Читать книгу Penny Jordan Tribute Collection - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 25

‘THANKS for the lift…’

Petra watched as the young tour guide reiterated his grateful thanks to Blaize, before jumping down out of the Land Rover.

They had all been on the point of departing from the oasis when the tour guide’s Jeep had refused to start.

Places had been found for his passengers in other vehicles, but unfortunately there had not been enough room for him, so Blaize had offered to give him a lift back to the complex.

Of course his presence had made it impossible for Petra and Blaize to discuss anything personal, but Petra suspected that she minded this far more than Blaize did.

The truth was that he was probably relieved she couldn’t say anything about last night, Petra acknowledged unhappily.

After all, if he had felt anything for her—even a mere small percentage of the love she knew she had for him—then he would have told her so last night, instead of returning her to her own bed and then treating her this morning as though… as though she meant nothing to him!

She might mean nothing to him, but he meant everything to her!

Still, at least one good thing had come out of last night, she tried to tell herself with a brave attempt at cynical courage.

Rashid certainly wasn’t going to want to marry her now. Not once he knew she had spent the night with another man! Given herself to another man! A man, moreover, who didn’t love or want her!

Determinedly Petra tried not to give in to her own despair.

That wasn’t true, she argued mentally with herself. Blaize had wanted her!

Her or just a woman… any woman?

Her pain was so intense that she didn’t dare to even look at Blaize, just in case he might read her feelings in her eyes and feel even more contempt for her than he no doubt already did. All she meant to him was a meal ticket and a few hours of casual and no doubt quickly forgettable sex! She had known what he was all along, she reminded herself, so why had she been so stupid? So reckless with herself and her love? What had she been thinking? That with her he would be different? That her love would make it different? Why, why, why had she closed her eyes so deliberately to reality? Why had she ignored everything she knew about him and the way he lived his life?

Because her love for him had given her no choice, Petra recognised bleakly. Because, against her love, common sense and logic had no real weapons at all!

Acidly painful tears burned the back of Petra’s throat. They were outside her hotel now, and without giving Blaize the opportunity to say anything she opened the door of the Land Rover and got out.

As she walked away she thought she heard Blaize calling her name, but she refused to stop.

It might be too late to stop herself from loving Blaize, but it was not too late for her to salvage her pride and her self-respect!

If she had meant anything to him… anything at all… he would have told her so last night.

An hour later, having exhausted every rational and several very irrational combinations of reasons and excuses for Blaize’s behaviour, and still had to return to the unwanted, unbearable truth that he had simply been using her and, having done so now, no longer wanted her, Petra heard someone knocking on the door to her suite.

Immediately, despite everything she had just told herself, her heart leapt, whilst relief and joy poured through her. It was Blaize! It had to be! She had got it all wrong! There was a rational explanation for the distance he had put between them, and he had now come to explain everything to her—to apologise for hurting her and to tell her how much he wanted her, how much he loved her.

Her whole face illuminated with happiness and love, Petra ran to open the door.

Only it wasn’t Blaize who was standing outside; it was her cousin Saud. In the shock of her disappointment Petra could only stand and stare at him uncomprehendingly.

‘Are you packed yet?’ she heard him asking her.

‘Packed?’

‘I told my mother she should have rung ahead to check that you were ready!’

Ready! Guiltily Petra realised that today was the day she was due to move in to the family villa. She had been so wrapped up in her love for Blaize and what had happened between them that she had totally overlooked the plans that had been made.

‘I… I’m running a bit late, Saud,’ she told him. After all, it was technically the truth. ‘I’m sorry…’

‘That’s okay,’ Saud assured her easily. ‘I’m not in any rush. Did you enjoy your trip into the dessert with Rashid? I saw him driving you there,’ he added casually.

Petra stared at him, her body completely immobile, like that of someone caught up in the dark power of a sorcerer’s spell.

‘Rashid?’ she questioned. Her lips were having trouble framing his name, and her heart had started to beat with heavy-doom laden thuds that rocked her whole body. ‘You saw me with Rashid?’

‘Yes, in one of the safari company’s Land Rovers,’ Saud confirmed.

‘But I wasn’t with—’ Petra began to protest, and then stopped as Saud continued with a wide grin.

‘My mother’s already planning the wedding. She thinks…’

‘Rashid,’ Petra mouthed, forcing her lips to accommodate themselves to his name, whilst her body shook with the enormity of what Saud had said. ‘But…’

But what? she asked herself numbly. But she had not been with Rashid. She had been with Blaize! Blaize who was not Rashid… who could not be Rashid…

‘I suppose Rashid is working upstairs in the Presidential Suite now, is he?’ Saud was chattering on happily. ‘Has he taken you to see his new villa yet? The one he has just had built out by the private oasis he bought?’ Saud was asking her excitedly. ‘Did he show you his horses? And his falcons? I’d love a falcon of my own, but Dad says it’s out of the question—especially if I’m to go to university in America.’

‘Saud, I’m not… I’m not packed yet. Could you come back a little later, say in an hour?’ she asked him jerkily, interrupting his enthusiastic and excited conversation.

‘Sure!’

Petra stared blankly at the door Saud had closed behind him.

Saud had said that he had seen her with Rashid. But the man she had been with was Blaize. Which meant either that Saud had been mistaken or…

There was a vile sickening sensation clawing coldly at the pit of her stomach, a suspicion inside her head that wouldn’t go away.

The Presidential Suite. That was on the top floor. White-faced, but determined, Petra opened the door of her suite and headed for the lift.

What she was thinking couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t! Saud had to be mistaken, but she had to find out, she had to know… to be sure!

Only one lift went all the way to the Presidential Suite, and when she got out of it Petra was trembling violently—although whether from shock, fear or fury, she didn’t really know.

Blaize could not be Rashid. It was totally implausible that he might be, totally impossible! But somehow the reassurances she was trying to give herself had a disconcertingly hollow and empty sound to them.

In the private hallway to the suite, a thick, lushly rich carpet muffled her footsteps—but not her racing heartbeat. Nervously Petra stared at the closed door in front of her.

What was she doing here? Blaize was a beach bum, a chancer, an adventurer who lived on his wits and other people’s money, a man with no moral beliefs, who made his own rules—and then broke them. Rashid, in contrast, from what she had heard about him, was a seriously successful businessman, a man ruthlessly focused on his own goals, a man prepared to marry a woman he did not know for his own advancement and benefit.

They could not be one and the same person. It was unthinkable that they might be. Unthinkable, unsustainable, unendurable! Of course it was! Saud had simply made a mistake.

Feeling slightly calmer, Petra pressed the doorbell and waited.

The door swung inwards, and a male voice demanded curtly, ‘Yes?’

The voice was the same, but the businesslike crispness certainly wasn’t!

Her throat muscles virtually paralysed with shock and disbelief, Petra stared up into Blaize’s face. Only he wasn’t Blaize. He was… He was…

Ignoring the bare arm that Blaize had placed across the half-open doorway, Petra pushed her way past him and into the suite.

She had obviously disturbed Blaize, or rather Rashid, as she now knew him to be in mid-shower, to judge from the rivulets of moisture still running over his skin down to the towel he had draped round his hips.

‘How could you?’ she demanded chokily. ‘How dare you? Why did you do it? Why…? Let go of me,’ she spat as he suddenly took hold of her arm, her face white with shock and fury. ‘Let go of me,’ she repeated, as Blaize—Rashid, she corrected herself bitterly—virtually dragged her into the elegant sitting room.

If she had either shocked or shamed him, he certainly wasn’t showing it.

‘Not until you’ve calmed down and you’re ready to listen to reason,’ Rashid told her calmly. ‘Come and sit down and I’ll get you a cool drink. You look as though you need one.’

A cool drink! Petra tried to pull free of him and found that she could not.

‘What I need,’ she told him through gritted teeth, ‘is an explanation of… of what is going on… of why you pretended to be someone you quite obviously are not…’

‘I was going to tell you,’ Rashid interrupted her curtly. ‘But—’

‘Liar!’ Petra cut across him. ‘You’re lying to me. Just like you’ve lied to me all along! Let go of me,’ she demanded fiercely. ‘I can’t bear having you touch me. I—’

‘That wasn’t what you said last night,’ Rashid reminded her grimly.

Petra shuddered, unable to stop herself from reacting—not just to his words, but also to her own feelings, her memories…

‘In fact, last night, as I recall, you seemed to find my touch a good deal more than merely bearable! Remember?’

When Petra refused to answer Rashid goaded her.

‘Shall I help you to do so?’

As Petra gave a sharp gasp of shock he drew her closer to him. Petra tensed as she felt the dampness of his skin through her thin top. Her mind knew how gravely, how devastatingly, how unforgivably he had behaved towards her, but her body seemed only to know that he was its lover, its love.

‘If I were to kiss you now,’ he began softly, the words whispering tormentingly against her tightly closed lips, ‘then…’

He stopped speaking and lifted his head as the suite door suddenly opened and a tall grey-bearded man strode in, his bearing immediately marking him out as a person of eminence and rank.

‘Rashid, our new American project—how long do you think—’ he began, and then stopped as he took in the scene in front of him, its apparent intimacy.

Eyes as sharp and dark as a falcon’s made Petra feel as though she was as pinioned beneath their gaze as she was by Rashid’s grip.

‘Highness, please allow me to present to you Miss Petra Cabbot.’

Highness!

Petra gulped, sensing the cool air of regal disapproval emanating from the newcomer as he looked from Rashid to Petra and then back to Rashid again before saying quietly, ‘I see!’

He left a brief but telling pause before asking Petra politely, ‘Your godfather is well, I trust, Miss Cabbot? He and I were at Eton together.’

‘He’s—he’s in the Far East,’ Petra managed to croak, wondering if she dared add that he was there with her passport—which right now she needed very much.

‘Indeed.’ The princely head was inclined towards her. ‘He is a very shrewd statesman, as was your father. Statesmen of world-class stature with far-seeing eyes are very much needed in these turbulent times.’

Her face burning, Petra moved out of earshot of the two men whilst the Prince spoke with Rashid.

Despite the Prince’s politeness, Petra was uncomfortably aware of his evident, if unexpressed disapproval of her presence unchaperoned in Rashid’s suite.

The moment the Prince had left, Petra made to leave herself. But immediately Rashid shook his head, closing the door firmly and standing in front of it as he said grimly, ‘You do realise what this means, don’t you? What will have to happen now that the Prince has seen you here alone with me?’

‘You were the one who introduced me to him,’ Petra reminded him defensively, ignoring his question.

‘Because I had no other option,’ Rashid told her savagely. ‘If I had chosen not to introduce you it would have been a tacit admission that it was because honourably I could not do so… because you were my whore! There is nothing else for it now. You will have to marry me! Nothing less can save your reputation or that of your family!’

Petra stared at him in shocked disbelief.

‘What?’ she croaked. ‘We can’t!’

‘We can and we are,’ Rashid assured her grimly. ‘In fact, we don’t have any other option—thanks to you!’

‘Thanks to me?’ Petra glared at him. ‘Thanks to me? What does that mean? I wasn’t the one…’

‘It means that since His Highness found you here in my apartment unchaperoned, I now have no other option than to marry you. It was obvious what he thought.’

‘What…? That’s… that’s ridiculous,’ Petra protested. ‘Why didn’t you just tell him the truth?’

‘Which truth?’ Rashid demanded scornfully. ‘The truth that says last night you gave yourself to me? Last night…’

‘Stop it… stop it.’ Petra demanded in anguish, before accusing him recklessly, ‘You’ve done all this deliberately, haven’t you? Just so that you can get your own way and force me to marry you—for the financial benefit you’ll get out of it! Just as a matter of interest, what is marriage to me worth to you, Rashid?’ Her temper was burning white-hot. ‘A good deal more than the traditional camels, I am sure! One hotel… two… an office block and perhaps a dozen or more villas thrown in? And why stop there? I know that the Royal Family’s hotel interests extend all over the world, and—’

‘You’re overreacting.’ Rashid cut across her increasingly emotional words curtly. ‘If you would just allow me to explain—’

‘Explain what?’ Petra demanded bitterly. ‘Explain that you deliberately lied to me and… and plotted and planned to… to use me for… for your own ends?’

‘Me—use you. I wasn’t the one who came into your room,’ Rashid reminded her icily. ‘Into your bed! If anything, if anyone is to blame for the situation we now find ourselves in, Petra, it is you and your wretched virginal curiosity! And, contrary to what your juvenile imagination has decided, it is for that reason that I have no option other than to do the honourable thing and marry you.’

‘Because I was a virgin! That’s crazy!’

‘No. You are crazy if you honestly believe there can be any other outcome to what happened. We have to marry now. Apart from any other consideration there is the fact that you could have a child.’

Petra stared at him.

‘But… but that isn’t possible,’ she started to stammer. ‘You… you… took precautions…’

She tensed as she heard him draw an exaggeratedly deep breath.

‘Indeed I did—the first time!’ he told her derisively. ‘The second time I did not, and the second time I…’

‘You planned all this, didn’t you?’ Petra repeated furiously, panicked by both the situation and Rashid’s grim anger. ‘You deliberately lied to me and—’

‘Do you really think I like or want this any more than you do? And as for planning it! You obviously haven’t listened properly to me, Petra. As I’ve just told you, I wasn’t the one who crawled into your bed! Nor was I the one who begged—’

With a small chagrined moan Petra forced back the shocked emotional tears that were already stinging her eyes.

‘How many more times do I have to tell you that for me not to marry you now would not just relegate you to the status of a… a plaything, it would humiliate your grandfather and his whole family?’ Rashid said bitingly. ‘Quite apart from the fact that you were alone in here with me in an intimate situation—do you really think the fact that we spent the night together last night went unnoticed? Has it really not occurred to you yet that this morning you so obviously looked…’

‘No! I won’t listen to any more,’ she protested.

Every word he said was like a knife in her heart. She could hardly take in what was happening. What he had said. She had enough to do trying to come to terms with the fact that the man she had thought of as Blaize was in actual fact someone quite different, without having to cope with this additional shock!

‘None of this need have happened if you had just been honest with me that evening down on the beach,’ she threw at him wildly. ‘If you had told me then.’

‘When you first approached me I had no idea who you were. I had just returned from a business trip to discover that the idiotic young man who looked after the windsurfers, who I had already had to warn on more than one occasion about his familiarity with the female guests, had been discovered by one of our guests in bed with his wife. Naturally I had had to sack him, and I had gone down to the beach simply to walk and think.’

‘You were putting away the windsurfers,’ Petra accused him bitterly.

Rashid gave a small shrug.

‘An automatic habit. I worked on a Californian beach as a student, and just seeing them lying untidily there…’

‘You could have told me who you were! Stopped me…’ Petra persisted. ‘You may think that you have been very clever, tricking me like this, but I won’t marry you, Rashid.’

‘You don’t have any other choice,’ he told her starkly. ‘Neither of us do! Not now! I cannot—’

‘You cannot what?’ Petra demanded, refusing to allow him to finish speaking. ‘You cannot afford to offend the Royal Family? Well… well, tough! No way am I going to marry you just to… to save your precious reputation—’

She stopped in mid-sentence as Rashid cut across her, his voice sharply cynical. ‘My reputation? Haven’t you listened to anything I have just said? It is your own you should be thinking about! Your own and that of your family. Because what I cannot do, Petra, unless I marry you, is protect you from the gossip that is now bound to occur. And not just about you! I have far too much respect for your grandfather to want to publicly humiliate him by having it known that I have not offered you marriage.’

‘Fine! Your conscience is clear, Rashid! You have offered me marriage. And I am refusing to accept!’

‘Despite the fact that you could be carrying my child?’

For a moment they looked at one another. Petra could feel herself weakening, remembering… But then she made herself face reality. He had lied to her, totally and without compunction, tricked and deceived her, and she could never overlook that, not if she wanted to retain her own self-respect, what little there was left of it!

Determinedly she told him, ‘It could also be that I am not carrying your child! I won’t marry you, Rashid,’ she reinforced.

‘Unfortunately, I am tied up with business meetings which cannot be cancelled or delayed until the day after tomorrow. But rest assured, Petra, on that day I shall be calling on your grandfather to formally request your hand in marriage.’

So intense was her sense of fury and frustration that Petra simply couldn’t speak. Giving Rashid a savagely bitter look, she headed for the door.

To her relief he allowed her to pass through it without making any attempt to stop her or to say anything else.

Calling on her grandfather to request her hand in marriage. She had never heard of anything so archaic! Well, she would soon make it plain to him that his proposal was neither wanted nor acceptable!