Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 15

BY THEN the isolation was beginning to get to her. She hadn’t dared to so much as step out of the apartment for fear of being waylaid by the press or people she did not want to see.

Oh, her mother called her up every day on the telephone. In her own way, Lucinda was trying to be supportive, but it didn’t come easily to her. And really it was Evie who found herself ladling out calm reassurance to her mother when each new day went by without hearing a single thing from Raschid.

‘If he lets you down in this, I’ll kill him,’ Lucinda vowed when a full week had gone by with no word from Raschid.

‘Trust him, Mother,’ Evie replied. ‘I do. He loves me as much as I love him and he wants this baby. With that kind of incentive men can move mountains.’

But, as the days went by without any word from Raschid, for the first time ever Evie found herself wishing the newspapers would give her some clue as to what was going on in Behran. But they were frustratingly empty of any reference to either Sheikh Raschid or Evie Delahaye for a change. It was a matter of priorities to them. A juicy scandal had suddenly blown up involving two government ministers and the media were busy covering that.

Asim didn’t help. For he too clamped up whenever Evie tried to grill him, feigning no knowledge of what Raschid was doing and advising her to be patient. But he knew more than he was admitting to, Evie was absolutely sure about that, and the fact that he wasn’t prepared to speak could only mean the information filtering back to him from Behran had to be bad.

Oh, he tried his very best to make the wait bearable. In fact, she and Asim became quite close friends during those two wretched weeks. He had duties to attend to at the Behran Embassy for part of each day, but otherwise he devoted his time exclusively to her.

They walked together each morning on the roof garden attached to the apartment. And in the evenings he encouraged Evie to reacquaint herself with the game of chess—something she had played often with her father before he’d been tragically killed in a horse-riding accident when she was only ten years old.

Her arm healed quickly under Asim’s care. He was a good man, a kind man, a pleasant companion, and it was during those two weeks that she began to understand why Raschid kept him close by all the time.

He also talked freely and proudly about his country and all of the changes that had been made during the last twenty years. Life in Behran, she discovered, was not as totalitarian as she had believed it to be. The women were not kept hidden behind locked doors. It was no longer compulsory for them to cover themselves when they ventured out in public. Education was compulsory for both sexes, and women were beginning to find a place for themselves in all aspects of the working society.

Only a very small section of the people wanted to keep things as they used to be, he’d told her. Most people saw the advantages in moving forward with the rest of the world rather than trying to pull against it.

But the most curious point of all she learned from Asim during these talks they shared was that all of the changes made in Behran had been effected through Raschid’s father, which made his old-fashioned attitude towards marriage all the more confusing.

But then, religion did that—divided and fragmented a human race that should be drawing closer together. Religion, colour, social tradition. Her own mother was guilty of discrimination in all three areas, so why should Evie expect Raschid’s father to feel any different?

And Raschid’s father did not feel different—as Evie found out for herself soon enough.

His feelings were made known to her via his personal envoy towards the end of the second week of her enforced isolation.

Asim was out attending to his duties as was his habit during the middle part of the day. Evie hadn’t been feeling too well that morning—sickly and aching as if she might be going to come down with a bug.

‘You are unwell, Miss Delahaye?’ he’d enquired when she’d declined their usual walk on the roof garden before he’d left her.

Evie had just sent him a rueful look. ‘You’re the doctor,’ she’d said dryly. ‘You tell me why I feel sick all the time.’

Asim had grimaced his understanding of her condition, and left her lounging on one of the living-room sofas, apparently content to read a book, which she did, in a halfhearted kind of way—until the sound of steps in the hallway brought her jackknifing to her feet.

Since no one else but Asim had access to the apartment, and he wasn’t due back for ages yet, she thought it was Raschid returning at last. So her eager expression reflected that assumption as the living-room door swung firmly inwards—only to cloud in confusion when two complete strangers stepped boldly into the room.

Two Arabs, to be precise, dressed in smart western suits and looking about as innocuous as two gangsters.

‘Miss Delahaye?’ the taller, sharper-looking of the two enquired.

Evie’s stomach muscles contracted, her shoulders straightening slightly as if in readiness to receive a dread ful blow. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What are you doing here?’

She was offered an obsequious bow, and Evie didn’t like it. It sent an icy shiver chasing down her spine, as if the cold hand of fate had just touched her shoulder.

‘My apologies for this intrusion,’ the spokesman murmured politely. ‘My name is Jamal Al Kareem. I am come bearing messages for you from Crown Prince Hashim,’ he explained.

‘And Prince Raschid?’ Evie questioned. ‘Is he not with you?’

‘Prince Raschid is engaged on—official business,’ she was informed. ‘In our neighbouring state of Abadilah.’

Abadilah…That cold hand touched her shoulder again. Abadilah was the state Aisha’s father ruled.

‘Then how did you gain access to this apartment?’ she asked coldly.

‘As the Crown Prince’s head of security I have access to all Royal residences. It is, I am afraid, a necessary evil for powerful families to take special precautions to protect themselves,’ he explained, moving ever closer to her as he spoke. ‘For power brings with it its own enemies, and those enemies may decide that trouble can best be served from within, so to speak.’

He came to a stop at the rear of the sofa where Evie had been sitting. In response, Evie found herself taking a defensive step backwards, something in his super-polite, very silky tone making her feel threatened. As if he was subtly informing her that she was classed as an enemy here.

‘Y-you said Crown Prince Hashim sent you,’ she prompted, utilising a cool aloofness in an attempt to offset whatever it was this horrible man was giving off.

Another bow—another shiver. ‘The Crown Prince is most concerned about the—predicament you find yourself in at present,’ the messenger confirmed. ‘He wishes me to relay to you his most sincere apologies for any—distress you have been forced to endure due to his premature announcement to the media.’

‘Th-thank you,’ Evie said, her eyes flicking nervously to where the other man was standing by the door—half in and half out of it as if he was on alert, listening for Asim’s return. ‘But you may assure Crown Prince Hashim that no apology was necessary.’

‘He will be most humbly grateful for your gracious understanding,’ the spokesman returned courteously. ‘But the Crown Prince is—disturbed that your feelings were not taken into account when he released the statement about his son’s forthcoming marriage. It was—insensitive of him, as his revered son pointed out. Now he wishes to make recompense for any distress caused to yourself…’

Watching him lift a hand to his inside pocket, Evie felt the muscles in her shoulders tighten just a little bit more. What she thought he was going to withdraw from that pocket she wasn’t quite sure, but what she didn’t expect to see him holding out towards her was a slender slip of paper.

Wary, confused, instinctively suspicious of what was taking place here, Evie stepped forward so she could take the piece of paper, then stepped quickly back before letting her eyes drop from Jamal Al Kareem’s expressionless face to check out what she was holding. And felt a sense of chilling horror slide slowly through her blood.

It was a cheque made out to the World Aid Foundation for two million pounds.

‘The Crown Prince is aware of the good work you do for this particular charity,’ the messenger explained while Evie just stared unblinkingly down at the cheque. ‘He begs you will accept this small donation as a—gesture of atonement. And in the light of events,’ Jamal Al Kareem smoothly continued, ‘he feels sure you will understand the sad necessity for him to also offer you—this…’

Evie blinked, glancing up rather dazedly to find yet another offering was being held out to her. It was a business card; she could see that even before she stepped forward to take it.

But it was only as she lowered her eyes and found herself staring at the famous logo of a very exclusive private clinic right here in London that the full horror of what was really being relayed to her here finally hit her.

‘The Crown Prince is, of course, confident of your continued discretion during this—delicate time,’ Jamal Al Kareem silkily concluded. ‘In anticipation of your understanding, he remains your most humble servant, and hopes this will put an end to the matter…’

An end to the matter—an end to the matter. Those few terrible words went round and round in Evie’s head as she stared at that wretched business card while her two visitors made their bows and left her to it.

She didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t do anything at all as far as she was aware. She felt strange, separated from herself almost. As if she were now standing where Jamal Al Kareem had been standing and was observing from a distance someone who looked like her, staring down at the cheque and the business card she was holding in her hands with absolutely no reaction at all.

Her face was very white, her lips cold and bloodless. Her eyes were lowered so she couldn’t tell what they were doing, but her chest wasn’t moving, as if her heart and lungs had simply stopped functioning, effectively cutting the oxygen off from her brain so that it couldn’t even attempt to think.

Because thinking meant pain—the worst kind of pain. The pain of knowing that this truly was the—end of the matter.

No hope left. No more waiting. No chance that Raschid was going to walk through that door at any moment now and tell her that everything had been sorted in their favour.

For Raschid was in Abadilah, with Aisha. And Evie should not be standing here in his apartment.

From that very cold, distant place she seemed to have retreated into, she watched her other self open her fingers and let both the cheque and the card drop to the floor. Then that person simply turned and walked away—out into the hallway, out of the apartment and into the waiting lift. It took her downwards. She didn’t even stop when the concierge called out to her sharply.

Outside, the good weather was still holding. London was baking beneath a heatwave that had most people walking around in shirt-sleeves. So she didn’t look out of place in her pale blue knitted top and casual white cotton trousers as she joined the lunchtime rush taking place on the pavements.

A car followed her for a while, though she didn’t know that, its two occupants pacing her progress along the embankment until she turned onto a paved walkway where a car could not go.

An hour later—maybe two—and she was still walking. It must have been instinct that eventually made her aware of where she was, because she suddenly found herself standing outside her mother’s apartment.

She rang the bell, and her mother’s disembodied voice sounded in the communication box.

‘It’s Evie,’ she heard herself say. ‘Can I come in?’

There was a moment’s surprised silence, then the buzzer sounded to tell Evie she could open the front door now. Her mother’s apartment was on the first floor. She was already standing at the flat door when Evie got there. Lucinda took one look at her daughter and went as white as a sheet.

‘Oh, my God, Evie,’ she gasped in shaken dismay. ‘You’re bleeding!’

Evie barely heard her; she was too busy fainting at her mother’s feet.

* * *

It was very late that same evening and Lucinda was sitting beside her daughter’s hospital bed when the door suddenly swung open and Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah stepped into the room with his faithful servant crowding right behind him.

He took one look at Evie lying so still in the bed and strode urgently forward. Only to pull to a halt when Lucinda Delahaye jumped to her feet and placed herself firmly between him and her daughter.

For once, Lucinda looked less than her usual immaculate self. Her hair was untidy, silken threads of gold were tumbling around her face where they had escaped from the elegant chignon they were supposed to be contained in. She had aged decades, her usually alabaster-smooth skin scored by lines of strain.

She grimly ushered them out of the room, firmly closing the door behind her. ‘How dare you people show your faces here?’ she raked at them viciously.

Raschid didn’t seem to hear her. His bronzed skin looked grey, his golden eyes blackened by a terrible shock.

‘The baby…?’

‘Oh, I suppose it would solve all your problems to hear that she’s lost it!’ Lucinda lashed at him.

‘No!’ Raschid ground out, and swayed, his face going so white that it was only as Asim reached out to take hold of him that Lucinda realised how Raschid had misunderstood her meaning.

‘Well, she hasn’t lost it.’ She grudgingly rectified the error. ‘Though how she didn’t after what your henchmen did to her has to be a miracle.’

‘Is there somewhere we can discuss this in privacy?’ Asim quietly suggested.

The hospital corridor wasn’t busy, but some of the patients had the doors to their rooms standing open. They had to be able to hear every word that was being said.

Asim still had an arm around Raschid’s shoulders while Raschid himself seemed incapable of anything except just standing there looking devastated. And for some reason that devastation utterly incensed Evie’s mother.

‘You want privacy?’ Lucinda hissed. ‘I can give you privacy,’ she grimly decreed, and stalked off down the corridor with the two men following behind her.

And she was in no mood to be pleasant. Having just gone through the worst experience of her life, watching the very lifeblood seep out of her daughter, Lucinda wanted someone else’s blood as recompense.

Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah’s blood.

‘Do you know what those two men did to her?’ she demanded the moment they were shut away inside the waiting room. ‘If Evie ever forgives you in this lifetime, Sheikh, then I certainly will not!’

‘It was a mistake,’ he muttered, still so caught up in his first impression of what Lucinda had said to him that even with her swift correction of that misunderstanding he still hadn’t recovered.

‘Was it also a mistake when you didn’t bother to get in touch with her for two whole weeks?’ Evie’s mother challenged.

‘I had nothing good to say,’ Raschid thickly explained. ‘It seemed—kinder to wait until I could relay only good news.’

‘Kind?’ Lucinda scorned that excuse. ‘Where was the kindness in keeping her in suspense like you did? She bottles things up!’ she cried. ‘She always has done! I thought you knew that! You told me you loved her! You promised to take care of her!’ she went on remorselessly. ‘Instead she was treated like a whore by your people!’

Raschid flinched then suddenly folded into a nearby chair to bury his face in his hands.

‘Lady Delahaye…’ It was Asim who tried to calm the situation, his voice that soothingly diplomatic one Evie knew so well. ‘We understand and accept your right to be angry. But we would sincerely appreciate it if you could explain to us what happened after Miss Delahaye left the apartment.’

As he stood there, tall and proud beside his crumpled master, Lucinda felt a sudden urge to leap on both of them. Instead she turned her back, folded her arms across her trembling body and tried at last to get a hold on herself.

‘She walked out of there with nothing,’ she whispered starkly. ‘In shock. No money. No idea of what she was doing—’ There was a pause while she swallowed several times before she could continue. ‘I don’t know how long she walked for but she eventually found her way to my door—my door!’ she swung around to fling at Raschid. ‘Do you realise how far that is from your apartment? And she was bleeding!’ Lucinda choked out on a wretched sob. ‘Bleeding and she didn’t even know it!’

Lurching violently to his feet, Raschid took two tense strides towards the door then just stopped, his whole frame clenched by some powerful inner tension that held him locked right there to the spot. ‘Did they touch her?’ he rasped out tautly.

‘Who?’ Lucinda said bitterly. ‘Your men?’

‘They were not Sheikh Raschid’s men, Lady Delahaye,’ Asim denied.

‘His father’s men, then—what’s the difference?’ she flashed. ‘But in answer to your question Evie didn’t say they physically touched her, only that they made her see that if your father could hate her that much, then there really was no chance for the two of you.’

‘And her health?’ Asim enquired gently.

Tears washed across Lucinda’s eyes but she blinked them away again as determinedly as Evie herself would have done. ‘She lost a lot of blood,’ she replied. ‘But by some quirk of fate managed to hang on to her baby. Now they are prescribing bed-rest, no stress and no confrontations. So I would appreciate it, Sheikh Raschid, if you would respect those things.’

A warning. A threat. The English way of issuing both that was just as effective as the Arab way.

Raschid didn’t answer. But he did move at last, lifting a hand to rub wearily at his eyes before turning around to face Lucinda.

It was the first time Lucinda had actually allowed herself to look at him—and at last she saw the ravages that had taken place on his face. The man looked tormented, stripped clean to the bone of his arrogance and hurting for it.

‘May I see her?’ he gruffly requested.

But Lucinda firmly shook her head. ‘Not without Evie’s agreement,’ she said. ‘Seeing you may upset her, and, as I just said, I won’t have her upset.’

Raschid nodded his head in acknowledgement of that. ‘Then I will wait until you acquire her permission,’ he announced, walked back to the chair and sat down again.

He was still sitting there twelve hours later, and even hardhearted Lucinda was beginning to feel sorry for him.

‘I don’t want to see him,’ Evie stated stubbornly.

‘But, darling!’ her mother pleaded. ‘He’s been sitting out there throughout the whole night! Surely that deserves some consideration!’

‘I said,’ Evie repeated, ‘I don’t want to see him.’

Lucinda looked utterly bewildered. ‘I never thought I would hear myself say this, Evie,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t think you’re being fair to the man. He’s distraught! It is his baby too, you know! He has a right to reassure himself that you are both okay!’

‘You reassure him, then,’ Evie suggested coldly. ‘The doctors say I mustn’t get stressed, and Raschid stresses me.’

With that, she turned her head away to stare fixedly out of the window. It was unbelievable what the last twenty-four hours had done to her. It was as if the trauma of almost losing her baby had forced her to grow a protective shell around herself that nobody could penetrate.

It had also brought her mother crashing down from the haughty pedestal she usually sat upon. That frightening ride in an ambulance with all sirens blaring had shaken her more than she cared to admit. For a while last night she’d truly believed she was going to lose her daughter. Shocks like those focused the mind on what was really important in life.

And nothing could be more important than life itself.

By some miracle the doctors had managed to stem the bleeding and keep the baby safe, but at what cost to her daughter’s sanity Lucinda wasn’t really sure, because in all Evie’s twenty-three years she had never known her to cut herself off from others as coldly as she was doing now.

‘I thought you loved him,’ she murmured. ‘In the name of that love, doesn’t he deserve a hearing?’

‘No,’ was the blunt reply. ‘Evie—’

‘I’m tired now,’ Evie interrupted, and closed her eyes, bit deep into the inner cushion of her lower lip, and silently prayed that her mother would drop the subject!

Surprisingly she slept. She didn’t even hear her mother leave the hospital room. Next time she awoke it was dark outside and a nurse was bending over her.

‘You need to eat something, Miss Delahaye,’ she said. ‘You’ve gone over twenty-four hours without food and that isn’t good for your baby.’

‘Can I get out of bed?’ she asked; she needed the bathroom badly.

But the nurse sadly shook her head. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid.’ Which meant that Evie had to suffer the indignity of using a bedpan.

Which also didn’t help her mood when, washed by the nurse and her hair combed and plaited, the mobile tray that held her dinner was moved across Evie’s lap and the nurse said gently, ‘You have a visitor. He’s been waiting for hours. Will you agree to see him, for just a minute?’

Evie stared down at the bowl of soup that suddenly tasted like sawdust in her mouth when only seconds before it had tasted rather pleasantly of chicken.

‘I don’t think he’s going to leave here until you do see him,’ the nurse added. ‘He arrived late last night, and hasn’t left the waiting room since except to wash and change his clothes in one of the spare rooms along the corridor. Your mother has pleaded with him, his companion has pleaded with him and we have pleaded with him. He doesn’t even acknowledge that we’ve spoken! I have never come up against such intransigence in all my life!’

Watch this space, Evie thought coldly, and went on with her soup without making a single comment. After a while the nurse sighed and left her to it. A little while later Evie curled up on her side, folded her arms protectively over her stomach, and went to sleep thinking about Raschid sitting there in the waiting room.

The next time she came awake, a grey dawn was just beginning to lighten the bedroom—and there was a man standing at the bottom of her bed, reading her medical chart.

He glanced up when she moved. ‘Good morning, Miss Delahaye.’ He smiled before returning his attention to whatever he was reading. ‘Your child is most determined to stay exactly where he is,’ he remarked lightly. ‘I suspect a mixing of two sets of very stubborn genes must give him his tenacity.’

‘Asim,’ Evie breathed. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘I am Sheikh Raschid’s personal physician,’ he reminded her. ‘Which now means I am his child’s personal physician.’

‘Is that a joke?’ she demanded, using her hands to slide herself up the pillows and into a sitting position.

‘No joke,’ Asim blandly denied. ‘Where Sheikh Raschid’s child goes, I go from now on—Oh, come,’ he said when he saw her expression. ‘We are good friends now, are we not? You do not find me too overbearing. We will get along very well together, I am certain of it.’

‘And where does Raschid fit into all of this?’ Evie enquired acidly.

‘At this precise moment he sits exactly where he has been sitting since he arrived here two evenings ago,’ Asim replied. ‘Where he now awaits my report on his child’s state of health.’

‘But not the mother’s,’ Evie bitterly assumed from all of that.

‘At this stage in the proceedings, the child’s health depends entirely on the mother’s health so of course she matters. But as for the woman,’ Asim continued smoothly, ‘he accepts now that he is beyond her forgiveness. Which matters little when it is clear that he will never learn to forgive himself.’

‘If you’re trying to play on my sympathies, Asim,’ Evie sighed, reaching out for the flask of water sitting on her bedside cabinet, ‘it isn’t working.’

‘Here,’ Asim offered instantly. ‘Let me do that for you.’

Taking the flask from her, he unscrewed the cap and poured some of the chilled water into a glass before handing it to her. In silence he stood beside her and watched her drink the water, took the glass from her when she had finished and smoothly replaced both glass and flask back on the cabinet.

Then he pleaded soberly, ‘See him, madam. For two nights and a day he has neither slept nor eaten and I am seriously worried about him.’

‘He kept me waiting for two weeks before his henchmen came to evict me.’

‘They were not his henchmen.’ Asim denied the charge. ‘And if you force him to he will wait two weeks in that waiting room just down the corridor, I promise you.’

Evie could believe that, knowing the man as well as she did.

‘Okay,’ she wearily conceded, deciding that she might as well get it over with. ‘I’ll see him.’

‘Thank you.’ Asim sent her one of those bows that reminded her of Crown Prince Hashim’s messengers, and she shuddered.

‘He can have five minutes then you make him leave,’ she added on the back of that shuddering reminder.

‘As you wish.’

What Evie wished for was to never set eyes on Raschid again, but she kept that thought to herself as Asim quickly left the room now he had what he had come for.

The door opened again in seconds, and what she saw as Raschid strode into the room almost—almost caused the shell she was hiding behind to crack.

Not with sympathy but with anger, because if this man hadn’t eaten or slept in two nights and a day, he was looking disgustingly well for it!

Evie felt conned.

Conned by the pristine neatness of the clothes he was wearing, by the clean-shaven smoothness of his face and the arrogance with which he stood there by the closed door studying her with absolutely no hint of remorse written anywhere on his lean dark face.

‘How are you?’ he enquired.

‘I’m sure everyone has told you exactly how I am,’ Evie replied, in no mood for pleasantries.

He nodded politely, taking the words at their face value, then strode smoothly forward to pull out and sit down on the chair beside the bed.

It was only when he came this close to her that Evie saw the slight bruising around his eyes, which showed that the man had been going without sleep—but even those bruises added to his dark brooding sensuality, she noted resentfully.

That gut-wrenching sensuality that had been catching her out from the first time that she’d ever looked at him.

In an effort to stop herself from feeling like that, Evie dragged her eyes away and slid her knees up so she could hug them loosely with her arms. Then, head lowered, mouth clamped shut, she grimly waited for him to say what he had waited around this long to say.

Yet he didn’t speak. He dragged out that silence like a taut piece of string that seemed to be trying to tug her chin up so she would look at him. But Evie refused to look at him, because looking meant communicating, as they had always been able to do with just the merest clash of their eyes. And she didn’t want that kind of communication with him any more.

‘I won’t go away just because you wish it, you know,’ he murmured eventually.

‘I can’t deal with you right now,’ she answered flatly. ‘Anyone with a bit of sensitivity would have understood that and left me to myself.’

‘Because you blame me for what happened?’

Yes, she blamed him. She’d felt used, ignored, abandoned and abused by the time those two men had left her alone. Raschid had promised her protection. He had promised to call her. He had vowed to make everything work for them.

‘I’m sorry my father’s people frightened you so badly.’

‘Your father’s people are also your people,’ Evie reminded him. ‘I don’t particularly want you to differentiate between yourself and them.’

‘Why not?’

Why not? she repeated grimly to herself. ‘Because you are no different, and I don’t want to see you as such any more.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, I have been shown the light,’ she answered with spiked mockery. ‘And will you stop throwing questions at me as if I am the one standing on trial?’ she flashed. ‘In case you haven’t realised it yet—I am the victim here!’

‘And you think I am not just as much a victim?’ His wide chest heaved, lifting and falling on a tense pull of air. ‘I had no idea my father could stoop so low as to pull a lousy stunt like that!’ he said savagely. ‘He now deeply regrets what he did,’ he added, sounding so short and clipped that if she had been anyone else Evie would have read stiff reluctance to offer that information in that haughty tone.

But she wasn’t anyone else. And she knew this man inside out, so she also knew what that tone of voice really meant.

Raschid was struggling to keep his real feelings about his father under tight wraps.

‘He sends you his most sincere apologies—’

‘He’s already done that,’ she clipped, her face going white when she remembered the last person who had said those words to her.

‘And begs your forgiveness,’ Raschid doggedly continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

Evie clamped her lips together and forbore to repeat that his father had also done that before.

‘He will, of course, tell you these things personally as soon as he is fit enough to leave hospital.’

That brought her eyes up and around to stare at him. ‘What hospital?’ she gasped.

‘The one I put him in,’ he replied, the words hard with a mockery that had no hint of humour. ‘When he refused to accept that I intended to marry you and not Aisha,’ he went on to explain, ‘I abdicated my right to succession. The shock almost killed him.’

‘Oh, Raschid, no,’ Evie groaned, and wondered wretchedly how many people this whole horror story was going to hurt before it was done.

‘Still,’ he went on coolly, ‘all’s well that ends well, as you British like to say. My father now has a heart which beats as healthily as my own does, and he is also reconciled to the fact that I will marry where I choose to marry.’

‘Not if that marriage includes me, you will not,’ Evie said stiffly.

His dark head turned, and it was only as it did so that Evie realised that he too had been avoiding all eye contact between them.

But not now. Those liquid gold eyes now pierced her with a deep, dark, grim intent. ‘You will marry me,’ he proclaimed. ‘I have not spent millions of pounds and too many precious days scouring the Middle East searching for a suitable substitute to take my place as Aisha’s husband, nor did I almost put my own father in his grave and place at risk both you and the child you carry simply to hear you now tell me it was all for nothing!’

‘Did I ask you to do all that?’ Evie countered tersely.

‘Yes!’ he declared. ‘Every time you told me you loved me, you asked me to do those things!’ he rasped. ‘Every time we simply look at each other, we are demanding from the other that we go to any lengths necessary to be together!’

He got up, the passion sounding in his voice reflected in the angry movement of his body as he walked across the room to stand glaring out of the window.

While Evie sat, stunned into utter silence by his vehemence.

And the worst of it was that he was right! The kind of love they had shared during the last two years had demanded that they go to any lengths to hold on to it!

But not any more, Evie thought on a shudder. Recent events had gone too far and turned too nasty to hang on to romantic ideals that had no place in reality.

‘I can learn to live without your love,’ she told him huskily. ‘I can even live without people’s respect!’ Hadn’t she been doing that very successfully for two whole years now? ‘But I’ve discovered that I cannot live with hatred.’

‘My father doesn’t hate you,’ he sighed. ‘He simply saw you as a pawn he could use in the battle he was waging with me.’

‘That makes it all right, does it?’ Evie flashed back bitterly.

‘No,’ he heavily conceded.

‘And I wasn’t the real pawn,’ Evie added. ‘My baby was.’

‘Our baby,’ Raschid grimly corrected.

But Evie shook her head. ‘No matter how you want to cover it up, Raschid, your father wanted this baby dead. I can’t forgive that. I refuse to forgive that! So as far as I am concerned for him this baby is dead,’ she announced. ‘I will not acknowledge you as his father, and he will not bear your name. I will not place his life at risk like that from anyone again.’

‘And I have no say in this? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I am saying,’ Evie wearily asserted, ‘that if you care for this child then you will do the right thing by him and forget you ever conceived him.’

He didn’t say anything for a long time after that. And the silence pealed like the toll of a funeral bell while Evie waited to find out what he was going to do.

And he looked every inch the heir to a kingdom, she noted helplessly. Body straight, chin high, that lean dark aquiline profile revealing absolutely nothing when in actual fact she knew she had just cut deep into the very heart of him with those brutal words.

‘So be it,’ he said suddenly, turned and walked stiffly to the door.

It came as such a shock, such a terrible, terrible shock to have him concede defeat like that that it literally smashed her control to smithereens.

And her shrill cry of, ‘Raschid—no!’ filled the room with more agonised despair than it could accommodate.

It made him reel around in its shock-waves, dark face certainly showing emotion now as he strode back to the bed and bent over her, his skin wiped clear of any colour, golden eyes ferocious.

‘I should damn well think so!’ he ground out savagely. ‘I am your other half—don’t you dare discard me like that again!’

Her arms were already clutching at his shoulders, his sliding beneath her so he could scoop her out of the bed.

‘Now we talk sense,’ he gritted, sitting down on the bed with her then, using hard fingers to angle her face so she could see the power of his fury. ‘For if you think I have risked so much only to concede surrender to your sudden cowardice, then you don’t know me as well as you ought to do by now!’

‘You set me up!’ she sobbed out accusingly. ‘I am supposed to avoid that kind of stress!’

‘Your stress,’ he said angrily, ‘was there because you were playing the ice-princess to the hilt again!’

His chest heaved on a taut rasp of air; Evie clutched all the harder at him. ‘What your father did was unforgivable!’ she choked.

‘Then don’t forgive him!’ he declared with a shrug that completely dismissed the problem. ‘But you will marry me, Evie,’ he grimly ordained. ‘Proudly and openly. We will bring up our child together and he will bear my name!’