Читать книгу Dreaming Of... France: The Husband She Never Knew / The Parisian Playboy / Reunited...in Paris! - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 9

NOELLE stirred slowly to life, like a swimmer coming up to the surface of the sea. Consciousness glimmered, a twinkling, faraway thing. She reached for it, desperate now to seize it, and opened her eyes as if weights were attached to her lids. She lay in a bed and all around her was dark with shadows, and in the distance she heard the drone of an engine, could feel the thrum of it through her body. She was on a plane.

Panic shot through her as she struggled to make sense of what had happened, what little she could remember.

She had been walking to work and someone had grabbed her. Thrown a blanket or bag over her head and taken her in a car. She’d kicked out at her assailant and her fingernails had connected with someone’s face, raking along a cheek. And then someone had said something—in a language she didn’t understand—and she’d felt a jab in her arm and then … nothing.

Terror clutched at her chest, grabbed her by the throat. She’d been kidnapped. Abducted in broad daylight from one of Paris’s best neighbourhoods. Impossible and yet—here she was. On a plane—going where? And what did her captors want? Ransom? Her family was certainly wealthy enough to consider such an awful possibility. Or was it something else—something worse? Vague images of the modern-day slave trade danced through her mind and she tasted bile. She’d kill herself first, if she had an opportunity.

‘You’re awake.’

Noelle let out a stifled scream. In the near-darkness she hadn’t seen the figure sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. She still couldn’t make out his features, but she could certainly recognise his gravelly voice. Ammar.

‘You,’ she said, and her voice came out in a scratchy, unused whisper. She coughed and Ammar came forward to take the glass of water from her bedside table and hand it to her. Noelle took it, her fingers trembling so much that Ammar kept his hand wrapped around the glass, his fingers overlapping hers, and helped her to drink. She was too tired and too thirsty to resist this small solicitude, yet finally, with an effort borne of desperate fury, she pushed the glass away, spilling droplets on the silk coverlet. ‘You kidnapped me,’ she managed, trying to make it a question, because surely he wouldn’t have done such a thing. Yet here he was, and so was she.

In the shadowy room she could not make out his expression at all. ‘I told you, I needed to talk to you.’

Noelle let out a hoarse bark of disbelieving laughter and leaned back against the pillows. ‘And that makes it acceptable, does it?’

‘You didn’t give me many options.’

‘You didn’t give me many options.’

‘Sometimes,’ Ammar said, ‘extreme measures are necessary.’

‘You take extreme to an entirely new level.’ She shook her head, tried to untangle her emotions. She was shocked, yes, and definitely angry, but was she afraid? No, she didn’t think so. If she were honest, she felt a treacherous tingle of relief that it was him and not some unknown thug. Or even just that it was him. And yet … kidnapped.

‘I’m sorry that extreme measures were necessary in this instance—’

‘Sorry? You talk as if you had no choice but to kidnap me, Ammar. As if I made you do it.’ She closed her eyes, a sudden sorrow added to the welter of feelings inside her. ‘You’re blaming me for what you did. This feels very familiar.’

‘I never,’ he said in a low voice, ‘blamed you for anything.’

She supposed that was true. It had just felt like it was her fault. One minute she’d been married, nurturing dreams of happily-ever-afters, domesticity and children and a little house outside Paris, and the next her husband was barely speaking to her, never mind anything else, with no explanation at all.

‘Turn a light on,’ she said, because she wanted to see his face. Ammar opened a shade on one of the windows, letting in a sudden stream of hard, bright sunlight.

In the unforgiving brightness he looked, Noelle thought, terrible. He was unshaven, the scar snaking down his cheek livid, red and raw. Although he was dressed in a pressed grey polo shirt and black jeans, he seemed more haggard and gaunt than he had last night. Last night—could it really have only been last night that she’d seen him at the charity ball? She didn’t even know how much time had passed.

‘Are we on a plane?’ she demanded hoarsely.

‘My private jet.’

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘To my home.’

‘Alhaja?’ She’d hated the island his father had called home, a prison-like bunker set in gorgeous gardens on a private island in the Mediterranean. She’d spent two lonely months there before she’d finally fled.

‘No. Alhaja was never my home.’ His voice was hard, dark. Noelle saw one lean hand clench into a fist against his thigh before he slowly, deliberately flattened his palm out once more. ‘We’re going to my private villa in Northern Africa, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.’

‘You have a villa in the Sahara?’

Ammar gazed back at her levelly. ‘Yes.’

‘And you’re taking me there?’

‘Yes.’

Obviously. Yet she still struggled to understand, to believe. What could he possibly want with her? She closed her eyes, too tired to ask. She heard the creak of the chair as Ammar rose, and then her exhausted body suddenly pulsed with life as she felt his hand, callused, cool, on her forehead.

‘You should sleep some more.’

‘I don’t want to sleep—’ But she did. Already she felt herself sliding back into the safety of unconsciousness. Dimly, as if from a great distance, she heard Ammar speak.

‘We’ll be there in a few hours. I’ll stay here until you wake.’

Noelle was too tired to resist. And as she tumbled back into sleep a small, strange part of her felt reassured that he’d told her he would stay.

Ammar watched Noelle’s face soften in sleep and felt regret pierce him with its double-edged sword. Ever since he’d arranged for her transport here he’d felt it, that sliver of doubt, jagged, sharp and painful. He should not have taken her like that. Kidnapped, that was the word she’d used. A crime.

He sat back in the chair, his hands resting on his knees as he gazed at her sleeping form. He shouldn’t have done it, he knew that, but what choice had he really had? He was not going to chase her around Paris, trailing after her like a kicked puppy, begging for a few seconds of her time. And here, just the two of them, he hoped—even if he was unwilling to say it aloud—that they might recapture something of what they’d had before.

Now you’ll know never to trust a woman. Never to be weak.

Even in death his father mocked him. Ammar swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry, his heart thudding. He hated his memories. Hated the response they instinctively dredged up in him, the fear, the loathing. The longing. He forced them away, made his mind blank. He’d always been good at that, had had to be good at it. Don’t think about what you’re doing. Don’t think about who it hurts. Don’t think. Taking a deep, slow breath, he leaned back in the chair and waited for Noelle to wake.

When Noelle woke again the sluggish exhaustion had gone, giving her a sense of relief, but also leaving her feeling both weakened and wary.

She sat up and saw Ammar was still sitting in the chair by her bed. He’d fallen into a half-doze, his face softened in sleep, dark lashes sweeping against his cheek, reminding her for a breathless second of the man he used to be. The man she’d thought he was. His eyes flickered open and he stared at her for a taut moment that seemed suspended and separate in its sudden, raw honesty. Ammar gazed at her, seeming almost vulnerable, hungry, and as for her? Noelle could feel the answer in herself. She’d loved this man once, no matter how he’d brought them to this place, and she felt its echo through her heart.

Ammar straightened, glancing at his watch, and the moment broke. ‘We’ll be in Marrakech in twenty minutes.’

‘And then?’

‘A helicopter to my villa. It takes a couple of hours.’

She shook her head slowly, banishing that echo, that remnant of longing. ‘Ammar … why are you taking me there? What do you want from me?’

His mouth tightened and his gaze flicked away. ‘We’ll talk about that later. Right now you should freshen up. There’s food in the main cabin.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

He returned his gaze to her, level and considering. ‘As you wish. I was only seeing to your comfort.’

‘My comfort? If you’d been concerned with that, you wouldn’t have kidnapped me in the first place!’

He expelled a low breath. ‘I told you, it was necessary.’

‘You had me drugged.’

‘It was the safest way to transport you. I didn’t want you to harm yourself.’

‘How very thoughtful of you.’

‘I try,’ Ammar said with a ghost of a smile, and it took Noelle a stunned second to realise he was actually making a joke. Toc-toc.

‘Try harder,’ she answered back, meaning to snap, but it came out like some absurd attempt at witty banter. It was getting harder to hold onto her brittle edge, the safety of sarcasm. She could still remember how he’d looked in that unguarded moment, how she’d felt, even as fury raced through her.

Ammar gazed at her with the remnant of that smile, his eyes dark and sorrowful. ‘I will,’ he said softly, and Noelle felt something twist inside her, start to break. No, she could not start responding to this man. Remembering.

The only thing to remember was the hard fact that he’d hurt her terribly in the past and kidnapped her today. What kind of people did he know, to arrange a kidnapping in broad daylight? What kind of man was he?

Before their marriage she’d thought he was gentle, tender, loving, if a little restrained. They’d dated for three months, a time so achingly sweet Noelle’s eyes stung to remember it. She’d wanted to give him everything, her life, her soul and, more importantly, she’d thought he wanted it. Sometimes she’d caught him gazing at her in a kind of wonder, as if he couldn’t believe she was really his.

Then they’d said their wedding vows and in a matter of hours he’d changed completely, turned into a brusque and distant stranger she didn’t know or understand. A man who, it seemed, was perfectly capable of abducting his former wife and keeping her captive in his desert villa. The real Ammar.

It was the real Ammar she needed to remember now. Drawing herself up, she said firmly, as if talking to an unruly child, ‘Well, now you’ve got me here you can say whatever it is you’ve wanted to say, and then you need to arrange my immediate return to Paris. I can get a flight from Marrakech.’

Something flashed in Ammar’s amber eyes, although Noelle could not discern what it was. She’d once loved the colour of his eyes, the warm peat-brown of whisky. She’d seen emotion reflected there, emotion he had never spoken of or given into in any way and yet she’d believed. She’d known.

‘No.’

Noelle’s fingernails snagged on the coverlet as she clenched her fists. ‘No?’

‘I cannot arrange your return to Paris. Yet.’

‘When, then?’ He shrugged, which was no answer at all. ‘Ammar, what do you want from me?’ Another flicker in his eyes—could it be regret? ‘This is a crime, you know,’ she said in a low voice, hardly able to believe she was saying the words, and that they were true. ‘You could be arrested for this.’

He glanced away. ‘I’ve done too many things already I could be arrested for. One more won’t matter.’

Shock iced straight through her, froze in her bones. She did not want to know what he was talking about, was overwhelmed by the terrible strangeness of a man she’d once thought she knew. Loved. ‘My God,’ she choked, ‘who are you?’

Ammar turned back to her and she saw a fierce blaze of determination now turning his eyes to gold as he met her own bewildered gaze. ‘I’m your husband.’

She stilled, the cover sliding from under her nerveless fingers. ‘You haven’t,’ she said after a long charged moment, ‘been my husband for ten years.’ And he’d never truly been her husband, never in the way that mattered most.

‘I know that.’ He looked away again, everything about him—his voice, his expression—seeming to harden. ‘We’ll talk of this later. We’re about to arrive, and I’m sure you’d like a moment to compose yourself.’ He rose from the chair. ‘There are clothes in the wardrobe. I’ll meet you out in the main cabin when you are ready.’ He spoke coolly, issuing these instructions with every expectation of being obeyed. It reminded Noelle of the man he’d been after their marriage, and she hated it. Hated remembering how different Ammar had seemed, how different she’d been with him, confused, needy and so unhappy, her dreams turning to dust, hopes to ash.

‘I’ll stay here.’ It was a small act of independence, but in her current situation it was all she could manage.

Ammar shrugged, then nodded his assent. ‘Very well.’ And then he was gone.

Ammar paced the main cabin of the plane, feeling as trapped as Noelle surely was. Nothing was going the way he had hoped. He’d handled everything wrong, he saw now, from the moment he’d accosted her in the hotel, to the clumsy abduction of her from the street, to the conversation he’d just had. He was a man who had millions at his disposal, thousands of employees to do his bidding and even more people who regarded him with both awe and fear, yet one slip of a woman defeated him. All the words he wanted to say, all the things he felt, tangled up inside him so he couldn’t get any of it out. He didn’t even know the words. He missed her, he wanted her, he needed her, but how he did tell her that without issuing a command?

Never show weakness. Never beg or even ask.

The rules his father had drilled into him were impossible to break or ignore. He’d learned them the hard way, by his father’s fist, starting on his eighth birthday when Balkri Tannous had taken him from the playroom and his brother’s side and, in the sanctified solitude of his study, hit him hard across the face without warning.

It had begun then and there, his education, the forming of his very self. How did he shed it? How did he change?

‘Mr Tannous?’ Abdul, one of his staff, appeared in the doorway. ‘We land in ten minutes.’

‘Very good.’ He glanced back at the door to the bedroom and, after a second’s hesitation he rapped on it sharply. ‘We’re about to land, Noelle. It would be safer for you to sit in here, in a proper seat.’

The door was wrenched open and Noelle stood there, still wearing her crumpled grey dress. She’d washed her face and brushed her hair, but he still saw dark shadows under her eyes, the anger flaring in their hazel depths.

She didn’t speak as she moved past him and sat down, buckling the lap belt. Ammar sat across from her. He tried to think of something to say, some words to bridge the gulf between them, but nothing came. Kidnapping her had been just about the worst way to go about this. Yet how to make amends?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said abruptly, and she turned to face him, surprise flaring in her eyes.

‘Sorry for what?’

‘For … abducting you.’

‘And do you think I should accept your apology?’ She let out a short, unfriendly laugh and rolled her eyes. ‘No problem, Ammar. Mistakes happen.’ She shook her head, seeming disgusted, and fury flared through him.

‘You wouldn’t listen.’

‘And you wonder why.’

He shouldn’t have started this conversation. It was too soon. Ammar turned to stare out at the sky, an endless stretch of blue. He felt his stomach dip as the plane moved lower and then, a few minutes later, with the pair of them still sitting in taut silence, the plane bumped to a landing.

They didn’t speak as they moved from the plane to the waiting helicopter. As they came out on the tarmac Ammar saw Noelle scan the empty expanse and wondered if she’d actually make a run for it. If she did he knew he could catch her easily and in any case he had half a dozen staff waiting for his command. Besides, they were in Marrakech and a woman alone with no money, no passport and no phone wouldn’t get very far. Danger lurked everywhere.

For the first time he realised just how vulnerable she must feel, and regret lashed him again. He reached for her elbow, meaning to steady her, but she jerked away from him.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she snapped.

Ammar dropped his hand. Wordlessly he ushered Noelle towards the helicopter and then climbed in after her.

They took off into the sky once more, neither of them speaking. Sweat prickled along the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades. He hated travelling in helicopters since the crash, but his villa didn’t have the space to land a jet and there were no roads.

In any case, he needed to conquer his fear. Grimly, he stared out of the window, even as his stomach churned and memories of the crash danced before his eyes. He remembered the way the world had tilted and the sea seemed to swoop up to meet him. How he’d stared into his father’s grim face, a man he’d loved and hated in equal measure.

‘Ammar.’

He didn’t realise he’d been scrunching his eyes shut until he opened them and saw Noelle. He felt a jolt of panicked confusion, for her face—her smile—had been the last thing he’d seen before impact. No more than a memory, and now here she was in reality. By his force.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked quietly, and he nodded. Gulped.

‘I’m fine.’ And even though he knew he’d revealed a terrible weakness, he couldn’t keep from being glad she’d asked.

They didn’t speak again until the helicopter had landed.

The whole world felt as if it were holding its breath as Noelle stepped from the helicopter. The air was hot and dry and utterly still. Desert stretched in every direction, endless, undulating sand, occasionally strewn with boulders and rocks. She didn’t think she’d ever been in a more remote place.

Silently she followed Ammar into a low, rambling building of sandstone that blended almost entirely into its desert surroundings.

He stopped in the foyer, turned to her with that blank expression she despised. For a moment, in the helicopter, she’d felt a flicker of sympathy for him, knowing he must hate flying in helicopters since his crash. Sitting there so tautly with his eyes clenched shut, Ammar had looked like a man in the throes of a desperate agony.

And now? He looked as stony and remote as the desert surrounding them, and yet still, irritatingly, she felt that flicker. A yearning compassion she couldn’t keep herself from feeling, even though she desperately didn’t want to.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked and, even though she knew she should resist any solicitude, Noelle nodded.

‘Starving.’

‘If you’d like to refresh yourself, there is a bedroom for you upstairs. And clothes, if you wish.’ He glanced at her creased dress. ‘You cannot wear that for ever.’

‘It depends on how long you intend to keep me here,’ Noelle answered bluntly and his expression tightened, eyes narrowing, lips thinning.

‘We can discuss that at dinner.’

‘Fine.’ Noelle lifted her chin. She was strong enough to accept his hospitality—ha—and still keep swinging. With a jerky nod, she turned on her heel and headed upstairs.

She found a sumptuous bedroom behind the first door she opened, with a wardrobe full of clothes and an en suite bathroom with a sunken marble tub and an array of luxurious toiletries. After the day she’d had, she was ready for a good long soak.

Yet once she’d immersed herself in steaming, fragrant bubbles, Noelle felt her resolve—and her anger—start to slip away. She kept seeing that look of yearning on Ammar’s face when he’d woken up, when she’d caught him off guard. She felt the same yearning in herself, a longing for the way he’d been. The way she’d been, with him, so long ago.

That was not going to happen.

She couldn’t start thinking that way, wanting that way. Not after he’d hurt her, not after he’d revealed what kind of man he was—

Do you really know what kind of man he is?

Refusing to answer that question, or even think it, Noelle dunked her head under the water and started to scrub. Too bad she couldn’t scrub away her thoughts. Or that flicker of yearning that threatened to fan into something far more dangerous.

Ammar paced the dining room just as he’d paced the cabin of the plane. He came to his desert retreat for solitude and safety, a place where the rest of his life never intruded, yet he was finding neither tonight.

Should he let her go? The thought had been flitting around in his mind like an insistent insect since Noelle had suggested the very thing. If he let her go, Ammar knew, she would never come back to him. She would never love him again.

And the same thing might happen if you make her stay.

He closed his eyes. He’d felt hopelessness before, God only knew; he’d felt hopelessness for most of his life. Yet it hurt so much more when you felt hope first.

‘Hello.’

He whirled around to see Noelle standing in the doorway.

‘Come in.’ He cleared his throat, took a step forward. He felt tension twang through his body so he felt like a marionette, all awkward, jerky movements. He no longer knew how to be natural with her, but then had he ever? Being natural, he thought with a sudden bitterness, was not natural to a man like him. Yet there had been moments, miraculous, tender moments, where he’d felt himself lighten with the sheer joy of being in her presence. Smiling, even laughing, at her enthusiasm for life, her silly jokes, her sudden laughter. He missed that. He missed the man he’d felt he could be with her by his side.

She walked into the room and he saw she was wearing a caftan he’d ordered for her, along with all the other clothes. It was a pale spring green shot through with silver threads and, though it was basically a shapeless garment, it still somehow managed to emphasise her slender form, her graceful posture. Her hair was still damp from the shower and twisted up in a careless knot, her face flushed from heat—or anger. At that moment it didn’t matter. All Ammar knew was that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

‘I’m glad—’ he began, wanting somehow to articulate how lovely she looked, but she cut him off, her voice flat.

‘I want my clothes back.’

He’d had his housekeeper take them while she was in the bath. He realised now how that might have made her feel even more vulnerable, and cursed himself for not thinking of that before. ‘They’re being laundered. You can have them back as soon as they’re dry.’ He’d regarded her stark grey dress and black tights with a sorrowful bemusement; the woman he remembered from ten years ago had worn bright clothes, cheerful colours. ‘There is a wide selection of clothes at your disposal, in your room.’ In addition to the caftan, he’d bought sweaters, shirts, jeans, even a few dresses, all in the bright colours he liked—and thought she did.

Noelle shrugged, the thin cotton of the caftan sliding off one shoulder. Ammar’s gaze was drawn instinctively to the movement and he felt his insides tighten with long-suppressed desire. Desire he’d never acted on, yet longed to—had always longed to, even now. Her skin was the colour of almonds, creamy and golden with a slight spattering of freckles. ‘None of them fit,’ she said. ‘They’re two sizes too big.’

‘I thought I remembered your size.’ He saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes, like sunlight on water, that he would have ever known such a thing.

‘I’ve dropped a few sizes.’

‘You’ve lost weight—’

‘I’m thinner,’ she corrected, and he frowned, because Noelle had always been slender. Now that he was looking at her properly, he saw how skinny she looked, the bony angles of her elbows and collarbone jutting out even under the voluminous folds of her clothing.

‘Come eat,’ he said and, with her mouth pressed into a hard line, she followed him to the table laid intimately for two.

This wasn’t, Ammar acknowledged, going to be easy. Yet he didn’t want to let her go. He couldn’t. Hope, he knew, was too heady a possibility. Yet what would it take to unbend her? Make her not just listen, but want to listen?

Grimly, he realised he had no idea.

Noelle stepped further into the room, deep with shadows and flickering with candlelight, suppressing the sudden hot flare of awareness she felt at the sight of Ammar’s admiring glance, quickly veiled. If he hadn’t wanted her when she’d been wearing a silk teddy and stilettos, he could hardly want her now, in this tent-like caftan.

In any case, it didn’t matter what he did or didn’t want. She was only here because she was hungry. And she needed to convince Ammar to return her to Paris.

‘Please sit.’ He pulled out a chair and, deciding there was no point in being ungracious, Noelle accepted and sat down. Ammar laid a napkin in her lap, his fingers barely brushing her thighs, yet even so she felt another flare of desire low in her belly. Never mind what he felt, she still had the same instinctive response to him. Lust and longing. Hopeless. How could she feel it now, after ten years, when he’d brought her here by force?

Resolutely, she pushed such thoughts away. Absolutely no point in dwelling on anything but a determination to get out of here.

‘May I serve you?’ he asked, so scrupulously polite, and it reminded Noelle of when they’d been dating in London. They’d got caught in a downpour and she’d brought him back to her flat in Mayfair, hoping he’d stay the night. She’d had a shower while he waited; she’d been far too shy to ask him to join her.

When she’d emerged, swathed in a dressing gown, her hair still damp, he’d asked, in that same serious, polite way, May I brush your hair? She’d nodded, and he’d so carefully, so gently, brushed her hair with long, sensual strokes. She’d had to keep herself from trembling throughout the whole exquisite ordeal, longing to lean back against him, for him to turn her around and take her in his arms. They’d kissed twice so far, that was all. Sweet, aching kisses that had made her want so much more. And for a moment she thought it would finally happen. Her hair finished, he’d laid the brush aside and his hands had slid slowly, deliberately along her shoulders, down her arms, as if he were learning her body. Noelle had remained completely still, mesmerised by his touch, but she could not keep from gasping aloud when Ammar pressed a tender, lingering kiss to the bared nape of her neck. She’d never experienced anything so romantic, so erotic, and so very sweet. They’d remained there for an endless, aching moment, his head bowed, his lips against her skin, and then he’d let out a shudder and stood up. Before Noelle could even say anything he was, in his solemn, restrained way, bidding her goodnight.

Now she glanced up at him, waiting patiently for her response while she lost herself in all these aching memories. She was tired of them, exhausted by the emotions they made her feel. Regret. Sorrow. Longing.

‘Yes, thank you.’

He ladled couscous and stewed lamb on her plate, and Noelle glanced around the room, spare and spacious, with an understated elegance in its few pieces of mahogany furniture. A pair of French windows were shuttered against the night, and she wondered where they led. She’d opened the shutter on her bedroom window after her shower, but the only thing the moon had illuminated was the endless, undulating desert and a long drop down to the sand.

For a short while she said nothing while she ate hungrily. ‘So,’ she said finally, stabbing another piece of meat with her fork, ‘why won’t you return me to Paris?’

Ammar didn’t answer for a moment. In the candlelight he looked so serious, his eyes dark, his movements controlled and restrained as always. Noelle glanced at the scar snaking down his cheek. Amelie had been right; it did look sexy. He looked sexy, but then he’d always been sexy to her, sexy and gorgeous and infinitely desirable. Even now, when he had lost weight—like she had—and still bore the scars of his accident, she could not deny the pulse of longing she felt for him. Her body remembered how he felt, the solid strength of him, corded muscle and callused skin. Even now, with all that had—and hadn’t—happened between them, her body remembered and wanted more.

‘I would like,’ Ammar said, thankfully breaking into the torment of her thoughts, ‘for you to stay here for a little while.’

Noelle jerked her gaze from its revealingly leisurely perusal of his body back up to his face with its implacable expression. ‘Stay here? For what, a little holiday?’ Her voice was sharp with sarcasm but Ammar simply nodded.

‘Something like that.’

‘Ammar, you abducted me—’

He clenched one hand on the table. ‘So you keep reminding me.’

‘You think I can just forget it? I told you I had nothing to say to you, and I still don’t. I want to go home.’ To her shame, her voice trembled and she felt tears crowd under her lids. She wasn’t even sure why she was near to crying: because she wanted to go home or because a tiny, treacherous part of her wanted to stay? How shaming. How pathetic. She bit her lip and looked away, not wanting him to see how close to tears she was, but she could not keep a shudder from ripping through her.

‘Noelle—’ His voice caught on a note of near-anguish and he reached one hand out to her, as if he would comfort her. How ridiculous was that, to be comforted by her captor? And yet she still longed for him to touch her, could almost imagine the warmth of his hand on her skin. She averted her head and he dropped his hand.

‘Please, Ammar.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You can,’ she insisted, angry now. Anger felt stronger, simpler. ‘You brought me here; you can let me go. You just don’t want to, and I have absolutely no idea why.’ She glared at him, and Ammar gazed steadily back.

‘I brought you here because I want to be with you,’ he said, choosing each word with care.

Noelle blinked. Stared. Her mind seemed to have slowed down, snagged on his meaning. He wanted to be with her? ‘What—’

‘I want us,’ Ammar said, ‘to be husband and wife.’