The Mistress Bride

by Michelle Reid

  A shadow which had a definite shape to it, Raschid's father. His family. His Arabian people. None of whom were to be present today. Oh, the reasons for that had come thick and fast enough. His father was not well enough to travel great distances. His sister could not come because one of her children had been taken ill. His Embassy people were, unfortunately, involved in important matters of state that could not be rearranged to accommodate their rushed marriage. But Evie wasn't stupid; she could recognise denunciation when she was being fed it so blatantly. Westhaven Town Hall was a rather elegant red-brick building that took pride of place in the old town square where a small crowd had gathered to watch-including the expected clutch of reporters. As the car drew to a stop at the bottom of the steps, Evie could see Raschid waiting for her at the top of them. He was wearing a dark silk suit, bright white shirt and dark tie, she noted, and wondered heavily if the lack of his traditional Arab dress was just another statement she should take grim note of. Yet her eyes clung to him as he came lightly down the steps towards the car. So tall, lean, so painfully handsome, this Arab lover of hers, she thought helplessly. And Julian is right; I can't live without him.

  After opening the limousine door for her, his eyes blazed with possessive approval as he helped her to alight. 'Beautiful,' he murmured softly.

  Flash bulbs exploded, people called out. Evie plastered a social smile on her face, and let Raschid escort her to their wedding.

  The civil ceremony itself was to take place in front of only a few chosen witnesses. Then they were to return to Westhaven where the rest of their guests would be waiting to watch the Christian blessing Raschid had arranged to take place there.

  There was to be a Muslim blessing, too, but not here in England, and not until Raschid's father was well enough to attend it. Or when he was ready to accept Evie as his son's wife she suspected was the truth. Her mother, Christina and Asim were waiting for them inside the foyer. At least Asim was wearing traditional Arab robes, Evie noted wryly.

  The service was short, over almost before it had begun. Evie stood beside Raschid and repeated her vows in a frail voice that had their few witnesses straining to hear them. Raschid's voice was stronger, but slightly constricted, as if he was finding this more of a strain than he had expected it to be.

  Evie felt the ring slide on to her finger, looked down to see a band of delicate gold twining around the Al Kadah family crest.

  Did this ring make her one of them now? she wondered. 'You may now kiss the bride, sir.'

  Kiss the bride. Like an automaton, Evie turned towards Raschid as he turned towards her. Lavender eyes clashed with gold. It was like free-falling into a vat of hot honey, and for several long seconds she wasn't aware of anything but this man and the power he had over her.

  He didn't move, didn't attempt to claim his kiss, but just stood there looking down at her with his darkly tanned face cast into disturbingly sombre lines. The tension grew. Evie's heart began to stutter, her parted lips trembling slightly as they waited for that kiss. What was wrong with him? Did looking down into this face that bore no resemblance to his own people make him suddenly realise what he was actually putting at risk by joining himself to her? By now the breathless tension was beginning to envelop everyone. No one moved, no one spoke; all eyes were fixed intently on them. Her skin began to shimmer, long lashes flickering as her eyes anxiously asked him a question.

  Raschid murmured something soft in his own language, a plea to Allah, Evie thought it was. Then she felt his hand searching for and taking hold of her hand, felt the tremor in his long fingers as he drew that captured hand up between their two bodies.

  His dark lashes fell over liquid gold eyes as he looked down at the crested ring adorning her finger. Then he kissed it gently and lifted his eyes back to Evie's again. 'Kismet,' he said, that was all.

  Kismet. The will of Allah. Their destiny.

  Evie's heart swelled to bursting. And at last she smiled. In the next moment his arms were banding around her and he was claiming his kiss.

  Outside the registry office, the air had suddenly developed a crystal clarity to it that totally outshone the dark shadow of before. Flash bulbs popped again, people called out to them. Evie smiled for the cameras, serenely ignored the questions and let her new husband lead her down to the waiting limousine, which would take them back to Westhaven.

  Raschid maintained a grip on her hand as the car sped them away. Evie turned to smile at him, but he didn't smile back. 'You look utterly, soul-destroyingly lovely,' he murmured huskily. 'But for a while back there you also looked heart-breakingly sad.'

  'Maybe I was having second thoughts,' she said teasingly.

  'Were you?' It was a serious question.

  Well, Evie asked herself, was I really having second thoughts about marrying this man?

  'Kismet.' She smiled. The word really did seem to say it all for both of them. He nodded in understanding and dropped the subject to lean over and kiss her instead. But he wasn't fooled. Evie knew that he was aware that she might have answered one question but she had avoided telling him why she had looked so sad.

  No giant white canopy awaited them at Westhaven, no band, no hundreds and hundreds of guests. Just a few close friends, a clutch of close relatives, and the summer house where the local vicar waited to bless their union in respect of Evie's Christian faith.

  An alfresco buffet lunch had been laid out on trestle tables on the lawn in front of the house. Great-Aunt Celia was present, but she sensibly avoided actually speaking to either the bride or her groom. And Harry was there, escorting a pretty young thing that gazed doe-eyed at him. Evie spied Raschid standing talking to them at one point and wondered curiously when mutual hostility had turned into friendship.

  'I've given him some of my horses to train,' Raschid explained later when she asked him the question. 'As a consolation prize for being a good loser.'

  'What an arrogant thing to say!' Evie exclaimed.

  'Not really,' Raschid drawled, sending her a wry look. 'For I would not have handled losing you to him as honourably as he has handled losing you to me.'

  'Why?' she asked curiously. 'What would you have done?'

  The hand he had resting on her still slender waist drew her around to stand in front of him. 'Guess,' he whispered. 'I think we are talking of locked doors and eunuchs again,' Evie pondered sagely.

  'Preceded by kidnap, of course,' Raschid added. 'Which is exactly what I am about to do to you right now.'

  As he spoke a helicopter came swooping low around the side of the house, gleaming white against the summer-blue sky and forcing the women to clutch at their hats as its rotor blades churned up the air around all of them. It set itself down on the lawn several hundred feet away. 'Our transport away from here,' Raschid announced.

  'I'll go and get changed .. .'

  'No need.' Raschid stopped her by capturing her hand. 'You look perfect as you are. Come, say your goodbyes quickly. We are working to a very tight schedule.'

  'I wish you would tell me where we are going,' Evie complained. 'I may have packed all the wrong things!' He didn't answer, his attention already diverting to Evie's mother who was coming towards them and looking tearful.

  She hugged Evie tightly. 'Look after yourself,' she said. It still amazed Evie how tactile her mother had become since she'd witnessed her daughter's near-death experience. But a bit of the old Lucinda appeared when she turned towards Raschid. 'I suppose you're expecting a motherly hug too, now,' she remarked coolly.

  'Not unless it is genuinely offered,' he threw back. Lucinda's eyes flashed, with irritation or appreciation, Evie wasn't entirely sure. But the curt, 'Just you take precious care of her!' was issued alongside a blow-softening kiss brushed against one of Raschid's lean cheeks.

  'I think she is reluctantly beginning to like me,' Raschid confided as they settled into the helicopter. Shame the same could not be said of his own family's feelings towards her, Evie thought-and just like that she felt her mood flip over fro
m light to heavy.

  He noticed, this sharp-eyed Arab of hers. 'What's wrong?' he demanded. 'What did I just say to cause you to look like that?'

  'Nothing.' She found a smile from somewhere that only just made it. 'I'm tired, that's all, missing the nap Asim daily forces upon me.' Asim was sitting up front with the pilot. Evie wasn't surprised to find he was coming with them. Everywhere Evie went these days, Asim was right there with her. He hadn't been bluffing when he'd told her that this child she was carrying was now his responsibility.

  'Then as soon as we board the plane that is exactly what you will do,' Raschid ordained. They transferred to one of the Al Kadah personal jets a private airfield not many minutes away from Westhaven. The moment they were up in the air, Raschid released them both from their seat belts and pulled Evie to her feet.

  'Time for the lady's rest,' he explained, drawing her along the luxury main cabin and in through a door that turned out to be a fully equipped bedroom.

  'Oh, very decadent,' Evie teased, looking curiously around her as Raschid moved over to the double bed that dominated the cabin, complete with passion-purple silk sheets and mounds of richly coloured silk pillows.

  Picking something up from the bed, he tossed it negligently over his shoulder. It was a short silk nightdress in a very sensual dark red colour.

  'Turn around,' he commanded, ignoring the taunt. 'So I can release you from this exquisite creation.'

  Evie did as he bade her. 'I feel I must inform you that as a full-blooded Arab I am feeling very cheated at this precise moment,' he said lightly as his deft fingers dealt with the long zip that ran down the length of her spine. 'I was expecting those seed-pearls decorating your front to be my one hundred and one buttons-as is the traditional way Arab women drive their new husbands crazy while they are forced to unwrap their prize inch by painful inch.'

  'But you don't want what's beneath this gown,' Evie pointed out. 'So why bother to mention it?' 'Is that what you really think?' The dress was eased away from her shoulders, and allowed to slither to the floor. Evie reached up to pull off the skullcap while kicking off her white satin slip-ons at the same time. She felt Raschid's fingers at the clasp of her smooth satin bra, and quivered slightly as his warm flesh touched her flesh.

  'Yes,' she said.

  She heard his soft laugh as he bent down to deal with the only piece of clothing she had left. Seconds later, she was naked, and his hands were gently clasping her slender hip bones. The brush of his mouth against the curving cheeks of her bottom made her spine arch in stinging response.

  'Liar,' he drawled. 'You know I adore every single inch of this delectable body.' Then he was turning her to face him, his hands still holding her there in front of him while he continued to squat at her feet. In a slow, slow, agonisingly sensual drift of his heavy eyelids, he inspected her from bare toes upwards. Her legs turned to liquid, her thighs began to bum, that hidden place between them pulsing out its needy message. He inspected the pale-skinned flatness of her stomach where their baby was not yet making its presence felt, drifted those hooded eyes up over her rib-cage to her breasts where a new firm fullness was most definitely evident.

  'Every inch,' Raschid repeated huskily.

  Evie dragged in a constricted breath of air, her hand snaking up to cup his lean cheek so that she could make him look at her. His eyes changed colour, darkening on a swirling tempest of craving. Her thumb moved, brushing across his lips to gently part them. The moist inner heat lining the recess of his mouth drew powerfully on some inner heat of her own that had her folding to her knees in front of him.

  'I don't really need to rest, you know,' she told him softly. 'But I do need you.'

  'Ah .. .' he sighed sorrowfully. 'But-'

  Evie smothered the 'but'. She crushed it right back into his mouth with the hungry press of her own. What was absolutely glorifying was the fact that he didn't attempt to fight her. He let her deepen that kiss to a bone-melting intimacy that made her feel alive and happy for the first time in weeks.

  He still held her hips tightly between his two hands. Evie used her own hands to begin urgently dealing with his clothes. As far as she was concerned, he was wearing too many; impatient fingers tossed the nightdress to one side then began pushing his jacket from his shoulders before yanking at his tie. In all their two years she had never longed for him as much as she was longing for him right now, and it showed in the small growl of triumph she made against his mouth as the tie came free.

  Shirt buttons then began popping without a care to how they came free. He wasn't helping her-which only incited her urgency. The shirt came to rest around his elbows with his jacket, trapped there by the hands he still had clamped to her hip bones.

  Evie didn't care; she had warm, tight skin to touch at last, and a wonderful hair-roughened breastplate to reacquaint herself with. Her mouth wrenched itself away from his so it could go and taste that newly exposed flesh. On a tormented groan, Raschid suddenly burst into action. He freed his arms from his trailing clothes, reached for her, pulling her hard against him, his hot mouth homing in on tight, tingling nipples that set her whole body singing.

  How long had it been since they'd been together like this? Five weeks?

  It showed in the violence of their breathing, in the urgency with which they began to devour each other. He sucked so hard on one of her nipples that she actually whimpered-then laughed because she had missed his mouth on her like this so very badly.

  Breathing gone haywire, bodies hot, emotions locked into a raging frenzy. When he dragged himself to his feet, Evie rose up with him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. His mouth found hers again; she clung to him, her breasts pressing against him in open provocation. But when she dropped het hands to the waistband of his trousers his reaction was so unexpected that it thoroughly stunned her. Picking her up in his arms, Raschid turned and dumped her on to the bed.

  'No!' he ground out, jerked right away from her, then spun on his heel to bend and snatch up the discarded nightdress, which he tossed at her before bending to snatch up his shirt.

  'Wh-what do you mean-no?' she gasped, barely able to believe he really meant what he was implying here! 'I'm sorry,' he muttered. 'I didn't mean to become so carried away. But we must not,' he added tautly. 'I made a vow.'

  'A vow?' Evie repeated shrilly, beginning to shake all over in reaction. 'What kind of vow?'

  'Cover yourself,' he commanded roughly.

  Having recently devoured her with his eyes, he was now looking anywhere but at her, his dark face a mask of bone gripping tension. Evie knew that look. He was hurting, and at this precise moment she was glad he was hurting! 'What kind of vow?' she angrily insisted.

  'A vow to Allah,' he confessed. 'That I would treat you with respect.'

  'I've got news for you, Raschid,' Evie informed him, grimly dragging the nightdress over her trembling flesh. 'This doesn't feel like respect, it feels like rejection!'

  He winced as if she'd hit him, but it didn't stop that wonderful chest Evie had just eagerly exposed for herself from disappearing behind snowy white linen.

  'That is because you misunderstand my motive,' he explained, bending to retrieve his jacket and his tie next. 'For too long I have undervalued your importance to me. It is a sin I am determined to put right.'

  'What sin?' she demanded bewilderedly. 'The sin of wanting to make love to me?' She sounded so damned offended that his mask of a face seemed to turn to iron. Yet he nodded his dark head in sombre confirmation. 'And the sinful lack of understanding as to what our relationship was doing to your pride, your self-esteem and your reputation.'

  'Is this explanation supposed to make me feel better?' 'It will, when I've finished,' he said, dragging his jacket back on. He didn't look so elegant now, Evie noted caustically, with half the buttons on his precious shirt missing! 'Then by all means please go on!' she invited. 'For I find myself completely enthralled by all of this humility!' He muttered something she didn't catch, an Arab curse aimed
at sarcastic females, she suspected.

  'I exposed you to mockery, humiliation and danger,' he nonetheless continued. 'I stood by and watched your own family shun you at your brother's wedding. I witnessed the whole party freeze in horror when you caught Christina's bridal bouquet! I then watched you stand alone by a moonlit lake and toss those damn flowers into the water as if you were tossing away all hope for you and me!' His chest heaved on an angry rasp of air. 'Yet, seeing all of this,' he grimly went on, 'knowing exactly how wretched you must have been feeling, I still responded badly to your news about the baby! How you could bring yourself to speak to me after that performance,' he concluded gruffly, 'I will never comprehend!'

  Evie said nothing, what could she say? He was only telling it as it was, after all. She had been tossing away hope with those flowers. He had reacted badly about the baby.

  'You didn't even carry a bouquet to our wedding,' he then inserted huskily. 'Do you think I did not see the significance in that omission? I have this dreadful suspicion that if you ever hold another flower in your hand you are always going to see that cursedly doomed bouquet in its stead!' He was probably right, so Evie didn't argue the point with him. 'I still don't see what any of this has to do with you and I making love now that we are married.'

  'I made a vow to Allah,' he said, bringing the whole unbelievable conversation reeling back to where it had begun. 'While I waited out my vigil in that hospital waiting room, I promised Him that if He gave me a final chance with you I would never, ever undervalue your worth to me again. And since sex is all I ever gave to you before,' he finally concluded, 'then sex will now await its pleasure, until I have proved to you that you mean more to me than just a source of physical gratification.'

  And that was what this was really all about? He'd made some silly vow to Allah while sitting in a hospital waiting room turning himself inside out with guilt and worry?

  'In case it has escaped your notice,' Evie dryly mocked, 'I tended to use you in exactly the same way.' To her surprise, he laughed one of those warm, husky, very male laughs that eased some of the tension out of him.