Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection - Мишель Смарт, Kate Hardy - Страница 100

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT WAS ICY cold back in England after the seductive warmth of the Jazratian sun. Livvy returned to a stack of unopened mail, a cat determined to ignore her and the realisation that she didn’t have a clue what she wanted to do with the rest of her life—except that deep down she knew it no longer involved making beds and cooking breakfasts.

She had left Jazratan with a heavy heart—without even a final kiss from Saladin—knowing she had only herself to blame. She had kicked him out of her bed and told him she was returning to England and he had retaliated by angrily telling her to go ahead. Had she really expected the proud sheikh to mount some sort of campaign to get her to change her mind? She kept telling herself that he’d been offering sex, not security or love. And anyone with half a brain could see it was better to get out now, while her heart was still intact.

Unless it was already too late. Hadn’t her heart felt crushed when she’d left Jazratan on Saladin’s private jet? When, earlier that same morning, she’d crept along to the stables to rub her cheek against Burkaan’s thick mane and the stallion had stamped one of his hooves—almost as if he had shared her grief at parting and had known the reason why salty tears were flowing down her face.

Saladin had been courteous when she’d been granted an audience to say a formal farewell to him—in the throne room, where he was surrounded by his powerful advisors and bodyguards. Had he correctly interpreted the silent plea in her eyes that had asked for a moment alone with him—and simply chosen to ignore it? Or had his mind already been on other things?

Either way, he had given her nothing but a brief handshake and a flicker of a smile, accompanied by a few words of thanks—which had only added to her feelings of misery as one of his staff had presented her with a cheque. And she felt as if she’d sold herself somewhere along the way.

But she hadn’t, she told herself fiercely. She wasn’t a victim—not anymore. She’d been sexually awoken by a man who had turned out to be an amazing lover. She had been persuaded back onto a horse and had realised just how much she loved riding, and she must be grateful to him for that. If she had learned anything it was that you couldn’t let yourself live in the past and be dominated by it. Not like Saladin and the beautiful young wife he was unable to forget. And that was the irony of it all—that he didn’t follow the same advice he’d so eagerly given her. He could dish it out, but he couldn’t take it.

And if she now believed herself to be in love with him, well—she would have to wait for it to pass.

At least Stella—her part-time help—had disposed of the Christmas tree, and the decorations had been returned to the loft. The snow was all melted and the holiday was nothing but a distant memory when Livvy arrived home. All that remained were a few stray mistletoe berries, which had rolled underneath a bureau in the hall and somehow escaped being swept up.

Livvy wrote an email to Alison Clark and her friends saying what a shame it was they’d had to cancel their visit and expressing her hope that they’d enjoyed their Christmas in the London hotel. Unenthusiastically, she looked down at the blank pages of her diary. Could she really face trying to drum up more business for the year ahead? To wipe out most of her summer by clearing up after people, when she’d been doing it for so long? All to maintain a house that just didn’t feel the same any more. Her inherited home now seemed like nothing but a pile of bricks and mortar, not something she was tied to by blood. She found herself looking around the rooms with a critical eye. It was just a too-big house that needed redecoration and a family to bring it alive, not some aging spinster who rattled around in the rooms.

‘So what was it like?’ questioned Stella as they were cleaning one of the bedrooms a few days after Livvy had returned from Jazratan.

Livvy gave the bedspread another tug. ‘What, specifically?’

Stella shrugged her generous shoulders. ‘You know. Living in the desert.’

Livvy puffed out her cheeks and sighed as she straightened up. ‘It was...different.’ She hesitated, trying to be objective. Trying to forget the man who was the very heart of the place. The man who made her own heart ache whenever she thought about him. ‘It was lovely, actually. Really lovely. The palace itself is unbelievable—and so are the gardens. There’s a kind of beauty in all that heat and starkness, and the stars are the brightest I’ve ever seen.’

‘And didn’t they feed you?’ asked Stella critically. ‘You’ve lost weight.’

‘Of course they did. It’s just that—’ Livvy gave a wan smile ‘—I didn’t seem to have a lot of appetite. It was very...hot.’

No, not because it was hot. Because she’d been so obsessed with Saladin that she’d barely been able to think about anything else. She still couldn’t and it was driving her crazy. There was her future to decide, and she was busy obsessing about a man with black eyes and a hard body, who had taken her to those bright stars and back.

And she would never see him again.

‘Well, there’s a pipe leaking in the red bathroom. Better get it seen to before it brings the roof down,’ added Stella, with her customary love of domestic drama.

The plumbing problems distracted her for a while, and then Livvy burned off a load of frustration by picking up the leaves that had gathered in a sodden heap by the front door.

It was after lunch, when Peppa had finally decided to forgive Livvy for going away and had started winding her furry body around her legs at every opportunity, that the telephone rang. Stella bustled along the corridor to answer it, her eyes nearly popping out of her head as she listened to the voice at the other end.

‘It’s him,’ she mouthed.

‘Who?’ Livvy mimed back.

‘The sheikh.’

With a tight smile Livvy took the phone and carried it through to her little study, trying to control her suddenly unsteady breathing as she gazed out at the garden where water was dripping from the bare branches of the trees and the grass resembled a sea of mud. As a reflection of the way she felt, it was perfect. You need to stay calm, she told herself. You need to be strong. For all she knew, Saladin might just be phoning for a chat to check she’d got home safely. This was probably normal for people who’d briefly been lovers. He might even be wanting to ask her advice about Burkaan. Yes, that was probably it. But she could do nothing about the wild thunder of her heart.

‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Livvy?’

‘Yes, it’s me.’ But as the silken caress of his voice washed over her, some of her forced calm began to trickle away and Livvy realised that she wasn’t any good at playing games, or pretending to be friends. Not when she wanted to blurt out how much she missed him. Not when she wanted to feel his arms around her, holding her very tight. She heard the ping of an email entering her inbox. ‘What can I do for you, Saladin?’

‘Which isn’t the friendliest greeting I’ve ever heard,’ he observed drily.

‘But I thought that’s the way you wanted it. Formal and polite. I thought we’d concluded our business together. I thought we’d said everything that needed to be said. That was certainly the impression I got when I left.’ She paused. ‘Which makes me wonder why you’re ringing?’

At the other end of the line, Saladin stared out at the sky. Why was he ringing? It was a question he hadn’t wanted to confront and one that instinctively he shied away from answering. He wondered if he could persuade her to return to Jazratan by telling her that his horse was pining for her, which was true.

He suspected not. He sensed that financial inducements would no longer sway her, no matter how much more generous he made his offer. Just as he sensed that pride wouldn’t allow her to accept something that could only ever be second best. He sighed. He realised that, for all her newly awoken sexual liberation, Livvy Miller remained a fiercely traditional woman who would not look kindly on the sort of relationship he usually offered his lovers. And the pain in his heart was very real, wasn’t it? The question was how far he was prepared to go to be with her.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Talk away. I’m not stopping you.’

‘I’m not having this conversation over the phone.’

‘And I’m not offering you an alternative,’ she answered coolly. ‘What do you want, Saladin?’

‘To see you.’

‘Sorry. No can do.’

‘Livvy,’ he growled. ‘I’m serious.’

‘And so am I,’ she said. ‘You said some pretty tough things to me that last night. You were suspicious and hostile and accused me of all kinds of devious motivations—’

‘For which I apologised.’

Only because you had to, thought Livvy. Only because you had to. ‘Yes, you did. So surely we’ve said everything that needs to be said. It was a fantastic affair and I’m sorry it had to end that way—but the point is that it had to end some time.’ She cleared her throat. ‘How’s Burkaan?’

‘He’s fine. Livvy—’

‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ she said desperately as she heard another email ping into her inbox. ‘Someone’s trying to contact me. Goodbye, Saladin, and...take care of yourself.’

She cut the call before she had the chance to change her mind, or to be lulled by a seductive voice into doing something that would only bring her pain.

After Livvy had put the phone down, she sat down at her desk. She wasn’t going to make a fuss about it, she thought, even though her heart was crashing painfully against her ribcage, because the pain would go. It might take time, but it would definitely go. She would answer her emails and carry on as normal and rejoice that she’d had the strength to resist him. Her hand hovered over the mouse and her whole body stiffened as she clicked on the first email and began to read...

An hour must have passed before she realised that she hadn’t moved and was sitting in total darkness and that Peppa was mewing plaintively by her feet and Stella had long gone. She ought to do something. She ought to feed the cat and...

And what?

Sit there for the rest of the evening thinking about what a devious bastard Saladin really was?

Her eyes skated down the rest of the emails. There were two tentative booking enquiries, plus one of those round-robin jokes that one of her school friends always insisted on sending and that she didn’t find remotely funny. And a ‘Singles Nite’ being offered by the local pub. She screwed her eyes up as she looked at the date. Tonight’s date.

Print out this voucher for free entry to the Five Bells ‘Singles Nite’. Music, karaoke and so much more!

A sudden new resolution flooded through her as, impetuously, she pressed the print button, fed Peppa and then went upstairs to get ready.

She told herself that she was going to stop acting like a startled hermit and get out there and put everything Saladin had taught her into practice. No longer was she going to live like a nun. There was no reason why she couldn’t have other relationships—in the same way that there was no reason she couldn’t have another career. Defiantly, she applied more make-up than usual, fished out a sparkly top to wear with her jeans and piled her hair into an elaborate topknot so that it wouldn’t get wrecked by the wind on the way out to the car.

When she drew up outside the pub, she almost turned around to go home because music was blaring out at a deafening pitch. Inside it was crowded, but at least the noise became less loud when a woman started swaying around on a small stage, tunelessly singing about her intention to survive. There were a few people Livvy recognised from the village, but not well enough to sit with—so she bought herself a tomato juice, told herself that she would drink it up and then go. Baby steps, she thought. Baby steps. You’ve come out on your own and it hasn’t killed you. And although it’s pretty dire—next time might be better.

She found a corner seat and sat there smiling as if her life depended on it. She tapped her feet to the music and tried to look as if she was having a good time and eventually a man about her age wandered over, with a half-drunk pint in his hand. He had thick hair and crinkly blue eyes and he asked if he might join her.

But before she could answer, a silky and authoritative answer came from behind him.

‘I’m afraid not.’

Livvy didn’t need to hear the deeply accented voice to know it was Saladin. She should have realised he’d walked in because the pub had suddenly gone quiet and even the woman doing the karaoke had stopped singing as she stared at him incredulously. But who could blame her? Powerful olive-skinned sheikhs wearing dark cashmere weren’t exactly at a premium around these parts.

Livvy put her tomato juice down on the table with shaking fingers as the conversation all around them took on a sudden roar of interest.

‘How did you get here?’ she demanded, her heart starting to race. ‘You’re in Jazratan.’

‘Obviously, I’m not. I flew in today and came here by helicopter,’ he answered.

Her face remained unwelcoming, but she kept it that way. Why had he followed her and why was he here on her territory, when she was just starting out on a long journey to forget him? ‘What do you want?’

‘There are three things I want,’ he said grimly. ‘And the first involves having a conversation, which won’t be possible with all this noise going on. So can we go outside, Livvy? Please?’

She opened her mouth to say that she didn’t want to go anywhere with him, except that was a blatant lie and she suspected he would see right through it. And he was asking in the kind of voice she’d never heard him use before. But even so...

‘It’s raining,’ she objected.

‘You can sit in my car.’

‘No, Saladin,’ she said fiercely. ‘You can sit in my car, and you can have precisely ten minutes.’

He didn’t look overjoyed at the suggestion but he didn’t object as he followed her into the blustery and rainy night. Outside an enormous limousine was parked with a burly bodyguard standing beside it, but Livvy marched straight past it towards her own little car, feeling inordinately pleased at the almost helpless shrug that Saladin directed at the guard.

But the moment he removed a sock from the passenger seat—what was that doing there?—and got in beside her, she regretted her decision. Because the limousine would have been better than this. It was bigger, for a start, and there wouldn’t be this awful sense of the man she most wanted to touch being within touching range...and being completely off limits.

‘So what’s the second thing?’ she questioned, in a voice that sounded miraculously calm. ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘I had someone watching your house who was instructed to follow you,’ he said unapologetically. ‘When I arrived, they told me you were still here. It was at that point that a ball of fur hurled itself out of nowhere and decided to start attacking my ankles.’ He grimaced. ‘Your cat doesn’t like me.’

‘Probably not. I got her from the rescue centre.’ She shot him a defiant look. ‘She was ill-treated by a man as a kitten and she’s never forgotten it.’

There were plenty of parallels between the woman and the cat, Saladin thought. Livvy had been ill-treated by a man, too, and it had made her wary. And he hadn’t exactly done a lot to try to repair her damaged image of the opposite sex, had he? He had treated her as if she was disposable. As if she could be replaced. And wasn’t it time he addressed that?

He looked at her in the dim light of the scruffy little car, his gaze taking in an unremarkable raincoat and the fiery hair, which the wind had whipped into untidy strands that were falling around her face. She was wearing too much make-up. He’d never seen her in such bright lipstick before and it didn’t suit her, and yet he couldn’t ever remember feeling such a raw and urgent sense of desire as he did right now. Was that because she had shown the strength of character to reject him—to walk away from the half-hearted relationship he’d given her? Because by doing that she had earned his respect as well as making him realise that they were equals.

‘I miss you, Livvy,’ he said softly.

He saw a flicker of surprise in the depths of her eyes before her face resumed that stony expression.

‘The sex, do you mean?’ she questioned sharply. ‘Surely you can get that with someone else?’

‘Of course I miss the sex,’ he bit out. ‘And I don’t want to get it with anyone else. There are other things I miss, too. Talking, for one.’

‘I’m sure there are many people who would be only too happy to talk to you, Saladin. People who would hang on to your every word.’

‘But that’s the whole point. I don’t want someone hanging on my every word. I want someone who will give back as good as she gets.’

‘I want doesn’t always get,’ she responded, infuriatingly.

‘I miss seeing the magic you worked on my horse,’ he continued resolutely. And on me, he thought. And on me. ‘I want you to come back to Jazratan with me.’

It was as if that single sentence had changed something. As if she’d removed the stony mask from her freckly face so that he could see the sudden glitter of anger in her amber eyes. ‘And how far are you prepared to go to get what you want?’ she demanded. ‘How many people are you prepared to manipulate just so that Saladin Al Mektala can get his own way?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Excuse me?’

Angrily, she punched her fist on the steering wheel. ‘I’ve just had an email from Alison Clark, who you probably don’t even remember. She was the woman who was due to spend Christmas here with her polo friends, before you decided you needed me in Jazratan. The group who miraculously decided not to come at the last minute and to spend their Christmas in a fancy London hotel instead. A trip financed by you, as I’ve just discovered in an email written by the grateful Alison. So what did you do, Saladin—have your people track down these guests of mine and offer them something they couldn’t resist, just so that you could whisk me away from Derbyshire?’

He met her accusing stare and gave a heavy sigh. ‘They seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement.’

‘I’m sure they were. All-expenses-paid trips to five-star hotels don’t exactly grow on trees! But it was a sneaky thing to do and it was manipulative,’ she accused. ‘It was just you snapping your powerful fingers in order to get your own way, as usual.’

‘Or a creative way of getting you to come to Jazratan, because already I was completely intrigued by you?’ he retorted.

‘You just wanted me to fix your horse!’

‘Yes,’ he admitted, in a voice that suddenly sounded close to breaking. ‘And in the process, you somehow managed to fix me. You found a space in my heart that I didn’t even realise was vacant. And you’ve filled it, Livvy. You’ve filled it completely.’

‘Saladin,’ she said shakily. ‘Don’t—’

‘I must.’ He reached out then and took one of the hands that was gripping the steering wheel and pressed it between the sensuous warmth of his leather gloves. ‘Every word you spoke was true,’ he said quietly. ‘I was using my early marriage and my guilt as a block to forming a meaningful relationship with someone else. But I’ve realised that what I have with you transcends anything I have known before. That we have a truly adult relationship and we are equals. Yes, equals,’ he affirmed as he saw her open her mouth to object. ‘I’m not talking about the trappings of my kingdom, or the division of wealth. We are equals in the ways that matter. Or at least, I hope we are because I love you, Livvy Miller. And I’m hoping that you love me, too.’

His words were so unexpected that for a moment Livvy thought she must have imagined them and she tried to ignore the excited leap of her heart—shaking her head with a defiance that suddenly seemed as necessary to her as breathing. ‘You’re still in love with your dead wife,’ she said.

‘I will always love Alya,’ he said simply. ‘But what I had with her was so different from what I had with you. She was very young and in complete thrall to me. I was her king, not her equal. And you were right. She was taken at a time when she was perfect, and that’s what her memory became to me. My single status became a kind of homage to her, as well as being a safety net behind which I could hide. When I spoke so disparagingly about romantic love, it was because I didn’t believe in it, but now I do. I didn’t think it could ever happen to me, but now it has.’ His black eyes burned into her steadily. ‘There are many different types of love, but believe me when I tell you that my heart is yours, Livvy. That I have found my equal in you. And that even though your stubbornness and refusal to do exactly as I say sometimes frustrates the hell out of me, I love you passionately and truly and steadfastly.’

And then Livvy did believe him, because it was too big an admission for a man like Saladin to make unless he really meant it. The passion that blazed from his eyes was genuine and the conviction that deepened his voice crept over her skin like a warm glow, but still something held her back.

‘And I love you, too,’ she said. ‘Very, very much. But I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to be the kind of lover you need.’

‘And what kind of lover is that?’ he asked gently.

‘I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to sell up and use the money you gave me to start my own stables,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a clue where that might be. And you’ll want a mistress, I suppose. I thought I wouldn’t be able to tolerate that kind of relationship, but now that I’ve seen you again I’m beginning to have second thoughts.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘But when I start imagining the reality—I don’t know if I can see myself being set up in some kind of luxury apartment so that you can come and visit.’

He frowned. ‘So that I can come and visit?’ he repeated, in a perplexed voice.

‘Whenever you’re in the country. Isn’t this how these things usually work?’

His answering laugh sounded like the low roar of a lion as he gathered her into his arms and tilted her chin very tenderly with the tip of his thumb. ‘I was hoping you might return with me to Jazratan, as my queen. I was hoping you would marry me.’

Her cheeks burned as she met his eyes, remembering the accusations he had thrown at her.

‘I know,’ he said ruefully. ‘But maybe I accused you of being matrimonially ambitious because already it was playing on my mind. Because I’ve realised there is no alternative scenario that I am prepared to tolerate.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘So will you, Livvy? Will you marry me?’

And suddenly Livvy had run out of reasons to keep telling herself that this couldn’t possibly be happening and that there must be a catch somewhere. Because there wasn’t—and when it boiled down to it, Saladin’s past didn’t matter and neither did hers. Because right then he was just a man with so much love in his eyes, which matched the great big feeling that was swelling up inside her heart and making it feel as if it were about to burst with joy.

‘Yes, Saladin,’ she said, putting her arms around his neck and holding on to him as if she would never let him go. ‘I’ll marry you tomorrow if you want me to.’