Читать книгу Penny Jordan Tribute Collection - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 28

‘PETRA, are you sure you are all right?’

‘Grandfather, I am fine,’ Petra fibbed as she turned away from him to prevent him from seeing her tears.

He had arrived unexpectedly that morning, just after Rashid had left to visit the stables, anxious to find out how Petra was for himself.

‘No, you aren’t,’ he insisted, coming up to her and turning her towards him. ‘You are crying. What’s wrong?’ he asked sternly.

Petra bit her lip. She still felt seared, scorched, shamed by her memories of the previous night! And there was no point in her trying to mentally blame Rashid! She had been the one to instigate things… even if he had carried them… and her… to a point… place… she had never imagined existed!

She was furious with herself for her weakness, unable to accept her own behaviour. How could she have been so weak-willed as to give in to temptation? Why couldn’t she make herself stop loving him? Especially when she knew there was no future for them; when she knew she couldn’t trust him.

He didn’t love her. He might have returned early from his business trip. He might have made love with her last night… he might even have stayed with her until she had fallen asleep. But he had never made any attempt to talk to her, to tell her…

To tell her what? That he loved her? But she already knew that he did not, didn’t she? She already knew that he had been forced to marry her!

They were trapped in a marriage which could only cause them both misery. And now, thanks to her behaviour last night, there could be additional complications. What if this time she had conceived his baby?

‘You are not happy,’ her grandfather was persisting. ‘You are too thin… too pale. This was not what I expected when you and Rashid married. You are so obviously suited to one another in so many ways.’ He started to frown.

Petra stared at him. Suited to one another! How could he think that?

‘In your eyes, perhaps,’ she told him unhappily. ‘But no…! We should never have married. Rashid feels nothing for me. He doesn’t love me and… I—’

‘Petra, what nonsense is this?’ her grandfather demanded immediately. ‘Of course Rashid loves you! That has never been in any doubt! It is quite obvious how he feels about you from the way he talks about you, from the way he has behaved towards you.’

‘No!’ Petra stopped him in disbelief ‘You’re wrong! How can you say that he loves me? The only reason Rashid married me is because he… he had to!’

‘Had to?’ To Petra’s consternation her grandfather actually laughed. ‘What on earth gave you that idea? It was most certainly not the case at all!’

He gave her a wry look. ‘It is, of course, true that the pair of you would logically be expected to marry, having spent so much time together unchaperoned, but I can assure you that there was no obligation for Rashid to marry you other than his own desire to do so! And I can also tell you that that desire sprang entirely from his love for you!’

Her grandfather shook his head. ‘And, besides, Rashid would never have allowed himself to be involved in such a potentially compromising situation if he had not been passionately in love with you!’

Her grandfather spoke with such conviction that Petra was dumbfounded.

‘There is only one reason Rashid married you, Petra,’ he repeated. ‘And that is quite simply that he loves you.’

‘If that is true then why has he never told me so himself?’ Petra asked emotionally, reluctant to allow herself to trust what she was hearing.

‘Have you told him of your love for him?’ her grandfather challenged her gently.

Biting her lip, Petra had to confess that she had not.

‘But you do love him?’ her grandfather persisted.

Petra could not bring herself to reply. She could see that her grandfather was frowning.

‘If I have misjudged your feelings, Petra, then you must say so,’ she heard him telling her with gentle firmness. ‘Much as I like and respect Rashid, you are my granddaughter. If you have discovered that you do not love him, if you are in any way unhappy, then you can come home with me now and I shall speak to Rashid if you wish.’

Petra’s eyes darkened with emotion.

‘I feel so confused. There is so much I… I believed… I thought…’ She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I thought that Rashid married me because of the financial benefits our marriage would bring him,’ she confessed, blurting out her despair.

‘The financial benefits?’ Her grandfather looked bemused. ‘Petra—’ he began, but Petra stopped him, rushing on fiercely.

‘Saud told me everything, Grandfather. You mustn’t be cross with him. He didn’t realise that I didn’t know there was a… a plan to have me marry Rashid—whether I wanted to or not! Saud hero-worships him so much that he thought I would be pleased… thrilled. I know all about… everything. Even my godfather seemed to think it was a good idea. So much so that he abandoned me here without my passport so that I couldn’t leave…’

‘Petra, Petra. My dear child. Please! You are distressing yourself so unnecessarily!’

Petra fell silent as she heard the pain in her grandfather’s voice. ‘Come and sit down here beside me,’ he commanded her gently.

A little reluctantly she did so.

‘You are right in thinking there was a suggestion that you and Rashid should meet one another, and that it was felt that… that you had a great deal in common—but you must understand that a suggestion was all it was, made more in jest than anything else. Saud obviously eavesdropped on that conversation and leapt to incorrect assumptions…’ He frowned. ‘You may be sure that I shall have some strong words to say to him about his behaviour and his actions in passing on his totally unfounded assumptions to you. As you say, he greatly admires Rashid… But I can assure you that Rashid immediately insisted that what was being suggested was totally out of the question. Rashid has far too much pride, too much of the same spirit I can see so clearly in you, to ever allow anyone else to make that kind of decision for him,’ he told her ruefully.

‘As for your godfather.’ He gave a small rueful shrug. ‘He is a statesman and a diplomat—who knows what such men think? Intrigue is their bread and meat. If it does not exist then they create it!’

Petra had to acknowledge that there was some truth in his assessment of her godfather, even if his description of him leaned towards the slightly over-cynical.

Shaking his head, he continued, ‘After losing Mija there was no way I would ever want to repeat the mistake I made with her. There was only one reason I wanted you to come to Zuran, Petra, and that is because you are my grandchild and because I longed so much to see you!’

‘Grandfather, I know that you and Rashid are in business together,’ Petra persisted. ‘And that he is dependent on the patronage of the Royal Family! I know that there were diplomatic reasons…’

Petra stared at her grandfather as he started to laugh.

‘Why are you laughing?’ she demanded, offended.

‘Petra, Rashid is a millionaire many times over in his own right, from the inheritance left to him by his father. We do have business interests in common, yes—and indeed the Royal Family are great admirers of his work—but Rashid is dependent on no one’s patronage!’

Shaking his head, he added huskily, ‘Petra, I did your mother a terrible wrong, but the price I paid is one I shall pay to the end of my days. There is never a sunrise when I do not think of your mother, nor a sunset when I do not mourn her loss.’

Petra blinked, her eyes wet with fresh tears. Instinctively she knew that her grandfather was telling the truth.

‘Are you still feeling unhappy? Do you want to come home with me now?’ he asked her. ‘I shall speak with Rashid for you, if you wish. The decision is yours, but it seems to me that it would be a pity if two such well-matched people should lose one another through a simple matter of pride, and lack of communication and trust.’

Her grandfather made it all sound so easy!

‘No… No, I do not wish you to speak to Rashid,’ she answered him.

‘I… I… can do that myself…’

The smile he was giving her made her colour self-consciously.

‘It isn’t for me to interfere, but you are my granddaughter,’

he told her gently. ‘It seems to me that you and Rashid are very well suited. You are both strong-minded, you are both proud, you share a spirit of independence; these are all good things, but sometimes such virtues can lead to a little too much self-sufficiency—claimed not because that is what a person necessarily wants but because they believe it is what they have to have in order to protect themselves. I think that both you and Rashid are perhaps afraid to admit your great love for one another because you fear the other will think you weak and in need.’

His intuitive reading of her most private and hidden feelings astonished Petra.

Part of the reason she had fought so hard to resist her love for Rashid had been because she feared its intensity. Could it be true, as her grandfather had implied, that Rashid felt exactly the same?

She was, she recognised, still trying to come to terms with the fact that she had made such an error of judgement in assuming why he had married her. But he had made no attempt to defend himself to her, had he? Out of pride? Or because he didn’t really care what she thought? And he had deceived her about who he really was!

‘Sometimes in life we are tested where we are most vulnerable. There are many ways of being strong, many reasons for being proud,’ her grandfather was continuing gently. ‘Only you can decide whether or not your love for Rashid is worth fighting for, Petra—whether it means enough to you for you to take the risk of reaching out to him, openly and honestly. Rashid has already taken that risk by marrying you. It is his way of saying how much he wants to be with you. Remember he has married you in free will and of his own choice. Perhaps it is now time for you to take your risk!’

Silently Petra absorbed his words. He had given her an insight into the workings of Rashid’s mind and heart that she had not previously contemplated, and the possibilities springing to life from that insight were giving her an entrancing, an intoxicating, an impossible to resist picture of what they could share together.

‘I have additionally been instructed to give this to you,’ her grandfather continued, changing the subject. He handed her a beautifully decorated piece of rolled parchment and a flat oblong package.

Petra frowned. ‘What is it?’

‘Open it and see,’ he said with a smile.

Hesitantly Petra did so, her glance skimming the letter written on the parchment and then studying it more slowly a second time, before she turned to the package and quickly unfastened it.

‘It’s a letter from the father of the little boy—the one at the stables,’ she told her grandfather. ‘He has written to thank me and he has…’ Her voice tailed away and she gave a small gasp as she studied the contents of the package.

‘It’s ownership papers for a… a horse… a yearling…’

‘Bred out of the Royal stables,’ her grandfather supplied for her. ‘They are very grateful to you for what you did, Petra. You saved the life of a very precious child… and at no small risk to your own.’

‘But a horse!’ Petra was overwhelmed.

‘Not just a horse,’ her grandfather corrected her with a smile. ‘But a yearling whose breeding means that he may one day earn you, his owner, the Zuran Cup!’

From the balcony of the Presidential Suite Petra could see down to the beach. Race Week and all its excitement and busyness was over. She and Rashid had said goodbye to their last guests and in the morning they were due to leave the hotel for the villa.

Rashid’s horse had come in a very respectable fourth, and Petra’s grandfather had teased him that he might soon find himself in the position of having his wife’s horse competing with his own.

There had been no opportunity for them to be on their own together since the night Rashid had made love to her at the villa, or for Petra to raise the subject she was desperately anxious to talk to him about.

According to her grandfather, Rashid loved her!

On a sudden impulse Petra left the suite and hurried towards the lift.

It was already almost dusk, the sun loungers around the pool empty, the beach deserted apart from one lone figure collecting the discarded windsurfers.

For a second his unexpected appearance checked Petra, and then she took a deep breath. She had initially intended to come down here merely to think, but perhaps fate had decided to take a hand in events.

The sand muffled her footsteps, but even so something must have alerted Rashid to her presence because he turned round to watch her in silence.

His formal clothes had been discarded and he was wearing a tee shirt and a pair of jeans.

Trying to control her nervousness, Petra walked up to him. His silence unnerved her, and she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, her face flushing as his gaze trapped the small betraying movement.

‘I… I… have a proposition I want to put to you,’ she told him, superstitiously crossing her fingers behind her back as she spoke.

How was he going to react? Was he going to walk away? Was he going to ignore her? Was he going to listen to her? Petra knew which she wanted him to do!

‘A proposition?’

Well, at least he was responding to her, even if she could hear a grim note of cynicism in his voice.

‘What kind of proposition?’

‘I have a problem and I think you could be the very person to help me,’ she said.

It was a relief that it was now fully dusk and he couldn’t see her face—although she suspected that he must be able to hear the anxiety and uncertainty in her voice. If she had felt nervous the first time she had propositioned him then she felt a hundred—no, a thousand times more so now. Then all that had been at stake had been her freedom; now it was her whole life… her love… everything!

‘I need you to help me find out if the man I love loves me. Until today I believed that he didn’t, but now it seems I might have been wrong.’

‘The man you love?’ he questioned, and there was a new note in his voice that sent Petra’s pulses racing.

‘Yes. I love him so much that I’m almost afraid to admit just how much—even to myself, never mind to him—and I thought…’

‘Yes?’

He had moved so swiftly and silently, and she had been so engrossed in her own anxiety, that his sudden proximity to her caught her off-guard.

‘I thought you might be able to show me a way to show him just how I feel…’ she said huskily.

‘Oh, you did, did you? What inducement exactly were you planning to offer me in return for my co-operation?’

There was a distinct huskiness in his voice now, and Petra allowed herself to relax just a little.

‘Oh…’ She pretended to consider. ‘I was rather thinking in terms of… er… payment in kind…’

‘Uh-huh…’

Uh-huh. Was that going to be his only response? Nothing more? Nothing more positive? More encouraging? Fresh uncertainty gripped her.

‘If you aren’t interested—’ she began.

‘Did I say that?’ He was standing even closer to her now.

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But…’

‘If you really wanted to prove to him that you do love him, I think a good place to start would be right here,’ she heard him murmur. ‘Right here, in his arms, like this…’

His arms were closing round her, holding her tight. Relief melted the tension from her bones.

‘Like this?’

Was that thrilled little squeak really her voice?

‘Uh-huh. And then you might show him that you liked being here by putting your arms around his neck, looking up in his eyes and…’

‘Like this, you mean?’ Petra whispered.

‘Sort of… You’re on the right track—but it would be even better if you did this!’ Rashid told her, showing her what he meant as he brushed her lips with his own.

‘Mmm… But what if I want to kiss him properly?’ Petra asked him.

‘Well, then I think you should go right ahead,’ Rashid replied. ‘But I ought to warn you that if you do that, he could very well want to…’

Sometimes actions could speak far more informatively than words, Petra decided dizzily as she daringly silenced Rashid’s soft-voiced instructions with the loving pressure of her mouth against his.

It was a long, long time before either of them wanted to speak again, but when they had finally managed to stop kissing one another Rashid told her masterfully, ‘I think our negotiations might be better conducted somewhere more… private.’

‘Oh?’ Petra gave him a mischievous look. ‘Have you anywhere specific in mind? Only I am staying at the hotel.’

‘What I have in mind,’ Rashid responded softly, with an erotic undertone to his voice that made her heart dance in excited anticipation, ‘is a very large bed, in a room that is preferably soundproofed so that no one can hear your cries of pleasure other than me…’

Since he was threading each word on a necklace of kisses round her throat, in between teasing her lips with the briefest of sensual contacts with his mouth, Petra was not really able to focus on too many specifics—although the words ‘bed’ and ‘pleasure’ did manage to penetrate her dizzying mist of euphoria.

As he kissed his way up the side of her neck and nibbled on her earlobe she demanded huskily, ‘So it is true, then—you do love me?’

So abruptly that it shocked her, Rashid released her. For a moment Petra went icy cold with fear, but then she saw the expression in his eyes.

‘I fell in love with you here on this beach, the evening you propositioned me,’ Rashid told her quietly. ‘Up until then you had just been a name I had heard mentioned in connection with your grandfather—someone who shared a similar parental background to my own, yes, but there are many, many offspring of mixed marriages living here.’ He gave a small dismissive shrug. ‘And then you accosted me here, and told me your wild tale of believing you were about to be forced into marriage to a man I admit even I was beginning to despise after I had listened to your description of him! And I thought that Saud liked me!’ he commented drolly.

Petra had the grace to give him an abashed look.

‘My grandfather told me that I’d got it all wrong, and that Saud had misunderstood what he had overheard!’

‘A passing comment, between business partners, that was never intended to be taken seriously. Knowing how concerned your family was about your grandfather’s health, and the effect your visit might have on it, I volunteered to show you something of the complex. But never for one moment did I intend to do so with a view to seeing if you might be a suitable wife!’

‘Did you really fall in love with me that night?’ Petra couldn’t resist asking him.

‘When I asked you what kind of man you wanted, and you told me…’ He paused and looked away from her, before looking back again. ‘I am a very wealthy man, Petra, and naturally I have been pursued by the kind of woman who sees a man only in terms of the financial benefits she can gain from him. When you spoke so passionately of your feelings and your beliefs, your hopes and desires for the way you wanted your life and your love to be, they so closely mirrored my own that I knew I could not let you walk away from me. And then I kissed you.’

‘And you knew then?’

Petra knew that her voice was trembling, and that Rashid would be able to hear quite clearly the joy and incredulity in it, but now she felt no need to hide her feelings or to feel ashamed of them.

‘Yes,’ Rashid acknowledged simply.

‘I knew then, and I was determined to court you… and woo you… but unfortunately I hadn’t reckoned on your stubborn determination not to fall in love with the man you believed me to be. I was beginning to panic. I was afraid that I might lose you. And then you found out who I was and I thought I had lost you. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Not when I knew just how good things could be for us.’

Petra gave him a wry look. ‘So you had made up your mind that I loved you, had you?’

‘Quite simply I could not bear to think of how my life would be if you didn’t!’

His admission dissolved any potential suspicion of arrogance or lack of respect for her feelings so immediately that Petra could only look softly at him.

‘And,’ Rashid continued huskily, ‘I hoped—especially after the way you had given yourself to me with such wonderful passion and completeness—that you loved me. But I knew that time was running out for me, that as Rashid I could not continue to be “away on business” for much longer. And then came the desert.’

‘When you couldn’t take your eyes off the belly dancer!’ Petra reminded him challengingly.

‘I know her—after all, she is an employee of the hotel complex and she knew who I was! I was afraid that she might inadvertently give me away! But then you came to me… to my bed… and I knew I had to take a chance and find some way of keeping you permanently in my life. When you came to the hotel suite, to confront me, I seized on the opportunity it gave me to insist that we marry out of desperation.’

‘But you said nothing, Rashid… You were so cold—so indifferent…’

‘I felt guilty,’ he admitted. ‘I had railroaded you into marriage to get what I wanted… and I knew that I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘There are lots of things you shouldn’t have done,’ Petra mock reproved him. ‘Including giving me a separate suite of rooms and tormenting me by letting me think that you didn’t care.’

‘But now you know that I do care,’ Rashid whispered softly. ‘You are the oasis of my life, Petra, the cool enriching gift of water to my parched desert. You and you alone have the power to make my heart bloom and flower.’

Misty-eyed, Petra listened to him.

‘I want to go home, Rashid,’ she told him shakily.

‘Home!’ He didn’t try to hide either the starkness in his voice or the tormented, anguished pain in his eyes. ‘You want to leave me! Perhaps I deserve it, after what I have done, but I cannot bear to let you go, Petra. Please, just give me a chance to show you, prove to you, how much I want to make you happy, to give you love. If you are not happy here in Zuran then we can live somewhere else—anywhere else that you choose—so long as you let me live there with you!’

Immediately Petra realised that he had misunderstood her, but his reaction was all the proof she could have asked for of just how much he did love her.

‘I meant I want to go home with you, to our home,’ she corrected his misunderstanding. ‘To our home, our room, our bed… home to you, Rashid. You are my home, and wherever you are that is where my home is,’ she told him with quiet sincerity.

As he wrapped her in his arms and proceeded to kiss her with fierce passion Petra could feel the fine tremble of his body.

‘You know that I shall never, ever let you go now, don’t you?’ Rashid whispered to her. ‘You are mine, Petra. My wife, my love, my life, my heart!’