Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (17 page)

‘Are you saying that the bed reserved in the private clinic was not your doing?’ Evie questioned.

The nod of his covered head confirmed the point. ‘Though I can accept,’ he added, ‘that I must have given the impression that it would have been better if the coming child had not been conceived or my ill-chosen messenger would not have taken the initiative upon himself to add such a grave suggestion in my name. Needless to say—’ he shrugged ‘—Jamal Al Kareem no longer holds such a trusted position in my employ—or any other position, come to that.’

‘If this is the truth, why hasn’t Raschid told me all of this?’ Evie was already questioning the truth in what he was saying here, for there was no doubt in her mind that Raschid would have rushed to tell her—if only to help clear his father’s name.

But the Crown Prince was shaking his head. ‘Raschid cannot tell you what he does not know,’ he said, then added with a shrug and a grim smile, ‘He would kill the man if he discovered this. Better I continue to shoulder the blame than have my son imprisoned for murder in one of our own jails. He will learn to forgive me in time, you see. Whereas you,’ he added shrewdly, ‘I suspect will never forgive—or even let me get close to my grandchild if you continue to believe me capable of such a dastardly crime.

Which is why, of course, I am making this confession to you.’

He was right, and Evie didn’t even bother to pretend otherwise. Now all she had to do was decide whether she could risk believing him or not.

Then she looked into that face that was so like Raschid’s face. Saw the pride there, saw what it was costing that pride for this man to make this confession to her, and at last felt the tension begin to ease out of her backbone.

‘Your people lined our route here,’ she remarked, quite out of context. ‘Raschid insists they were welcoming us. Were they?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

‘And was that your doing?’

‘Ah,’ he said, and his smile was wry to say the least. ‘I understand what you are attempting to do here. You are attempting to bestow upon me qualities I do not possess,’ he perceived. ‘But—I will reluctantly decline the redeeming offer. So—no.’ He replied to the question. ‘I did not command my people to welcome you both here tonight. In fact, I confess that their response came as big a shock to me as it did to Raschid. You see…’ he added softly, ‘I saw my son’s marriage to you as a sign of weakness in him—whereas my people surprised me with their perception in seeing only strength in a man who stands by his principles, no matter what those principles are going to cost him.’

‘Kismet,’ Evie murmured softly.

‘My son’s definition?’ he asked, then smiled. ‘He could be right,’ he quietly conceded. ‘And who am I to be so conceited as to pull against the will of Allah?’

You are a man who is seeing your own power diminish as your son’s grows stronger, Evie realised on a sharp pang of understanding as she watched those eyes so like Raschid’s eyes cloud with a sadness at his own dulling senses.

And without letting herself think about it she got up and walked over to squat down beside him. ‘If I promise to be as good a wife as any woman could be for your son,’ she offered, ‘do you think you and I could call a truce?

‘And what would you require from me in return?’

‘Acceptance,’ Evie answered instantly. ‘That I am what Raschid wants—even though I absolutely refuse to walk two paces behind him, no matter how exalted he is,’ she added with a teasing smile that at last melted the ice from her eyes.

The Crown Prince burst out laughing.

And that was how Raschid caught them when he strode into the room a moment later. His face was hard, his eyes angry, his body taut with a desire to taste someone’s blood.

‘Ah,’ his father murmured in greeting. ‘My prodigal son at last. You have married well, Raschid.’ He dryly announced his approval. ‘She is beautiful. She is tough, and she is blessed with compassion. I commend your good taste and your good fortune.’

‘I wish you would tell me what he said to you,’ Raschid sighed out in heavy frustration.

‘I told you,’ Evie replied, leaning contentedly against him. They were standing on the balcony of Raschid’s private apartment in his father’s palace. The stars were still out, though not for much longer. Dawn was on its way. ‘He apologised. I accepted his apology. Then we called a truce.’

‘Just like that?’ He didn’t believe her.

‘Well, not—just like that,’ she allowed, but still had no intention of breaking his father’s confidence. ‘I liked him,’ she confessed. ‘He showed dignity in defeat and apologised with grace. And I felt sorry for him,’ she added with a small sigh. ‘He sees his own strength fading as yours grows stronger. It hurts him.’

‘And because of that you decided to forgive him?’

‘Well, no. But…’ Twisting around in his arms, Evie gazed up at him solemnly. ‘He
is
your father,’ she explained. ‘Which means that without him
you
would not have been born. Now…’ she continued, moving closer to the lean, hard length of his body. ‘Just think for a moment what that would mean to me. No you and me coming together like this,’ she said as her fingers began trailing across his silk-covered shoulders. ‘No one for me to love and be loved by. No fantastic sex on a starlit balcony…’

‘No, Evie,’ he groaned, catching hold of her fingers. ‘I—’

‘I know,’ she cut in. ‘You made this vow. But—tell me, Raschid, how much more proof does Allah need that you must truly love me, having just watched you marry me not once, but three times? And anyway,’ she went on before he could answer, ‘I have come up with a really ingenious strategy to get around your silly vow,’ she confided, reaching up to run the tip of her tongue along the rigid line of his jaw.

‘I seduce you…’ she whispered, freeing her captured fingers so she could slip the bootlace straps that were holding up her nightdress down her arms. ‘You don’t have to do a single thing, I promise you…’ Fine silk whispered to the ground around her bare feet.

‘This way, your honour remains firmly intact and I get what I want…’ she explained as her hands then became busy with the belt on his blue silk robe.

She found warm, tight male flesh and pounced hungrily on it. Her body arched, stretched sensually then moved even closer until she was pressing herself to the full length of him.

‘You see,’ she breathed against his mouth, ‘you taught me well. I know all the right moves to make this work for us…’

As she spoke one of her legs hooked itself around his leg, the pad of her bare foot stroking caressingly along a
rock-solid calf muscle. The action brought her hips into more intimate contact with what was cradled between his hips.

If he was fighting to withhold his response to this blatant bit of female provocation, he wasn’t being very successful, and Evie sighed with pleasure against his mouth as she moved softly against him.

It took just two minutes to make him weaken, and another two to have him scoop her up in his arms and carry her inside. The bed waited—a wickedly decadent affair with silk sheets strewn with jewel-coloured cushions, which he settled them both down amongst.

Then there were too many long, delicious minutes to count when he took over the seduction, drawing her down through layer after layer of pleasure until she lay, boneless, beneath him.

‘A thousand years from now,’ he murmured as he paused above her, his face a dark gold map of intense desire, ‘I will still remember this night.’

‘Why this night, in particular?’ Evie questioned curiously. They had done this many times before after all.

‘Because of—this,’ he muttered, reaching out to take hold of her hand and bringing it to his mouth. ‘Mine,’ he breathed, taking a biting grip on her wedding ring at the same moment that he entered her.

It was such a possessive, pagan, passionate thing to do that Evie laughed as her long legs wrapped themselves around him so she could draw him in deeper.

‘Barbarian,’ she accused him.

It never occurred to her to question the thousand-year memory he had just laid claim to. But that was because she didn’t need to. Kismet was like that—answered questions that most people would find absurd.

Michelle Reid

C
AROLINE
was pacing the floor and becoming more agitated with each step that she took. She arrived at the window which led out onto the terrace, saw nothing of the beautiful view the elegant two-bedroom suite offered her of the famous Puerto Banus, and turned to pace back the way she had come, glancing impatiently at her watch as she did so.

Nine o’clock. Her father had said seven o’clock. He had
promised
seven o’clock. ‘Just going for a stroll before
I
need to change for dinner,’ he’d said. ‘To check out the old place and see if it’s changed much since we were here last.’

He loved Marbella. They’d used to spend most of their summers here once upon a time, so she’d understood his eagerness to reacquaint himself with the resort—but not his refusal to let her go with him.

‘Don’t be a pain, Caroline,’ he’d censured when she’d instantly started to get anxious. ‘
I
don’t need you to hold my hand. And
I
certainly don’t need a watchdog. Show a little faith, for goodness’ sake. Haven’t
I
promised to behave myself?’

So she’d showed a little faith—and now look at her, she mocked herself bitterly. For here she was, pacing the floor like a worried mother hen with every nerve-end she possessed singing out a warning of trouble!

He wouldn’t let her down—would he? She tried to reassure herself. He had been so firm, so
needy
for her to believe in him that he wouldn’t, surely, fall prey to his old
weakness when he knew how important it was to them for him to remain strong?

Then where is he? A very cynical voice inside her head taunted. He’s been gone for hours. And you know what he can get up to when left to his own devices for too long.

‘Oh, hell,’ she muttered as the agitation suddenly reached whole new levels, and, in tight and angry surrender to it, she snatched up her little black velvet evening bag and headed for the suite’s outer door.

If she discovered that he had sneaked off to feed his damned habit then she would never forgive him! She vowed as she stabbed a hard finger at the lift call button then stood waiting impatiently for it to come. Things were bad enough already.

More than bad enough, she groaned inwardly. Or she wouldn’t even be here, her father knew that! He knew how much she hated this place now, hated the whole morass of painful emotions it evoked.

Seven years since their last visit, she recalled as the lift doors slid open. Seven years since they had been forced to leave beneath a dark cloud of pride-shrivelling humiliation and soul-destroying heartbreak, vowing never to return again.

Yet here they were, not only back in Marbella but staying in the same hotel. And once again she was having to go and hunt her father out in the very last place on this earth she ever wanted to step foot in!

The casino, she named it grimly as she walked into the lift. The wretched in-house casino, where she was all too aware of the damage her father could do in such a terrifyingly short space of time.

And how long had he been missing? she asked herself as she pressed for the ground floor.

Two hours at least.

Her fingers stood out white against her black evening
bag while she waited for the lift doors to shut. In two miserable hours he could lose thousands. Give him a whole night and he would, quite happily, lose his shirt!

Like the last time.

A wave of sickness suddenly washed over her, sending her slumping weakly against the lift wall just as the doors began to close. A hand snaked out, compelling the doors to open again, and she found herself quickly straightening as a tall dark man of Spanish descent, dressed in an impeccably tailored black dinner suit and bow tie, stepped lithely into the cabin with her.

‘My apologies for delaying you,’ he murmured in smoothly modulated English, swinging round to offer her a smile. A smile that instantly arrested when his eyes actually focused on her.

‘That’s okay,’ she replied, and quickly dropped her gaze so as not to encourage any further contact.

The lift began to sink. Standing tensely by the console, Caroline was stingingly aware that he was still studying her, but pretended not to notice. It wasn’t a new experience for her to be looked at like this. She had the kind of natural blonde, curvaceously slender, long-legged figure that incited men to stare. And the stranger was good-looking; she had noticed that about him before she’d lowered her gaze.

But she was in no mood to be chatted up in a lift—if she was ever in the mood anywhere, she then added, bleakly aware that it had been a long time since she had let any man get close to her.

Not since Luiz, in fact, right here in Marbella.

Then. No. Abruptly she severed that memory before it had a chance to get a grip. She wasn’t going to think of Luiz. It was a promise she had made to herself before she came here. Luiz belonged in the distant past, along with every other bitter memory Marbella had the power to
throw up at her. And this tall dark stranger looked too much like Luiz to stand the remotest chance with her.

So she was relieved when the lift stopped and she could escape his intense regard without him attempting to make conversation. Within seconds she had completely forgotten him, her mind back on the problem of finding her father as she paused at the head of a shallow set of steps which led down to the main foyer and began searching the busy area in front of her.

This was one of the more impressive hotels that stood in prime position on Marbella’s Puerto Banus. Years ago, the hotel had possessed a well-earned reputation for old-fashioned grandeur which had made it appeal to a certain kind of guest—a select kind that had once included both herself and her father.

But the hotel had only just been re-opened, after a huge refurbishment undertaken by its new owners, and although it still held pride of place as one of the most exclusive hotels in the resort, it now displayed its five-star deluxe ranking with more subtle elegance.

And the people were different, less rigidly correct and aware of their own status, though she didn’t doubt for a moment that if they were staying here then they must be able to afford the frankly extortionate rates.

It was a thought that brought home to her just how much she had changed in seven years. For seven years ago she too would not have so much as questioned the price of a two-bedroom suite in any hotel. She had been reared to expect the best, and if the best came with a big price-tag attached to it then that was life as she had known it.

These days she didn’t just question price-tags, she calculated how long she would have to work to make that kind of money.

In fact money was now an obsession with Caroline. Or at least the lack of it was, along with a constant need to
keep on feeding that greedy monster her family home had become.

A frown touched her brow as she continued to search for the familiar sight of her father’s very distinctive tall and slender figure among the clutches of people gathered in the foyer. For two hundred years there had been Newburys in residence at Highbrook Manor. But the chances of there being Newburys there for very much longer depended almost entirely on what her father was doing at this precise moment.

And he certainly wasn’t in evidence here, she acknowledged as, with a grace that belied her inner tension, she set herself moving down the steps and across the foyer to see if he had left a message for her at the reception desk.

He hadn’t. Next she went off to check out the lounge bars in the faint hope that he might have met someone he’d used to know, got to talking and lost track of the time. Again she drew a blank, and her heart began to take on a slower, thicker beat because she knew that there was now only one place left for her to look for him.

Grimly she set her feet moving over to a flight of steps set in their own discreet alcove that led the way down to the hotel basement. Walking down those steps took a kind of courage no one would understand unless they had known her seven years ago. By the time she reached the bottom she was even trembling slightly. For very little had changed down here except maybe the decoration, she noticed with a sickly feeling of
déjà vu
. The basement area still possessed its own very stylish foyer, still had a sign pointing to the left directing the guests to the hotel’s fully equipped gymnasium, beauty therapy rooms and indoor swimming pool.

Still had a pair of doors to her right, which were as firmly closed as they always had been, as if to keep carefully
hidden from innocent eyes what went on behind them.

But the sign hanging above the doors was not innocent. ‘Casino’ it announced in discreet gold lettering.

Her father’s favourite playground of old, she thought with a small shiver. A place where compulsive excitement went hand in hand with desperation and the flip of a card or the roll of a dice or the spin of a wheel had the potential to make or break you.

If he had given in to himself and gone in search of excitement, then she was sure she was going to find him on the other side of those wretched doors, she predicted as she took a reluctant step forward.

‘You will be disappointed,’ a smoothly accented voice drawled lazily.

Spinning round in surprise, Caroline found herself looking at the stranger who had shared the lift with her. Tall, dark, undeniably good-looking—her stomach muscles flipped on yet another sense of
déjà vu
. For he really did look uncannily like Luiz. The same age, the same build, the same rich Spanish colouring.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, thinking that even her first meeting with Luiz had been right here in this basement foyer, with her hovering uncertainly like this and him smiling at her like that…

‘The casino,’ he prompted with a nod of his dark head in the direction of the closed doors. ‘It does not open until ten o’clock. You are too early…’

Pure instinct made her check the time on her watch, to discover that it was only nine-fifteen. Sheer relief had her winging a warm smile at the stranger—because if the casino wasn’t even open, then her father could not be ensconced in there, wrecking what small chance they had of saving their home!

And now she felt guilty. Guilty for mistrusting him,
guilty for being angry, guilty for thinking the worst of him when of course he wouldn’t do that to her!

‘Perhaps I could persuade you to share a glass of wine with me in the lounge bar, while we wait for the casino to open?’ the stranger invited.

Caroline flushed, realising that he had misinterpreted her sudden smile, and the pick-up she had carefully avoided in the lift was back on track with a vengeance. The kind of vengeance that made him flash her a megawatt smile.

By contrast she completely froze him. ‘Thank you, but I am here with someone,’ she informed him stiffly, and pointedly turned back to the stairs.

‘Your father, Sir Edward Newbury, perhaps?’ he suggested lightly, successfully bringing her departure to a halt.

‘You know my father?’ she questioned warily.

‘We have met,’ he smiled. But it was the way that he smiled that chilled Caroline’s blood. As if he knew something she didn’t and was deriding that knowledge.

Or deriding her father.

‘I have just seen him,’ he added. ‘He crossed the foyer towards the lifts only a few short minutes ago. He seemed—in a hurry…’ That lazily mocking smile appeared again, making her feel distinctly uneasy.

‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘For letting me know.’ And she turned away from him once again.

The feel of his fingers closing around her wrist came as a shock. ‘Don’t rush away,’ he murmured. ‘I would really like to get to know you better…’

His voice was quite pleasantly pitched—but his grip was an intrusion and alarm bells were beginning to sound in her head, because she had a horrible feeling that if she tried to break free his fingers would tighten—painfully.

She didn’t like this man, she decided. She didn’t like his smooth good-looks or his easy confidence or the lazy
charm he was utilising—while using physical means to detain her.

She didn’t like his touch on her skin, or the itchy suspicion that he had been shadowing her movements since the lift, and had timed his approach to coincide with the fact that they were standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs well away from other people.

And she didn’t like the uneasy sensation of feeling vulnerable to someone stronger than herself and clearly so sure of himself that he dared detain her like this.

‘Please let go of me,’ she said.

His grip did tighten. Her pulse began to accelerate. ‘But if I let you go you will not learn
how
I became acquainted with your papa,’ he pointed out. ‘Or, perhaps more significantly,
where
I became acquainted with him…’

‘Where?’ she responded, aware that he was deliberately dangling the knowledge at her like a carrot on a stick.

‘Share a glass of wine with me,’ he urged. ‘And I will tell you.’

And it was such a juicy carrot, she noted, one that was trying to make her go one way while every single instinct she possessed was telling her to run in the other.

At which point anger took over, for if he believed she was open to this kind of coercion then he was severely mistaken! ‘I’m sure,’ she replied in her coldest voice, ‘that if my father thinks your meeting memorable enough he will tell me about it himself. Now, if you will excuse me?’ she concluded, and gave a hard enough tug at her captured wrist to free it, then walked stiffly up the steps without glancing back.

But her insides felt shaky, and the nerves running along her spine were tingling, because she half expected him to come chasing after her. It was an unpleasant sensation, one that stayed with her all the way up that flight of steps and across the busy foyer into one of the waiting lifts. In fact

it was only when the doors had shut her in without him joining her there that she began to feel safe again.

And her wrist hurt. Glancing down at it, she wasn’t surprised to find the delicate white skin covering it was showing the beginnings of bruising. Who was he? she wondered. What was he to her father that made him believe it was okay to accost her like that?