Читать книгу The Sheikh's Collection - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 19

BREAKFAST FOR SAFFY and Zahir the following morning was an almost silent affair. Zahir, being Zahir of course, was scrupulously polite and yet in every glance, every intonation Saffy imagined she heard condemnation, suspicion, doubt that she could be trusted as he believed he should be able to trust his wife. Nausea stirred in her stomach as she contemplated the piece of toast clasped between her fingers and with a stifled apology she fled for the nearest bathroom to lose what little she had eaten.

Afterwards, weak and with hot, perspiring skin she lay down on the bed, relishing the restorative coolness of the air conditioning wafting over her.

Zahir strode through the bedroom door, stunning dark golden eyes intent on the picture she presented. ‘With all the flowers surrounding you here you look like the Sleeping Beauty…’

Saffy parted pink lips. ‘But this doesn’t feel like a fairy tale,’ she whispered apologetically because if there had ever been a romantic male, it was Zahir. And how on earth could a romantic male ever come to terms with something as ugly as her biggest secret?

‘I’ve phoned Hayat’s obstetrician.’

‘Why the heck did you do that?’

‘You’re sick. You need medical attention,’ Zahir informed her with a stubborn angle to his jaw line.

‘Being sick in early pregnancy is very common and not something to make a fuss about,’ Saffy countered steadily.

‘I shouldn’t have tired you out last night,’ Zahir responded tight-mouthed, his beautiful eyes shaded by his outrageously lush black lashes.

Saffy thrust her hands down onto the mattress to lift herself up into sitting position. ‘That’s got nothing to do with this—this is only my body struggling to adapt to being newly pregnant and it’s normal.’

‘I will stop worrying only when the doctor tells me to do so. I’m responsible for looking after you,’ Zahir asserted, unimpressed by her argument. ‘And while I realise that you’re not feeling like it, you must make an effort to eat some breakfast to keep your strength up.’

And the boss has spoken, Saffy tagged on in silence to that speech as Zahir stalked out of the door again. He did care that she wasn’t feeling well, she assured herself ruefully. It wasn’t love but it was concern, but for how long would she even retain that hold on him if she continued to keep her secrets? Naturally he was curious, naturally sooner or later he would need to know the truth about her past. For the first time she accepted that telling Zahir the truth was unavoidable and a bridge she would eventually have to cross.

Zahir’s sister, Hayat, accompanied the consultant, who had tended her through her pregnancies. A well-built older man with a studious manner, he was calm and practical and exactly what Saffy needed to reinforce her belief that a little nausea was not serious cause for concern.

‘The baby’s father is very worried about your health,’ the doctor declared. ‘It is a challenge of civility to tell a king he must not worry unduly.’

Hayat was waiting outside to ask Saffy to join her for tea. Dressed in a light summer dress in shades of blue, Saffy accompanied her sister-in-law to the rear of the palace complex where she and her husband and children lived. Her husband, Rahim, was a senior doctor at the city hospital and their three little girls occupied much of Hayat and Saffy’s conversation until a maid arrived to take the children out to the gardens to play.

Tea with tiny sweet cakes was served on a shaded balcony.

‘My brother needs to learn to say no,’ Hayat told Saffy firmly. ‘The same day he brings you home a bride he was immediately dragged into some government squabble about security concerns and forced to abandon you. You will quickly discover that Zahir doesn’t know how to say no to the demands made on his time.’

Saffy simply smiled, warmed by the frank tongue that Hayat appeared to share with her brother. ‘Zahir was always very conscientious. Thank you for being so welcoming, Hayat. I appreciate it.’

‘I know how much you and Zahir went through when you were married five years ago and our people now have a very good idea as well,’ Hayat commented, her brown eyes level and serious. ‘Zahir was wise when he chose to issue a public statement, admitting that he was remarrying the woman whom his father once forced him to divorce.’

Saffy stiffened in surprise at that revelation. ‘I had no idea there had been any statement made about our marriage!’ she exclaimed.

‘Or that now my brother, the king, is forced to tell lies in public to protect you?’ another louder voice interposed from the doorway behind them and both women’s heads whipped around in astonishment at the interruption.

‘Akram!’ Hayat snapped in a warning tone at her youngest brother before turning back to Saffy with her face flushed and her expression uneasy to say, ‘Please excuse me for a moment.’

But Zahir’s volatile kid brother had worked up too much of a head of steam to be denied the confrontation with his brother’s wife that his temper clearly craved. He concentrated his attention on Saffy, who was already starting to rise from her chair in dismay. ‘You walked out on my brother—you deserted him after all he had endured to keep you as a wife against our father’s wishes!’ he accused with loathing. ‘Zahir was imprisoned, tortured and beaten for your benefit and then you threw your marriage away by divorcing him when he needed your loyalty most!’

Her expression distraught, Hayat was pleading with her angry brother to keep quiet while simultaneously yanking on his arm in an unsuccessful effort to physically drag him away.

Saffy could barely part her numb lips. She was in serious shock from Akram’s ringing condemnation of her behaviour. And what on earth was he talking about? Imprisoned, tortured, beaten? Zahir?

‘I will deal with this…’ and another more familiar voice intervened, cutting across the row going on between Hayat and Akram with commanding force.

Trembling, Saffy focused on Zahir where he stood like a bronzed statue in the centre of the light, airy reception room, coldly surveying his squabbling siblings. He spoke in his own language at length to Akram and Hayat backed off, dropping her head apologetically. Whatever Zahir told his brother, Akram turned his head in consternation to stare back at Saffy with frowning disbelief. He took a half-step towards her and muttered uncomfortably, ‘I am very sorry. It seems I got everything wrong.’

‘Yes, Zahir divorced me,’ Saffy pointed out ruefully.

‘Even so, I should never have spoken to you in that way or approached you in a temper. It was not my business,’ Akram mumbled, his face very flushed, his discomfiture in Zahir’s thunderous presence pronounced. ‘Over the years it seems I reached the wrong conclusions and, as my brother has reminded me, I was never party to the true facts of what happened between you.’

An uneasy silence fell. Zahir was still glaring angrily at his kid brother.

‘No harm done,’ Saffy said awkwardly, keen to dispel the tension. ‘I assume that Zahir has told you what really happened and that you no longer think so badly of me. Now, if you would all excuse me…’

‘Where are you going?’ Zahir demanded.

‘Only for a walk. I’d like to be alone for a while,’ she muttered tightly.

‘I will accompany you,’ Zahir pronounced.

‘No…I only want a minute alone,’ Saffy whispered pleadingly, because she was thinking about what Akram had hurled at her and reaching the worst possible conclusions. Zahir had been punished by his father for defying him by marrying her? Why had that possibility never occurred to her before? Why had she been so wrapped up in her own misery that it had never occurred to her that Zahir might be dealing with bad things too? But, imprisoned, tortured, beaten…surely not? Was that possible? Would his father have subjected his son to such brutal intimidation? According to his reputation, King Fareed had been responsible for many atrocities. She thought of Zahir’s appallingly scarred back and a sense of cold fear of the unknown and of such cruelty infiltrated her. But if Zahir had suffered like that, why hadn’t he told her?

When Saffy actually focused enough to recognise where her wandering feet had carried her, she realised that she was back in the old part of the palace where she had once lived. She walked down a dim corridor and cast open the door of the room that had once been theirs. It shook her that it was still furnished the same, untouched by time or alteration, and she walked in with a compulsive shiver of remembrance of the past.

A thousand images engulfed her all at once and she reeled from memories of Zahir watching her with wary eyes, his silences, sudden absences and his refusal to answer questions. Had he been hiding stuff from her that she should have guessed? Was Akram telling the truth? She couldn’t bear that suspicion, wasn’t sure she could ever live with any discovery that painful…

‘I should have had this place cleared…’ Zahir murmured from behind her. ‘But I used to come here to think about you.’

Saffy turned round, her face pale as milk, her eyes nakedly vulnerable. ‘When? After the divorce? I think you need to start talking, Zahir…and maybe I do too,’ she acknowledged unevenly.

‘After I married you, my brother Omar asked me if I was insane to challenge our father to that extent,’ Zahir admitted with curt reluctance. ‘But at first I genuinely had no idea what I was dealing with: Omar had protected me too much. He kept a lot of secrets. I was the younger son, the junior army officer, and I wasn’t part of the inner circle of people who knew what a monster my father had become on a diet of unfettered power.’

‘So, you must have regretted marrying me rather quickly,’ Saffy assumed, searching the lean strong features she loved for every passing nuance of expression and sinking down on the edge of the bed where she had often cried her heart out with loneliness.

His handsome mouth hardened. ‘I only ever regretted the unnatural lifestyle which our marriage inflicted on you. I had no regrets on my own behalf.’

‘That’s a kind thing to say but it can’t be the way you really felt.’

‘I loved you more than life,’ Zahir breathed starkly. ‘My mistake was in rebelling against my father and bringing you back here to become the equivalent of a hostage. I should have married you and left you in London where you would be safe, but I was too selfish to do that.’

Loved you more than life. The declaration rippled through her like an unexpected benediction, steadying her nerves. ‘I loved you too. You weren’t selfish. I wouldn’t have agreed to being left behind in London.’

‘But you didn’t know what you were getting into here any more than I did.’ Face grave, Zahir compressed his lips. ‘Omar had been married five years and he still had no child. Our father was impatient to see the next generation in the family born.’

‘That must have put a lot of pressure on Omar and Azel.’

‘More on Omar for the lack of fertility was his, not hers but I didn’t learn that until shortly before Omar…died.’ He spoke that last word with curious emphasis. ‘My older brother’s secret was that he had discovered he was unable to father a child and he was afraid to tell our father lest he was passed over in the succession stakes in favour of me. Omar was always the ambitious one,’ Zahir told her heavily. ‘Unfortunately for him, our father had run out of patience. He demanded that Omar either set Azel aside or take a second wife.’

Saffy was shocked. ‘And that was the background to our marriage?’

‘Our father was doubly enraged when I married you without permission because my marriage to a suitable woman would have been the next step on his agenda.’

‘And of course I got in the way of his plans,’ Saffy completed. ‘Yet you thought he would eventually accept me.’

‘I was wrong,’ Zahir admitted grittily. ‘I was much more naïve than I thought I was about what our father was really like. I never dreamt he would be as vicious with his sons as he was to some of our people. How adolescent was such innocence in a grown man?’

‘Everybody wants to think the best of their parents,’ Saffy told him with rueful understanding. ‘I don’t blame you for getting it wrong.’

‘The year we were married was the year my father went over the edge. Although I was unaware of it, he had become a regular drug user and suffered from violent rages. From the first day you arrived he wanted me to divorce you…and the sensible act would have been to surrender to greater force, but I was never sensible about you.’

Her heart was beating in what felt uncomfortably like the foot of her throat. ‘Greater force?’ she queried suspiciously. ‘If even half of what Akram suggested happened to you, I have the right to know about it. Were you imprisoned? Tortured? Beaten?’

Zahir stared levelly back at her, not a muscle moving on his bronzed handsome face, his mouth an unsmiling line. ‘I could curse Akram, though he spoke out of ignorance. This is a conversation I never wanted to have with you…’

Saffy was trembling. ‘You’re telling me that your father—your own father—did do that stuff to you?’ she prompted sickly. ‘That you weren’t away on army manoeuvres when you disappeared for weeks on end?’

Zahir gave confirmation with a grudging jerk of his chin.

And Saffy just closed her eyes, because all of a sudden she couldn’t bear to look at him when she had excelled at being such a blind, childish fool all the months they had been man and wife the first time around. He had reappeared after those apparent military trips, filthy, often visibly bruised and cut, always having lost weight…and not once had she questioned the condition he was in, not once had she suspected that he had been brutally ill-treated while he was away from her and prevented from returning from her. In her little cocoon the very fact he was a prince had made entertaining such a suspicion too incredible to even consider. She had assumed that soldiers led a rough and ready life and that such trips were organised to be as realistic and tough as real warfare. And he had never told her, never once breathed a word of what was being done to him, never once sought her sympathy or support…

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked thickly, tears thickening her throat and creating a huge lump there.

‘I didn’t want to upset you. There was nothing you could have done to stop it. Omar was correct. I should never have brought you to Maraban. Our father was a madman and he was out of control, incapable of accepting any form of opposition. It was all or nothing and once I defied him he was determined to break me.’

‘And all over me…all because you married me,’ Saffy muttered, her distress growing by the second as she looked back on her colossally ignorant and oblivious self at the age of eighteen. Little wonder he had ducked her questions, embraced silence, never knowing when he would be with her or torn from her side again.

‘That whole year you were the only thing that kept me going,’ Zahir informed her harshly. ‘Look at me.’

‘No!’ Saffy unfroze finally and flew upright. ‘I have to think about this on my own!’

As she tried to brush past him he closed a hand round a slim forearm. ‘I told you I would tell no more lies or half-truths but I never wanted you to know about that period of my life!’

‘Oh, I know that…Mr Macho-I-suffer-in-silence!’ Saffy condemned chokily, her increasing distress clawing at her control. ‘So when you came back here to me after suffering gross mistreatment and allowed me to shout at you and complain that I was bored and lonely? Just what I need to know to feel like the biggest bitch ever created!’

And, tears streaming down her distraught face, Saffy fled, in need of privacy. How could he do that to her? How could he not have told her? How could he have allowed her to find out all that from his resentful brother? She had known King Fareed wasn’t a pleasant or popular man, but she had had no idea that he was a drug-abusing tyrant capable of torturing his own son if he was disobedient! What an idiot she must have been not to have guessed that something so dreadful was going on! How could she ever forgive herself for that? You were the only thing that kept me going. Why was he still trying to make her feel better by saying that sort of rubbish? He’d been stuck in a virtually sexless marriage while being regularly punished for rebelling against his father’s dictates. And not once had she suspected anything. Was she stupid, utterly stupid, to have been so unseeing?

Saffy took refuge in their new bedroom, which was comfortably removed from the suffocating memories of the older accommodation they had once occasionally shared. She was remembering the condition of Zahir’s back, thinking, although she didn’t want to, of him being whipped, beaten up, hurt and all on her behalf. Zahir with his pride and his intrinsic sense of decency! She ran to the bathroom and heaved but nothing came up and she hugged the vanity unit to stay upright, surveying her tousled reflection with stricken accusing eyes. How could you not know? How could you not see what he was going through?

‘This is why I never wanted you to know. I didn’t want to see you hurt because all of it was my fault…’

Saffy spun round. He stood in the doorway, lean and bronzed and gorgeous in black jeans and a white shirt, so much the guy she loved and admired and cared about. ‘How was it your fault?’ she scissored back at him incredulously.

‘I married you. I brought you back here with me. I placed both of us in a foolish and vulnerable position,’ Zahir stated grimly. ‘I will never forgive myself for that.’

‘You should’ve divorced me the minute the punishments started!’ Saffy launched back at him. ‘How could you be so stubborn that you went through that just for me?’

A faint shadow of a smile that struck her as impossible in the circumstances curved his wide sensual mouth. ‘I loved you…I couldn’t give you up.’

‘I wouldn’t have let you go through that if I’d known! How could you still want me?’ she sobbed in disbelief. ‘I wasn’t even able to give you sex!’

‘The sex was the least of it. Believe me, at the time, consummating our marriage was not my biggest challenge.’ His stunning golden eyes lowered from her shaken face and he held out a hand until she grasped it, allowing him to pull her closer. ‘But I couldn’t seek help or advice for us either. Had anyone known we had those problems my father would have had yet another reason to want you out of my life…’

Saffy dragged in a quivering breath, still reeling from what she had learned. Eyes wet, she pushed her face against his shoulder, drinking in the scent of his sun-warmed flesh, the faint evocative tang that was uniquely his, which made her feel vaguely intoxicated. She was addicted to him, so pathetically addicted. ‘Thank heaven you finally had the sense to divorce me and give the dreadful man what he wanted.’

‘That was probably the one and only unselfish thing I ever did while I was married to you, the only thing I ever did solely for you and not for me,’ Zahir muttered roughly above her down-bent head, his lips brushing across her brow in a calming gesture. ‘I’m not the saint you seem to think. I made appalling errors of judgement.’

Her forehead furrowing, she looked up at him ‘Such as?’

‘Bringing you into Maraban five years ago,’ he specified. ‘Three months after Omar’s death, I found out that he had been murdered…’

‘What?’ Shattered by that statement, she stared up at him.

‘One of the generals told me the truth because the most senior army personnel were becoming nervous about my father’s reign of terror. Omar was beaten up by my father’s henchmen and he died from a head injury. The car crash was simply a cover-up. It was then that I realised that my father really had gone beyond the hope of return,’ Zahir revealed rawly.

‘Oh…my…word,’ Saffy framed sickly. ‘Are you sure?’

‘One hundred per cent.’ Zahir compressed his lips. ‘That’s when I appreciated that keeping you in Maraban was sheer insanity when my father wanted rid of you. I didn’t have the power to protect you. I was putting your life at risk by refusing to divorce you. I was making you a target in my father’s eyes. I’m ashamed it took Omar’s death to make me accept that if I couldn’t keep you safe, I had to let you go…

Saffy’s heart was beating very loudly in her eardrums and she drifted dizzily away from him on weak legs to drop heavily down on a sofa in the corner of their room. ‘So, that’s why the divorce came out of nowhere at me. You honestly thought I was in danger. Why didn’t you tell me the truth then, Zahir?’

‘The truth would have terrified you and I was ashamed that I could not even keep myself safe, never mind my wife. But that was also the moment that, in losing you, my father finally lost my loyalty. I could never have forgiven him for what he had done to Omar, but losing you was excruciating,’ he completed gruffly, dropping down on his knees in front of her and momentarily lowering his dark head down onto her lap. ‘You have no idea how much I loved you, what strength it took to give you up, knowing, having to accept that it was the only thing I could do…’

As he admitted that stinging tears were rolling down Saffy’s face. She had never dreamt that she could feel such pain on someone else’s behalf and yet when Zahir talked of how much it had hurt to divorce her, it was as if a giant black hole of unhappiness opened up inside her and cracked her heart right down the middle. Her fingers delved into his luxuriant black hair, delving, smoothing. ‘I loved you too…I loved you so much. I don’t think I even understood how much I needed you in my life until we were forced apart,’ she confided jaggedly.

‘I tried to contact you after my father died and the fighting was finished,’ Zahir told her grimly as he lifted his handsome dark head and leapt back upright to pace restively. ‘I spoke to your sister, Kat.’

Saffy was stunned. ‘She didn’t tell me.’

Zahir grimaced. ‘Kat pleaded with me to leave you alone. She said you had just got your life back together, that you were working, making friends and that the last thing you needed was to see me again,’ Zahir recalled, tight-mouthed at the recollection.

Saffy felt as if someone had walked over her grave. How could the sister she loved have got her so wrong? The divorce had broken her heart but she had still loved Zahir and would have moved heaven and earth to see him again. ‘She shouldn’t have interfered.’

‘On that score we’ll have to disagree.’ Zahir surprised her with that response. ‘Sadly, even though I didn’t like what Kat had to say, she was right.’

‘No, she was wrong,’ Saffy contradicted.

‘You were far too young to deal with what I was dealing with then on top of the other problems we had and Maraban had. You needed the time to live the normal life you should have enjoyed before we married,’ Zahir contended. ‘I can see that now but I couldn’t see it at the time. I simply wanted you back the minute it would have been safe to bring you back…’

Tears trickled down Saffy’s cheeks. ‘I would’ve come back to you,’ she whispered shakily.

‘You would’ve walked away from those magazine covers and your face everywhere?’ Zahir prompted dubiously.

‘Yes, it was never that important to me. It was the means to make a living and not be a burden on my sister.’

Zahir bent down and grasped her hands to raise her. ‘But we work better now because we’re older and wiser.’

A shadow crossed her lovely face. ‘And, of course, you’re much more experienced.’

He paled, his strong bone structure tightening. ‘After our mutual failure, I was afraid I had become…impotent. I had lost all confidence,’ he confided in a grudging undertone, tension and shame etched in every line of his strong face. ‘I knew I had to get past my obsession with you because you were no longer mine. My father sent me abroad before the civil war broke out. Ironically he was trying to reward me for divorcing you…’

Saffy lifted her fingers and gently smoothed the stubborn angle of his jaw. ‘It’s all right. I can’t say I don’t mind because that would be a lie, but I understand why it happened.’

His beautiful dark eyes narrowed and centred intently on her solemn face. ‘Then isn’t it time you explained how that miracle happened for you? You insist there hasn’t been another man but—’

‘That was the truth.’ Her wandering fingers strayed to his wide sensual lower lip to silence him. ‘I wanted to be normal in the bedroom and I went to see a specialist to find out what was wrong with me. I was told that I suffered from a condition called vaginismus, which is an involuntary tightening of the pelvic muscles, often triggered by some trauma in the past. My inability to relax, the panic attacks when you tried to touch me were all part of it,’ she explained, doggedly pushing herself on to spill what had lain behind her deepest vulnerability. ‘I went for therapy but it wasn’t until I had hypnotherapy that I discovered what had triggered my phobia about that part of my body…’

Zahir held her back from him, his shrewd gaze welded to her troubled face and the sheen of perspiration already dampening her upper lip. ‘Tell me—there should be nothing you can’t tell me.’

‘I was abused by one of my mother’s boyfriends when I was a child,’ Saffy framed shakily, tears welling up in her eyes because she could not bring herself to look and see how he was reacting to that unsavoury news. ‘I suppose I was lucky he didn’t rape me, but then he was never able to get me alone for very long. He threatened me. He said that if I told Mum, she wouldn’t believe me, and he said Emmie and Topsy would have to take my place.’

Zahir swore in his own language and gripped her shoulders. ‘Please tell me that you went to your mother for help.’

A taut expression set Saffy’s face. ‘I did but my abuser was right—Mum refused to believe me and punished me for even opening the subject. My abuser was a well-off professional man with a name for being a womaniser and there was no way my mother was going to give him up or suspect him on only the strength of my word.’

Zahir pushed up her chin. ‘What age were you?’

‘Seven.’ Saffy gazed up into his furious eyes and shivered. ‘I couldn’t stop him, Zahir, but I knew it was wrong.’

Zahir almost crushed her in his arms. ‘Is that the impression I’m giving you? That it was somehow your fault that some filthy pervert abused your trust? That’s not how I feel. I’m furious the bastard got away with it, furious your mother wouldn’t listen to you, furious I wasn’t there to prevent it happening in the first place!’ he spelt out in a savage undertone.

‘You’re angry.’

‘But not with you, with the people who have hurt you and let you down, even though I’m one of their number,’ he muttered, his breathing fracturing as he scooped her up and brought her carefully down on the bed with him, holding her close to every line of his long, lean physique. ‘Facing the fact that you’d been abused must have been very difficult for you.’

‘Apparently it’s quite common for children to suppress memories of that kind of assault,’ Saffy whispered unevenly, reassured by the solid thump of his heart against her breast and the reality that he was hugging her without demonstrating any symptoms of revulsion towards her. ‘I felt horrible but, on one level, it was a relief to find out what had made me the way I was. I knew I’d never be able to have another relationship until I could overcome my problems.’

‘I wish I’d known. What treatment did you have?’

‘I had loads of supportive counselling and then a physical intervention,’ Saffy explained hesitantly. ‘I had muscle relaxants injected to prevent the contractions and a dilator was inserted while I was still unconscious. For a long time I slept with it inserted overnight…’ As Zahir looked down at her, her face was burning. ‘I had to learn to accept my own body and to touch myself. I’d always avoided that without ever wondering why. I assumed I was just very fastidious, I didn’t know I suffered from an actual phobia until we got married and it all went wrong. But after I had completed the treatment I did hope to find a lover once I’d worked through all the recovery steps.’

‘And why didn’t you do that?’ Zahir demanded, stunning dark golden eyes pinned to her. ‘I shouldn’t have thought that would have been a challenge.’

‘You’d be surprised. I not only wanted a man who attracted me, but also one whom I cared something about. Having waited so long and gone through so much to find the answer to my problems, I didn’t want just anyone!’ Saffy explained with spirit. ‘Unfortunately the right guy didn’t appear. To most of the men I met, I would only have been a trophy. I wanted more than that from a man. I believed I deserved more than that.’

His lush black lashes semi-screened his glittering scrutiny, colour lying in a hard line along his fabulous cheekbones. ‘Then how on earth did you contrive to settle for me again?’

Saffy stiffened. ‘I was still very attracted to you…don’t know why,’ she dared to pronounce, watching his amazing eyes smoulder at that challenge into glowing golden flames. ‘I told myself that being with you didn’t mean anything to me emotionally and that I was simply using you to get rid of my virginity.’

Zahir nodded very slowly and then bent his head to steal a kiss that made her head spin, and her fingers clutched frantic handfuls of his luxuriant black hair. The pressure of his mouth combined with the penetration of his tongue was an intoxicating thrill, so that when he lifted his head again, separating them, she frowned.

‘I told myself a lot of lies that night in the tent as well. I couldn’t admit how I still felt about you,’ he confided with a hard twist of his mouth. ‘In fact in the time we were divorced I had grown unreasonably and unjustly bitter.’

‘Bitter?’ she queried.

‘Bitter that I’d loved and lost you and that you appeared to be having a hell of a good time without me. Even worse, I couldn’t forget you,’ he confessed harshly. ‘There you were in my sister’s magazines, which she was always leaving lying around, seemingly enjoying a party lifestyle with various different men. I was angry and jealous… There, I have said it at last! I wanted you back from the moment I lost you and I never changed towards you. I loved you five years ago and I love you even more now…’

‘You…do?’ Saffy was enchanted by that admission and the ferocious fervent force with which he spoke and studied her.

‘I love you and I always will.’ Zahir groaned because the wife he adored was not a patient woman and she was stroking her hand down his taut, powerful thigh with rousing intent.

‘I love you too… I didn’t stop loving you either,’ Saffy confided. ‘But I was too proud to admit that. At first, I wanted you to believe I’d had other lovers.’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered if you had had. I would still love you. I’ve grown up too,’ Zahir declared. ‘Circumstances tore us apart.’

‘But you brought us back together again.’ Saffy scored a fingernail along the rippling muscle of one thigh, loving his instant response to her provocation. ‘You kidnapped me.’

‘I also asked you to be my mistress. I’m ashamed of that,’ he said bluntly. ‘But I wanted you any way I could get you… I couldn’t face losing you again but my behaviour was inexcusable.’

Saffy stared down at him and suddenly grinned, unable to hide her amusement. ‘But that behaviour was very much you. You can’t fight what you are inside: direct, bold, passionate. I couldn’t believe you still wanted me that much after our disastrous year together.’

‘I honestly did believe that it was I who had failed you in the bedroom,’ Zahir told her tautly. ‘I assumed my clumsiness and ignorance had scared you, that I’d hurt you, given you a fear of intimacy.’

‘No…no, it wouldn’t have mattered who I was with, it would have been the same, but another man might not have had your patience,’ she argued, her eyes not leaving his for a second as, drawn like a moth to a flame, she slowly lowered her mouth to his. ‘You were very kind and understanding when you must have been hugely sexually frustrated.’

It was Zahir’s turn to smile. ‘No, you took care of me in other ways and I had few complaints.’

Saffy tensed. ‘Doesn’t knowing about the…er…abuse turn you off?’

‘No, it makes you even more worthy of being the love of my life. I know how strong you must be to have got through that and dealt with it.’ With gentle fingers he smoothed a stray strand of golden hair from her brow. ‘I know how hard I had to work coming to terms with what was done to me while I was imprisoned by my father…’

‘I still can’t stand the thought of that,’ she admitted chokily, her eyes filming over.

‘Omar and I were raised like spoilt little rich kids with titles. Being powerless and a victim taught me a lot that I needed to learn for the benefit of others,’ Zahir delivered wryly, rolling over to slide a long, hard thigh between hers and nudge her knees apart. ‘I want to make love to you…I want to know that you’re mine forever.’

Loving the weight of him against her, Saffy gave him a teasing smile. ‘I hope you do appreciate that you will be stuck with me for ever.’

‘I was terrified that that might not be the case,’ Zahir sliced in, claiming a hungry driving kiss that left her breathless. ‘Afraid that you were keeping your options open and planning to ask me for a divorce some day.’

‘As long as you can kiss me like that, you’re pretty safe,’ Saffy teased, watching heat flare in his gaze.

He made love to her with all the scorching passion of his temperament and when she finally subsided in the strong circle of his arms, alight with happiness and the glorious aftermath of incredible physical pleasure, she snuggled close to him. ‘I’m not going anywhere away from you ever again,’ she swore vehemently.

Zahir grinned, splayed long fingers over her still-flat tummy and gently stroked it. ‘So, you’ll sleep in a tent with me next time I ask?’

‘As long as it has electric and hot and cold running water,’ Saffy specified. ‘You’re really happy about the baby, aren’t you?’

A slashing smile scythed across his lean bronzed features. ‘Of course I’m excited about the baby, the next generation. We’ll be a family as I always dreamt. I still remember the first time I saw you in that store,’ he confided huskily. ‘And people don’t believe in love at first sight.’

‘I do…’ Lacing her fingers into his thick, tousled black hair, Saffy looked up into his gorgeous eyes with a heart beating like a drum. ‘And after what we’ve been through together and apart, I also believe that a love like that can last for ever…’

‘For ever,’ Zahir repeated, wrapping both arms round her and pulling her close, knowing that, having lost her once, he would never take the smallest risk of losing her again.

Two years on from that conversation, Saffy soothed her son, Karim, as he fell off his toddler bike for at least the third time and roared with temper and frustration. As soon as his mother set him down again on his sturdy little legs, Karim streaked back to the bike, determined to master the art of riding it so that he could race around the gardens in the company of his female cousins. As she watched her little boy tell the bike off for not doing his bidding, she laughed.

‘He doesn’t give up easily,’ her sister, Kat, commented.

‘No, he’s like Zahir in that.’ Saffy smiled at her sibling, loving the fact that she and Mikhail had come to stay with them in Maraban but aching for the couple at the same time. Kat had recently gone through IVF in Russia in an attempt to conceive but, sadly, the procedure hadn’t worked. In another month the couple were set for a second try and Saffy was praying that the treatment would deliver a successful result, for if any woman deserved a child of her own it was Kat, who had raised her three sisters with so much love and support.

‘The servants wait on him hand and foot,’ Kat commented. ‘You’ll have to watch that.’

‘I do. He tidies up his own toys. Zahir doesn’t want him spoiled the same way he was.’

‘The way your husband spoils you?’ Kat laughed, secure in the knowledge that Saffy was deliriously happy in Maraban.

‘Spoiling me gives Zahir a kick,’ Saffy confided with a grin, thinking of the vast selection of jewels and luxuries she was continually showered in.

More importantly, Saffy had found a real role to keep her busy in her husband’s country. She had participated in making a promotional film of Maraban and had impressed everybody with her skill as a presenter. But then she had thoroughly enjoyed the personalised tour of the various sites of interest with Zahir by her side and had become almost as knowledgeable about his country of birth as he was in the process. The warm welcome of the locals had increased her identification with Maraban as her new home. She had got involved with local charities, now sat on the board of the newest hospital in the city and regularly visited educational institutions. But most precious of all on her terms had been spending an entire week with Zahir and Karim at the orphanage school in South Africa, which she had long supported.

As a rule she usually went to London to see her sisters. Topsy was at university, studying hard and rarely free for more than a weekend, but Emmie often visited London to shop and the twins now got together as often as they could contrive it. Rediscovering her relationship with her sister meant a great deal to Saffy and the process was helped by the reality that both women now had much more in common.

Zahir strode through the door with Mikhail a mere step in his wake. Kat’s husband, a Russian billionaire, was currently advising the Marabani government on how best to invest the oil revenues that kept the country afloat. Zahir swept his son off the bike a split second before the child fell again.

‘He won’t stop trying,’ Saffy told her handsome husband. ‘He won’t give up. He’s so like you.’

‘But he has your eyes and impatience,’ Zahir remarked appreciatively as he set his squirming son down again and watched him head straight back to the demon bike that still wouldn’t do what he wanted it to do.

Zahir linked his fingers with Saffy and walked her out onto the terrace. Overhead the sun was sinking in a peach and orange blaze of colour and soon they would sit down to dinner by candlelight and talk long into the night. Just for a moment, even though she was very much enjoying having her sister and her husband as guests, she wished she were alone with Zahir.

He looked down at her with smouldering dark golden eyes and butterflies leapt in her tummy and her mouth ran dry. ‘We should get dressed for dinner,’ he murmured lazily.

A smile tugging at her lush lips, Saffy leant back against his lean powerful body in an attitude of complete trust, knowing they would end up in bed, loving the fact that he found it as hard to keep his hands off her as she did him. She was deliriously happy in her marriage and Karim’s arrival had enriched and deepened the ties between her and Zahir. ‘I love you,’ she whispered.

‘I love you too,’ Zahir purred, pressing his mouth hungrily to the base of her throat and making her shiver against him.