by Lynne Graham
‘Seriously.’
‘Why are you asking me?’
‘Indulge me just this once.’
‘Well…you’re marvellous company, even tempered…and patient. Great in bed.’ Her face burned as Rashad elevated a questioning aristocratic brow that suggested she was barking up the wrong tree with her comments. ‘Generous, thoughtful, fair.’
‘I sound like a saint and I am not. You must be more candid and mention my faults.’
‘I didn’t say you had any faults,’ Tilda disclaimed instantly, feeling that she was being steadily backed into a corner for some reason that she had not yet contrived to comprehend. ‘Apart from being too clever for your own good sometimes.’
Rashad lifted a sheet of paper from the desktop and held it up for her to see. Tilda blenched, for it was the same photocopied picture of a woman dancing in a cage that Scott had sent her before. ‘Where did you get that from?’
‘Your mother forwarded it with your post. There was nothing on the envelope that indicated that it might be confidential, and it was opened by one of my staff, who thought it was a party invitation.’
Tilda extended her hand for the page and read the words below. ‘Next instalment due,’ it said, alongside Scott’s phone number and address.
‘It’s been dealt with,’ Rashad informed her quietly.
But shock and apprehension had made Tilda feel light-headed and sick, and she startled him as much as she startled herself at that moment by bursting into floods of tears.
Astonished and dismayed, Rashad lifted her out of the seat with a groaned apology. He smoothed her hair back from her damp brow. ‘I think this may qualify as a too-clever-for-my-own-good moment,’ he breathed rawly. ‘I didn’t intend to upset you. That was the very last result I wanted.’
‘What did you expect when you showed me that horrible picture?’ Tilda gasped chokily as he passed her a tissue and she mopped up. ‘I was hoping I’d never have to see it again!’
Rashad banded his arms round her. ‘You wouldn’t have had to see it, if you had come to me with the first demand.’
Tilda stiffened and finally dared to look up at him. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘I saw Scott last night. That’s where I was yesterday. Naturally, the instant I saw that picture, I knew that it could only have been sent to you as a form of threat. I confronted Morrison. There are no photos in existence of you dancing that night at the club.’
‘Are you certain of that?’
‘Yes,’ Rashad confirmed. ‘If he had had a genuine photo of you, he would have copied that, instead of using a stranger’s on a photocopy.’
Tilda flushed. ‘I suppose I should have thought of that.’
‘It was an amateur effort to extort money. He wasn’t clever enough to use a computer to fake a photo of you. It has been a very distasteful experience for you nonetheless. What was the first letter like?’
‘The same picture was used,’ she admitted tautly.
‘You received it when we visited your mother. That was Morrison you spoke to on the phone regarding the bill that required payment, wasn’t it?’
She nodded uncomfortably.
Dark deep-set eyes very direct in gaze, Rashad spread lean, shapely hands in a very expressive movement. ‘It shames me that you would not come to me for help and support with this matter.’
‘And rake up that cage business again? I’d sooner have died!’ Tilda told him with a feeling shudder. ‘I suppose that you already know that I paid Scott five thousand pounds?’
‘Yes, and there’s no hope of retrieving it, either. He’s spent it.’ Rashad grimaced with distaste. ‘He’s a nasty specimen, but he would never have dared to trouble you, had you come to me with his attempt to blackmail you. He’s scared of me.’
‘There’s no real photos of me dancing in that cage…you’re sure?’ Tilda prompted, because she was still concerned and could not quite accept as yet that the threat had been removed.
‘Certain.’
‘I feel such an idiot now for having paid up.’ She sighed. ‘But I was just so horrified at the idea of some horrible sleazy-looking photo appearing in the newspapers and embarrassing you.’
‘Even if there had been a photo we would have lived it down. I am more wise and tolerant than I was when you first knew me,’ Rashad said wryly. ‘I’m not that easily embarrassed.’
Tilda was amazed at his attitude. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Good. Then it’s about time that I told you that it was your friends who put me in that cage to dance. They paid the manager to get me into it because it was your birthday!’
Rashad was very much disconcerted by this revelation. Tilda quite enjoyed that turning of the tables. She told him that she had found out that Scott had been taking money from her mother for several years, and that Morrison had most likely been behind the appearance of the paparazzi at the airport that day. He looked grim but was convinced that her former stepfather would cause no further annoyance.
‘In my eyes, a husband’s most basic role is to protect his wife from harm,’ Rashad shared tautly. ‘Yet you could not trust me enough to tell me that Morrison was blackmailing you.’
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I felt so guilty about the cage episode.’
‘You have no need to feel guilty. But perhaps you did not have enough faith in me because I have been too slow to tell you what you mean to me.’ His lean strong face was taut. ‘Five years ago, you were everything I had ever wanted in a woman. In an instant I fell deeply in love with you. That’s all it took.’
Tilda stared up at him in unconcealed surprise.
‘You were my dream, my prize after many disappointments. I had been alone a long time. But I knew you did not feel the same way as I did-’
‘Rashad,’ she broke in emotively.
‘I believed that if you had felt as much for me as I did for you, that you would have slept with me.’
Tilda was shaken by that candid admission. ‘That’s just not true. I really loved you, but I thought there was no future in it. I mean, you were going to be a king some day and I didn’t want to be hurt. I thought if I kept our relationship light that it wouldn’t hurt so much when you went back to Bakhar.’
‘I had no idea. Wasn’t it obvious that I was serious about you?’
‘No. I was also terrified you would get me pregnant,’ she admitted in a rush. ‘I had a thing about that then-Mum always seemed to fall pregnant so easily.’
Rashad cupped her face with unsteady hands. ‘If only we had talked about the things that really matter, but I didn’t know how to. I just expected you to know what was in my heart.’
‘But I did really love you an awful lot,’ Tilda told him unsteadily. ‘When you dumped me, it felt like my world had ended.’
His lustrous dark eyes were suspiciously bright and he bowed his handsome head over hers with a husky groan. ‘I adored you. I would have given up everything for you, even the throne, and I think my father knew it, which gave him more reason to fear your power over me.’
Tilda was so close to him she could barely breathe and it still wasn’t close enough. He had adored her, too? He crushed her to him and she rejoiced in his emotion.
‘In five years without you, I was never once happy again. I am ashamed to admit it, but even if you had been a gold-digger I think you would still be my wife because I love you so much.’
‘How long have you been in love with me?’
‘For five years I called it hatred. I never got over you,’ Rashad confessed in a driven undertone.
‘Don’t you realise how much I still love you?’
Rashad studied her with doubt in his candid gaze.
‘But how could you?’
‘You say sorry very nicely. You’re great with blackmailers, too. You’re very handsome. You make me happy. I suppose that’s the most important thing of all. When I’m with you, I’m just so happy!’
‘You love me?’ His spellbinding smile was beginning to curve his lips.
Tilda stretched up and kissed him, and that was all the encouragement he needed to kiss her back-breathless.
‘Oh, and I think I might be pregnant,’ she shared in an afterthought, deciding that she would never keep anything from him again. ‘And I’m pleased.’
Rashad laughed out loud and surveyed her with near reverence. ‘I must be the luckiest man alive.’
Feeling very much like the luckiest woman, Tilda let her eyes drift dreamily shut as he carried her off to bed. She suspected that the end of their honeymoon would be postponed for yet another few days…
Almost three years later, Tilda watched Rashad hunker down to open welcoming arms to his son and daughter.
Sharaf was almost two, a solid little boy who was tall for his age with black hair and blue eyes. Pyjama-clad, the child hurled himself at his father with a shout of delight and immediately started chattering. Rashad tucked his son under one arm and murmured gentle encouragement to the baby crawling laboriously towards him. Bethany was nine months old. Blond and brown-eyed, she had her father’s charismatic smile and her mother’s temper. As the Persian rug beneath her rumpled and impeded her progress she burst into tears and threw herself flat to sob. Rashad scooped her up and soothed her with an ease that revealed how comfortable he was handling his children. The little girl clung like a limpet and patted his face, beaming at him with love and approval.
It was the weekend and Tilda and Rashad often spent weekends at the Palace of the Lions, where privacy was usually assured. Sharaf had proved such a delight to his parents that they had decided to have another baby as soon as possible after his birth. He was a delightful child, forward for his age and very active. Tilda had had two straightforward pregnancies and was planning on waiting awhile before contemplating a third.
Her mother had recently married Evan Jerrold and was living in much more comfortable circumstances. It had taken a year and professional help for Beth to overcome her agoraphobia. It had been a tough challenge for her, but she was now a regular visitor to Bakhar. Tilda had been delighted by Beth’s remarriage, for she had always liked Evan and she no longer worried about her parent in the same way that she once had. Her brother, Aubrey, had qualified as a doctor and Katie was at university. Her younger siblings, Megan and James, were doing well at school. It was a source of great satisfaction to Tilda that she was still able to see a lot of her family. She often visited London with Rashad.
The king was a regular visitor to their home in the Great Palace for he was very fond of children. Tilda had become very relaxed around the unassuming older man. She led a very busy but fulfilling life. She had supervised the renovation of the Palace of the Lions. She also realised how lucky she was to always have ready assistance with the children and she made the most of it. She had taken up painting again, although she had privately reached the conclusion that, although she enjoyed the pursuit she was possibly a more talented accountant than she would ever be an artist. Even so, Rashad, who could hardly draw a recognisable stick figure, was hugely impressed by her every artistic endeavour and embarrassingly quick to show her work off to visitors.
Tilda lifted Bethany from her husband’s arms. Their baby daughter was yawning. ‘She’s sleepy.’
Rashad leant down and claimed his wife’s luscious mouth with a brief but hungry insistence that made her dizzily aware of his potent masculinity. She went pink and thought about how much she had missed, for he had been in New York for a week. Sometimes Tilda and the children travelled with him, but it wasn’t always practical. Together they put Sharaf and Bethany to bed. They enjoyed such quiet family moments. Rashad told his son a bedtime story while Tilda gave their daughter a drink and tucked her into her cot.
‘At last,’ Rashad groaned, tugging her into his arms in the privacy of their bedroom. ‘I couldn’t wait to get back to you tonight.’
‘Hmm…’A blissful smile on her lips, Tilda leant into the heat of his big, powerful body. ‘Did I ever tell you how happy you make me?’
‘I can live with being told again.’ Stroking her hair back from a delicate cheekbone with tender fingers, Rashad studied her with possessive intensity. ‘But I couldn’t live without you…I love you more every day…’
Lynne Graham
***
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