by Penny Jordan
CHAPTER THREE
MARIELLA woke up before Fleur had given her first distressed, hungry cry. She wriggled out from under the cool pure linen bedding to pad barefoot and naked to where she had placed the carry-cot.
Her khaki-coloured soft shape trousers could be re-worn without laundering, but the white cotton tee shirt she had worn beneath her jacket, and her underwear—no way.
Fastidiously wrinkling her nose at the very thought, Mariella had rinsed them out, deciding that even if they had not dried by morning wearing them slightly damp was preferable to putting them back on unwashed!
Picking Fleur up, she carried her back to the bed...Xavier’s bed, a huge, low-lying monster of a bed, large enough to accommodate both a man and half his harem without any problem at all!
Sliding back beneath the linen sheets, Mariella stroked Fleur’s soft cheek and watched her in the glow of the single lamp she had left on. She could tell from the way the baby sucked eagerly on her finger that she was hungry!
She had seen water in the fridge, and she had Fleur’s formula. All she had to do was to brave the leopard’s den in order to reach the kitchen!
And in order to do that she needed to find something to wear.
Whilst she was deciding between one of the pile of soft towels Xavier had presented her with or the sheet itself, Fleur started to cry.
‘Hush,’ she soothed her gently. ‘I know you’re hungry, sweetheart...’
Xavier sighed as he heard Fleur crying. It was just gone two in the morning. The divan wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing to sleep on. Outside the wind shrieked like a hyena, testing the strength of the pavilion, but its traditional design had withstood many centuries of desert winds and Xavier had no fears of it being plucked away.
Throwing back the cover from his makeshift bed, he pulled on the soft loose robe and strode towards the kitchen, briskly removing one of the empty bottles Mariella had left in the sterilizer and mixing the formula.
His grandmother—an eccentric woman so far as many people were concerned—had sent him to work in a refugee camp for six months after his final year at school and before he went on to university.
‘You know what it is to be proud,’ she had told him when he had expressed his disdain for her decision. ‘Now you need to learn what it is to be humble.
‘Without humility it is impossible to be a great leader of men, Xavier,’ she had informed him. ‘You owe it to your grandfather’s people to have greatness, for without it they will be swamped by this modern world and scattered like seeds in the wind.’
One of his tasks there had been to work in the crèche. For the rest of his life Xavier knew he would remember the emotions he had experienced at the sight of the children’s emaciated little bodies.
Snapping the teat on the filled bottle, he headed for the bedroom.
The baby’s cries were noticeably louder. Her feckless mother was no doubt sleeping selfishly through them, Xavier decided grimly, ignoring the fact that he himself had already noticed just how devoted Fleur’s mother was to her.
Fleur was crying too much and too long to be merely hungry, Mariella thought anxiously as she caught the increasing note of misery in the baby’s piercing cry.
To her relief, Fleur seemed to find some comfort as Mariella sat up in the bed and cuddled her against her own body.
‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’ she whispered to her. ‘Are you missing your...?’
She froze as the protective curtain closing off the room swung open, snatching at the sheet to cover herself, her face hot with embarrassment as she glared at Xavier.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded aggressively.
‘So you are awake. I thought—’
Fleur’s eyes widened as she saw that he was carrying Fleur’s bottle.
‘What have you put in there?’ Mariella demanded suspiciously, holding Fleur even tighter as he held the bottle out to her.
‘Formula,’ he told her curtly. ‘What did you think was in it...hemlock? You’ve been reading too many idiotic trashy books!’
As she took the bottle from him and squirted a few drops onto the back of her hand, tasting it, he watched her.
‘Satisfied?’
Looking fully at him, Mariella compressed her lips.
‘My word,’ she heard him breathe in disbelief. ‘You even go to bed in those ridiculous coloured contact lenses! Hasn’t anyone ever told you that no one actually has eyes that colour? So if it’s your lovers you are hoping to impress and deceive...’
As Fleur seized eagerly on her bottle Mariella froze in outraged fury.
Coloured contact lenses. How dared he?
‘Oh, is that a fact?’ she breathed. ‘Well, for your information, whether you consider it to be ridiculous or not this just happens to be the real colour of my eyes. I am not wearing contact lenses, and as for wanting to impress or deceive a lover—’
Fleur gave a wail of protest as in her agitation Mariella unwittingly removed the teat from her mouth. Apologising to the baby, and comforting her, Mariella breathed in sharply with resentment.
Real? The only thing about her that was real was her outrageous lying! Xavier decided lowering his lashes over his eyes as he discreetly studied the smooth swell of her breasts as her agitated movements dislodged the sheet.
No wonder she had not wanted to feed her child herself. With breasts so perfectly and beautifully formed she would be reluctant to spoil their shape. He could almost see the faint pink shadowing of the areolae of her nipples.
Uncomfortably he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, all too conscious of the effect she was having on him. She was doing it deliberately, he knew that... She was that kind of woman!
When he came here it was to withdraw from the fast-paced city life and concentrate on more cerebral matters, Xavier reminded himself sharply.
The sheet slipped a little farther.
Her flesh was creamy pale, untouched by the sun. He frowned. Khalid had said specifically that he had taken her to the South of France. Surely there she must have exposed herself, as so many did, to the hot glare of its sun and the ever hotter lustful looks of the men who went there specifically to enjoy the sight of so much young, naked flesh?
Knowing his cousin as he did, he couldn’t imagine that Khalid would be attracted to a woman too modest to remove her bikini top!
He, on the other hand, found something profoundly and intensely sensual about the thought of a woman only revealing her bare breasts to her lover, her only lover...
Worriedly Mariella studied Fleur’s suddenly flushed face, reaching out to touch her cheek. It burned beneath the coolness of her own fingertips. Her heart jumped with anxiety.
Xavier’s stomach muscles clenched as she removed her arm, revealing the full exposed curve of her breast. As he had known it would be, her nipple was rose-pink and so softly delicate that he ached to reach out and touch it, explore its soft tenderness, feel it hardening in eager demand beneath his caress.
In her anxiety for Fleur, Mariella had all but forgotten that he was there, only alerted to his sudden departure by the brief swirl of air eddying the door-hanging as he left.
The minute he had gone Fleur started to cry again and nothing Mariella could do would soothe her.
In the end, terrified that he would reappear at any minute and demand that she silence the baby or else, Mariella got out of the bed and, wrapping the sheet around herself, started to pace the floor, gently rocking Fleur as she did so.
To her relief after about ten minutes Fleur began to fall asleep. Gently carrying her back to her cot she started to lie her down, but the minute she did so the baby began to cry again.
Resolutely Mariella tried again...and again...and again...
Three hours later she finally admitted just how
afraid she was. Fleur was crying pitifully now, her cheeks bright red and her whole body hot and sweaty. Mariella’s own eyes ached and her arms were cramped with holding her as she walked up and down the bedroom.
Outside the wind still howled demoniacally.
‘Oh, poor, poor baby,’ Mariella whispered anxiously. Tanya had entrusted her precious child to her. How would she feel if she knew what Mariella had done? How she had brought her to the middle of the desert where there was no doctor and no way of getting to one? What if Fleur had something really seriously wrong with her? What if she had picked up some life-threatening infectious disease? What if...? Sick with anxiety and guilt, Mariella prayed that Fleur would be all right.
In the outer part of the pavilion Xavier could hear the fretful cry of the baby but he dared not go in to find out what was wrong. He could not trust himself to go in and find out what was wrong he admitted grimly.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, still trying to soothe and comfort Fleur, Mariella felt desperately afraid. It was obvious that Fleur wasn’t well. The fear tormenting her could not be ignored any longer. Her hands trembling, Mariella relit all the oil lamps and then carefully undressed Fleur, slowly checking her for any sign of the rash that would confirm her worst fears and indicate that the baby could somehow have contracted meningitis.
Not content with having checked her skin once without finding any sign of a rash, Mariella did so again. When once again she could not find any sign of a rash, she didn’t know whether to feel relieved or simply more anxious!
Tenderly wiping the tears from Fleur’s hot face, she kissed her. Fleur grabbed hold of her finger and was trying to suck on it. No, not suck, Mariella realised—she was trying to bite on it. Fleur was cutting her first tooth!
All at once relief and recognition filled her. Fleur was teething—that was why she had been so uncomfortable. Mariella could well remember Tanya at the same age, her mother walking up and down with her as she tried to soothe her, explaining to Mariella just how much those sharp, pretty little teeth cutting through tender flesh hurt and upset the baby.
Naturally Mariella had tucked a good supply of paediatric paracetamol suspension into her baby bag before leaving home and, still holding Fleur, she went to get it.
‘This will make you feel better, sweetheart,’ she crooned, adding lovingly, ‘And what a clever girl you are, aren’t you, with your lovely new tooth? A very clever girl.’
Within minutes or so of the baby having her medicine, or so it seemed to a now totally exhausted Mariella, she was fast asleep. Patting her flushed face, Mariella smothered a yawn. Tucking Fleur into her cot, she made for her own bed.
* * *
XAVIER FROWNED. IT was well past daylight. He had showered and eaten his breakfast and switched on the laptop he had brought with him to do some work, but his mind wasn’t really on it. Every time he thought about his cousin’s mistress he was filled with unwanted and dangerous emotions. There hadn’t been a sound from the bedroom in hours. No doubt working in a nightclub she was used to sleeping during the day... And very probably not on her own!
The very thought of the woman sleeping next door in his bed drove him to such an unfamiliar and furious level of hormone-fuelled rage that he could barely contain himself. And he was a man who was secretly proud of the fact that he was known for his fabled self-control!
Khalid should think himself very fortunate indeed that he had prevented him from marrying that turquoise-eyed seductress.
But Khalid did not think himself fortunate! Khalid thought himself very far from fortunate and had, in fact, left his cousin’s presence swearing that he would not give up the woman he loved, no, not even if Xavier did try to carry out his threat and disinherit him!
His cousin was quite plainly besotted with the woman, and now that Xavier had met her for himself he was beginning to understand just how dangerous she was.
But not even Khalid’s love would be strong enough to withstand the knowledge that she had been his cousin’s lover. That she had given herself willingly to him! That the thought of ensnaring an even richer man than Khalid, in Xavier himself, had been enough to have her crawling into his bed.
That knowledge would hurt Khalid, but better that he was hurt quickly and cleanly now than that he spent a lifetime suffering a thousand humiliations at her hands! As he undoubtedly would do!
Surely the silence from the bedroom was unnatural. The woman should be awake by now, if only for the sake of her child!
Irritably Xavier strode towards the bedroom area, and pulled back the hanging.
Mariella was lying on the bed deeply asleep, one arm flung out, her pale skin gleaming in the soft light.
The thick strawberry-blonde hair was softly tousled, a few wisps sticking to her pink-cheeked face, lashes, which surely must be dyed to achieve that density of colour, surrounding the turquoise she insisted on claiming was natural.
In her sleep she sighed and frowned and made a little moue of distress before settling back into sleep.
Unable to drag his gaze from her, Xavier continued to watch her. There was nothing about what he knew of the type of person she was that could appeal to his aesthetic and cultured taste. But physically...
Physically, hormonally, she exerted such a pull over his senses that right now...
He had taken a step towards the bed without even realising it, the ache in his groin immediately a fierce, primal surge of white-hot need. If he took her in his arms and woke her now, would it be Khalid’s name he heard on her lips?
That thought alone should have been enough to freeze his arousal to nothing, but instead he was filled with a savage explosion of angry emotion at the thought of any man’s name on her lips that wasn’t his own!
As he battled with the realisation of just what that meant, his attention was suddenly distracted by the happy gurgling coming from the cot.
Striding over to it, he stared down at Fleur. Her child. The child another man had given her! A surge of primitive aching pain filled him.
Fleur had kicked off her blankets and was playing with her bare toes, smiling coquettishly up at him.
Xavier sucked in his breath. She was so small, so delicate...so very much like her mother.
Instinctively he bent to pick her up.
Mariella didn’t know what woke her from her deep sleep, some ancient female instinct perhaps, she decided shakily as she stared across the room and saw Xavier bending over Fleur.
Gripping the bedclothes, she burst out frantically, ‘Don’t you dare hurt her.’
‘Hurt her?’ Tight-lipped, Xavier swung round. ‘You dare to say that when she has already been hurt immeasurably simply by being brought into being as the child of a woman who...’
Unable to fully express his feelings, he compressed his mouth.
‘I suppose she is used to being left to amuse herself whilst her mother sleeps off the effects of her night’s work!’
Mariella could scarcely contain her fury.
‘How dare you say such things, after the way you have behaved? You are the most loathsome, the most vile man I have ever met. You are totally lacking in any kind of compassion, or...or responsibility!’
Her eyes really were that colour, Xavier recognised in disbelief as he watched them darken from turquoise to inky blue-green.
Did they turn that colour when she was lost in passion? Was she as passionate in her sexual desire as she was in her anger? Of course she was...he knew that instinctively, just as he knew equally instinctively that if she were his...
‘It is nearly eleven o’clock, the child must be hungry,’ he told her tersely, infuriated by his own weakness in allowing such thoughts to creep into his head.
Eleven o’clock—how could it be? Mariella wondered guiltily, but a quick glance at her watch showed her that it was.
&nbs
p; She couldn’t wait to get back to the city and the sooner she and Fleur were on their way back there, the better, she decided as Xavier strode out of the room.
CHAPTER FOUR
MARIELLA frowned as she walked into the empty living area of the pavilion. Where was Xavier?
A laptop hummed quietly on a folding campaign table to one side of the pavilion. Xavier had obviously been working on it.
As she looked round the pavilion with its precious carpets and elegant few pieces of furniture, which she recognised as being expensively antique as well as functional, Mariella tried to imagine her dizzy half-sister in such a setting. Tanya was totally open about the fact that she was a girl who loved the bustle of cities, holidays in expensive, fashionable locations, modern apartments as opposed to traditional houses. Although she adored Fleur, self-indulgence was her byword, and Mariella was finding it increasingly hard to visualise her sister ever being compatible with a man like Xavier, who she could not imagine truly sharing Tanya’s tastes. He was too austere, surely. Too...
Tanya loved him, she reminded herself stubbornly, although she was finding that equally hard to imagine! He was just so totally not Tanya’s type! Tanya liked happy-go-lucky, boyish, fun-loving men!
Fleur was sound asleep, and Mariella decided she would go outside to check on what was happening. She could no longer hear the sound of the wind battering against the walls of the pavilion, which hopefully meant that she would be able to make her way back to the city.
As she stepped outside she saw to her relief that the wind had indeed dropped. The air was now totally still and the sky had a dull ochre tinge to it. She could see her four-wheel drive, its sides covered in sand.
On the far side of the oasis, the rock face of the gorge rose steeply, its almost vertical face scarred here and there by the odd ledge.
There was a raw, elemental beauty about this hidden place, Mariella acknowledged, seeing it now with an artist’s eye rather than the panicky apprehension of a lost traveller.