by Fiona Brand
Still caught in the rosy aftermath of lovemaking, the sudden switch to the “business” of the wedding was a little jarring. Sarah picked up her handbag and adjusted the strap over one shoulder. “Stay in the hotel, as in lay low?”
Gabe’s gaze settled on her mouth and lingered. Not quite all business, then, she thought with relief.
“It would be expedient. Once the press get hold of this they’ll go crazy—”
Whoever Gabe was calling picked up. He half turned away while he spoke in rapid Zahiri. A few minutes later, he hung up and slipped the phone back in his shirt pocket. “That was Faruq, the minister of tourism. He’ll take care of the press release. Once the announcement is made, we can move you into the palace.”
Gabe drove Sarah back to her hotel, taking the time to question her about her and the baby’s health, wanting verbatim accounts of exactly what Evelyn had said. Sarah couldn’t help basking in his concern. To her mind, like the beautiful, off-the-register lovemaking, it was a sign that he was falling for her.
Feeling bemused and a little dreamy after the hours they’d spent making love, Sarah strolled into the deep shade of the hotel’s portico. Graham’s sudden appearance as he popped up from a café table caught her completely off guard.
His gaze swept her with that hint of disbelief she still found irritating. As if updating her look had somehow changed her beyond all recognition. Still intensely annoyed with Graham for breaking into her house and copying the journal, she fixed him with a flat glare. “What do you want?”
“Do I have to want something?”
When he opened his arms as if they were actually going to hug, Sarah stepped back, neatly avoiding the fake intimacy. “In my experience, yes. Although I thought you’d already gotten what you wanted.”
Unfazed, Graham fell into step beside her as she strolled into the gorgeous mosaic tile lobby.
“Mostly. I think I’m finally onto something, I just need you to decipher the piece of the journal that’s still written in Old French—”
“No.” Sarah stepped into an elevator. As the doors slid closed, Graham’s expression was red-faced and belligerent, but she didn’t care. She was too absorbed with Gabe to pay attention to Graham.
The elevator doors opened on her floor and she found herself staring blankly at a pair of probable honeymooners, their eyes starry, skin tanned, bright new wedding rings gleaming on their fingers.
As she strolled to her suite, she checked her watch, dazed at how little time had passed. Just over three hours since she had left. And yet in that time Gabe had found her, proved their attraction was still fiery and tingling with life. They had made love and the engagement had been confirmed.
Pulse speeding up at the memory of their lovemaking, she stepped into her suite and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror by the door. She touched a red mark on the side of her neck. She remembered Gabe’s jaw scraping her tender skin, the ripple of sensation that had gone through her at the utterly sensual caress, as if he couldn’t get enough of her.
She drew a deep breath as it sank in just how much she had changed.
She was no longer the dry, low-key history teacher who had stayed in Friday, Saturday...let’s face it, every night. She was the kind of risk-taking woman who attracted a sheikh and who, after one wildly passionate night, was carrying his child.
Gabe had made love to her as if she was desirable, as if he couldn’t resist her. As if she belonged to him.
Just as she knew that Gabe was hers.
A little startled by the clear, bold thought, she set her bag down and strolled to the refrigerator to get herself a cold drink. Carrying the ice water back to the sitting room, she sat down on the sofa and booted up her tablet. After the conversation with the waitress in the café, she was even more curious about Gabe’s first marriage. Maybe she should have asked him about it, but she hadn’t quite been able to broach the subject because she had wanted him to confide in her.
Minutes later, she had turned up an old tabloid report that seemed to confirm everything she’d heard. Gabe and Jasmine had been childhood sweethearts and married young. She had died tragically in a boating accident.
Another search turned up a series of photographs of Jasmine, fragile and breathtakingly pretty, an enormous diamond solitaire sparkled on her finger.
A ring. It was a small detail and something Sarah and Gabe hadn’t spoken about, something they hadn’t had time for, yet.
The phone rang. When Graham’s voice registered, she slammed the receiver down then took the phone off the hook. For good measure she also turned her cell off then went back to her tablet.
A couple of hours later, a rap on the door woke her from a nap. She checked the peephole in case it was Graham. It was Gabe.
Still feeling on edge about Gabe’s almost complete silence about his first wife, she opened the door. Gabe was obviously freshly showered and looked utterly gorgeous in dark pants and a light, gauzy shirt. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
His gaze narrowed as he picked up on the coolness in her voice. “I tried to ring but your cell seems to be turned off, and the hotel phone is off the hook. There’s been a change of plan. I’ve arranged a house for you to move into. It was originally a fortress, so it’s more secure than the hotel. If you can collect your things I’ll take you out now, then I thought we might go out for dinner.”
She stiffened at the calm way he was making arrangements, as if he’d smoothly moved past the minor glitch of almost losing her. Before she could stop herself, the question she’d promised herself she would not ask burst out of her. “Why don’t you ever talk about your first wife?”
His expression turned bleak. “The marriage ended years ago.”
Her fingers tightened on the doorknob. “But you haven’t forgotten her.”
“My wife died, that’s not something I’m likely to forget.”
Instantly, she felt guilty and contrite that she’d stirred up painful memories. Although that didn’t stop her wondering if the reason Gabe wasn’t falling for her was because he was still in love with his dead wife.
A group of cleaners, one pushing a trolley filled with cleaning products, strolled past, their expressions openly curious.
Gabe kept his gaze firmly fixed on her. “Why did you turn your phones off?”
Her brows jerked together at the probing question. She had only had her phones off for a couple of hours, while Gabe had been incommunicado for a whole week. “I bumped into Graham in the foyer. He tried to follow me to my room, then he started calling.”
“Southwell.” Gabe straightened, a grim fire burning in his gaze. “That’s why I’ve arranged the shift to the old fortress.”
He glanced at the cleaners who had stopped a short distance away and who seemed fascinated by their conversation. “We can’t discuss this in the corridor. Are you going to let me in?”
A little thrill shooting down her spine, she stepped back as Gabe stalked into her suite.
Closing the door, he crossed his arms over his chest. “What did Southwell want?”
“He wanted me to translate some Old French from the journal.”
Gabe looked briefly arrested. “You know Old French?”
“I did a couple of papers in historical linguistics.” She shrugged. “I’m not as good as Laine.”
He shook his head, the grimness morphing into an expression that made her heart race, as if he liked her quirky, oddball education, more, as if he liked her.
He shook his head slightly. “Damn,” he muttered. “Back to Southwell. If he ever comes near you again, call me immediately. And if you’re thinking of arguing about the move out to the house, you can forget it. I need you safe.”
Another small thrill shot down her spine at the flat series of commands, most especially the last statement, that G
abe needed her safe, as if her safety was personally important to him. And in that moment she knew that Gabe’s feelings toward her were neither neutral nor businesslike.
She had a sudden flashback to the night of the cocktail party at the Zahiri consulate, the moment when Gabe had walked out of the stormy night to rescue her.
The gloom that had enshrouded her when she had been focused on Gabe’s wife, Jasmine, dissipated. She had been concentrating on the past, but what was happening right now was significant. Gabe had gone out on a limb for her. He had changed his country’s constitution, brokered deals and canceled his marriage contract. He wanted her—enough that he’d made her pregnant. Now he wanted to put her in a fortress to keep her safe.
They were not the actions of a businessman wanting a marriage of convenience; they were the actions of a warrior with a passionate heart. A heart that had not been buried with his wife.
Twelve
The drive out to the house, which was situated on a cliff above Salamander Bay, took fifteen minutes along a narrow, winding road. The house itself stole Sarah’s breath, because although it had been extensively remodeled it was clear that the original structure had once been a cliff-top fortress.
Gabe introduced her to the resident housekeeper and gardener, Marie and Carlos.
She chose a room that had white walls and dark floorboards strewn with jewel-bright rugs, and which contained a huge four-poster bed draped with a filmy mosquito net. Light and airy French doors opened onto a stone balcony, and like many of the rooms she’d glimpsed, there was a spectacular view of the sea.
Sarah quickly unpacked then dressed for dinner in a softly draped red chiffon dress that floated off her shoulders and clung in all the right places. When she walked downstairs, Gabe strolled in from the terrace, which opened off a large sitting room that seemed filled with antique furniture and artwork.
Her interest piqued, she examined the carving on a chest that inhabited one corner of the room. “This must be a twelfth-century piece if it’s a day. Looks like it came off a ship.”
“It came off Camille’s ship, the Salamander. It’s one of the few objects that survived the wreck.” He nodded in the direction of the terrace. “If you want to see the remains of the Salamander, the outline of the hull, which is mostly buried, is still visible.”
Sarah followed Gabe out onto the windswept terrace.
Gabe leaned on the parapet, as he pointed out the shadowy outline of her ancestor’s ship, still visible where it had foundered in the rocky shallows of Salamander Bay.
Once she had seen the wreck, he hurried her back inside. “We need to discuss meeting my parents and we need to do it fast, because they’re on their way here.”
The sharp chiming of the doorbell sounded in the distance.
Gabe’s expression turned rueful. “Too late. They’ve already arrived.”
Moments later Sarah heard the click of high heels on ancient flagstones as Maria showed the Sheikh of Zahir and Gabe’s mother into the great room.
The sheikh was tall and lean with a dark, penetrating gaze. Forty years on, Gabe would look exactly like him. Gabe’s mother was slim and medium height. Despite being in her fifties, with her dark blond hair smoothed into a stylish short cut, she looked a good ten years younger than her husband.
The instant Hilary Kadir saw Sarah her face softened, and Sarah knew it was going to be all right.
Hilary gave Sarah a hug. “Your name’s Sarah?” Sarah barely had time to nod before Hilary continued. “Are you all right? Is he treating you okay?” She shot Gabe a faintly accusing look then smiled apologetically before introducing herself and her husband.
The sheikh was kind, but formal. From the paleness of his skin, Sarah guessed he was still unwell, so she hurried to offer him a seat then blushed because she’d been here less than an hour, and the house belonged to the Kadir family.
Hilary smiled. “We’re sorry for the ambush, but when I heard you were pregnant I couldn’t stay away. Since Jasmine—”
“Mom.”
Hilary frowned at Gabe and sent Sarah an apologetic look. “If we’d known there was a baby, we would have been in contact a whole lot sooner.”
Marie arrived with a tea tray.
Broodingly, Gabe watched as Sarah fielded his mother’s questions. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how on edge he had been about this particular meeting.
The turnaround in his thinking was immense and complete. He had gone from an organized, convenient marriage to marrying a woman he wanted. It was the exact opposite of the situation he had planned.
Gabe’s father was understandably cautious about the relationship, even with a baby on the way. Gabe knew that the biggest obstacle for his father right now was accepting the money situation, but he had finally handed the financial reins over to Gabe with his blessing.
His gaze rested on Sarah as she talked with his mother, who was a talented linguist. Whimsically, he wondered what his mother would think when she found out that, like her, Sarah could read Old French. Sarah reached up and adjusted a pin in her hair, and the memory of what it had felt like to have those strands cascade over his hands in a silky mass made him tense.
Dispassionately, he examined why he was so attracted to Sarah. Possibly it was because, with her double degree and forthright manner, she was as unlike Jasmine as it was possible to be. Although that wasn’t the whole of it, and the way he reacted to Southwell was a case in point.
Gabe considered the thought that he was jealous and dismissed it. Sarah was pregnant with his child, she was going to be his wife and Southwell was an unsavory character. There would be something wrong with him if he didn’t react possessively.
* * *
Hilary smiled at Sarah, her gaze narrowed shrewdly as she and her husband got ready to leave. “You love him, don’t you? I can tell.”
Sarah felt heat rise up in her cheeks. “Yes.”
She let out a breath, gripped by the thought that it was really that simple. She loved Gabe and she had from the first. A lot of things had happened that should have killed that love, but through all the reversals and the stinging betrayal of finding out he was engaged to Nadia, she hadn’t let go. Somehow her emotions were stubbornly anchored. She couldn’t imagine losing interest in Gabe; everything about him fascinated and drew her. She even loved his occasional bad temper because when it came down to it she would rather fight with Gabe than spend time with anyone else.
Although she had to be careful not to let him know that.
“He likes you,” Hilary said quietly. “And I think he’s over the moon that you’re pregnant. A lot of marriages have started with less.”
* * *
Gabe took Sarah to a small restaurant down on the waterfront, which had a private room. Seated on a balcony right over the water, the setting couldn’t have been more romantic. Although the dinner had a practical aspect. While they ate, Gabe filled her in on more family information, including the names of about twenty cousins, most of them female, and a raft of children.
“After meeting my mother you’ll understand why you need to know this stuff. She’s big on family.”
“I like your mother.” They’d chatted for ages, and Sarah had hemorrhaged most of her life story, including the two failed engagements. As appalled as she’d been over spilling those kinds of details, in the end she hadn’t minded because there had been a genuinely compassionate streak to Hilary Kadir.
After dinner, Gabe took her for a walk along the waterfront. The romanticism of the moonlit walk was somewhat marred by the fact that a very large bodyguard trailed them all the way.
She glanced at the guard, who was trying to look inconspicuous, but at six feet eight inches, with huge shoulders, that was difficult. “Do you always have a bodyguard?” Offhand she couldn’t remember seeing one in New Zealand.
Gabe looped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. “It depends. Sometimes I slip the leash.”
Half an hour later, Gabe dropped her off at the fortress house. He hadn’t suggested they sleep together, which had been obsessing her through the evening, because after what had happened at the beach house that afternoon she had assumed they would continue to sleep together. When his fingers tangled with hers when she opened the door, relief made her feel a little shaky and she found herself inviting him in.
The house was dark except for a couple of lamps left burning in the sitting room. Sarah automatically gravitated to the balcony, with its view. Gabe’s arms came around her and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to turn and kiss him. Long minutes later, he pulled her inside with him.
The perfumed warmth of the night air flowed around them as they undressed in her room. Somehow the more leisurely pace, so different from the fierce interlude in the beach house that afternoon, seemed even more intimate. Breathlessly she realized that this time they had all night.
With easy strength, Gabe swung her into his arms, lowered her to the bed and came down beside her. He cupped the small mound of her stomach then one rounded breast and she logged his curiosity.
“These are different.”
“They changed almost immediately.”
He bent his head and kissed each breast. The sensations low in her stomach coiled, tightened.
He lifted his head. “Do you want me to use a condom?”
The roughness of his voice and the jolting practicality of his question registered, but somehow couldn’t mar the magic of the night. He hadn’t asked the question when they’d made love earlier. She ran her hand down his chest, loving the heated feel of his skin. “Why use one when we don’t need it?”
He went very still. “Are you sure?”