Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 16

‘YOU look stunning, Evie,’ her brother murmured huskily. ‘Raschid is a very, very lucky man.’

Is he?

Standing there gazing at herself in the mirror, Evie wondered if Raschid was feeling lucky to be marrying her today.

Oh, he was quick to say all the right things to pronounce his good fortune. No one but no one could deny that Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah had been very vocal about his good luck when he’d announced his forthcoming marriage to Evangeline Delahaye to the world’s press three weeks ago.

But did he feel lucky, when there was so much he was placing at risk by marrying her?

And, more to the point, did she feel lucky? Just because, three weeks ago in that hospital bed, she had finally come to terms with the knowledge that she couldn’t let Raschid go no matter what that decision was going to mean to both of them, it did not automatically follow that all the concerns she had been struggling with then had melted away.

And as she stood here now, in her old bedroom at Westhaven, alone with her brother because the rest of her family were already making their way to the registry office where she was to marry Raschid in less than an hour’s time, it was those concerns that came back to haunt her.

Like the worrying ring of tight security Raschid had thrown around Westhaven when it was decided that she would come here to convalesce until they married.

Funny really, she mused, but having been with Raschid for two years and having always been aware that he was an exceedingly wealthy man in his own right, she had never known him make such a dramatic show of that wealth—until they’d come to Westhaven.

But that wealth had certainly been put on show in the very high-profile cordon that secured both the grounds and the property. Even Julian had found it necessary to prove his identity before he could gain access to his own home!

The curious press loved it; her mother serenely ignored it. Evie, on the other hand, was horrified by it.

‘Is there something going on that you aren’t telling?’ she’d demanded of Raschid when he’d come down to Westhaven to join them for dinner one evening. ‘Am I still at risk—is that what all this security is for?’

‘No,’ he’d denied. ‘But I learn my lessons the first time they are taught to me, and by leaving only Asim to take care of you at my apartment I devalued your importance to me in the eyes of those who gauge worth by the strength of its protection.’

‘The Arab mentality, you mean.’

‘If you wish to call it that,’ he’d conceded, refusing to take up the provoking derision pitched into the remark. ‘But it is an impression that has now been rectified. No one will ever dare to approach you again in threat.’

‘Does that mean I have my eunuch at last, sneaking up to guard my bedroom door every night after I’ve retired?’ Again the remark had been sharp with acid.

‘Quite obsessed with this eunuch thing, aren’t you?’ he’d drawled, a sleek black eyebrow arching in amused mockery at that suggestion. ‘Could it be you have been weaving secret fantasies in your lonely bed at night? Maybe as a punishment to me because I refuse to share it?’

His determined abstinence in this area of their lives was just another form of protection he imposed on her that Evie found worrying. In all their two years he had never been able to resist her—she only had to remember that brief episode in her bedroom at Beverley Castle to prove that point!

But now, suddenly, Raschid rarely even laid a finger on her. Why? What could he possibly hope to gain by his abstinence now, when the damage of their loving had already been done with the conception of their baby?

He had, until now, avoided the question whenever she had challenged him with it. And it was just another worry she was having to contend with as she stood here staring at herself in the mirror.

‘If you were me, Julian,’ she burst out suddenly, spinning round to look anxiously at her beautifully tanned brother who had not long been back home from his monthlong honeymoon sailing round the Caribbean, ‘would you be marrying yourself to an Arab who lives in a Muslim state?’

‘I thought true love could conquer all,’ he replied with a teasing grin.

But Evie was in no mood to be teased. ‘His family don’t want me to be his wife,’ she explained tautly. ‘His people don’t want me! For all I know, I may be walking myself straight into purdah!’

‘Or simply suffering from a bad case of wedding nerves,’ Julian suggested. ‘Oh, come on, Evie!’ he sighed. ‘Since everyone knows exactly what Raschid feels for you, I can’t see purdah being much of a problem when it would most definitely necessitate him having to share it with you!’

Then why does it feel as if I’m doing the wrong thing? she asked herself tautly as she turned back to the mirror.

What she saw standing there was a woman who was anxiously attempting to respect the traditions of two completely different cultures.

Her outfit had been made for her in-house by a top designer who had been drafted in at enormous expense by Raschid and instructed to create something incomparable, and what he had come up with was both startlingly simplistic and breathtakingly effective.

The dress was really nothing more than a long and narrow tunic with a simple high neck and long loose sleeves designed very much on Middle Eastern lines. Made of a fabulously rich antique-gold silk, its only decoration was the narrow band of delicate seed-pearls sewn down the front seam and around the tiny stand-up collar.

But it was the addition of a fine gold mesh skullcap dotted with yet more seed-pearls that gave it that special touch of glamour. On the advice of the designer, Evie had left her hair loose so the long silken mass tumbled down her spine in fine gold tendrils.

‘Medieval England meets mysterious East.’ Christina had softly described the effect just before she’d left for the registry office with Lucinda, putting in a nutshell exactly what it was that the designer had been trying to achieve when he’d created this look for Evie.

But what would Raschid see when he looked at her? A woman who was trying just a bit too hard to bridge the gap between two cultures?

Outside a long white limousine stood gleaming in the summer sunshine that hadn’t eased its grip on England for more than two months now.

‘Cheer up,’ Julian gently admonished her as they drove away. ‘You are supposed to be going to your wedding, not your funeral.’

Too true, Evie thought, but still couldn’t shake off the chilling feeling that a dark presence was casting its shadow over the car as they drove towards Hertford.

A shadow which had a definite shape to it—Raschid’s father. His family. His Arabian people. None of whom were to be present today. Oh, the reasons for that had come thick and fast enough. His father was not well enough to travel great distances. His sister could not come because one of her children had been taken ill. His Embassy people were, unfortunately, involved in important matters of state that could not be rearranged to accommodate their rushed marriage.

But Evie wasn’t stupid; she could recognise denunciation when she was being fed it so blatantly.

Westhaven Town Hall was a rather elegant red-brick building that took pride of place in the old town square where a small crowd had gathered to watch—including the expected clutch of reporters.

As the car drew to a stop at the bottom of the steps, Evie could see Raschid waiting for her at the top of them. He was wearing a dark silk suit, bright white shirt and dark tie, she noted, and wondered heavily if the lack of his traditional Arab dress was just another statement she should take grim note of.

Yet her eyes clung to him as he came lightly down the steps towards the car. So tall, lean, so painfully handsome, this Arab lover of hers, she thought helplessly.

And Julian is right; I can’t live without him.

After opening the limousine door for her, his eyes blazed with possessive approval as he helped her to alight. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured softly.

Flash bulbs exploded, people called out. Evie plastered a social smile on her face, and let Raschid escort her to their wedding.

The civil ceremony itself was to take place in front of only a few chosen witnesses. Then they were to return to Westhaven where the rest of their guests would be waiting to watch the Christian blessing Raschid had arranged to take place there.

There was to be a Muslim blessing, too, but not here in England, and not until Raschid’s father was well enough to attend it.

Or when he was ready to accept Evie as his son’s wife, she suspected was the truth.

Her mother, Christina and Asim were waiting for them inside the foyer. At least Asim was wearing traditional Arab robes, Evie noted wryly.

The service was short, over almost before it had begun. Evie stood beside Raschid and repeated her vows in a frail voice that had their few witnesses straining to hear them. Raschid’s voice was stronger, but slightly constricted, as if he was finding this more of a strain than he had expected it to be.

Evie felt the ring slide on to her finger, looked down to see a band of delicate gold twining around the Al Kadah family crest.

Did this ring make her one of them now? she wondered.

‘You may now kiss the bride, sir.’ Kiss the bride…

Like an automaton, Evie turned towards Raschid as he turned towards her. Lavender eyes clashed with gold. It was like free-falling into a vat of hot honey, and for several long seconds she wasn’t aware of anything but this man and the power he had over her.

He didn’t move—didn’t attempt to claim his kiss, but just stood there looking down at her with his darkly tanned face cast into disturbingly sombre lines.

The tension grew. Evie’s heart began to stutter, her parted lips trembling slightly as they waited for that kiss.

What was wrong with him? Did looking down into this face that bore no resemblance to his own people make him suddenly realise what he was actually putting at risk by joining himself to her?

By now the breathless tension was beginning to envelop everyone. No one moved, no one spoke; all eyes were fixed intently on them. Her skin began to shimmer, long lashes flickering as her eyes anxiously asked him a question.

Raschid murmured something soft in his own language—a plea to Allah, Evie thought it was. Then she felt his hand searching for and taking hold of her hand—felt the tremor in his long fingers as he drew that captured hand up between their two bodies.

His dark lashes fell over liquid gold eyes as he looked down at the crested ring adorning her finger. Then he kissed it gently and lifted his eyes back to Evie’s again.

‘Kismet,’ he said, that was all. Kismet. The will of Allah. Their destiny.

Evie’s heart swelled to bursting. And at last she smiled. In the next moment his arms were banding around her and he was claiming his kiss.

Outside the registry office, the air had suddenly developed a crystal clarity to it that totally outshone the dark shadow of before. Flash bulbs popped again, people called out to them. Evie smiled for the cameras, serenely ignored the questions and let her new husband lead her down to the waiting limousine, which would take them back to Westhaven.

Raschid maintained a grip on her hand as the car sped them away. Evie turned to smile at him, but he didn’t smile back. ‘You look utterly, soul-destroyingly lovely,’ he murmured huskily. ‘But for a while back there you also looked heart-breakingly sad.’

‘Maybe I was having second thoughts,’ she said teasingly.

‘Were you?’ It was a serious question.

Well, Evie asked herself, was I really having second thoughts about marrying this man?

‘Kismet.’ She smiled. The word really did seem to say it all for both of them.

He nodded in understanding and dropped the subject to lean over and kiss her instead. But he wasn’t fooled. Evie knew that he was aware that she might have answered one question but she had avoided telling him why she had looked so sad.

No giant white canopy awaited them at Westhaven, no brass band—no hundreds and hundreds of guests. Just a few close friends, a clutch of close relatives—and the summer house—where the local vicar waited to bless their union in respect of Evie’s Christian faith.

An alfresco buffet lunch had been laid out on trestle tables on the lawn in front of the house. Great-Aunt Celia was present, but she sensibly avoided actually speaking to either the bride or her groom. And Harry was there, escorting a pretty young thing that gazed doe-eyed at him. Evie spied Raschid standing talking to them at one point, and wondered curiously when mutual hostility had turned into friendship.

‘I’ve given him some of my horses to train,’ Raschid explained later when she asked him the question. ‘As a consolation prize for being a good loser.’

‘What an arrogant thing to say!’ Evie exclaimed.

‘Not really,’ Raschid drawled, sending her a wry look. ‘For I would not have handled losing you to him as honourably as he has handled losing you to me.’

‘Why?’ she asked curiously. ‘What would you have done?’

The hand he had resting on her still slender waist drew her around to stand in front of him. ‘Guess,’ he whispered.

‘I think we are talking of locked doors and eunuchs again,’ Evie pondered sagely.

‘Preceded by kidnap, of course,’ Raschid added. ‘Which is exactly what I am about to do to you right now…’

As he spoke a helicopter came swooping low around the side of the house, gleaming white against the summer-blue sky and forcing the women to clutch at their hats as its rotor blades churned up the air around all of them.

It set itself down on the lawn several hundred feet away. ‘Our transport away from here,’ Raschid announced.

‘I’ll go and get changed…’

‘No need.’ Raschid stopped her by capturing her hand. ‘You look perfect as you are. Come—say your goodbyes quickly. We are working to a very tight schedule.’

‘I wish you would tell me where we are going,’ Evie complained. ‘I may have packed all the wrong things!’

He didn’t answer, his attention already diverting to Evie’s mother who was coming towards them and looking tearful.

She hugged Evie tightly. ‘Look after yourself,’ she said. It still amazed Evie how tactile her mother had become since she’d witnessed her daughter’s near-death experience. But a bit of the old Lucinda appeared when she turned towards Raschid. ‘I suppose you’re expecting a motherly hug too, now,’ she remarked coolly.

‘Not unless it is genuinely offered,’ he threw back.

Lucinda’s eyes flashed, with irritation or appreciation, Evie wasn’t entirely sure. But the curt, ‘Just you take precious care of her!’ was issued alongside a blow-softening kiss brushed against one of Raschid’s lean cheeks.

‘I think she is reluctantly beginning to like me,’ Raschid confided as they settled into the helicopter.

Shame the same could not be said of his own family’s feelings towards her, Evie thought—and just like that she felt her mood flip over from light to heavy.

He noticed, this sharp-eyed Arab of hers. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded. ‘What did I just say to cause you to look like that?’

‘Nothing.’ She found a smile from somewhere that only just made it. ‘I’m tired, that’s all—missing the nap Asim daily forces upon me.’

Asim was sitting up front with the pilot. Evie wasn’t surprised to find he was coming with them. Everywhere Evie went these days, Asim was right there with her. He hadn’t been bluffing when he’d told her that this child she was carrying was now his responsibility.

‘Then as soon as we board the plane that is exactly what you will do,’ Raschid ordained.

They transferred to one of the Al Kadah personal jets at a private airfield not many minutes away from Westhaven. The moment they were up in the air, Raschid released them both from their seat belts and pulled Evie to her feet.

‘Time for the lady’s rest,’ he explained, drawing her along the luxury main cabin and in through a door that turned out to be a fully equipped bedroom.

‘Oh, very decadent,’ Evie teased, looking curiously around her as Raschid moved over to the double bed that dominated the cabin, complete with passion-purple silk sheets and mounds of richly coloured silk pillows.

Picking something up from the bed, he tossed it negligently over his shoulder. It was a short silk nightdress in a very sensual dark red colour.

‘Turn around,’ he commanded, ignoring the taunt. ‘So I can release you from this exquisite creation.’

Evie did as he bade her. ‘I feel I must inform you that as a full-blooded Arab I am feeling very cheated at this precise moment,’ he said lightly as his deft fingers dealt with the long zip that ran down the length of her spine. ‘I was expecting those seed-pearls decorating your front to be my one hundred and one buttons—as is the traditional way Arab women drive their new husbands crazy while they are forced to unwrap their prize inch by painful inch.’

‘But you don’t want what’s beneath this gown,’ Evie pointed out. ‘So why bother to mention it?’

‘Is that what you really think?’

The dress was eased away from her shoulders, and allowed to slither to the floor. Evie reached up to pull off the skullcap while kicking off her white satin slip-ons at the same time. She felt Raschid’s fingers at the clasp of her smooth satin bra, and quivered slightly as his warm flesh touched her flesh.

‘Yes,’ she said.

She heard his soft laugh as he bent down to deal with the only piece of clothing she had left. Seconds later, she was naked, and his hands were gently clasping her slender hip bones. The brush of his mouth against the curving cheeks of her bottom made her spine arch in stinging response.

‘Liar,’ he drawled. ‘You know I adore every single inch of this delectable body.’

Then he was turning her to face him, his hands still holding her there in front of him while he continued to squat at her feet. In a slow, slow, agonisingly sensual drift of his heavy eyelids, he inspected her from bare toes upwards.

Her legs turned to liquid, her thighs began to burn, that hidden place between them pulsing out its needy message. He inspected the pale-skinned flatness of her stomach where their baby was not yet making its presence felt, drifted those hooded eyes up over her rib-cage to her breasts where a new firm fullness was most definitely evident.

‘Every inch,’ Raschid repeated huskily.

Evie dragged in a constricted breath of air, her hand snaking up to cup his lean cheek so that she could make him look at her. His eyes changed colour, darkening on a swirling tempest of craving. Her thumb moved, brushing across his lips to gently part them. The moist inner heat lining the recess of his mouth drew powerfully on some inner heat of her own that had her folding to her knees in front of him.

‘I don’t really need to rest, you know,’ she told him softly. ‘But I do need you.’

‘Ah…’ he sighed sorrowfully. ‘But—’

Evie smothered the ‘but’. She crushed it right back into his mouth with the hungry press of her own. What was absolutely glorifying was the fact that he didn’t attempt to fight her. He let her deepen that kiss to a bone-melting intimacy that made her feel alive and happy for the first time in weeks.

He still held her hips tightly between his two hands; Evie used her own hands to begin urgently dealing with his clothes. As far as she was concerned, he was wearing too many; impatient fingers tossed the nightdress to one side then began pushing his jacket from his shoulders before yanking at his tie.

In all their two years she had never longed for him as much as she was longing for him right now, and it showed in the small growl of triumph she made against his mouth as the tie came free.

Shirt buttons then began popping without a care to how they came free. He wasn’t helping her—which only incited her urgency. The shirt came to rest around his elbows with his jacket, trapped there by the hands he still had clamped to her hip bones.

Evie didn’t care; she had warm, tight skin to touch at last, and a wonderful hair-roughened breastplate to reacquaint herself with. Her mouth wrenched itself away from his so it could go and taste that newly exposed flesh.

On a tormented groan, Raschid suddenly burst into action. He freed his arms from his trailing clothes, reached for her, pulling her hard against him, his hot mouth homing in on tight, tingling nipples that set her whole body singing.

How long had it been since they’d been together like this? Five weeks?

It showed in the violence of their breathing, in the urgency with which they began to devour each other. He sucked so hard on one of her nipples that she actually whimpered—then laughed because she had missed his mouth on her like this so very badly.

Breathing gone haywire, bodies hot, emotions locked into a raging frenzy. When he dragged himself to his feet, Evie rose up with him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

His mouth found hers again; she clung to him, her breasts pressing against him in open provocation. But when she dropped her hands to the waistband of his trousers his reaction was so unexpected that it thoroughly stunned her. Picking her up in his arms, Raschid turned and dumped her on to the bed.

‘No!’ he ground out, jerked right away from her, then spun on his heel to bend and snatch up the discarded nightdress, which he tossed at her before bending to snatch up his shirt.

‘Wh-what do you mean—no?’ she gasped, barely able to believe he really meant what he was implying here!

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t mean to become so carried away. But we must not,’ he added tautly. ‘I made a vow…’

‘A vow?’ Evie repeated shrilly, beginning to shake all over in reaction. ‘What kind of vow?’

‘Cover yourself,’ he commanded roughly.

Having recently devoured her with his eyes, he was now looking anywhere but at her, his dark face a mask of bone-gripping tension. Evie knew that look. He was hurting, and at this precise moment she was glad he was hurting!

‘What kind of vow?’ she angrily insisted.

‘A vow to Allah,’ he confessed. ‘That I would treat you with respect.’

‘I’ve got news for you, Raschid,’ Evie informed him, grimly dragging the nightdress over her trembling flesh. ‘This doesn’t feel like respect, it feels like rejection!’

He winced as if she’d hit him, but it didn’t stop that wonderful chest Evie had just eagerly exposed for herself from disappearing behind snowy white linen.

‘That is because you misunderstand my motive,’ he explained, bending to retrieve his jacket and his tie next. ‘For too long I have undervalued your importance to me. It is a sin I am determined to put right.’

‘What sin?’ she demanded bewilderedly. ‘The sin of wanting to make love to me?’ She sounded so damned offended that his mask of a face seemed to turn to iron.

Yet he nodded his dark head in sombre confirmation. ‘And the sinful lack of understanding as to what our relationship was doing to your pride, your self-esteem and your reputation.’

‘Is this explanation supposed to make me feel better?’

‘It will, when I’ve finished,’ he said, dragging his jacket back on.

He didn’t look so elegant now, Evie noted caustically, with half the buttons on his precious shirt missing! ‘Then by all means please go on!’ she invited. ‘For I find myself completely enthralled by all of this—humility!’

He muttered something she didn’t catch—an Arab curse aimed at sarcastic females, she suspected.

‘I exposed you to mockery, humiliation and danger,’ he nonetheless continued. ‘I stood by and watched your own family shun you at your brother’s wedding. I witnessed the whole party freeze in horror when you caught Christina’s bridal bouquet! I then watched you stand alone by a moonlit lake and toss those damn flowers into the water as if you were tossing away all hope for you and me!’ His chest heaved on an angry rasp of air.

‘Yet, seeing all of this,’ he grimly went on, ‘knowing exactly how wretched you must have been feeling, I still responded badly to your news about the baby! How you could bring yourself to speak to me after that performance,’ he concluded gruffly, ‘I will never comprehend!’

Evie said nothing—what could she say? He was only telling it as it was, after all. She had been tossing away hope with those flowers. He had reacted badly about the baby.

‘You didn’t even carry a bouquet to our wedding,’ he then inserted huskily. ‘Do you think I did not see the significance in that omission? I have this dreadful suspicion that if you ever hold another flower in your hand you are always going to see that cursedly doomed bouquet in its stead!’

He was probably right, so Evie didn’t argue the point with him. ‘I still don’t see what any of this has to do with you and I making love now that we are married.’

‘I made a vow to Allah,’ he said, bringing the whole unbelievable conversation reeling back to where it had begun. ‘While I waited out my vigil in that hospital waiting room, I promised Him that if He gave me a final chance with you I would never, ever undervalue your worth to me again. And since sex is all I ever gave to you before,’ he finally concluded, ‘then sex will now await its pleasure, until I have proved to you that you mean more to me than just a source of physical gratification.’

And that was what this was really all about? He’d made some silly vow to Allah while sitting in a hospital waiting room turning himself inside out with guilt and worry?

‘In case it has escaped your notice,’ Evie dryly mocked, ‘I tended to use you in exactly the same way.’

To her surprise, he laughed one of those warm, husky, very male laughs that eased some of the tension out of him.

‘Then take pity on me,’ he pleaded, turning rueful eyes on her. ‘And make this penance I have set myself easier to bear by lusting after me when I cannot see you doing it.’

Evie relaxed back into the pillows, no longer angry, but studying him thoughtfully. ‘You won’t be placing the baby at risk by making love to me, you know,’ she said. ‘If that’s what this is really all about.’

‘It isn’t,’ he denied.

‘I asked the doctor last week when I went for my checkup,’ she persisted regardless. ‘And he assured me that physical intimacy would not be a problem.’

He wasn’t blind; he could see exactly what her lavender eyes were offering him. ‘The world is full of practised sirens,’ he remarked wearily. ‘But why did I have to marry myself to one?’

‘Kismet,’ Evie said, her eyes openly provoking him now.

‘Purdah is beginning to take on a whole new appeal where you are concerned,’ he warned. Then, on a sigh, he came to sit down beside her, and leant down to softly kiss her cheek. ‘Why don’t you put me out of my misery and go to sleep?’ he suggested.

‘I can’t convince you to change your mind and join me?’ A delicate finger came up to gently play with his mouth.

‘No.’

‘Even though this is my wedding day and I am feeling terribly neglected?’ The finger moved to his jawline, and began trailing downwards to where the whorls of crisp dark hair were showing above the gap in his open shirt. ‘I promise not to try to seduce you.’

‘You are seducing me already.’ He utterly derided that promise, pointedly removed the trailing finger, and got to his feet again.

‘How can you make a pact with Allah about something as important to us as sex?’ Evie cried, losing all patience.

‘Rest,’ he commanded, moving back to the door.

‘All right,’ she snapped, sitting up again. ‘I’ll rest when you tell me how long this penance of yours is to last.’

For some reason the question put tension back into his shoulders. Alarm shot through her, the horrible suspicion that he was hiding something from her chilling her blood.

‘Raschid…’ she murmured as a sudden frightening thought struck her. ‘There isn’t something wrong with me or the baby that people aren’t telling me, is there?’

‘Of course not!’ he snapped, spinning round to frown at her. ‘You and the baby are perfectly healthy!’ he stated tersely. ‘No one has lied to you about that!’

‘Then what are you hiding?’

The breath hissed from his lungs on a sigh of frustration, and for a moment, a very brief but telling moment, Evie saw indecision flash across his eyes before he turned his back on her.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

But it was already too late; Evie had seen that indecision, and panic was suddenly erupting inside her. Climbing off the bed, she walked towards him. Her hand was trembling as she gripped his arm. ‘Don’t lie to me,’ she thrust at him angrily. ‘Don’t ever lie to me! There is something going on here that you aren’t telling me, and I want to know just what it is!’

The muscles beneath her gripping fingers bunched, his lean dark profile clenching on the power of whatever it was he was trying hard to suppress here.

Evie watched and waited, his tension becoming her tension, the war he was having with himself becoming her war until the prolonged silence began to buzz like an alarm bell vibrating along tautly stretched nerve-ends.

Then he turned his head, saw her strained pallor, the anxiety that was darkening her eyes, and on a soft curse he surrendered.

‘Okay,’ he said, taking hold of her hand to grimly lead her back to the bed. Sitting her down there, he then looked around him for a chair and set it so that he could seat himself right in front of her. ‘I was going to leave this as long as I could before telling you,’ he admitted. ‘But I can see that what you’re thinking is possibly worse than reality. So…’

Leaning forward to take hold of her hands, he announced very gently, ‘I am taking you home, Evie. To Behran…’

Behran—Evie’s mind went up like a volcano, shock, horror, a bone-chilling sense of trepidation all straightening her spine on a constricted gasp of dismay.

‘You have nothing to fear,’ Raschid quickly assured her. ‘Do you think I would be doing this if I believed it would place you in danger?’

No, she didn’t think that, but it didn’t alter the fact that the very idea of going to his homeland was filling her with horror.

Yet—she should have seen this coming! Why hadn’t she seen it coming? She had just married this man! She was now the wife of the future ruler of Behran! She carried his child inside her—maybe the next ruler of Behran after Raschid!

‘Why?’ she managed to breathe out frailly.

‘Because this visit is necessary,’ he replied. ‘To have avoided taking you home directly after our marriage would have given rise to the suggestion that I am ashamed of my western wife.’

He was talking pride here—defiance in the face of any dissension.

‘Wh-what is this going to mean?’ she asked, forcing the words past all the horrors that were trying to possess her. ‘Will I have to face them the moment we get off the plane?’

‘No.’ His fingers were squeezing hers tightly, urging her to trust what he was telling her. ‘We will transfer from the plane to a helicopter at the airport,’ he explained, ‘then fly directly to my private palace. The news will spread quickly enough that we are there together, and thereby lay to rest any suspicion that I am reluctant to bring you home. But you need see no one,’ he promised. ‘We will, in effect, be on our honeymoon, which will give you the chance to acquaint yourself with my way of life before we have to present ourselves officially as a couple.’

He meant to his father, though he was careful not to make the dreaded connection out loud.

Aware of his eyes still fixed intently on her, that he was tense, worried, and unsure as to how she was going to respond to this challenge he was setting before her, Evie lowered her eyes to their hands where they rested on her silk-covered lap, and tried desperately to pull her ragged senses together.

Raschid was a man of two cultures. He was used to slipping in and out of two different guises depending on which part of the world he was in. But she wasn’t. In all the time they had been together it had never once occurred to him to invite her to his homeland. She hadn’t even been invited to any of the functions Raschid had attended at his own embassy. For two long years she had not existed, as far as his people were concerned.

A few weeks ago they had certainly acknowledged her—by declaring her an enemy. Or, to be more precise, her baby was the enemy.

She shivered, recalling that memory, recalling too what had happened after it. Raschid felt that shiver and understood exactly what was causing it.

‘Look at me, Evie!’ he commanded. ‘Look into my eyes and see what you always see written there!’

Blinking herself into focus, she found herself staring at strong brown fingers tightly interlaced with delicate white ones like a love knot that was too intricate to break. And there, nestling amongst this mingling of brown and white, was a gold-crested wedding band that seemed to be telling her that this was it. The moment when she finally took on board what it really meant to be joined to this very special man.

You stand proudly beside him, and boldly take them all on—or why are you here at all?

And really, she told herself, she could have no argument with it. She had married him for good or bad. If the good was in looking forward to spending the rest of her life with him, then the bad had to be where they were going to live out that life.

Then she made herself look into those dark gold, passionately glowing eyes. Made herself see what he was insisting she see. Made herself acknowledge it. I love you! those eyes were telling her. You are my heart, my life—my soul! I would lay down my own life before I would let anyone get close enough to hurt you again!

‘Will I have to cloak and veil myself?’ she asked. ‘And make sure I walk two paces behind you?’

It took a moment—more than a moment—for what she was actually saying here to finally sink in. But when it came his reaction took her breath away. The husky growl of exultation he emitted was all the warning she received before she found herself flat on her back with him lying on top of her.

‘I knew you were brave,’ he uttered proudly. ‘I knew you were the right woman for me!’

‘I should really be telling you to go to hell,’ she said. ‘Get my own back on you for the way you refused to listen to reason about Julian’s wedding. But you like to pick your moments, don’t you?’ she sighed. ‘Nowhere for me to run,’ she dryly pointed out as her eyes made a rueful scan of their present surroundings. ‘Nowhere for me to—’

His mouth stopped the words of complaint with a kiss that was both hot and possessive. But before Evie could turn it into something much more satisfying he was, frustratingly, breaking them apart again.

‘No.’ He refused her yet again. Only, this time Evie was not offended—but challenged.

‘I’ll break that iron will of yours,’ she vowed as he made quickly for the door. ‘I will whittle away at it at every opportunity I’m offered.’

‘Part of my penance,’ he accepted with a sigh. ‘It will be interesting to discover how long I can hold out.’

Or how long I can maintain this brave face, Evie mused heavily when he had left her.

His father…She shuddered, turning to curl into a ball on her side as if making herself smaller would diminish the dread that name filled her with.

Did Crown Prince Hashim know they were on their way to Behran? Had Raschid told him?

She was to find out soon enough…