by Kim Lawrence
It isn’t me, it’s him, she thought, levelling a look of breathless resentment up at his impossibly handsome face. He was the one who was making her act this way, the one who was making her feel...out of control. Because of him she was saying the first thing that popped into her head. She’d lost every vestige of mental censorship; she was saying things she didn’t know she felt...
‘Oh, God!’ Without warning, the adrenalin wave that she’d been riding suddenly broke and she started shaking.
Watching her wrap her arms around herself, an action that didn’t disguise the fact she was shaking like a leaf, Kamel felt a sharp stab of guilt. ‘You’ve had a bad experience.’ A fact he was a little late acknowledging.
She slung him a look. Anybody hearing him would think he gave a damn. ‘I’m fine. Look, it was handy you turned up when you did.’ He was the last person in the world she would have wanted to see her in that position, but that didn’t alter the fact she had needed saving. ‘And if the opportunity ever arises and some ex-girlfriend of yours comes to scratch your eyes out I’ll return the favour.’ By the time the last syllable had left her lips Hannah was utterly drained; her ironic smile was not weak, it was non-existent.
‘So you will rescue me?’ He was torn between amusement, astonishment and an uncharacteristic impulse that he firmly quashed. Comforting embraces were so not his style.
She felt the colour rush to her cheeks. ‘You think that’s funny because I’m a woman.’ Hopping on one foot while she bent to try and retrieve the shoe that had been sucked into a patch of mud, she turned her head and threw him a look of frowning dislike. ‘You going to stand there and watch?’
He held up his phone, his eyes trained on her bottom, the firm, curvy outline very clear against the silk of her gown. ‘That really is a good look for you!’
‘You dare!’ she growled.
Still grinning—the grin made him look normal and nice and far too good-looking—he shrugged and slid the phone back into his pocket before he bent and grabbed the protruded strap of her shoe. It came free with a massive slurping sound.
‘Well, Cinderella, you can go to the ball but I don’t think that you’re going to be doing much dancing in this,’ he said, shaking free the larger dollops of mud that clung to the heel. His brows suddenly lifted.
‘What?’
‘I never realised,’ he said, his glance transferring from the wrecked shoe to her foot and back again, ‘that you actually have really big feet.’
Hannah’s jaw dropped.
‘As for women being weaker...Have you ever seen a tigress protecting her young?’ It was not the image of a tigress that formed in his mind, though. It was Hannah with a baby in her arms at her breast.
‘I suppose you have.’ There was an air of resignation in her response. He’d done all the things she hadn’t... An image that she had seen in a magazine during her last hairdresser’s appointment superimposed itself over his face: the gorgeous scantily clad model strutting her stuff at a red-carpet event while her escort looked on indulgently.
‘I have no doubt that a woman can be fierce in defence of what she considers hers.’
‘You’re not mine,’ she blurted, embarrassed by the suggestion and slightly queasy. In her head the damned supermodel was now doing things to the man she had married that Hannah knew she never could...which was a good thing, she reminded herself.
‘And I’m not fierce. I’m...I just like to pay my debts.’
‘And you shall.’
Promise, threat...Hannah was beyond differentiating between the two even in her own head. ‘By having sex with you?’
Anger drew the skin tight across his hard-boned features. ‘I have no intention of negotiating sex with my own wife,’ he asserted proudly.
‘You think I’m going to have sex with a man I don’t like or respect?’ She barely spoke above a whisper but her low voice sounded loud in the charged silence.
‘You don’t have to respect or like someone to want to rip off their clothes.’
‘My God, you do love yourself.’
‘This isn’t love, but it is a strong mutual attraction.’
Heart thudding, she dodged his stare and snatched the shoe from him, grimacing as she slid her foot back in. ‘Thank you.’ She managed two steps before the heel snapped and threw her off balance. The jolt as she struggled to stay upright caused her chignon to come free, effectively blinding her. She took several more lopsided strides forward before she stopped and swore.
Throwing him a look that dared him to comment, she took off both shoes and threw them in a bush. Hitching her skirt a little higher, she continued barefoot, feeling his eyes in her back.
‘Go on, say it!’ she challenged him.
‘Say what?’
‘Say whatever sarcastic little gem you’re just aching to say. Go ahead,’ she said, opening her arms wide in invitation. ‘I can take it.’
Their eyes connected and her challenging smile vanished. She dropped her arms so fast she almost lost her balance. She would have lowered her gaze had his dark, glittered stare not held her captive. The silence settled like a heavy velvet blanket around them. She had to fight for breath and fight the weird compulsion that made her want to...
‘You want to take me, ma belle?’ His eyes cancelled out the joke in his voice.
She could feel the heat inside her swell and she thought, Yes, I do. ‘You can’t say things like that to me.’
‘What do you expect? You are a very confrontational woman.’
‘I’m cold.’
‘So the rumour goes, but we both know different. What were you doing with a man who wants to put you on a pedestal and worship you from afar?’
‘Many girls dream of that.’
‘Not you, though. You want to be touched and you looked like you’d seen a ghost when you saw him.’ Kamel had made it his business to find out who the man was who was responsible for her shaken look.
Hannah heaved in a deep breath. She longed to be touched. She shivered; he saw it and frowned. ‘You’re cold.’
‘Oh, and I was just getting used to the idea of being hot,’ she quipped back.
He threw her a look. ‘I will explain to the guests that you are feeling unwell. Rafiq will see you to your room.’
On cue the big man appeared. Hannah was getting used to it—she didn’t jump, but she did accept with gratitude the wrap he placed across her shoulders.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HANNAH ACTUALLY PERSUADED Rafiq to leave her in the hallway and made her way upstairs alone. It was an area of the house that no guests had entered and it was very quiet. She found herself walking past the door to the guest suite, drawn by a need to experience the comfort of familiar things. She took the extra flight of narrow winding oak stairs hidden behind a door that led up to the next floor.
The attic rooms had been the servants’ quarters years before. Later on they became the nursery and more recently a semi self-contained unit, complete with mini kitchen. She opened the door of her old bedroom and stepped inside. The paintwork was bright and fresh but it was the same colour scheme she had chosen when she was twelve. The bed was piled high with stuffed toys, and the doll’s house she had had for her tenth birthday stood on the table by the window. It was like being caught in a time warp.
She picked up a stuffed toy from the pile on the bed and flicked the latch on the doll’s house. The door swung open, automatically illuminating the neat rooms inside.
She stood there, a frown pleating her brow, and waited. She didn’t even recognise she was waiting until nothing happened. There was no warm glow, no lessening of tension. She didn’t feel safe or secure.
In the past, she realised, this room had represented a sanctuary. She had closed the door and shut out the world. But even though the familiar things that had giv
en her a sense of security were still the same—she had changed.
She closed the door of the doll’s house with a decisive click. It was time to look forward, not back.
* * *
In the guest suite she showered and pulled a matching robe on over her silk pyjamas. Her hair hung loose and damp down her back. Leaving the steamy bathroom, she walked across to the interconnecting door and, after a pause, turned the key. Locked doors were no solution. Hugging a teddy bear had not helped, and hiding from the situation was not going to make it go away. Would talking help? Hannah didn’t know, but she was willing to give it a try.
So long as he didn’t construe the open door as an invitation to do more than talk.
She cinched the belt of her robe tight and walked across to the bed, trying not to think about the flare of sexual heat in her stomach as she heard his voice in her mind—You don’t have to respect or like someone to want to rip off their clothes.
‘Oh, God!’
She didn’t know if the dismayed moan was in her head or she’d actually cried out, but when she opened her eyes there was no room for debate—he was no creation of her subconscious. A very real Kamel stood framed in the doorway, one shoulder wedged against the jamb, as he pulled his tie free from his neck.
‘I’m glad that’s over.’
He sounded almost human. He was human, she realised, noticing the lines of fatigue etched into his face—a fatigue that was emphasised by the shadow of dark stubble across his jaw. So he could get tired. It was a tiny chink in his armour, but she still struggled to see him suffering the same doubts and fears as the rest of the human race, and it went without saying that fatigue didn’t stop him looking stupendously attractive. No, beautiful, she corrected, her eyes running over the angles and planes of his darkly lean face, a face that she found endlessly fascinating. She compressed her lips and closed a door on the thought. She knew it would be foolish to lower her defences around him.
He pulled the tie through his long fingers and let it dangle there, arching a sardonic brow as his dark eyes swept her face. ‘So, no locked doors?’
‘That was childish.’
The admission surprised him but he hid it. It was harder to hide his reaction to the way she looked. The only trace of make-up was the pink varnish on her toenails. With her hair hanging damply down her back and her face bare she looked incredibly young, incredibly vulnerable and incredibly beautiful.
There was a wary caution in the blue eyes that met his, but not the hostility that he had come to expect.
‘I thought you’d be asleep by now.’ The purple smudges under her eyes no longer smoothed away by a skilful application of make-up made it clear she still desperately needed sleep. Kamel reminded himself that her nightmare had been going on forty-eight hours longer than his. He felt a flash of grudging admiration for her—whatever else the woman he had married was, she was not weak.
Hannah absently rubbed the toes of one foot against the arch of the other until she saw him staring and she tucked them under her. She pushed her hair behind her ears as she admitted, ‘I felt bad letting you make excuses for me. Was it awkward?’ She had probably broken about a hundred unwritten rules of protocol.
‘Awkward?’ He arched a brow. ‘You mean did anyone see you leave with—?’
‘I didn’t leave with him. He f—’
He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I know.’
‘Me not being there. What did you say?’
‘I did not go into detail. I simply told my uncle that you had retired early.’ He had actually told Charles Latimer a little more. He had made it clear to his father-in-law that if he wanted his daughter to spend any time under his roof he would guarantee that Rob Preston would not be there.
‘Did they believe you?’
He took a step into the room and dropped his tie onto a chair. ‘Why should we care?’
The we was not symbolic of some new togetherness so the small glow of pleasure it gave her was totally out of proportion.
* * *
‘So how long were you standing there watching?’ She had gone through the scene enough times to realise that Kamel could have heard some, if not all, of the exchange with Rob.
Grave-eyed, she looked up from her contemplation of her hands and heard him say, ‘Long enough.’
She ground her teeth in exasperation at this deliberately cryptic response.
‘So he cheated on you?’
Oh, yes, he would have heard that bit.
‘It happens.’
There was no pity in his voice; Hannah let out a tiny sigh of relief.
‘Dumping him on the actual wedding day was a pretty good revenge.’ Kamel understood the attraction of retribution, though, being a man to whom patience did not come easily, he struggled with the concept of a dish served cold.
‘I didn’t plan it.’ She looked startled by the idea. ‘That’s when I found out.’
He looked at her incredulously. ‘On the actual day?’
She nodded, experiencing the familiar sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as the memory surfaced. It had been an hour before the photographers, hairdressers and make-up artists were due to arrive. She had knocked on Sal’s door under the pretext of collecting the something blue her best friend had promised her, though what she had actually wanted was reassurance—someone to tell her she was suffering from last-minute nerves and it was all normal.
‘I walked in on him with Sal, my chief bridesmaid. They were... It wasn’t until later that I discovered he’d worked his way through most of my circle.’
She didn’t look at him to see his reaction. She told herself she was past caring whether she came across as self-pitying and pathetic, but it wasn’t true. She simply didn’t have the strength left to maintain the illusion. The last few days one hit after another combined with exhaustion had destroyed her normal coping mechanisms... What pride she had left had been used up in her encounter with Rob.
‘So he slept with everyone but you.’
Her eyes flew to his face. ‘So you heard that too.’
He nodded. He had heard, but not quite understood. It was not a new strategy, and she was the sort of woman who was capable of inspiring obsession in susceptible men, though why a man who was willing to marry to get a woman in his bed would then choose to sleep around was more difficult to understand. Especially when the woman in question would make all others look like pale imitations.
‘So the only way he could have you was marriage.’ Twenty-four hours ago the discovery would not have left him with a sense of disappointment. Twenty-four hours ago he’d had no expectations that could be disappointed—he had only expected the worst of her.
His cynical interpretation caused her cobalt-blue eyes to fly wide open in shocked horror. ‘No, I wanted to.’ She gave a tiny grimace and added more honestly, ‘I would have.’ The fact was she simply wasn’t a very sexual creature, which did beg the question as to why she couldn’t look at Kamel or even hear his voice without feeling her insides melt. ‘But he...’
Kamel watched her fumble for words, looking a million miles from the controlled woman reputed to have a block of ice for a heart, and felt something tighten in his chest.
‘Apparently he wanted to worship me, not—’
‘Take you to bed,’ Kamel supplied, thinking the man was even more of a loser than he’d thought.
‘I don’t actually think he thought of me as a woman. More an addition to his art collection. He likes beautiful things...not that I’m saying I’m—’
‘Don’t spoil all this honesty by going coy. We both know you’re beautiful. So why is it everyone thinks he’s the injured party?’
‘I’d prefer to be thought a bitch than an idiot.’ The explanation was not one she had previously articulated. She was startled to hear the wo
rds. It was something she had not admitted to anyone before.
‘And your father still invited the man here?’ If a man had treated his daughter that way he would have— Kamel dragged a chair out from the dressing table, swung it around and straddled it.
‘Oh, it was easier to let him think I’d had second thoughts. They’ve been friends for a long time and Dad had already had an awful time telling everyone the wedding was cancelled. A lot of people turned up and it was terrible for him—’
‘And you were having such a great day...’
Hannah’s protective instincts surfaced at the implied criticism of her father.
‘You were right. It was my fault. This is my fault, totally my fault.’
He shook his head, bemused by her vehemence, and protested, ‘You didn’t ask the guy to jump you!’
‘No, not Rob. Getting arrested, getting you mixed up in it, terrifying Dad half to death. If he has another heart attack, it would be down to me.’
It was news to Kamel that he had had one. The man certainly hadn’t been scared enough to change his lifestyle. ‘I think a doctor might disagree. Your father does not hold back when it comes to saturated fat.’
‘You’re trying to make me feel better.’
He studied her face. ‘It’s clearly not working.’
‘Why are you being nice? It’s my fault we had to get married. I should have waited for help. I shouldn’t have left the Land Rover. I shouldn’t have been there at all.’ She shook her head, her face settling into a mask of bitter self-recrimination as she loosed a fractured sob. ‘All the things you said.’
‘The village did get the vaccines, and the help they needed.’
Lost in a morass of self-loathing, she didn’t seem to hear him. ‘I couldn’t even help myself, let alone anyone else. I was only there to prove a point. I’ve spent my life playing it safe.’ She planted her hand flat on her heaving chest and lifted her tear-filled eyes to his.