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 no
w, 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.
‘This really isn’t the time for this.’ Evie made a halfhearted attempt to stem what was already rushing through both of them.
‘I blame you,’ he informed her arrogantly. ‘Seeing you lying here looking so vulnerable and knowing you nurture my child inside you has made me feel most disgustingly macho.’
‘I can tell,’ she drawled in mocking acknowledgement as her hand slid down the flat plane of her stomach to cover the warm, tight evidence of his feelings.
A shiver ripped through him, the kind of shiver that was always his response to her initial touch of him. ‘Then you tell me,’ he murmured in sudden seriousness, ‘how we give this up when we can’t even control it while the world falls in on us.’
‘I don’t know,’ Evie sighed heavily.
‘Well, I do,’ he said as he pushed her on to her back then carefully placed her bandaged arm out of harm’s way before he came to lean over her. ‘We stay together. Somehow, some way, I will make it happen,’ he vowed. ‘You are mine. This child you carry is mine. I will lay claim to you both with pride and with honour. And that, my darling, is my promise to you.’
Fine words, wonderful words. But could he bring them to fruition? And if he could, at what cost to all of those other things in his life he held so dear to him?
Evie let herself be drawn down into that deep well of sensuality where Raschid’s loving always took her, but her mind didn’t follow; that remained locked in the tight coil of their problems even as they flew.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVIE came swimming up from the deep dark slumber she had escaped into after Raschid had moved away from her, and frowned as her ears picked up on the muffled sound of voices raised in anger.
One was Raschid, sounding cold and cutting. The other was…
‘Oh, no.’ Her mother.
Groaning, she pulled herself up and out of the bed.
In a flurry of urgency she grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a raspberry-coloured long silk wrap that Raschid must have left out for her, which she dragged on and began tying around her as she hurried, barefoot, towards the bedroom door.
The moment she was out in the hallway she could hear clearly what was being said.
‘Love?’ her mother was deriding icily. ‘Love doesn’t take and take without giving back! What have you given back during this affair, Sheikh Raschid?’ she demanded. ‘For I don’t see your reputation lying in shreds at your feet, or you becoming the object of everyone’s pity!’
Pity? White-faced and shaken to the roots by the very sound of the word, Evie pulled to a halt beneath the open archway that connected the sumptuous living room with the hallway which led to all the other rooms in Raschid’s vast apartment.
Her mother was standing there wearing a snow-white suit that was so dramatically effective against her milk-white skin and pale blonde hair—while Raschid was draped from neck to ankles in the flowing dark blue robes of his native culture.
And the two of them were facing up to each other like two very dangerous substances that should never, ever be allowed to mix. Mutual hostility and dislike was rife.
‘Yesterday was supposed to be a very special day for my family,’ Lucinda Delahaye continued angrily. ‘And, to give Evie her due
, she tried her level best to make it that! But you had to come. You had to upstage the bride and groom by getting yourself in the papers as usual. You calmly danced with my daughter while the rumours flew thick and fast about your coming marriage to another woman. And if that wasn’t enough your own father had made sure the whole world knew what a gullible little fool Evie is where you are concerned!’
‘Try trusting her judgement for a change,’ Raschid coolly suggested. ‘You never know, you may find that Evie can pleasantly surprise you.’
‘Not while she continues this shameful affair with you, she won’t.’
‘Our shameful affair is none of your business.’
‘Why don’t you just go home to your oil-rich desert—marry your cousin of a cousin and leave my daughter alone?’ her mother cried.
To Evie’s horror, Raschid laughed. ‘If only you knew,’ Raschid murmured dryly.
‘Frankly, I don’t want to know,’ her mother said dismissively. ‘All I want to do is speak to my daughter.’
‘Evie is resting.’ Raschid refused. ‘She was feeling—unwell,’ he explained. ‘She—’
‘I’m here,’ Evie said, quickly cutting off whatever Raschid might have been going to say by stepping into the room.
They turned together—and slid their gazes over her together, the cold blue eyes in stinging condemnation, while the gold ones were carefully hooded so she couldn’t read what they were seeing as they checked her out.
Still, it was like being scrutinised by two tough critics.
So much so that one hand went up to clutch at the gaping lapels of her robe while the other hand ran self-conscious fingers through her tumbled hair.
‘What’s supposed to be wrong with you?’ her mother demanded with deep suspicion.
‘N-nothing,’ Evie replied, carefully avoiding Raschid’s gaze as she stepped further into the room. ‘I w-was tired, that’s all. Wh-what do you want, Mother?’ she asked.
‘What do I want?’ Lucinda repeated. ‘I want to know what you think you are doing, lying in this man’s bed while he plans his wedding to another woman! Have you no pride—no shame? Have you even bothered to consider what it has done to your reputation to have openly come here with him today knowing full well what he intends to do?’
Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride Page 10