Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (9 page)

He didn’t answer, didn’t need to while he continued to look at her like that. Raschid had a ruthless streak running through him that could, when invited, become quite cruel—though until now Evie had never been a party to that side of him.

‘The child is mine.’ He reinforced the main points of conflict here. ‘You are mine. I have not the slightest intention of giving either of you up. Which means I must make your place in my life official.’

‘And damn the consequences?’

He grimaced but nodded. ‘And damn the consequences,’ he flatly confirmed.

The phone began to ring, slicing through the tension like a knife.

‘Do you want me to answer it?’ Raschid asked quietly.

Evie shook her head, her eyes lowered while she waited for the answer machine to take over.

It was her mother again. ‘Have you seen this morning’s paper?’ Her shrill voice slashed across the room. ‘I have never been so embarrassed in all my life! If it isn’t bad enough that you disappear without a word of thanks to anyone, that wretched man only goes and does the same thing—then I have to contend with the pair of you staring out at me from the front page of the newspaper!’

Evie looked up at Raschid, a question in her eyes, but he shook his dark head in grim answer.

‘I’m telling you, Evie,’ her mother said tightly. ‘I am so darned angry with you I could very easily disown you! Front page you stand wrapped in his arms! Centre page he stands with his father announcing his upcoming marriage to another woman!’

Raschid hissed out an acrid curse, his big frame taut as he strode across the room towards the telephone. He was
about to snatch it up to demand what the hell Lucinda was talking about when her voice came again.

‘And where is the picture of Julian and Christina?’ she demanded tearfully. ‘Nowhere to be seen! Scandal—that’s all you’ve ever brought me, Evangeline! Pain, disillusionment, embarrassment and scandal! The Beverleys are upset and trying not to show it! I am upset and trying not to show it! But where are you? That’s what I would like to know! With him somewhere? Are the pair of you nicely holed up enjoying your last passionate tryst before he dumps you to marry someone else? Perhaps you would like the press to cover that shocking event too!’

The connection was severed. In the drumming silence that followed it, Evie stood cradling her towel-wrapped arm against her and wondered bleakly what her mother was going to say when she found out about the coming baby.

A loud knock suddenly sounded on the front door. Evie jumped violently, the air shivering out of her lungs as she automatically walked forward to go and answer it.

‘No,’ Raschid bit out forcefully. ‘Check who it is first.’

Diverting towards the window, Evie glanced out then gave a gasp of surprise. ‘It’s the press!’ she exclaimed, and began quickly dragging the curtains across the glass when half a dozen of them saw her and began converging on the living-room window.

Within seconds the noise was unbelievable, people knocking on the door and on the window, calling out her name and shouting out questions. White-faced, she turned towards Raschid. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked bewilderedly. ‘What was my mother talking about? Why are they here?’

‘I don’t know.’ Frowning, he was already lifting the telephone up and stabbing in a set of numbers.

Evie stood, still trembling with shock from her scalding without the added confusion that was now taking place
outside her home. Raschid’s voice was tight with anger as he spoke in his own language to whoever it was he had contacted, his dark face growing darker by the second, while the thumping on the door and window grew so loud Evie could barely hear herself even think.

On a violent curse, Raschid slammed down the receiver. At the same moment a newspaper was pushed through the letterbox. It landed on the doormat with an ominous thud. Evie went to get it but Raschid was there before her.

‘Do you have anything to say about this, Miss Delahaye?’ a muffled voice shouted through the letterbox. ‘Front page. Can’t miss it!’ the voice added helpfully.

Front page. Can’t miss it.

Evie stood by Raschid’s arm and simply stared at what she was seeing. It was a photograph of herself and Raschid kissing beneath the wedding canopy at Beverley. Above it the headline read: ‘Is This Farewell?’ Below it was the sub-heading: ‘Behran Embassy announces the forthcoming marriage of Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah to neighbouring sheikh’s daughter! The marriage will unite two of the most powerful sheikhdoms and effectively put Evie Delahaye out in the cold.’

‘This has not been announced with my approval!’ Raschid insisted forcefully. ‘My father is attempting to force my hand!’

‘Oh, no,’ Evie whispered, sinking into the nearest chair when her legs went weak beneath her.

Raschid stood gripping the newspaper between white-knuckled fists while he read on, his dark face locked up like a steel trap. Neither spoke again; neither needed to. They both knew very well what this was going to mean to them.

For, no matter how much he would like to deny what his father had announced, Evie knew Raschid dared not. To deny it would be tantamount to insulting both his own father and Aisha’s family.

So this is it, Evie concluded hollowly. Her instincts had been sending her all the right signals, and this was the end for her and Raschid.

No more mouthing words that she didn’t really mean. No more pretending she wouldn’t marry him. For it was only now as she sat here accepting that she could never marry him that she realised she had been pretending to herself.

And it hit her hard, so hard she could barely function.

The telephone began ringing again. Neither of them heard it. Just as they didn’t hear the pounding on the front door and the window any more. For those few stark minutes the very walls could have come tumbling down around them and neither would have moved a muscle.

Then the letterbox flew up and a pair of eyes appeared in the opening. ‘Did you know about this yesterday, Miss Delahaye?’ a voice demanded. ‘Is that why you and the Sheikh were careful to avoid each other at your brother’s wedding?’

Not careful enough, was Evie’s hollow answer to that as she thought of that revealing photograph. And we didn’t avoid each other, she reminded herself as, with glassy eyes, she watched Raschid throw down the newspaper and angrily reach for one of her cream linen easy chairs. Picking it up, he rammed it against the door, effectively trapping the letterbox shut.

We danced together, her own train of thought went on uninterrupted. We made love in my room before we went to the ball together.

Raschid had been angry with her for avoiding him. He hadn’t known about this then, she was sure of it. For, whatever he was, he was not devious.

Angry again later, yes, when she told him about the baby, she acknowledged. Seeing all the problems a baby was going to cause because his father was already laying the pressure on him to marry Aisha.

But this—this was cruel. This did not take into account her own feelings. This publicly stripped her of her pride and left her heart exposed and bleeding.

Raschid just wouldn’t have done that to her.

‘I’ll go away,’ she whispered as one thought led haphazardly on to another. ‘I have relatives in Australia. I can—’

‘No!’ Raschid ground out at her furiously.

Glancing up, she saw him through a haze of tears. His wonderful skin had lost most of its colour, his eyes standing out like two golden suns locked into fierce eruption. ‘You will do nothing—nothing until I can get this sorted out! There is a way—there has to be a way!’ he raked out hoarsely.

And it was that hoarseness of voice that cut her to the quick. For Raschid, like herself, knew the emptiness of that statement.

Outside, the noise was growing. Inside someone was shouting questions at her via the answering machine. With an angry jerk, Raschid bent down and pulled the plug on the phone.

Then, on a growl, he muttered, ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ and retrieved his leather jacket to take his mobile phone out of one of the pockets. Tossing the jacket aside again, he stepped into the kitchen to peer out of the rear window, looking to see if they had been besieged at the rear of the cottage as well as the front.

No tell-tale camera lens came poking over the top of the seven-foot-high brick wall that protected the back of the property.

‘Get the car around the back of the cottage,’ he rasped tersely to whoever he was speaking to. ‘Keep the engine running and be prepared to move.’

With that he came back to Evie’s side, bent to grasp her uninjured arm and lifted her to her feet. ‘Come on,’ he urged grimly.

‘But—’

She looked dazed and shaken. Raschid shook his dark head. ‘You can’t stay here,’ he clipped out. ‘And I certainly cannot. Going by the questions they have been throwing at you, I don’t think they even know I am here—which is to our advantage. I arrived before they did, and my car was parked around the corner. With a bit of luck,’ he added as he unbolted the back door and pulled it open, ‘we can be out of here before they realise you’ve escaped.’

‘Escaped to where?’ Evie asked bleakly as he pushed her outside and followed her, pulling the door shut behind him.

‘To my apartment,’ he replied as if the question had been a serious one and not a stark response to her own bleak sense of isolation. ‘At least there I can protect you from all of this until we decide what we are going to do.’

Do? Evie let out a nervy little laugh that verged on the hysterical. They both knew what he had to do. It was her future that was hanging in the balance here.

I
T WAS
another warm sunny day and the enclosed back yard acted like a suntrap. But Evie felt shivering cold as she let Raschid take her over to the solid wooden back gate that led out into the narrow alleyway, which ran right along the row of terraced cottages.

They paused there in the sunshine, Raschid sliding back the two bolts that secured the gate then going still with his hand on the latch while he listened for the sound of his car arriving. Evie stood beside him with her face lowered where she stared blankly at the white towel still covering her scalded arm. The skin was burning a little, but it didn’t seem to matter, not when her whole world felt as though it was slowly but surely falling in on her.

Raschid put a hand to her waist, then sent it travelling up her trembling spine until it reached her nape where his long fingers gently closed so he could use his thumb beneath her chin to lift her eyes to his.

Her heart turned over at the dark glow she could see burning in his eyes. He was so handsome, she thought tragically, so dark and smooth and so right for her somehow—how was she ever going to survive without him?

‘
I
love you,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Don’t let anyone or anything ever try to convince you otherwise.’

And he did love her. Evie only had to look into those rich golden eyes to know it was true love that burned from them.

‘But love isn’t enough, is it?’ she said, her mouth quivering on the true wretchedness of that comment.

Bending his head, he caught her quivering mouth, tasted it—soothed it with his own firmer lips. ‘
I
will find a way
through this,’ he gruffly vowed. ‘You are mine. I am yours. Nothing can change that.’

Evie wished with all her aching heart that she could believe that—but she couldn’t. ‘Duty can,’ she replied.

Raschid didn’t answer but his expression clouded—and she couldn’t even swallow against the thickness that was suddenly clogging her throat.

The car drew up beyond the gate then. Lifting the latch, Raschid stepped out to check the alleyway before he opened the rear door of a silver Mercedes then quickly urged Evie inside.

‘Right—go!’ he commanded the driver as he got in beside her.

It was the sheer urgency in his voice that made Evie turn to look through the car’s rear window. A man with half a dozen cameras hanging around his neck had just appeared at the other end of the alleyway. He was desperately trying to bring one of those cameras up to his face as they took off across the cobbles at speed.

‘It’s all right,’ Raschid soothed, seeing Evie’s anxious expression. ‘He is on foot. By the time he has collected his own form of transport we will be gone.’

‘But he now knows you’re with me,’ she pointed out heavily. Which made for just another bit of delicious scandal for them to feed upon.

‘I will always be with you,’ he replied with a flat-voiced sincerity that only helped to heighten her anxiety.

For how could he make a pronouncement like that knowing it was only going to cause more distress for all of them?

‘Raschid—’

‘No.’ His hand came out, reaching across the small gap separating them to close warmly around one of her own tightly clenched hands. ‘We will not discuss this now,’ he ordained. ‘You are too upset and I am too confused by
what my father has done for either of us to discuss anything constructively.’

‘But—’

‘But,’ he intruded, turning dark eyes on her that issued one very dire warning, ‘you are carrying my child, Evie, which is one fact we are not in any confusion about. And that child will have my name no matter how many problems we have to surmount to reach that goal.’

A vow from the soul that filled her breast with warm honeyed love for this man who valued her so dearly.

But it didn’t stop her mind from gnawing away at the problems they were about to face as the car reached the end of the alleyway and shot out on to the main street, heading towards the river.

The sound of Raschid’s mobile phone bursting into life brought her sharply to attention. His hand left hers, and for the next few minutes he talked at length in his own language. His voice sounded hard, the answers he was receiving to any questions he shot out doing nothing to ease his temper.

‘They’re all over the place,’ he muttered when he eventually sat back again. ‘Besieging my apartment block as well as your cottage! I could really have done without all of this!’

He
could? Evie’s head was beginning to swim with it all. ‘You got me out of my house so fast, I haven’t even got my purse,’ she said, adding to his problems. ‘And we didn’t lock the doors behind us.’

‘Your cottage will have been secured within minutes of us leaving,’ Raschid assured her. ‘And you can survive without your purse, surely?’

He was terse to the point of being cutting, and Evie turned her face sideways and pretended he wasn’t there. She wasn’t hurt or offended by his tone; in fact she sympathised with it. The whole situation had exploded into
something way beyond what either of them could control, and that was what was so hard to swallow.

Being out of control.

‘How is your arm?’

Evie glanced down at it, rather confused to see it was still wrapped in the white towel. ‘It still burns a little,’ she replied.

But then, so did her eyes; they felt sore and gritty through lack of sleep and a dire need to sob her heart out. Perhaps he knew it, because, on a heavy sigh, Raschid slid across the gap separating them so he could pull her against him.

‘Asim will take care of your arm as soon as we reach my apartment,’ he murmured. ‘All we need to do first is get past the press waiting for us there, and that should be easy enough when they cannot follow us underground, into the car park.’

‘Then what?’ she asked. ‘Do we hide away like fugitives in your apartment instead of my cottage?’ There didn’t seem to be much difference between the two locations to Evie.

‘At least I can protect you there,’ he countered. ‘Because,’ he then added very grimly, ‘this is only the beginning of it all, not the end of it.’

The beginning, not the end. Evie shuddered. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d never met you,’ she sighed.

Surprisingly he laughed, albeit ruefully. ‘Only sometimes?’ he mocked. ‘There is a chance for us yet, then.’

It was merely one of those light, throw-away remarks people made in times of trouble that really did not mean anything in particular. But still, it weighed heavily on Evie’s mind as the car swept up to the security-protected entrance to his basement car park, because she didn’t think they had a chance whichever way you looked at it.

Evie sank deeply into the rear seat when she saw the gaggle of press people standing around waiting for them,
and Raschid’s arm drew her tighter against him as he clipped out a terse order to his driver to run them over if he had to.

Luckily such a dire response wasn’t necessary; as the car drove towards them the rat-pack parted, their cameras flashing against the car windows as it forged its way down into the relative sanctuary of the basement.

The car stopped and Raschid jumped out to stride around the car so he could open Evie’s door for her. The lift waited; they entered it together and travelled upwards in complete silence. It stopped and the doors slid open directly into Raschid’s private white marbled foyer.

Asim was standing there waiting for them. When he saw the way Evie was cradling her towel-wrapped arm he gasped in horror. ‘Someone has harmed you, Miss Delahaye?’ he asked sharply.

‘I did it myself,’ Evie dryly replied.

‘Hot tea,’ Raschid inserted tightly. ‘From that urn you gave to her.’

It was a rotten thing to say, especially when poor Asim suddenly looked as if he’d poured the stupid tea over her himself. ‘Stop taking your bad temper out on Asim!’ she snapped. ‘It’s not his fault your life is in such a mess!’

‘What a damned mess!’ he had rasped at her last night. And just now he had added an apt little rider to that with his, ‘This is only the beginning of it all, not the end of it.’

Without waiting for instruction, Asim quietly bade Evie to follow him into the living room where he sat her down on one of the chairs then squatted in front of her so he could gently unwrap her burned arm.

The skin looked red, but it hadn’t blistered, although when he touched a cool fingertip to it she jumped in pained response. ‘It is still hot?’ he asked.

Evie nodded her head, weak tears suddenly flooding her eyes.

‘Do something about it!’ Raschid grated from behind the older man.

‘Of course.’ As impassive as ever in the face of Raschid’s anger, Asim rose up and moved quietly away.

‘You’re horrible to him,’ Evie snapped out accusingly. ‘Ever speak to me like that and I will slap your face!’

‘Before you burst into tears or after?’ he countered. Then sighed and turned his back on her, his stance taut and angry. ‘I don’t like to see you hurting,’ he tagged on gruffly.

Well, I’m hurting in a whole lot of other places you don’t even know about, Evie thought bleakly.

Asim came back. Raschid looked relieved. Squatting down in front of her again, the older man unscrewed the top off a jar and began gently smearing a clear ointment on her scalded skin.

It was delicious, so cooling. Evie sighed softly and relaxed back in the chair to close her aching eyes. A few minutes later a moist bandage was being carefully wrapped around her arm.

‘The heat is receding?’ Asim asked her.

She nodded. ‘Thank you, Asim.’

‘We will repeat the process again later,’ he said. ‘But for now, Miss Delahaye, I really think you should lie down on the bed and rest. You are looking exceedingly pale…’

‘But—’

‘Good advice.’ Raschid was suddenly standing over her.

‘But…’ she tried again.

‘But nothing. To put it bluntly, Evie, you look dreadful.’

She felt it too—shock, she assumed, the delayed kind of shock that was making her feel ever so slightly woozy. ‘I haven’t had a single thing to eat today,’ she remembered as Raschid helped her get to her feet.

‘Then while we get you comfortable in bed Asim will prepare something—what would you like?’

It was weird, but having felt her stomach growling for
want of sustenance, it was suddenly churning for an entirely different reason. ‘Oh, no,’ she choked, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth.

‘What’s the matter?’ Raschid demanded sharply.

But Evie had already broken free from him to run.

A single glass of water drunk at five-thirty that morning was no real problem to bring back up, but Evie remained leaning over the bowl in the bathroom for a long while afterwards, still feeling sick and dizzy enough not to dare to move away.

After a while, she straightened carefully and went in search of the minty mouthwash she knew Raschid kept hidden behind the large mirrored wall cupboard. Finding it, she shut the cupboard door and was just about to unscrew the cap when a reflection in the mirror caught her attention.

And it came as a shock to see that both Raschid and Asim were standing in the bathroom doorway gravely watching her.

‘Oh, go away!’ she cried out on a sudden loss of dignity. ‘Can’t a girl even be sick in private here?’

‘We were concerned,’ Raschid said.

‘Well, don’t be,’ she snapped, then sighed as her stomach made another grasping clutch at her. ‘It happens,’ she added fatalistically.

A baby… she thought dazedly. They had made a baby. Lifting her eyes, she stared at Raschid’s sober face through the mirror then turned her gaze to Asim.

He knew, she realised painfully. It had quickly hit him just what was not being said here. And the horror he was having difficulty in disguising brought the weak spill of tears washing into her eyes.

‘Oh, damn it,’ she choked, and turned away from both the mirror and the two men to tip a small quantity of mouthwash into the plastic cap. But her hand was shaking
badly, and she spilled more than she caught in the cap before she had enough to warily swill her mouth with.

‘Come on…’ Raschid’s arm came around her shoulders, his voice deep and heavy as he gently turned her. ‘You may feel better if you lie down for a while.’

Quietly dismissing Asim, Raschid led her through to the bedroom, and Evie found she just didn’t have enough energy to argue with him when he began to undress her. So she simply let him get on with it, lifting a foot when required or an arm, then finally allowed him to slide her between the cool linen sheets.

‘He’s going to hate me now,’ she murmured dully as Raschid straightened away from her. ‘For messing up your life.’

‘Don’t be foolish,’ he admonished, not even pretending to wonder whom it was she was talking about. ‘Asim has great affection for you, and you know it.’

As he moved away from her, Evie let her eyes follow him. He went to touch the button on the wall that would bring the curtains swishing across the windows. The instant transformation from bright sunlight to a mellow half-light helped soothe the ache going on behind her weary eyes.

‘If he seemed upset,’ Raschid continued as he walked back to her, ‘then it is because he sees the problems facing us just as clearly as you and I do.’

‘Your father will hate me.’ Evie was in no mood to be consoled right now. ‘My mother will hate me…’

‘Shut up,’ Raschid said. ‘Or I may just decide to exert other methods to rid you of your melancholy.’

Lavender eyes that he expected to slice him in two at such an audacious threat were instead blunted by a vulnerability even Raschid had never seen in them before.

It moved him to see it, touched a painful chord deep inside him that wrenched free the impassive mask he had been wearing, and replaced it with a complexity of emotions,
all of which revolved around several different kinds of frustration.

‘Oh, what the hell?’ he muttered to himself, and with a slick economy of movement his tee shirt came off over his head to reveal that wonderful polished bronze breastplate set between wide, muscled shoulders.

Evie watched him wordlessly as he stripped himself naked, let her eyes feast on every beautiful inch of him as he lifted the sheet and slid into the bed. Her arm lifted in welcome; he coiled himself around her. Their mouths touched briefly, then not so briefly.