Читать книгу Six Sizzling Sheikhs - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 15
ОглавлениеTHE admission seemed to surprise both of them. Khaled stilled, his gaze intent on hers.
‘Do you mean it?’ he asked in a low voice, and Lucy swallowed, still blinking back tears. ‘Yes, I do. For Sam’s sake.’
Khaled pulled back, his expression closing, folding in on itself. ‘Of course.’
Lucy looked away, feeling as if she’d disappointed Khaled, disappointed herself. Yet Khaled had never even told her he loved her! Perhaps he wanted her as an adoring limpet once more and that was all. Perhaps this would be a marriage of convenience for him, and happily so. Questions and doubts raced through her mind, making her almost dizzy with fear.
Something rustled in the trees behind them—a bird or a small animal—and the wind that blew over them had no last warmth from the setting sun. It was night, and it was cold.
‘Well, then.’ Khaled’s eyes had darkened and he gave an impatient little shrug as he rose stiffly from the blanket. ‘It is late. We should return to the palace.’ His voice was cool, his face averted.
Lucy nodded, and they set about gathering the discarded plates and glasses, returning the food to the picnic basket and folding the blanket. Mindless tasks that kept both of them from facing what had just happened, or needing to talk about it.
What had she done?
It was a question borne of panic, of fear. For a moment Lucy considered telling Khaled that she wouldn’t marry him, that she couldn’t. Yet the words wouldn’t come. They crowded thickly on her tongue, and she choked them back helplessly. For Sam’s sake.
They walked back in silence through the darkness, the only sound the crunch of dirt under their feet, and the chattering of a bird high in a Dragon’s Blood tree.
Wordlessly Khaled opened the passenger door of the Jeep, and Lucy slid inside.
It seemed as if all of Biryal was quiet and dark, was empty. Lahji’s lights glimmered on the horizon, tiny and seemingly insignificant against the vast darkness of both island and ocean. Lucy tried to imagine spending her life here, but couldn’t.
Khaled’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel and his jaw was tight. Although he didn’t speak, Lucy knew he was angry. Annoyed, at least. At her. She’d let him down, and the realisation made her feel angry right back. What right did he have to ask her if she loved him, when he’d never declared himself? He hadn’t been that vulnerable after all, had he?
Back at the palace, Khaled dropped her off in the courtyard before returning the Jeep to its garage. Lucy knew he didn’t need to perform the mundane task; there was an army of servants waiting to do his bidding.
He just wanted to be away from her, she supposed.
Or perhaps he regretted the marriage proposal, her acceptance?
The thought jolted her; it frightened her. It was the thought that her mind had been skittering away from for so long.
What if he walks away from me…again?
She might not have told him she loved him, but Lucy had a fearful feeling that her heart might break all the same.
Pushing the thought away, she returned to her room to dismiss the nurse and check on Sam, who was fast asleep. She prowled the suite of rooms restlessly, wondering if Khaled would come and find her, wondering if she wanted him to.
He didn’t.
She dressed for bed, brushed her teeth and washed her face, yet sleep had never felt so far away. Questions tangled and cascaded through her anxious mind, questions and doubts. Fears.
After a moment of indecision where she hovered on the threshold of her bedroom, Lucy muttered under her breath and then stalked from her bedroom out into the corridor.
She was going to find Khaled.
It wasn’t easy. Lucy had begun to familiarise herself with the palace, but its endless corridors still defeated her. Everything was eerily silent, lost in shadows. She felt like she might stumble upon Bluebeard’s skeletal cache at any moment, as she’d joked when she’d first laid eyes on this place.
She didn’t hear the bare feet padding softly behind her, so that when a hand closed around her elbow she nearly screamed. A breath of terrified sound escaped her and she whirled around, knocking the hand away.
A servant stood there, dressed in a plain cotton thobe and turban, holding his hands up in a gesture of apologetic self-defence.
‘So sorry, mistress. I only wonder if I can help you.’ The man smiled rather toothlessly, and Lucy’s heart rate began to slow.
‘You scared me. I’m sorry; I think I frightened you as well.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I’m looking for Prince Khaled.’
The servant gave a regretful little shake of his head. ‘He has retired for the night.’
Just those innocuous words caused Lucy to picture a host of images: Khaled lying in bed covered in nothing but a sheet, slung low on his hips, as she’d seen him before, as she remembered him.
‘Still,’ she said firmly, pushing those images away, ‘I’d like to see him.’
The servant looked both shocked and doubtful, and Lucy met his gaze directly. ‘I have important business to discuss with him.’
After a moment the man lifted one shoulder in a little shrug, as if to say what is it to me what the foreign woman does? Then he turned around silently so Lucy had no choice but to follow.
He led her to the back of the palace, past her own bedroom, where she quickly checked to see that Sam still safely slept, to another suite of rooms. Khaled’s.
He knocked softly on the door, shrugging again, and padded softly back down the hall. Lucy pushed the door open with her fingertips; warm, yellow lamplight spilled from inside onto the hall floor.
‘Yes? Yusef?’ Khaled’s voice, low and sure, seemed to vibrate through Lucy’s bones. Why was she so nervous? She opened the door further and stepped inside.
‘Hello, Khaled.’
He looked up, his eyes widening in surprise, his mouth thinning in—disapproval? Displeasure? Lucy lifted her chin.
‘Do you want something?’ he asked in a voice made remote with politeness.
‘Yes. I want to talk to you.’
He shrugged, leaning back against the sofa cushions where he sat, and Lucy’s gaze took in what he’d been doing for the first time.
Dressed only in pyjama bottoms, his chest golden, taut and bare, he was playing chess. By himself. He held one piece, the rook, between long, brown fingers.
‘You play chess?’ Lucy exclaimed in surprise, and a wry smile flickered across Khaled’s face.
‘Is that what this is?’ he gently mocked, holding up the piece of carved ebony. ‘Do you play?’
‘Not really.’ Lucy quickly shook her head. She had painstakingly learned to play when she was eight, but she’d never actually played a proper game. She’d never had the chance. ‘Are you very good?’
Khaled shrugged. ‘How does one answer that?’ Which Lucy surmised meant he was very good indeed.
‘You’re playing by yourself?’ she remarked, moving further into the room, suffused as it was with both warmth and tension. She studied the board, and could see that Khaled had been moving the pieces on both sides.
He shrugged. ‘It is a pastime.’ His fingers tightened round the rook and he replaced it on the board. ‘What do you want, Lucy?’
Her head was bent, her hair falling down in front of her face like a dark curtain. She pushed it back. ‘I want to talk. I just agreed to marry you.’
‘Did you?’ he mocked and Lucy bit her lip.
‘I’m scared, Khaled.’ She hadn’t meant to say that, or confess it. She didn’t want Khaled to know her secrets, her weaknesses, even as she silently acknowledged that he’d given her his.
Khaled wasn’t in the mood to be forgiving. He shrugged one powerful, bare shoulder. ‘So decide, Lucy. You can’t live on the knife edge of fear for too long—you lose your balance.’
And that was how she felt, as if she were about to topple over into an endless abyss of uncertainty. Swallowing, she perched on the edge of the sofa, as far away from Khaled as was possible.
‘So, tell me what this marriage will be like.’
He shrugged again. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’
‘I want to spend at least part of the time in London. Sam has family there—my mother especially. And I have my work—I won’t give that up, not completely.’
‘That’s not exactly describing our marriage, Lucy,’ Khaled said, his voice low yet threaded with dark amusement. ‘You sound as if you’re negotiating a business deal.’
‘And isn’t that what this is?’ Lucy pressed, stung by Khaled’s words. ‘A business deal, for Sam’s sake? I suppose many royals have such arrangements.’
‘It would seem so.’ Khaled had stretched his arms out along the back of the sofa, and Lucy was uncomfortably aware of the long, muscled length of his arm, his fingers scant inches from her own shoulder.
She felt awkward and formal, stiff and polite, and she couldn’t shake it.
They were strangers, or nearly so; their affair had been nearly half a decade ago, and had lasted a mere two months. Could she even say she really knew this man?
Or that he knew her?
‘So, tell me what you expect from this marriage,’ Lucy pressed, and Khaled smiled.
‘This arrangement?’ he mocked. ‘I expect you by my side, in my bed. For us to be a family. If more children come, then so be it. All the better. As for your little requests—’ he shrugged ‘—I see no reason why we cannot spend at least part of the year in London. Sam needs to know all his family, and I think you would probably go mad on Biryal all year. Perhaps we all would.’ His hard smile glimmered briefly in the dim lamplight. ‘If work is so important to you, then by all means work. Part-time, anyway. You will have duties, obligations as Sam’s mother, my wife…and princess.’
Lucy swallowed. Khaled sounded so cold, so unconcerned. There was no love on his side, she realised bleakly. Not even close.
‘Thinking of backing out?’ Khaled said softly, his voice too close to a sneer. ‘Cold feet?’
‘I won’t back out,’ Lucy replied. ‘For Sam’s sake.’
‘Good.’
‘I’ve come to realise,’ she replied evenly, ‘that what you said was true. Marriage is sensible.’
Khaled muttered something in Arabic that sounded like a curse. He rose from the sofa in one fluid movement, went over to a side table and poured himself a drink.
‘Have you taken your—’
‘Don’t,’ he said dangerously, turning round, ‘treat me like an invalid. God knows that’s the last thing I need from you now.’
‘I was just asking,’ Lucy said stiffly. She couldn’t think of Khaled as an invalid, not when he stood before her radiating power, beauty and strength. Anger, too. Yet she felt her insides start to yearn, melt, as they always did when he was near. She wanted to reach him, to clamber over this wall of awkward formality that her fear had built brick by unbearable brick, and yet she couldn’t.
Khaled might not leave, she realised starkly; he might not walk away as he did before, but he could still hurt her. Could break her heart…if she gave him that power. If she let him in.
‘Have you thought of a date?’ she finally asked, her throat dry and scratchy. ‘For the wedding?’
‘No later than a fortnight from now.’
‘A fortnight!’ She stared at him in disbelief. ‘But that’s—’
‘Soon?’ Khaled finished, one eyebrow arched. ‘Yes. The sooner the better.’
‘That’s impossible. I have to tell my mother, at least. This is my wedding, Khaled.’
‘And mine also. I want no time for gossip, speculation, tabloid smears. You’ll find that the things you want—what, a white dress? Some flowers?—can be arranged.’ He tossed back his drink, his eyes glinting at her over the rim of the glass.
Lucy shook her head. She wanted more than pretty flowers or a white dress. She didn’t care about the wedding; it was the marriage that mattered. And it had already started to sour.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this,’ she said, half to herself. ‘It might hurt Sam more to have parents who…’ She trailed off, her courage failing her, but Khaled finished the thought easily and sardonically.
‘Who don’t love each other?’
So he didn’t love her. The knowledge hurt, even though she knew it shouldn’t. She shouldn’t let it. ‘Right.’
‘The important thing is we both love Sam,’ Khaled said. He spoke in that terribly pleasant voice that Lucy knew was a cover for far darker, more dangerous emotions. ‘As long as we treat each other with kindness and courtesy, Sam won’t be affected.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Lucy pressed, and impatience flitted through his eyes.
‘I can’t. But many children have parents who aren’t madly in love with each other and manage, so I think Sam will too. Now.’ He set down his glass, his hands on his hips, every inch the arrogant, autocratic prince. ‘Tomorrow morning I will inform my father of our plans, and within a day it will be news all over the world. You can ring your mother beforehand, if you like, so she doesn’t find out about it in the papers.’
‘Fine.’ Lucy pushed aside the dizzying sense of her life spiralling even further out of control. Khaled was right; she didn’t have time to indulge her fears. It would be better for both of them if she didn’t.
And yet she couldn’t keep a sense of desolation from sweeping over her as she rose from the sofa. The future seemed unknowable, impossible. Unhappy.
‘All right, then. I’d better go. I’ve left Sam for too long as it is.’
Khaled jerked his head in a nod of acceptance, but his eyes met and clashed with hers, burning her. She opened her mouth to say something—what? What could she say? What would bridge this chasm that had opened so unbearably between them?
What could heal their scars, calm their fears?
‘Goodnight, Khaled,’ she whispered, and slipped silently from the room.
Khaled’s fingers clenched around his glass as he watched Lucy walk away.
Damn.
He had handled that wrong; he was handling everything wrong. He was losing her before he’d even had her, and he didn’t know why. How.
Or perhaps he knew all too well. No matter what Lucy said she wanted, he knew one cold, hard truth: she’d loved the man he’d been four years ago. She didn’t love him now, not the man he was, the man he would always be.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
Maybe we shouldn’t do this.
He wouldn’t allow her to back out. He didn’t care if she was unhappy. He was that selfish, Khaled acknowledged as he gazed out over the darkened palace gardens, the surface of the swimming pool glinting in the moonlight. He wanted her that much, and now he wondered if it—he—would destroy them both.
Over the next few days Lucy had the sense of time speeding up, slipping by so fast she couldn’t hold on to a single moment. Khaled told his father about their marriage, and with a jerky nod of acceptance—Lucy didn’t dare hope it was approval—a host of plans that would change her life for ever had been set in motion.
She tried to avoid the newspapers and television—all eager to cover a breaking story of an unexpected royal marriage, and to an English woman!—but she couldn’t avoid more personal confrontations. She needed to talk to her mother and to Sam.
The first conversation was the most difficult. Lucy’s fingers curled slickly round the telephone receiver as she listened to the phone ring in her mother’s house thousands of miles away.
They chatted for a few moments, and then Dana cleared her throat and asked, ‘So when are you coming back from that godforsaken place?’
Not a good beginning, Lucy thought wryly. ‘Actually, Mum…’ She took a breath. ‘I’m staying for a while.’ Dana was silent, and Lucy continued. ‘The thing is, Khaled and I… We’ve decided the best thing for Sam is to—to marry.’ More silence. Lucy closed her eyes and summoned her strength. She even managed a little laugh. ‘Come on, say something, Mum.’
‘I don’t know what to say, Lucy.’ Disapproval Lucy could have handled, but her mother sounded stunned. Shaken. Doubt swirled through her once more, putting everything into a hopeless fog.
‘It’s the sensible thing to do,’ Lucy said. How she was tired of saying that. Thinking it.
‘Really?’ Dana’s voice sharpened. ‘Because it sounds incredibly foolish to me.’
‘Mum—’
‘Lucy, why? Why are you opening yourself up to that kind of pain again? Do you remember what happened? How Khaled treated you? How you felt? How can you—’
‘It’s different now,’ Lucy interjected.
‘Is it?’ Dana sounded scornfully sceptical. ‘How?’
Lucy closed her eyes, her knuckles white as she clutched the phone to her ear. ‘It just is.’
‘I don’t know if I believe that, Lucy,’ Dana said frankly. ‘I’ve known men like Khaled, and I don’t trust—’
‘I’m not under any illusions about Khaled any more.’ Lucy cut her off, unable to hear any more of her own fears parroted back to her. ‘We’re marrying for Sam’s sake, to provide stability.’
‘Is that really necessary? Plenty of children grow up in single-parent homes and they’re fine. Look at you—’
‘But Sam isn’t me,’ Lucy interrupted. ‘He’s the son of a prince, and one day he will be king.’
‘So?’ Dana sounded belligerent, and Lucy almost smiled. Her mother was always ready for a fight, ready to champion her cause, or the cause of single mothers in general: you didn’t need a man. You were fine without one.
And Lucy had believed that and been strong without one, until she’d met Khaled and all her principles and opinions had toppled like flimsy cards. She’d been left with only wanting. Yearning. For him.
How weak did that make her? How pathetic? And it was happening again. Except, she told herself, this time she would be strong. She wouldn’t need or want.
She wouldn’t love.
‘It’s different, Mum,’ she insisted quietly. ‘And, besides, Sam will be spending a good part of his life in Biryal. I’m not about to give him up to Khaled, to absent myself from such an enormous aspect of his life.’
‘So you’ll absent yourself from your own life instead?’
‘My life is Sam,’ Lucy said quietly. ‘Surely you can understand that? I love my job, I love my house and my friends, but it’s not my life.’
Dana was silent for a long moment. ‘I just don’t want you to be unhappy,’ she finally said, and Lucy heard the sorrow in her voice. She felt it herself.
‘I won’t be.’ Please, God. Please, now that she knew what she was getting into. Please let her be stronger than that.
Except, Lucy thought as she finally hung up the phone, she was unhappy. She wanted more from her marriage and her life than something sensible. She wanted the feeling of inexpressible hope, wonder and love that she’d experienced with Khaled before, even though it had been false.
She wanted to love Khaled, and sometimes she wondered if she could—if she could love this new Khaled, a man hardened and yet also humbled by his suffering, a man deeper and darker, and yet stronger too.
Or was that man even real? And would that man walk away, withdraw from their marriage, when he decided it was the best thing for both of them?
The conversation with Sam was far easier. She’d told Khaled she wanted to tell him alone, and with a little shrug, his mouth tightening, he’d agreed.
‘But we will both talk to him,’ he stipulated, ‘about what it means to be a king.’
Lucy agreed; that was not a conversation she wanted to have today, or any time soon.
Now she perched on the edge of Sam’s bed as he bounced up and down; he was eager to tear down to the swimming pool and begin another exciting, adventurous day.
‘Sam, you’ve enjoyed it here, haven’t you? With Khaled?’
He looked at her incredulously, as only a three-year-old can do, making Lucy feel rather silly. ‘Yes!’
‘Good.’ Lucy smiled, drawing a breath.
Sam interrupted impatiently, ‘Can we go swimming now?’
‘In a minute, darling.’ She smoothed the hair back from his forehead, smiling a little sadly as he ducked his head away from her touch. He was growing up, growing away from her, even now. ‘I want to tell you something. I think it will be good news.’
Something about her sombre tone made Sam turn to her, alert. He looked suspicious. ‘What?’
‘You know how we’ve been spending time with Khaled—and he’s such a good friend to you? And…’ she paused, sucking in air ‘…to me?’ Sam nodded, still looking suspicious. ‘Well…what would you think, Sam, if Khaled was your daddy? If you called him Daddy from now on?’
A look of incredulous delight passed over Sam’s face like sunlight, and then suddenly he frowned. ‘Is he my daddy?’
How did three-year-olds know to ask such pressing, to-the-point questions? ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, Sam, he is.’
She waited for a barrage of further questions: why didn’t you tell me before? Where has he been? But perhaps such nuances were beyond him. It was unimportant now, anyway. A delighted smile brightened Sam’s face and he hopped off the bed, ready to swim. ‘Cool.’
And that was that, Lucy thought bemusedly as she walked with Sam down to the pool. He’d accepted Khaled—even living in Biryal—with insouciance and ease.
If only she could do the same.
Khaled was waiting for them by the pool, dressed in a formal thobe and bisht. He looked tense, and Lucy gave him a bemused smile.
‘Sam’s thrilled.’
‘Is he?’ Sam seemed to have forgotten their conversation, for he greeted Khaled as he always did before plunging into the pool. ‘Hadiya will watch him now,’ Khaled said, gazing at Sam as he splashed and played. ‘There is a press conference we both need to attend.’
‘A press conference?’ Lucy repeated, feeling sick. Khaled’s eyes narrowed.
‘Yes. You should be used to them, from your days with the England team.’ He made it sound as if those days were past—and perhaps they were. Lucy couldn’t quite imagine returning to her old life, her old job; not now. Perhaps not ever.
‘I know, but this is different—’
‘Not really. Reporters ask questions, we answer them.’
‘Do we?’ Her voice sharpened. ‘Honestly?’
‘I don’t suppose they need to know the details.’ Khaled’s voice was cool. ‘It would certainly help Sam if we could play the loving couple.’
Play. Pretend. Because none of this was real.
Lucy nodded. ‘Fine.’
The press conference was held on one of the wide terraces of the palace. Dressed in a cool linen sheath and low heels—both had been provided by a professional stylist—her hair swept up into an elegant chignon, Lucy faced the cameras and questions with a calm, smiling Khaled at her side.
As soon as they came onto the terrace, the cameras flashed and the questions came in an impossible cacophony of sound. Lucy couldn’t distinguish one question from the other, and she blinked and squinted in the glare of the cameras’ lights, but Khaled seemed entirely unfazed.
She merely heard words—when, child, wedding, love—while he answered questions.
He held up one hand to silence the journalists. ‘The wedding will be here in Biryal, in a fortnight.’
Another battery of questions. Lucy blinked. Khaled smiled. ‘Of course I love my wife. This marriage is a long time coming…for both of us.’ His arm came round her waist, pulling her unresistingly to him. Her head fell back as she looked up at him, met his smiling gaze, sensed the hardness underneath. ‘Isn’t that right, darling?’
A smile stretched across her face. She felt sick with nerves, yet even so an answering flame sparked in her belly. ‘Of course.’ Khaled brushed her lips with his, the barest of kisses, but it caused the mob of journalists to cheer and howl with delight. Khaled moved away, and Lucy righted herself as best she could.
She didn’t hear any more questions, barely felt conscious of herself. It was so surreal, so impossible that this was happening. This was her life. Would she ever get used to it?
Khaled took her hand and drew her back inside, dropping it as soon as the reporters and cameras were out of sight.
Lucy felt suddenly bereft, and miserably she answered his question: no, she wouldn’t.
