Читать книгу The Royals Collection - Ким Лоренс, Rebecca Winters - Страница 17
ОглавлениеTOO PROUD TO ask for help, Hannah was lost. She finally located Kamel in the fourth room she tried—one that opened off a square, windowless hallway that might have been dark but for the daylight that filtered through the blue glass of the dome high above.
Like the ones before it, this room was massive and imposing, and also came complete with a built-in echo, and her heels were particularly noisy on the inlaid floor. But Kamel didn’t look up. The hawk on its perch followed her with its dark eyes while her master continued to stare at the screen of his mobile phone with a frown of concentration that drew his dark brows into a straight line above his aquiline nose.
Choosing not to acknowledge the strange achy feeling in the pit of her stomach, she walked up to the desk and cleared her throat.
When his dark head didn’t lift she felt her temper fizz and embraced the feeling. If he wanted to be awkward, fine. She could do awkward. She felt damned awkward after last night.
‘Is this your doing?’ Realising that her posture, with her arms folded tightly across her stomach, might be construed as protective, she dropped them to her sides.
Kamel stopped scrolling through his emails, looked up from his phone and smiled. ‘Good morning, dear wife.’
Kamel did not feel it was a particularly good morning and it had been a very bad night. He felt tired, and more frustrated than any man should be after his wedding night. A cold shower, a long run and he had regained a little perspective this morning. But then she walked in the room and just the scent of her perfume... He wanted her here and now. The difference between want and need was important to Kamel. He had not allowed himself to need a woman since Amira.
He needed sex, not Hannah. And the sex would be good—his icy bride turned out to have more fire in her than any woman he had ever met. But afterwards he would feel as he always did—the escape from the tight knot of brutal loneliness in his chest was only ever temporary.
Hannah’s lips tightened at the mockery but she did not react to it; instead she simply arched a feathery brow. ‘Well?’
‘I feel as though I am walking into this conversation midway through. Coffee?’ He lifted the pot on the desk beside him and topped up his half-filled cup and allowed his gaze to drift over her face. ‘Hangover?’
‘No,’ she lied. The delicious aroma drifted her way, making her mouth water. She felt shivery as she struggled to tear her eyes off his long brown fingers. ‘I don’t want coffee.’
‘So can I help you with something?’
She emitted a soft hissing sound of annoyance. Without looking back, she pointed to the open doorway where a suited figure stood, complete with enigmatic expression and concealed weapon. ‘Did you arrange for him to follow me?’
Kamel stood up from the desk and walked past her towards the open door. Nodding to the man standing outside, he closed it with a soft thud and turned back to Hannah, though his attention appeared to be on the lie of his narrow silk tie that lay in a flash of subdued colour against his white shirt. The jacket that matched the dove-grey trousers was draped across the back of the chair.
‘For heaven’s sake, you look ridiculously perfect.’
Her delivery lacked the scornful punch she had intended, possibly because the comment was no exaggeration. The pale grey trousers that matched the jacket were clearly bespoke and could have been cut to disguise a multitude of sins if he’d had any, but there was no escaping the fact that physically at least he was flawless.
He raised his brows and she felt her cheeks colour. ‘I despise men who spend more time looking in the mirror than I do.’
‘Rather a sexist thing to say,’ he remarked, his tone mildly amused and his eyes uncomfortably observant. ‘But each to his own. I’m sorry I don’t measure up to your unwashed grunge ideal.’
Having dug herself a hole, she let the subject drop. He could never fail to live up to any woman’s ideal, on a purely eye-candy level, of course. ‘I do not require a bodyguard.’
‘No, obviously not.’
Her pleased smile at a battle so easily won had barely formed when his next words made it vanish.
‘You will require a team of them.’
‘That’s ludicrous!’ she contended furiously.
The amusement in his manner vanished as he countered, ‘It’s necessary, so I suggest you stop acting like a diva and accept it.’
‘I refuse.’
His glance slid from her flashing eyes to her heaving bosom, lingering there long enough to bring her hand to her throat. ‘Refuse all you like, it won’t alter anything. I appreciate this is an adjustment and I’ll make allowances.’
That was big of him. ‘Allowances! This is a palace! How do I adjust to that?’
‘I have been to Brent Hall and it is hardly a council flat,’ he retorted, thinking of the portrait that hung above the fireplace in the drawing room. Had Hannah Latimer ever possessed the dreamy innocence that shone in the eyes of her portrait, or had the artist been keen to flatter the man who was paying him?
She opened her mouth to retort and then his comment sank in. ‘You’ve been to my home?’
He tipped his head. ‘I stood in for my uncle on one social occasion, actually two. I predict you will adjust to your change in status. After all, you have played the pampered princess all your life. The only difference now is you have an actual title, and, of course, me.’
‘I’m trying to forget.’
‘Not the best idea.’
Despite the monotone delivery, she heard the warning and she didn’t like it, or him.
Kamel gave a tolerant nod and picked up a pen from the desk. ‘It is a fact of life. You will not leave this building without a security presence.’
‘I wasn’t outside the building. He was waiting outside my bedroom. What harm was I likely to come to there?’
‘Oh, so your concern is for your privacy.’
‘Well, yes. Obviously.’ The idea of living like a bird in a golden cage did not hold any appeal. She’d given up her freedom but there had to be boundaries. Where were your boundaries last night, Hannah?
‘We will be private enough, I promise you.’
The seductive promise in his voice sent a beat of white-hot excitement whipping through her body. As it ebbed she was consumed by hot-cheeked embarrassment.
‘You blush very easily.’
She slung him a belligerent glare. ‘I’m not used to the heat.’ The desert heat she might grow accustomed to, but being around a man who could make her feel...feel...she gave a tiny gusty sigh as she sought for a word to describe how he made her feel, and it came—hungry! That was something she would never get used to. She just hoped it would pass quickly like a twenty-four-hour bug.
‘So this is an example of how my life will not change?’ she charged shrilly. ‘I left one cell with a guard outside for another.’
‘But the facilities and décor are much better,’ he came back smoothly.
The languid smile that tugged the corner of his mouth upwards did not improve her mood. Neither did looking at his mouth. It was a struggle not to lift a hand to her own tingling lips. So far he hadn’t mentioned the kiss. Had he forgotten?
She wished she had, but her memory loss only lasted until she had stood under a shower and then the whole mortifying scene came rushing back.
‘This isn’t a joke.’
The shriller she got, the calmer he became. ‘Neither is it a subject for screaming and shouting and stamping your little foot.’
He glanced down at the part of her under discussion. She had very nice ankles but she had even nicer calves. He found his eyes drawn to the silky smooth contours and higher... The skirt of the dress she wore, a silky blue thing, sleeveless and cinched in at the waist with a narrow plaited tan belt, ended just above the knee. The entire image was cool, perfectly groomed...regal.
He refused to allow the image of his hands sliding under the fabric up and over the smooth curves—but the suggestion had been enough to send a streak of heat through his body where it coalesced into a heavy ache in his groin. He could have woken up this morning in her arms. Even while he had called himself a fool during the long wakeful night, he had known it was the right decision.
‘I did not stamp my foot,’ Hannah retorted and immediately wanted to do just that.
‘But you have a tendency to turn everything into a drama, angel.’
Her brows hit her smooth hairline exposed by the severe hairstyle she had adopted that morning. The woman who had looked back at her from the mirror after she had speared the last hair grip into the smooth coil did not even look like a distant relative of the woman with the flushed face, feverishly bright eyes and swollen lips she had glimpsed in the mirror last night before she had fallen onto the bed fully dressed.
‘If this isn’t a drama, what is?’
‘I appreciate this is not easy, but we are both living with the consequences of your actions.’
She threw up her hands and didn’t even register the discomfort as one of the pearl studs she wore went flying across the room. She sighed heavily and asked, ‘How many times a day are you going to remind me it’s all my fault?’
‘It depends on how many times you irritate me.’ Kamel left his desk and walked to the spot where the pearl had landed beside the window.
‘My breathing irritates you,’ she said.
He elevated a dark brow. ‘Not if you do it quietly.’ He half closed his eyes, imagining hearing her breath quicken as he moved in and out of her body.
Hannah was not breathing quietly now. The closer he got, the louder her breathing became, then she stopped altogether. ‘You are...’ The trapped air left her lungs in one soft, sibilant sigh as he stopped just in front of her, close enough for her to feel the heat from his body.
‘Have you ever heard of personal space?’ she asked, tilting back her head to meet his challenging dark stare as she fought an increasingly strong impulse to step back. Her cool vanished into shrill panic as he leaned in towards her. ‘What are you doing?’
More to the point, what was she doing?
She had tried so hard not to look at his mouth, not to think of that kiss, it became inevitable that she was now staring and not in a casual way at his mouth and the only thing she could think about was that kiss—the firm texture of his lips, the heat of his mouth, the moist...
‘You lost this.’
It took a few seconds to bring into focus the stud he held between his thumb and forefinger. When she realised what he was holding her hand went jerkily to her ear...the wrong one.
‘No, this one.’ He touched her ear lobe, catching it for a moment between his thumb and forefinger before letting it drop away. ‘Pretty.’ Her head jerked to one side, causing a fresh stab of pain to slide like a knife through her skull. How long before the headache tablets she had swallowed kicked in?
The strength of her physical response to the light contact sent a stab of alarm through Hannah. She swayed slightly and shifted her position, taking a step back. It no longer seemed so important to stand her ground. Live to fight another day—wasn’t that what they said about those who ran away?
‘Thank you,’ she breathed, holding out her hand as she focused on his left shoulder.
He ignored the hand and leaned in closer. Help, she thought, her smile little more now than a scared fixed grimace painted on. Her nostrils quivered in reaction to the warm scent of his body, his nearness. She could feel the heat of his body through his clothes and hers...imagine how hot his skin would feel without...
And she did imagine; her core temperature immediately jumped by several painful degrees as she stood there in an agony of shame and arousal while he placed a thumb under her chin to angle her face up to him.
She’d decided that the only plus point in being married to a man she loathed was that she would never again suffer the pain and humiliation of rejection. She wouldn’t care. A lovely theory, but hard to cling to when every cell in her body craved his touch. She had never felt this way before.
She bit her lip, fearing that if she set free the ironic laugh locked in her throat there would be a chain reaction—she would lose it and she couldn’t do that. Pretty much all she had left was her pride.
Listen to yourself, Hannah, mocked the voice in her head. Your pride is all you have left? Go down that road of self-pity and you’d pretty much end up being the spoilt shallow bitch your husband thinks you are.
Husband.
I’m married.
Third time lucky. Or as it happened, unlucky. She knew there were many women who would have envied her unlucky fate just as there had been girls at school who had envied her.
The influential clique who had decided to make the new girl’s life a misery even before they’d discovered she was stupid. She’d thought so too until she’d been diagnosed as dyslexic at fourteen.
For a long time Hannah had wondered why—what had she done or said?—and then she’d had the opportunity to ask when she’d found herself sitting in a train compartment with one of her former tormentors, all grown up now.
Hannah had immediately got up to leave but had paused by the door when the other woman had spoken.
‘I’m sorry.’
And Hannah had asked the question that she had always wanted to ask.
‘Why?’
The answer had been the same one her father had given her when she had sobbed, ‘What have I done? What’s wrong with me?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with you, Hannah. They do it because they can. I could move you to another school, sweetheart, but what happens if the same thing happens there? You can’t carry on running away. The way to cope with bullies is not to react. Don’t let them see they get to you.’
The strategy had worked perhaps too well because, not only had her cool mask put off the bullies, but potential friends too, except for Sal.
What would Sal say? She closed off that line of thought, but not before she experienced a wave of deep sadness. She didn’t share secrets with Sal any more; she had lost her best friend the day she had found her in bed with her fiancé. It was to have been her wedding day.
And now here she was, a married woman. Kamel’s touch was deft, almost clinical, but there was nothing clinical about the shimmies of sensation that zigzagged through her body as his fingers brushed her ear lobe.
Hannah breathed again when he straightened up, keeping her expression as neutral as his.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured distantly. ‘Could you tell me where the kitchen is?’
He looked surprised by the question. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘You don’t know where your own kitchen is?’
Kamel, who still looked bemused, ignored her question. ‘Why were you going to the kitchen?’ he persisted. ‘If you want a tour of the place the housekeeper will...’
‘I didn’t want a tour. I wanted breakfast.’ She had eaten nothing the previous evening. Unfortunately she had not shown similar restraint when it came to the champagne.
‘Why didn’t you ring for something?’
‘Do you really not know where your kitchen is?’
He arched a sardonic brow. ‘And am I meant to believe you do? That you are a regular visitor to the kitchens at Brent Hall?’ It was not an area he had seen on the occasion he had been a guest at Charles Latimer’s country estate, a vast Elizabethan manor with a full complement of staff. The daughter of the house had not been home at the time but her presence had been very much felt.
There was barely a polished surface in the place that did not have a framed photo of her and her accomplishments through the years—playing the violin, riding a horse, looking athletic with a tennis racket, looking academic in a gown and mortar board.
And looking beautiful in the portrait in the drawing room over the fireplace.
‘He really caught her,’ the proud father had said when he’d found Kamel looking at it.
* * *
His sarcastic drawl set her teeth on edge. ‘I left home at eighteen.’
And by then Hannah had been a very good cook, thanks to her father’s chef at Brent Hall. Sarah Curtis had an impressive professional pedigree, she had worked in top kitchens around Europe and she had a daughter who had no interest in food or cooking. When she’d realised that Hannah did, she’d encouraged that interest.
For Hannah the kitchen was a happy place, the place her father came and sat in the evenings, where he shed his jacket and his formality. She had not realised then why...now she did.
‘Yes, I can imagine the hardship of picking out an outfit and booking a table every night must have been difficult. What taxing subject did you study?’
‘Classics,’ she snapped.
‘So you spent a happy three years learning something incredibly useful.’
‘Four actually. I needed extra time because I’m dyslexic.’
‘You have dyslexia?’
‘Which doesn’t mean I’m stupid.’
It was a taunt she had obviously heard before, and taunts left scars. Kamel experienced a swift surge of anger as he thought of the people responsible for creating this defensive reflex. In his opinion it was them, not Hannah, who could be accused of stupidity...ignorance...cruelty.
Kamel was looking at her oddly. The silence stretched. Was he worried their child might inherit her condition? He might be right, but at least she’d know what signs to look for—he or she wouldn’t have to wait until they were a teenager before they had a diagnosis.
‘You have dyslexia and you got a degree in Classics?’ Now that was something that required serious determination.
‘Not a first, but I can make a cup of tea and toast a slice of bread, and at least I don’t judge people I don’t know...’ She stopped and thought, Why am I playing it down? ‘I got an upper second and actually I’m a good cook—very good.’ She’d be even better if she had accepted the internship at the restaurant that Sarah had wangled for her: awful hours, menial repetitive tasks and the chance to work under a three-star Michelin chef.
For once she hadn’t been able to coax her father around to her way of thinking—he had exploded when he’d learnt of the plan. It hadn’t just been to please him that instead she had accepted the prestigious university place she had been offered; it had been because she had realised that the contentious issue of her career had become a major issue between her father and his cook.
His mistress.
The smile that hitched one corner of Kamel’s mouth upwards did not touch his eyes; they remained thoughtful, almost wary. ‘I have married a clever woman and a domestic goddess. Lucky me.’
Her jaw tightened at what she perceived as sarcasm.
‘Lucky me,’ he repeated, seeing her in the wedding dress, her face clustered with damp curls, her lips looking pink and bruised, her passion-glazed eyes heavy and deep blue, not cold, but hot. He rubbed his thumb absently against his palm, mimicking the action when he had stroked her cheek, feeling the invisible fuzz of invisible downy hair on the soft surface.
The contrast with the cold, classy woman before him could not have been more dramatic; they were both beautiful but the woman last night had been sexy, sinfully hot, available—but married. He didn’t sleep with drunk women; the choice was normally an end-of-story shrug, not hours of seething frustration while he wrestled his passion into submission, cursing his black and white sense of honour.
The same honour that had made him push Amira into Hakim’s arms.
He was either a saint or an idiot!
Hannah gave a mental shrug and turned a slender shoulder, telling herself that it didn’t matter what he thought of her...she still wanted to hit him.
Or kiss him.
Dusting an invisible speck off her silk dress, she gave a faint smile and thought about slapping that expression of smug superiority off his hateful face.
‘Relax, we leave at twelve-thirty.’
Relax, no. But this was the best news she had had in several nightmare days.
‘Where are you off to?’ She didn’t care but it seemed polite to ask.
‘We.’
Her expression froze. ‘We? What are you talking about? There is no we!’
‘Please do not treat me to another bout of your histrionics. Behind closed doors there is no we.’ Lips twisted into a sardonic smile, he sat on the edge of the desk. ‘But in public we are a loving couple and you will show me respect.’
‘When you stop lying to me. You said we would not have to live together.’
‘You didn’t really believe that. I said what you wanted to hear. It seemed the kindest thing at the time.’
She let out a snort of sheer disbelief—was this man for real? ‘Perhaps I should thank you for kindly lying through your teeth.’
He glanced at the watch on his wrist, exposing the fine dark hairs on his arm as he flicked his cuff. ‘Quite clearly we have things to discuss,’ he conceded.
Hannah, who was breathing hard, flashed a bitter smile. ‘Discuss’ implied reasonable and flexible. It implied listening. ‘You think?’
He refused to recognise the irony in her voice. ‘Yes, I do think.’
‘You are giving me a time slot?’ She was married to a man she was expected to make an appointment to talk to? Now that really brought home how awful this entire situation was. She had walked into it with her eyes wide open and her brain in denial. The fact was that deep down she had never stopped being a person who believed in happy ever after, who believed that everything happened for a reason.
A spasm of irritation crossed his lean, hard features.
She shook her head and gave a laugh of sheer disbelief. ‘Or should that be granting me an audience?’ she wondered, letting her head tip forward as she performed a mocking curtsey.
The childish reaction made his jaw clench.
‘You’re used to people dropping everything when you require attention. But I’ve got a newsflash...’ He let the sentence hang, but the languid contempt in his voice made it easy to fill in the blanks as he glanced down at the stack of papers spread out on the inlaid table.
It wasn’t that she wanted to be important to him, but a little empathy—she’d have settled for civility—would have made him human. Instead he intended to map out just how insignificant she was in the scheme of things from the outset. Did he really think she didn’t know she was on the bottom rung of his priorities?
Hannah could feel the defensive ice forming on her features. ‘Sorry,’ she said coldly. ‘I’m still living in a world where people have marriages based on mutual respect, not mutual contempt! It was unrealistic of me, and it won’t happen again,’ she promised. ‘I won’t disturb you any longer. Have your people talk to my people and...’ The ice chips left her voice as it quivered... My people. I have no people. The total isolation of her position hit home for the first time.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
‘I need an hour.’
She opened her eyes and found he was looking right at her. Her stomach immediately went into a dive.
‘I could postpone this but I assumed you would prefer to arrive early at Brent.’
Her eyes flew wide. ‘Brent!’ She gave a shaky smile. ‘You’re taking me home?’
‘This is your home.’
Swallowing the hurt and annoyed with herself for leaping to conclusions, she lifted her chin and stared at him coldly. ‘This will never be my home.’
‘That, ma belle, is up to you. But your father wanted to hold a wedding party for us, and for your friends. I think it would only be polite for us to be there. I will have some breakfast sent up to your room.’
Jaw clenched at the dismissal, Hannah left the room with her head held high.
