Читать книгу Modern Romance June 2019 Books 1-4 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 17

‘A STORM IN a teacup but it’s put my father in a real rage.’ Raj expelled a stark breath, impatience and exasperation lacing his intonation. ‘Last year my father drove Maraban’s only gossip magazine out of the country. Now they’re based in Dubai and what they publish about us has steadily become more shocking. He should’ve left them alone. He has to accept that these days everything we do is watched and reported on and our family cannot hope to keep secrets the way we did when he was a boy.’

‘I guess he’s a bit behind the times. The press are more disrespectful of institutions nowadays. So, what’s in that magazine?’ she prompted, thoroughly puzzled. ‘Some forgotten scandal?’

‘Not even a scandal, merely an intrusion.’ He had crushed the magazine between his hands and now he smoothed it out with difficulty and handed it to her. ‘Of course, you can’t read it but the photos are self-explanatory and this article coming out the same week as our wedding, suggesting that I wasn’t allowed to marry the woman I loved because she was a commoner, may be embarrassing for my father but it is also an absurd allegation.’

Dry-mouthed now, Zoe stared down at the splash of photographs, depicting Raj with Nabila. Old photos, of course. She could see that they were younger but what she had not been prepared to see was the look of adoration in Raj’s face as he gazed down at the other woman. He was studying Nabila as if she’d hung the moon for him and for some reason, Zoe registered, seeing those youthful carefree photos of them holding hands, larking about beside a fountain and smiling at each other hurt. She couldn’t explain why those photos hurt but the instant she scrutinised them in detail she felt as though someone had punched her hard in the stomach because the pain was almost physical in its intensity.

What the heck was wrong with her? Was she starting to care for Raj? Was she suffering from jealousy, despite her earlier reassurance to him that she felt no such emotion concerning him? Those questions made her feel as shaky as if the ground had suddenly disappeared from under her feet. Yes, she was starting to care in the way you did begin to care more for someone when you got closer to them, she reasoned frantically and, yes, she had been jealous when she saw those photos. But none of that meant that she was necessarily falling for him.

‘She was my first love and that was all,’ Raj continued, wonderfully impervious to his bride’s pallor and her silence. ‘Very few people marry their first love and what does it matter anyway what I was doing eight years ago? It’s a really stupid article but it is revealing a relationship that only our families knew about to the public. What I can’t understand is how they got a hold of such private photos. I had copies but I destroyed them after we parted and the friend who took the photos—Omar—would never have shared them with anyone.’

‘You said it was an absurd allegation,’ Zoe recalled dully. ‘How so when it’s true? Your father wouldn’t agree to you marrying her.’

‘Not because of her parentage but because I suspect he had had her checked out and knew a great deal more about her than I knew at the time,’ Raj admitted wryly. ‘At least he had the consideration not to throw what he had found out in my face.’

‘As you said...a storm in a teacup,’ Zoe remarked rather stiffly, because all of a sudden she was tired of hearing about anything that related to Nabila and she could only marvel at her previous curiosity. Just then she thought she would be happier if she never heard the wretched woman’s name spoken out loud again. As for seeing those stupid photos of her with Raj regarding her as if he had been poleaxed, well, that had been anything but a pleasure for a woman already labelled as a friend with benefits. No doubt that was why she had felt envious of the other woman.

No doubt, right at this very moment Raj was thinking about Nabila, remembering how much he had loved and wanted her, positively wallowing in sentimental memories! And on that note, Zoe decided that she would be very, very tired that night, in fact throughout the day, so that Raj would not dare to think she was in the mood to provide any of those benefits he had mentioned!

* * *

‘You still haven’t told me how it happened,’ Raj reminded Zoe stubbornly.

Raj was like a dog with a bone when he wanted information, he just kept on landing back on that same avoidance spot of hers, an area of memory where she never ever travelled if she could help it. She breathed in deep, a little bit of a challenge when he was still flattening her to the wall of the shower. Shower sex? Yes, she had gained a lot of experience she had never expected to have over the past two weeks. Resolving to keep her paws off Raj hadn’t worked when he was behaving like lover of the year. It was the only analogy she could make when she refused to let herself think of him as a husband.

But there it was: her watch broke, so a new one studded with diamonds arrived within the hour; phone kept on running out of charge, and a new phone was there by bedtime so that she could talk to her sisters as usual. She preferred flowers growing in the ground to those cut off in their prime and stuffed for a short shelf life into vases, and so he took her into the hills of Bania to stage a luxury picnic beside a glorious field of wild flowers. That had been only one of the blinders Raj had played over the past fortnight. He hated her high heels, seemed to be convinced she was going to plunge down steps and, at the very least, break her neck, but he had still bought her shoes, the dreamiest, absolutely over-the-top jewel-studded sandals with soaring heels. She had worn them out to dinner last night in a little mountainside inn, where everyone around them had pretended—not very well—not to know who they were to give them their privacy.

The only problem for Zoe, who was blossoming in receipt of such treatment, was that it was a constant battle not to start caring too much about Raj. She kept on reminding herself that none of this was real. Yes, he was her husband, but this was a convenient arrangement that they’d both agreed to. At best, he was just a friend, an intimate friend certainly, but beyond that she knew she dared not go. She was terrified of falling for him and if she made that mistake, she would be rejected and her heart would be broken.

‘Zoe...’ Raj growled, nipping a teasing trail across the soft skin of her nape to her shoulder with his lips and his teeth, sending a shudder of response through her that even very recent fulfilment could not suppress. ‘I want to know how it happened.’

‘And I don’t want to revisit it.’

‘It would be healthier for you to talk about it,’ Raj told her doggedly.

‘Like you talk about being bullied at military school!’ Zoe flung even as she wriggled back into his lean, powerful body, registering that he was ready to go again while conceding that there was nothing new about that because Raj appeared to be insatiable. ‘I practically had to cut the story out of you with a knife at your throat,’ she reminded him with spirit. ‘And by the way, Raj, it wasn’t bullying. What you and Omar went through was abuse of the worst kind!’

‘If I talked you can talk too,’ Raj traded, running a long-fingered hand down over her spine, setting her alight without hesitation.

‘This is sexual torture,’ she told him shakily.

‘All you have to do is say no,’ Raj whispered, nipping at the soft lobe of her ear, flipping her long hair over his shoulder as he had learned to do, lost in the magic of her and her response for, as he had learned, it was enthralling to have that much power over a woman, as long as he never ever looked at the other side of the coin and acknowledged the reality that it was mutual.

Zoe straightened her shoulders and breathed, ‘Right... I’m saying no...but you’re not allowed to look at me like that!’

‘Like what?’ Raj prompted.

Those stunning dark silvered eyes of his shimmered with hunger and a tiny hint of hurt, and even a hint of hurt on show grabbed Zoe’s heart hard and squeezed the breath out of her. She wanted him; every time she looked at him she wanted him.

But that was fine, absolutely fine, she told herself soothingly. It was just sex. She’d had a friend at university who went on a girls’ holiday once purely to have sex with a lot of different men. That had been Claire’s idea of fun: Raj was Zoe’s idea of fun. And the world of sensual freedom she had learned to explore with Raj was the best reward of all. After the shocking attack she had survived as an adolescent, she had never dreamt that she could aspire to such freedom in her own body. Now she could only look back with a sigh when she recalled the frightened, broken young woman she had still been when she’d first met Raj.

‘OK... I’ll tell you,’ she conceded, stepping out of the shower, surrendering to his demand but unable to do so when he was still touching her, something in her shying away in revulsion at any association between making love with Raj and what had happened to traumatise her when she was still a complete innocent.

Zoe settled down on the side of the vast bed, still wet and dripping and not noticing. But Raj noticed, pale beneath his bronzed skin, his sculpted bone structure rigid because he was worried that he had pushed too hard for her confidences. Lifting her up, he carefully wound her like a doll into a giant fleecy towel, but when he tried to keep a soothing hold on her body, she broke away from him and dropped down into a bedside chair instead.

‘There was an older boy, well, not much older, he was fourteen and I was twelve,’ she trotted out shakily. ‘In the same foster home. We used to play video games together... I thought he was a friend. There was a film I wanted to see, a stupid romantic comedy, and my foster mum said he could go with me, look out for me...but he didn’t take me to the cinema.’

‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ Raj incised in a hoarse undertone.

‘No, my sisters used to say I needed to talk about it, which is why I went to therapy. He didn’t take me to the cinema. He took me what he said was a shortcut across wasteland and there was this old hut...and I was complaining because there was a storm and I was getting soaked.’

Her breathing was sawing noisily in and out of her struggling lungs.

‘In the hut all these boys were waiting. They were a gang and the price of his entry into the gang was to bring a virgin, any virgin. They beat me up when I tried to get away and I was so badly hurt I couldn’t move. They cut off my clothes with a kn-knife...and I had nothing even for them to see b-because I was a l-late developer,’ she muttered brokenly, almost back there, reliving the terror, the pain and the shame of that public exposure.

Raj grasped both her trembling hands to pull her back into the present. ‘It’s in the past, and it can’t hurt you now unless you let it... And, as you’ve already told me, you were lucky—you’re a survivor.’

‘Yes...’ Her voice was stronger when she encountered shimmering dark-as-night eyes that seemed full of all the strength and calm she herself so often lacked. ‘Yes, you’re right. You have to be wondering how I escaped being raped. The police forced their way in to arrest one of the gang and I was rescued. But now you know why I suffer the panic attacks and why I eventually had the nervous breakdown at university—because I hadn’t really dealt with what had happened to me. That was when I went for therapy and it helped enormously.’

Raj lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed them. His hands were unsteady. All his emotions were swimming dangerously close to the surface and he was fighting to suppress them with every breath in his body. Hers was a distressing story and he now more than understood her fear of men, but there was no need for the rage inside him at those who had been ready to prey on a child for a few moments of vicious entertainment. She had been saved and they had been punished by the law. Only it wasn’t enough, he thought fiercely, nowhere nearly enough punishment for the damage that had been inflicted on Zoe. In Maraban, the punishment would have been the death penalty.

As they travelled back to the palace, their honeymoon, as such, at an end, Zoe could see that telling Raj what had happened to her had made him settle back in behind his former reserve. Her small face tightened and her hands gripped together hard. She was questioning why she had shared all her secrets with him and anxious about why she was allowing herself to feel so close to him. Wasn’t she acting foolishly? Wasn’t it unwise in the circumstances to let every barrier between them drop?

‘A surprise awaits you on your return to the palace,’ Raj announced, trying to sound upbeat about what he was about to reveal, but failing miserably because he was no idiot and Vivi’s cold reaction to him at the wedding had told him all he needed to know about how he was viewed by Zoe’s family.

‘A surprise?’ Zoe queried.

He would have to hope that his own surprise went unnoticed while her sister was present. Dark blood highlighted Raj’s exotic cheekbones as he thought about the fainting couch he had succumbed to buying and he had to wonder how he had drifted so far from his original intentions. Logic, good judgement and self-control had gone out of the proverbial window the minute he’d laid eyes on Zoe. It was that simple, that basic, he acknowledged grimly.

‘Raffaele, Vivi’s husband, is apparently attending a business meeting in Tasit and your sister accompanied him to visit you.’

To his surprise, Zoe’s mouth down-curved and her chin came up, scarcely the display of uninhibited delight he had expected to see in receipt of such news. After all, she was in daily contact with her siblings, revealing a very close bond with them.

* * *

Zoe’s rarely stirred temper was humming at the prospect of seeing Vivi. Vivi was only coming to visit to check up on her.

‘This is a lovely surprise,’ Zoe said, smiling and lying through her teeth as she hugged her older sister, wondering when her redheaded sibling would finally accept that she was a grown woman but, by nature, Vivi, a forceful personality, was very protective of those she considered weaker. It stung Zoe’s pride to see herself as weak and breakable in Vivi’s eyes.

‘I wanted to see how you were managing.’

‘My phone calls should’ve reassured you on that score,’ Zoe pointed out as a maid brought in coffee and tiny cakes.

Vivi winced. ‘Well, to be frank, they had the opposite effect because you sound so gosh-darned happy all the time.’

‘My goodness, when did being happy become a sign that there was something to worry about?’

‘It’s a sign because I’ve never really heard you this happy before,’ Vivi admitted ruefully. ‘You can smile and laugh and seem happy on the surface but it’s usually very brief and now, all of a sudden, when nobody’s expecting it...’

‘Have you noticed all the changes I’ve made around here?’ Zoe interrupted abruptly, setting down her cup and springing up to indicate all the additional furniture in the room. ‘The staff took photos of the unused rooms and sent them while we were away and I made selections. It’s a big improvement, don’t you think?’

‘If medieval makes you hot to trot,’ Vivi remarked with a sniff, strolling across the room to flick a heavily carved piece that in her opinion would have looked fabulous in a horror movie of some creepy old house.

‘Let me show you around,’ Zoe urged, willing to do anything to evade Vivi’s curiosity, because in truth she was happy and she didn’t really want to think too deeply about why.

Vivi glanced into the bedroom, her attention locking straight onto the male and female apparel currently being unpacked by staff. ‘So, what happened to the—?’

In haste, Zoe thrust open the bathroom door, although she hadn’t yet added anything to its décor, and then froze at the sight of the very opulent tasselled purple fainting couch in the centre.

‘Oh, I like that...it’s sort of sexy and decadent!’ Vivi carolled, walking over to smooth a hand across the rich buttoned upholstery and flick a braided gold tassel.

Zoe was recalling her conversation with Raj and her face was burning hot as hellfire even while a little flicker of heat at her core flamed at the gesture...the challenge. Would she or wouldn’t she? He would be wondering all day about that, she knew he would be, and a dreamy smile at the knowledge of that erotic prospect removed the tension that Vivi’s arrival and awkward questions had induced.

‘You know, I don’t even need to ask you any more.’ Vivi sighed as she returned to her coffee. ‘Obviously, the separate bedroom deal crashed very quickly and you’re sleeping with him. Whose idea was that? I hardly think it was yours! If you get too involved with Raj, Zoe...there will be consequences, because what you have together isn’t supposed to last...and where will you be when the marriage ends?’

‘It doesn’t matter whose idea it was,’ Zoe argued quietly. ‘All that matters is that there isn’t a problem of any kind with Raj and I, and our present arrangements are our private business.’

Vivi groaned out loud. ‘You’re besotted with him. It’s written all over you,’ she condemned, her concern palpable. ‘That smooth bastard took advantage of you just as I feared he would!’

‘Vivi!’ Zoe blistered across the room in a furious voice her sister had never heard from her before. ‘You do not talk about Raj like that!’

‘I’m not saying anything I wouldn’t say to his face!’ Vivi shot back at her defensively. ‘I’m trying to protect you but it looks like I got here a little too late for that. Damn Grandad, this is all his fault, his wretched snobbery pushing you into this marriage, and now you’re going to get hurt.’

Zoe drew herself up to her full unimpressive height. ‘There is no reason why I should get hurt.’

‘I know what I saw in your face...you’re in love with this guy, who only married you to please his father and use our fancy-schmancy grandmother’s ancestry to enhance his standing.’

‘I’m not in love with him,’ Zoe argued fiercely. ‘It sounds slutty but we’re just having sex for the sake of it!’

Vivi unleashed a pained and unimpressed sigh. ‘And what would you know about a relationship like that?’

Zoe lifted her head high. ‘I’m learning as I go along, just like every other woman has to. I need that freedom, even if I make mistakes... It’s part of growing up,’ she reasoned.

‘You’re definitely growing up,’ Vivi conceded ruefully. ‘I never thought there would come a day when you would fight with me.’

‘Even Winnie fights with you!’ Zoe laughed and gave her much taller sister a hug, relieved the unnervingly intimate dispute was over.

After Vivi had been picked up an hour later, Zoe walked thoughtfully back to her suite with Raj. Not. In. Love. With. Him. She was simply happy and there was nothing wrong with being happy, was there? Zoe hadn’t enjoyed much happiness in her life and she was determined to make the most of every moment.

She studied the fainting couch set out like a statement, an invitation, and she smiled before she wandered down the steps to the private courtyard around which their rooms ranged, which allowed them complete privacy.

And all around her she could see the proof of Raj’s desire to please her and make her happy, for the once dark courtyard had been replanted during their absence into a spectacular jungle of greenery amongst which exotic flowers bloomed. Even the fountain she had admired, which had long since fallen out of use, was now working again, clean water sparkling down into the brightly tiled basin below. He hadn’t mentioned a word about his intentions, but then he never did. He never looked for thanks either. Gifts simply appeared without fanfare, gifts like the wonderful transformation of an outdated, neglected courtyard garden.

She didn’t need him to love her as he had loved Nabila, she only needed the proof that he cared, Zoe reflected fiercely. And care he did with amazing efficiency and resolve. How could she expect any more than that in a pretend marriage? After all, he was already giving her much more than she had expected to receive. It wasn’t going to last, she knew that, accepted that and that was her choice, her choice to live for today and worry about tomorrow only when it arrived...