a triumph, the group of men told her, and now they were going out skiing on the floodlit slopes while she cleared up. ‘Have a good time,’ she called after them. ‘Breakfast at seven?’ she confirmed with Mac, acting bright and businesslike as if she weren’t hoping for some words of reassurance long before then. He’d changed into jeans, boots and a hooded sweater after taking a shower and looked hot beyond belief, making the gulf between them unbridgeable and herself a fantasist for even imagining it could be any different.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to stay and help you clear up?’

She did a double take, while his friends laughed good-naturedly as if this was the most hilarious suggestion Mac had ever made. ‘Thank you, I’m good,’ she said, smiling a casual smile as if there were nothing between them.

She thought Mac’s look was almost one of disappointment, but then he flashed a glance at his watch and his expression firmed up. ‘We’d better get going,’ he announced to his friends. ‘Time’s running out.’

She shivered inwardly as Theo clapped a hand round Mac’s shoulders as if he understood. They all understood—while, for all her intimacy with Mac, she knew nothing about his private life. ‘Have a good night,’ she said on autopilot, keeping her smile in place until Mac led the men out of the room.

But then her smile faded. She felt sick, weak, foolish and the rest. Someone should have warned her how much love hurt—she’d have been more careful to avoid it. But she could hardly blame Mac for wanting to ski with his friends when the slopes were floodlit for the torchlit procession down the mountain to the village. Skiing was what he was here for, after all. He was hardly going to stay behind on one of the best nights of the year to help her clean the chalet. Plucking a clean cloth from the drawer, she set to. However many knocks life threw at her she was going to bounce back and start over. The next stage would be to forget him.

Forget Mac? Impossible. She would never forget him. She wouldn’t even keep him in her heart as a warning; she’d keep him in her heart because that was where he belonged. And if Mac couldn’t see how she felt about him …

He was hardly going to see it now, Lucy reasoned sensibly, giving the table the polish of its life—it was proving harder to bring up a sheen while her tears were falling on it. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that Mac would soon be gone, or that she only had herself to blame for falling in love with him, but it was one thing being a fool and quite another knowing it.

‘Let me pick up the pieces for you,’ Tom offered, ducking his head inside the helicopter.

Pieces? This was a car crash. ‘No need, Tom. I’ve got it covered.’ He’d been right thinking Lucy wasn’t his usual type of woman, and right again, suspecting he was in too deep. So much for holding back on feelings. Lucy had drawn more feeling out of him than he’d realised he had. She’d given more than he’d ever expected anyone to give—and he had expected no more of Lucy than he expected of any woman.

‘Do you want me to pass on any messages?’ Tom shouted above the roar of the rotor blades starting up overhead.

It was better to make a clean break—better for Lucy. He’d known his destiny since Ra’id had explained it to him when he was just thirteen. He was going back to Isla de Sinnebar to put on the robes of duty and devote himself to the service of a country. In doing so he would lose his freedom. He did this gladly, but a pure, free spirit like Lucy Tennant deserved something better than a man who had to be so single-minded for the sake of his country.

‘Razi?’ Tom pressed him as the engine noise increased.

Guilt and longing swept over him. He felt so bad leaving Lucy. The first of many times he would experience such feelings, he suspected as the image of her open, trusting face remained steady in his mind. ‘If she needs anything, anything at all—a job, a reference …’ Tom and he were almost as close as brothers and there was no need for explanation—they both knew he was talking about Lucy.

He felt diminished as he handed Tom his no-frills business card. He’d signed it so it carried his authority. ‘See she gets this, will you, Tom?’ Before Tom had chance to answer or he had chance to change his mind, he gave the signal and the helicopter lifted off.

What was this? She felt sick inside as she sank down on the bed. She had just switched on the bedside light and seen the money someone had left on the nightstand. Before this moment she hadn’t even known there was such a thing as a five-hundred-euro note—and now there was a stack of them within touching distance.

Not that she wanted to touch them, even though they were crisp and new and looked as though they hadn’t been touched, other than to have whatever paper bands had held them together removed.

There must have been tens of thousands of euros in the neat pile, Lucy realised, staring at them. And there was ice in the pit of her stomach, because she knew. She didn’t need it spelling out to her—she didn’t need to think about it. Mac hadn’t come home with the other men and his bodyguards had gone too. Whoever he was—and she had shut the possibilities out of her mind just to live the fantasy—fabulously wealthy Mac had returned to whatever world he belonged to, leaving her with a small fortune in pinkish, purplish notes, as if sufficient money could paper over the cracks in her heart.

He thought money could do that?

She turned her face to the wall, biting down on the back of her hand so she wouldn’t cry out and the other men wouldn’t hear her. Drawing a deep shuddering breath, she told herself she’d got what she’d deserved—a lot more than she’d deserved, in fact; there was enough money here to open her own restaurant …

And even that didn’t begin to ward off the chill creeping through her veins. Her legs felt like lead as she dragged them up onto the bed. Tugging up the duvet to her chin, she lay unsleeping, fully clothed and shivering as she contemplated a world that was not just empty now, but irrevocably changed—by Mac’s opinion of her, and by his pay-off.

Change was inevitable at the end of the ski season. Change was all-encompassing when a pregnancy test turned out to be positive.

Lucy rested against the wall of her bathroom with her eyes shut. When she opened them again the betraying blue line was still there. She’d been feeling sick every morning recently, and all-over funny—different—changed—as if she weren’t alone in her body any longer. There was a very good reason for that, as she now knew for sure …

Stroking her hands down her still-flat stomach, she felt an incredible sense of wonder—instant love—instant fight-to-the-death protective instincts towards the little bud of life sheltering and growing inside her—someone to love—someone she hoped would love her—a family all of her own …

And Mac?

Why did he have to know?

Remembering the pile of money he’d left her and the way he’d left her—leaving Tom to pass on his business card of all things—he didn’t deserve to know.

Grit her teeth against the pain as she might, she still loved him. She would always love Mac. Though she hated what he’d done, she couldn’t fight the flood of memories—so many good memories and so few bad—until that last bitter blow, when he’d left the resort without saying goodbye—without leaving a proper message, nothing but that wretched business card that Tom had put in an envelope and sealed. ‘You never know when you might need something,’ Tom had said in his kindly way, after explaining what the envelope contained.

‘I’ll never need anything from Mac,’ she had assured him tightly, planting the unopened envelope deep in her apron pocket.

‘A job, maybe?’ Tom had said with a shrug as if he sensed her hurt and wanted to ease it.

‘No, nothing,’ she had insisted, shaking her head. When she’d returned to her room she had stuffed the envelope to the back of a drawer where it still lay to this day, untouched.

Well, it gave her a use for the stack of untouched banknotes currently residing in a large padded envelope with her name on it in the company safe, Lucy reflected, throwing away the third pregnancy test she’d done that morning. There was so much to consider. She could hardly arrive at her parents’ house with a baby. She would need a home for one—a home with a proper garden where a little girl could play. She was so sure it was a little girl. There was a business to think about. She’d get a job to start with to help with the fund and then she’d strike out on her own.

She was going to be a mother …

The thought had not only filled her with joy, but with renewed ambition. She had someone to fight for now—someone who would need a college fund and a prom dress and every advantage she could give her.

And Mac?

Unfortunately, she had to tell him. She had to relent. She didn’t want anything from him, but he should know. Mac should be given the opportunity to know he was going to be a father. She had to give him that chance. She had no choice. Telling him was the right thing to do.

R. Maktabi. CEO Maktabi Communications. Having dived into her sock drawer in a frenzy of ‘let’s-get-this-over-with’, she found that was all that was printed on the card. She almost laughed out loud to think Mac was in the wrong business—communicating was hardly his forte. But there were three telephone numbers: London, New York and somewhere in the Arabian Gulf called Isla de Sinnebar. So that explained Mac’s exotic looks, Lucy mused, staring blindly out of the window. Mac had contacts in both east and west and now he had returned to … She shrugged and dialled the London number. Mac wasn’t there, a frosty secretary told her. She could practically see the woman flinching over the phone when she’d asked for Mac. She realised now that Mac was an abbreviation of his surname, and guessed not many women used it—or, at least, not to the old battleaxe on the other end of the phone. ‘Sorry to have troubled you—’

She drew a blank with New York too—but she’d saved the best ‘til last. Closing her eyes, she allowed the vision of a desert encampment complete with billowing ivory silk tents to flow through her mind—and had to stop that thought dead when she discovered how many gorgeous women dressed in rainbow hues like so many lovely butterflies were queuing up to serve canapés to a recumbent Mac, who was reclining on silken cushions as they fed him dainty morsels. That wasn’t such a great image.

‘An appointment with the CEO of Maktabi Communications?’ a very polite man enquired in the softest, creamiest voice Lucy had ever heard when she got through to Mac’s office in the Arabian Gulf. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’

‘But he is there?’ She was clutching Mac’s card so tightly, she had crumpled it, Lucy realised as she waited for an answer. ‘And if he is, may I speak to him, please?’ she persisted, remembering who had made her brave. ‘It’s of the utmost importance.’

‘May I enquire what your business is?’

Mac was there. She knew it. She clutched the phone to her chest, her heart hammering so hard she was sure the man could hear it beating in Isla de Sinnebar. She put the phone to her ear again. ‘I’m afraid it’s personal. Perhaps I could meet with him?’ She had no intention of telling some stranger her business—but if she could just get into the building, maybe she could find Mac.

‘You cannot possibly make an appointment to see—’

Cannot possibly? She held the phone away from her ear. Was Mac contagious? Had he suddenly become so aloof, so untouchable, he wouldn’t speak to people he knew? ‘But I know him,’ she protested, ‘and I’m sure he’ll want to speak to me.’

There was silence and then a rather offensive laugh. ‘You cannot imagine how many people say the same thing,’ the man derided.

How many women? Lucy wondered.

Her heart shrank to the size of a bitter, joyless nut. Suddenly she saw how it must sound—a young girl that no one had heard of rang up to demand an appointment with the head of a large multinational corporation …

‘And in any case,’ the man rapped dismissively, ‘we have a public holiday coming up so there would be no one here to see you. Should you be so foolish enough to decide to come you’ll find no one here—everywhere will be shut from—’

‘From when?’ Lucy demanded eagerly.

‘From Thursday,’ he said, sounding surprised that she hadn’t folded yet.

In three days’ time. ‘Perfect. Can we arrange our meeting for Wednesday?’

‘Our meeting?’ There was silence as the man absorbed her sleight of hand. ‘I don’t think you heard me. There can be no meeting, Ms—’

‘Miss Tennant—’

‘Goodbye, Miss Tennant.’

Lucy stared at the silent receiver in disbelief. How rude. It was another dead end, but she couldn’t leave it here. She was shaking and not feeling brave at all after such a humiliating put-down, but with the baby to consider nothing would stop her seeing Mac. Dialling the operator, she got ready to book her flight.