Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride

by Michelle Reid

  She grimly ushered them out of the room, firmly closing the door behind her. ‘How dare you people show your faces here?’ she raked at them viciously.

  Raschid didn’t seem to hear her. His bronzed skin looked grey, his golden eyes blackened by a terrible shock.

  ‘The baby…?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose it would solve all your problems to hear that she’s lost it!’ Lucinda lashed at him.

  ‘No!’ Raschid ground out, and swayed, his face going so white that it was only as Asim reached out to take hold of him that Lucinda realised how Raschid had misunderstood her meaning.

  ‘Well, she hasn’t lost it.’ She grudgingly rectified the error. ‘Though how she didn’t after what your henchmen did to her has to be a miracle.’

  ‘Is there somewhere we can discuss this in privacy?’ Asim quietly suggested.

  The hospital corridor wasn’t busy, but some of the patients had the doors to their rooms standing open. They had to be able to hear every word that was being said.

  Asim still had an arm around Raschid’s shoulders while Raschid himself seemed incapable of anything except just standing there looking devastated. And for some reason that devastation utterly incensed Evie’s mother.

  ‘You want privacy?’ Lucinda hissed. ‘I can give you privacy,’ she grimly decreed, and stalked off down the corridor with the two men following behind her.

  And she was in no mood to be pleasant. Having just gone through the worst experience of her life, watching the very lifeblood seep out of her daughter, Lucinda wanted someone else’s blood as recompense.

  Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah’s blood.

  ‘Do you know what those two men did to her?’ she demanded the moment they were shut away inside the waiting room. ‘If Evie ever forgives you in this lifetime, Sheikh, then I certainly will not!’

  ‘It was a mistake,’ he muttered, still so caught up in his first impression of what Lucinda had said to him that even with her swift correction of that misunderstanding he still hadn’t recovered.

  ‘Was it also a mistake when you didn’t bother to get in touch with her for two whole weeks?’ Evie’s mother challenged.

  ‘I had nothing good to say,’ Raschid thickly explained. ‘It seemed—kinder to wait until I could relay only good news.’

  ‘Kind?’ Lucinda scorned that excuse. ‘Where was the kindness in keeping her in suspense like you did? She bottles things up!’ she cried. ‘She always has done! I thought you knew that! You told me you loved her! You promised to take care of her!’ she went on remorselessly. ‘Instead she was treated like a whore by your people!’

  Raschid flinched then suddenly folded into a nearby chair to bury his face in his hands.

  ‘Lady Delahaye…’ It was Asim who tried to calm the situation, his voice that soothingly diplomatic one Evie knew so well. ‘We understand and accept your right to be angry. But we would sincerely appreciate it if you could explain to us what happened after Miss Delahaye left the apartment.’

  As he stood there, tall and proud beside his crumpled master, Lucinda felt a sudden urge to leap on both of them. Instead she turned her back, folded her arms across her trembling body and tried at last to get a hold on herself.

  ‘She walked out of there with nothing,’ she whispered starkly. ‘In shock. No money. No idea of what she was doing—’ There was a pause while she swallowed several times before she could continue. ‘I don’t know how long she walked for but she eventually found her way to my door—my door!’ she swung around to fling at Raschid. ‘Do you realise how far that is from your apartment? And she was bleeding!’ Lucinda choked out on a wretched sob. ‘Bleeding and she didn’t even know it!’

  Lurching violently to his feet, Raschid took two tense strides towards the door then just stopped, his whole frame clenched by some powerful inner tension that held him locked right there to the spot. ‘Did they touch her?’ he rasped out tautly.

  ‘Who?’ Lucinda said bitterly. ‘Your men?’

  ‘They were not Sheikh Raschid’s men, Lady Delahaye,’ Asim denied.

  ‘His father’s men, then—what’s the difference?’ she flashed. ‘But in answer to your question Evie didn’t say they physically touched her, only that they made her see that if your father could hate her that much, then there really was no chance for the two of you.’

  ‘And her health?’ Asim enquired gently.

  Tears washed across Lucinda’s eyes but she blinked them away again as determinedly as Evie herself would have done. ‘She lost a lot of blood,’ she replied. ‘But by some quirk of fate managed to hang on to her baby. Now they are prescribing bed-rest, no stress and no confrontations.

  So I would appreciate it, Sheikh Raschid, if you would respect those things.’

  A warning. A threat. The English way of issuing both that was just as effective as the Arab way.

  Raschid didn’t answer. But he did move at last, lifting a hand to rub wearily at his eyes before turning around to face Lucinda.

  It was the first time Lucinda had actually allowed herself to look at him—and at last she saw the ravages that had taken place on his face. The man looked tormented, stripped clean to the bone of his arrogance and hurting for it.

  ‘May I see her?’ he gruffly requested.

  But Lucinda firmly shook her head. ‘Not without Evie’s agreement,’ she said. ‘Seeing you may upset her, and, as I just said, I won’t have her upset.’

  Raschid nodded his head in acknowledgement of that. ‘Then I will wait until you acquire her permission,’ he announced, walked back to the chair and sat down again.

  He was still sitting there twelve hours later, and even hardhearted Lucinda was beginning to feel sorry for him.

  ‘I don’t want to see him,’ Evie stated stubbornly.

  ‘But, darling!’ her mother pleaded. ‘He’s been sitting out there throughout the whole night! Surely that deserves some consideration!’

  ‘I said,’ Evie repeated, ‘I don’t want to see him.’

  Lucinda looked utterly bewildered. ‘I never thought I would hear myself say this, Evie,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t think you’re being fair to the man. He’s distraught! It is his baby too, you know! He has a right to reassure himself that you are both okay!’

  ‘You reassure him, then,’ Evie suggested coldly. ‘The doctors say I mustn’t get stressed, and Raschid stresses me.’

  With that, she turned her head away to stare fixedly out of the window. It was unbelievable what the last twenty-four hours had done to her. It was as if the trauma of almost losing her baby had forced her to grow a protective shell around herself that nobody could penetrate.

  It had also brought her mother crashing down from the haughty pedestal she usually sat upon. That frightening ride in an ambulance with all sirens blaring had shaken her more than she cared to admit. For a while last night she’d truly believed she was going to lose her daughter. Shocks like those focused the mind on what was really important in life.

  And nothing could be more important than life itself.

  By some miracle the doctors had managed to stem the bleeding and keep the baby safe, but at what cost to her daughter’s sanity Lucinda wasn’t really sure, because in all Evie’s twenty-three years she had never known her to cut herself off from others as coldly as she was doing now.

  ‘I thought you loved him,’ she murmured. ‘In the name of that love, doesn’t he deserve a hearing?’

  ‘No,’ was the blunt reply.

  ‘Evie—’

  ‘I’m tired now,’ Evie interrupted, and closed her eyes, bit deep into the inner cushion of her lower lip, and silently prayed that her mother would drop the subject!

  Surprisingly she slept. She didn’t even hear her mother leave the hospital room. Next time she awoke it was dark outside and a nurse was bending over her.

  ‘You need to eat something, Miss Delahaye,’ she said. ‘You’ve gone over twenty-four hours without food and that isn’t good for your baby.’

  ‘Can I
get out of bed?’ she asked; she needed the bathroom badly.

  But the nurse sadly shook her head. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid.’ Which meant that Evie had to suffer the indignity of using a bedpan.

  Which also didn’t help her mood when, washed by the nurse and her hair combed and plaited, the mobile tray that held her dinner was moved across Evie’s lap and the nurse said gently, ‘You have a visitor. He’s been waiting for hours. Will you agree to see him, for just a minute?’

  Evie stared down at the bowl of soup that suddenly tasted like sawdust in her mouth when only seconds before it had tasted rather pleasantly of chicken.

  ‘I don’t think he’s going to leave here until you do see him,’ the nurse added. ‘He arrived late last night, and hasn’t left the waiting room since except to wash and change his clothes in one of the spare rooms along the corridor. Your mother has pleaded with him, his companion has pleaded with him and we have pleaded with him. He doesn’t even acknowledge that we’ve spoken! I have never come up against such intransigence in all my life!’

  Watch this space, Evie thought coldly, and went on with her soup without making a single comment. After a while the nurse sighed and left her to it. A little while later Evie curled up on her side, folded her arms protectively over her stomach, and went to sleep thinking about Raschid sitting there in the waiting room.

  The next time she came awake, a grey dawn was just beginning to lighten the bedroom—and there was a man standing at the bottom of her bed, reading her medical chart.

  He glanced up when she moved. ‘Good morning, Miss Delahaye.’ He smiled before returning his attention to whatever he was reading. ‘Your child is most determined to stay exactly where he is,’ he remarked lightly. ‘I suspect a mixing of two sets of very stubborn genes must give him his tenacity.’

  ‘Asim,’ Evie breathed. ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘I am Sheikh Raschid’s personal physician,’ he reminded her. ‘Which now means I am his child’s personal physician.’

  ‘Is that a joke?’ she demanded, using her hands to slide herself up the pillows and into a sitting position.

  ‘No joke,’ Asim blandly denied. ‘Where Sheikh Raschid’s child goes, I go from now on—Oh, come,’ he said when he saw her expression. ‘We are good friends now, are we not? You do not find me too overbearing. We will get along very well together, I am certain of it.’

  ‘And where does Raschid fit into all of this?’ Evie enquired acidly.

  ‘At this precise moment he sits exactly where he has been sitting since he arrived here two evenings ago,’ Asim replied. ‘Where he now awaits my report on his child’s state of health.’

  ‘But not the mother’s,’ Evie bitterly assumed from all of that.

  ‘At this stage in the proceedings, the child’s health depends entirely on the mother’s health so of course she matters. But as for the woman,’ Asim continued smoothly, ‘he accepts now that he is beyond her forgiveness. Which matters little when it is clear that he will never learn to forgive himself.’

  ‘If you’re trying to play on my sympathies, Asim,’ Evie sighed, reaching out for the flask of water sitting on her bedside cabinet, ‘it isn’t working.’

  ‘Here,’ Asim offered instantly. ‘Let me do that for you.’

  Taking the flask from her, he unscrewed the cap and poured some of the chilled water into a glass before handing it to her. In silence he stood beside her and watched her drink the water, took the glass from her when she had finished and smoothly replaced both glass and flask back on the cabinet.

  Then he pleaded soberly, ‘See him, madam. For two nights and a day he has neither slept nor eaten and I am seriously worried about him.’

  ‘He kept me waiting for two weeks before his henchmen came to evict me.’

  ‘They were not his henchmen.’ Asim denied the charge. ‘And if you force him to he will wait two weeks in that waiting room just down the corridor, I promise you.’

  Evie could believe that, knowing the man as well as she did.

  ‘Okay,’ she wearily conceded, deciding that she might as well get it over with. ‘I’ll see him.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Asim sent her one of those bows that reminded her of Crown Prince Hashim’s messengers, and she shuddered.

  ‘He can have five minutes then you make him leave,’ she added on the back of that shuddering reminder.

  ‘As you wish.’

  What Evie wished for was to never set eyes on Raschid again, but she kept that thought to herself as Asim quickly left the room now he had what he had come for.

  The door opened again in seconds, and what she saw as Raschid strode into the room almost—almost caused the shell she was hiding behind to crack.

  Not with sympathy but with anger, because if this man hadn’t eaten or slept in two nights and a day, he was looking disgustingly well for it!

  Evie felt conned.

  Conned by the pristine neatness of the clothes he was wearing, by the clean-shaven smoothness of his face and the arrogance with which he stood there by the closed door studying her with absolutely no hint of remorse written anywhere on his lean dark face.

  ‘How are you?’ he enquired.

  ‘I’m sure everyone has told you exactly how I am,’ Evie replied, in no mood for pleasantries.

  He nodded politely, taking the words at their face value, then strode smoothly forward to pull out and sit down on the chair beside the bed.

  It was only when he came this close to her that Evie saw the slight bruising around his eyes, which showed that the man had been going without sleep—but even those bruises added to his dark brooding sensuality, she noted resentfully.

  That gut-wrenching sensuality that had been catching her out from the first time that she’d ever looked at him.

  In an effort to stop herself from feeling like that, Evie dragged her eyes away and slid her knees up so she could hug them loosely with her arms. Then, head lowered, mouth clamped shut, she grimly waited for him to say what he had waited around this long to say.

  Yet he didn’t speak. He dragged out that silence like a taut piece of string that seemed to be trying to tug her chin up so she would look at him. But Evie refused to look at him, because looking meant communicating, as they had always been able to do with just the merest clash of their eyes. And she didn’t want that kind of communication with him any more.

  ‘I won’t go away just because you wish it, you know,’ he murmured eventually.

  ‘I can’t deal with you right now,’ she answered flatly. ‘Anyone with a bit of sensitivity would have understood that and left me to myself.’

  ‘Because you blame me for what happened?’

  Yes, she blamed him. She’d felt used, ignored, abandoned and abused by the time those two men had left her alone. Raschid had promised her protection. He had promised to call her. He had vowed to make everything work for them.

  ‘I’m sorry my father’s people frightened you so badly.’

  ‘Your father’s people are also your people,’ Evie reminded him. ‘I don’t particularly want you to differentiate between yourself and them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Why not? she repeated grimly to herself. ‘Because you are no different, and I don’t want to see you as such any more.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning, I have been shown the light,’ she answered with spiked mockery. ‘And will you stop throwing questions at me as if I am the one standing on trial?’ she flashed. ‘In case you haven’t realised it yet—I am the victim here!’

  ‘And you think I am not just as much a victim?’ His wide chest heaved, lifting and falling on a tense pull of air. ‘I had no idea my father could stoop so low as to pull a lousy stunt like that!’ he said savagely. ‘He now deeply regrets what he did,’ he added, sounding so short and clipped that if she had been anyone else Evie would have read stiff reluctance to offer that information in that haughty tone.

  But she wasn’t anyone else. And she knew this man in
side out, so she also knew what that tone of voice really meant.

  Raschid was struggling to keep his real feelings about his father under tight wraps.

  ‘He sends you his most sincere apologies—’

  ‘He’s already done that,’ she clipped, her face going white when she remembered the last person who had said those words to her.

  ‘And begs your forgiveness,’ Raschid doggedly continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

  Evie clamped her lips together and forbore to repeat that his father had also done that before.

  ‘He will, of course, tell you these things personally as soon as he is fit enough to leave hospital.’

  That brought her eyes up and around to stare at him. ‘What hospital?’ she gasped.

  ‘The one I put him in,’ he replied, the words hard with a mockery that had no hint of humour. ‘When he refused to accept that I intended to marry you and not Aisha,’ he went on to explain, ‘I abdicated my right to succession. The shock almost killed him.’

  ‘Oh, Raschid, no,’ Evie groaned, and wondered wretchedly how many people this whole horror story was going to hurt before it was done.

  ‘Still,’ he went on coolly, ‘all’s well that ends well, as you British like to say. My father now has a heart which beats as healthily as my own does, and he is also reconciled to the fact that I will marry where I choose to marry.’

  ‘Not if that marriage includes me, you will not,’ Evie said stiffly.

  His dark head turned, and it was only as it did so that Evie realised that he too had been avoiding all eye contact between them.

  But not now. Those liquid gold eyes now pierced her with a deep, dark, grim intent. ‘You will marry me,’ he proclaimed. ‘I have not spent millions of pounds and too many precious days scouring the Middle East searching for a suitable substitute to take my place as Aisha’s husband, nor did I almost put my own father in his grave and place at risk both you and the child you carry simply to hear you now tell me it was all for nothing!’