‘I’ve known Raoul almost all of my life,’ she murmured. ‘We—all the crowd on the island have been meeting up for holidays there since we were small children. Flirting and teasing was part of the group culture but no one ever took it further than that.’
‘But he decided to.’
‘We hadn’t seen him for a couple of years,’ she explained. ‘When he came back to the island this summer, he’d changed. We all noticed it, wondered why, but Raoul refused to talk about it. So we drew our own conclusions and decided it had to be a failed love affair or a fall-out with his brother, André, for whom he’d always nurtured a resentment. But never in my wild imaginings did I think he had changed so much that he was capable of pulling something like that.’
‘Forget it, it’s over.’
‘But maybe it was my fault. Maybe I did lead him on.’
‘You know that isn’t true, so we aren’t getting into that,’ Ethan said firmly.
Eve pressed back against him and said no more. Beyond the window she watched her grandfather’s car taking off down the driveway. The roof was folded away so she could see Aidan sitting next to him. They would be going to a local café where they would drink coffee while Aidan told her grandfather all his woes, and her grandfather would relay wise advice, previously discussed and decided upon with Aidan’s older brother, Patrick. It was how it had always worked since Eve had lost her parents and Aidan had lost his in the same car accident, leaving Grandpa to play the role of wise counsellor to both families. Strange really, she mused. But, thinking about it, Raoul had shown signs of resentment to that closeness too.
‘Where’s your ring?’
Glancing down, she realised that her hands were lost in the clasp of his and his thumb was stroking her naked ring finger in much the same way as her own had been doing every since she’d taken the ring off.
‘Tigger has it,’ she said.
‘And where is Tigger?’
‘In my dressing room with his friends.’ She went to move. ‘Do you want me to go and—?’
‘No.’ He stopped her. ‘We haven’t finished here yet.’
‘Finished what?’ Foolishly she turned in his arms to face him—foolishly, because she should have guessed what was coming, but didn’t; so his kiss when it arrived took her breath away.
It was fierce and it was greedy. It brought her hands around his neck and placed his hands on her hip-bones so he could pull her close. She came alive for the first time in too many days to dare think about.
He whispered something into her mouth. ‘Marry me,’ he said.
‘I’m not on my knees.’
‘You can go there later. Just say yes.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Ethan released a soft laugh. ‘Now tell me you love me.’ He was going for broke here.
‘I love you,’ she softly complied.
After that, things moved on a pace. They found the bed, they lost their clothes, Ethan found his little red-painted heart. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this here,’ he thought to remark when it was already way too late. ‘This is your grandfather’s house. It shows a lack of respect.’
‘I don’t recall you being so sensitive when you seduced me in Victor Frayne’s house,’ Eve pointed out.
It more or less put the lid on his conscience so that he could sink himself into what he had started.
Later, much later, they lay in a tangle of satiated limbs. ‘You do know I love you to distraction, don’t you?’ he told her solemnly. ‘Leona was—’ He stopped, then started the same sentence from a different place. ‘I think I only ever loved the idea of loving someone like Leona.’ He thought that said it best. ‘But in Rahman, when I looked at her, I couldn’t even see her face because your beautiful face insisted on imprinting itself over the top of hers. No, don’t cry.’
‘I’m not crying.’ But there were tears in her beautiful eyes, nonetheless. ‘I just needed you to say that.’
It cut him to the quick—which he knew he deserved. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say it a long time ago.’
She wound her arms around him; he drew her close. They sighed together as their mouths joined. No complicating sex this time, just love and caring and—’
‘Get dressed,’ he decided suddenly.
‘Why?’ she protested. Eve was perfectly happy where she was.
‘We are going to play the rest of this relationship by the book. So we get dressed, then we will go out and find you something amazing to wear in hot-pink for our official betrothal tonight. Then we get married—next week,’ he added as a frowning afterthought. ‘Because I don’t think we can behave ourselves for longer than that.’
‘You won’t last a week,’ Eve informed him a short ten minutes later as they left her room and his hand was already checking out the smooth line of her bottom.
‘I suppose you are going to make it your mission to prove yourself right.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said airily. ‘I love a good challenge.’
She won, but then she usually did. Eve the flirt, Eve the temptress, went to her marriage bed every night that week.
The Arabian Love-Child
By Michelle Reid
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
CHAPTER ONE
RAFIQ AL-QADIM climbed out of the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine and strode through the plate-glass doors that guarded the International Bank of Rahman. In the clenched fist of one hand he held a rolled-up newspaper, in his eyes glowed a look that foretold of hell to pay for some poor fool. Hurrying behind him, his newly appointed aide, Kadir Al-Kadir, was wearing an expression that suggested he might be that very unfortunate person.
As Rafiq struck a direct line for the row of steel lifts set into a wall of grey marble, people in his path took one look at him and began backing away to give the big man an uninterrupted passage to his target. He didn’t notice; he was too consumed by the blinding fury that carried his intimidating six-foot-four-inch frame into the nearest vacant lift. A dark-suited arm shot out; a decidedly murderous finger stabbed at the button for the top floor. The lift doors shut out Kadir Al-Kadir and the sea of stunned faces. No one who’d had any dealings with Rafiq Al-Qadim had ever seen him appear anything but formidably controlled.
But he was not in control. Rafiq had never been so angry. Rage was literally bouncing inside him, fighting to get out and vent itself. The lift took less than fifteen seconds to reach its destination. The doors opened; he strode out. Nadia, his secretary, took one look at his face, paled and shot to her feet.
‘Good morning, sir,’ she greeted warily. ‘There have been several messages for you and your first appointment arrives in—’
‘No calls. Nothing.’ He cut right across her and kept on walking, each of his powerfully constructed, sleekly toned muscles moving him with stallion-like grace to behind his office door, leaving Nadia staring after him in a state of near shock, for she too had never known Mr Rafiq to be anything but staunchly even-tempered and rigidly polite.
Rafiq’s private office was a statement in architectural drama. High ceilings, marble floors, a window that was a wall of glass, in front of which a large slab of grey marble rested on legs of forged steel. As he moved across to it the pale sunlight of a London winter morning shot shards of cold steel through his black hair and added a sharpened cast to his lean dark profile that spoke of his ruthless Arab heritage.
Stepping around the edges of the slab of marble, he slammed the newspaper down on its smooth grey top. It unfurled on impact, showing him the inner-page headline that his aide had helpfully presented to him. It was Kadir’s job to scour the world’s newspapers, his job to mark those items he believed would be of interest to the acting head of the International Bank of Rahman. But Kadir would not be making the same mistake again very quickly, Rafiq mused as he glared at the r
eason for all of his anger. He had been duped, he’d been betrayed, he had been taken for a fool by a woman. And there it was, splashed all over the page of a Spanish tabloid: his private life uncovered, picked over and mocked at.
‘SHOCK ANNOUNCEMENT,’ block capitals proclaimed. ‘SERENA CORDERO DROPS BILLIONAIRE SHEIKH TO MARRY HER DANCE PARTNER, CARLOS MONTEZ.’
His skin began prickling against his clothing, sharp white teeth setting behind the grim line of his mouth. Only two months ago she had been clinging to him like a limpet, adoring him, begging him, telling him she could never love anyone else.
The liar, the cheat, the unfaithful little slut. As far back as six months ago his brother Hassan had warned him about Serena and Carlos Montez. Rafiq had dismissed those rumours as mere publicity to add spice to the current world tour the two flamenco dancers were embarked upon. Now he knew the truth and he could taste the bitterness of his own conceit and arrogance at having believed that Serena could not have wanted another man while she could have had him. Only twice before in his life had he ever been betrayed by a woman: once by his mother, and once by the only woman he had ever let himself love. After that last bitter experience he had vowed he would never be betrayed like that again.
Yet here he stood, pulled into the betrayal trap by yet another woman, and he was so angry he could spit nails into the half-page picture of the beautiful Serena, smiling into her new husband’s handsome face.
His mobile phone began to ring; dragging it out of his pocket he put it to his ear.
‘Querida, please don’t hang up. I need you to listen to me!’
His face, like his height and the tough, muscled build of his body, made no compromises at the best of times but the low dark sensual tones that hit his ear made his face take on properties as cold as the marble and steel that surrounded him.
‘The tour is in trouble. We needed a sensation to put our names on people’s lips. I love you, Rafiq. You know I do. But marriage between us was never a possibility. Can you not accept this situation for what it is?’
‘You are someone else’s wife. Do not call me again,’ he incised, and broke the connection before tossing the phone from him as if it was contaminated.
Silence arrived, buzzing in his ears like a thousand wasp wings. In front of him lay the discarded phone and the damning newspaper. Behind him lay the rest of the world who would now be laughing at him. He was an Arab in every way you wished to look at him. Make an Arab look a fool and you win yourself a life-long enemy.
Eyes like black opals turned almost silver at the prospect. Picking up the newspaper, he flung it sideways and watched as it landed in the waste-paper bin. Serena Cordero’s name would never reach his eyes again, he vowed as the other telephone sitting on his desk dared to start ringing. Black opals fired as a hand snaked down and long fingers closed round grey plastic as if it was someone’s throat. ‘I thought I said no calls!’ he bit into the mouthpiece.
‘By your tone I presume you have seen the news today,’ a very dry voice drawled into his ear.
His half-brother, Hassan. He should have expected it. He swung himself down into his black leather desk chair. ‘If you have called me to say I told you so, then take my advice and try silence,’ Rafiq returned grimly.
‘May I commiserate?’ Hassan wryly suggested.
‘You may mind your own business,’ he snapped, then added tautly, ‘Does our father know?’
‘You think we swap gossip about your love life?’
‘I don’t have a love life,’ Rafiq hit back with bite. This had been part of the problem with Serena. Finding a time when their busy schedules came to together had been almost impossible. If he had seen her twice in the last few months he could well be exaggerating, for while Serena had been travelling the world in one direction with her flamenco dance troupe he had been travelling in the other direction, attending to business duties that usually belonged to Hassan.
‘How is Father?’ he enquired as one thought led to another.
‘He is well,’ his brother assured him. ‘His blood count is good and his spirit is high. Don’t worry about him, Rafiq,’ Hassan added gently. ‘He means to meet his first grandchild, believe me.’
This time Rafiq’s sigh was heavy. The last six months had been a trial for all of them. The old sheikh’s illness had been long and miserable, spanning years of waste and pain. But six months ago it had almost taken him from them. With thanks to Allah, he had rallied on hearing the news about his coming grandchild. Now the disease was in remission, but no one could say how long it would remain that way. So it had been decided that from then on one of the two brothers must always be at home with their father. He needed the comfort of their presence. They needed to know that one of them would be there if his new-found strength should suddenly fade again. With Hassan’s wife Leona in the latter stages of a much prayed for pregnancy, Hassan had elected to stay at home and deal with internal matters of state while Rafiq did all the travelling, taking care of the family’s international business interests.
‘And Leona?’ he enquired next.
‘Round,’ her husband drawled satirically. But Rafiq could hear the pleasure there, the love and the pride. He wished he knew what those things felt like.
Then, he told himself forcefully, no, he was not going to go down that particularly rocky pathway, and turned the conversation to the less volatile subject of business. But when he rang off he continued to sit there seething and brooding and contrarily wondering why it was that he was so angry.
He had never loved Serena. She had been speaking the truth when she’d said marriage between them had never been a possibility. She was beautiful and hot—the perfect bed partner, in fact—but love had never been the engine that drove them through the passages of pleasure, even if she’d liked to use the word to him. It had been sex, good sex, but just sex for both of them. And sitting here wishing for love like his brother had was a damn fool’s game.
But the small lecture brought him to his feet and sent him to stand staring out of the window. He was remembering a time when he had once thought he had found the kind of love Hassan was enjoying—had believed he held it in his hand like a precious diamond only to discover it was merely paste. Since then he had never looked for love; he had no wish to feel its tortuous grip again, harboured no burning desire to pass on his genetic fingerprint. That delight belonged to Hassan and Leona, both of whom were worthy candidates to make the successful genetic mix. Whereas he…
That muscle within his chest called a heart gave a squeeze and he grimaced at the sensation. Alone. The sensation spoke to him of a bleak dark sense of aloneness that made him envy all of those people he could see moving about in the street below because they probably had good wholesome relationships to go home to at night, while he—
Well, he stood up here in his marble tower, personifying the rich and powerful and enviously privileged, when sometimes, like now, he felt as poor as any beggar you might pick out on any street corner—emotionally anyway.
Serena’s fault? No, not Serena but that other woman, the one with hair with the same golden sheen he could see on the woman standing in the street below. Melanie had ruined him. With a calculation that belied her beauty, her shyness and innocence, she had taken a younger Rafiq, full of confidence and optimism, and had turned him into this hardened cynic he was today.
Where was she now? he found himself pondering sombrely. What had the last eight years done for Melanie? Did she ever think of him and what their affair had done to him? Or had she simply moved on, left him so far behind that she would struggle to remember his name if they had the misfortune to come up against each other again? He guessed the latter—he knew the latter. Melanie might have possessed the face of an angel but she owned the heart of a harlot. Harlots did not remember names; one merged in with the many.
Behind him his mobile phone burst into life again. It would be that other harlot, Serena, he decided. She was not the kind of woman to give up easily. Did he answer? Did
he leave it? Had he dropped down so low in his own estimation that he was actually asking himself those questions? His teeth came together, gleaming white against the satin darkness of his olive-toned skin as he let the phone ring and glared down at the street where the woman with the golden hair was still hovering, as if she was unsure what she was doing or where she was going. He understood the feeling, could even sympathise with it.
In fact, the golden-haired stranger had more chance of getting him to answer her call than Serena did, was his final thought on the subject of female betrayal.
Standing on the pavement outside the imposing marble, glass and forged-steel frontage of the International Bank of Rahman, Melanie tried very hard to convince herself that she was doing the right thing by coming here. The building was big, and it was bold; it spoke of no compromises when she knew she desperately needed many compromises if her plan was to succeed.
Could it succeed? Was she wasting her time by coming here to see a man she knew from experience held no respect for her at all? Remember what he said, remember what he did, a small voice in her head cautioned. Turn around, Melanie, and walk away.
But walking away was the easy option. And easy options had never come to her. It was either do this or go home and tell Robbie nothing, she determined. And if those two options were not the same as being caught between a rock and a hard place, then she didn’t know what was.
So, think of Robbie, she told herself firmly, and set her reluctant feet moving towards a giant pair of plate-glass doors reinforced by solid-steel tubing that defended the entrance to one of the most prestigious investment banks in the world. As she approached she glimpsed her own reflection in the polished glass doors and didn’t much like what she saw: a too-slender woman with pale hair caught into a neat little topknot and an even paler complexion touched by strain. Her eyes looked too big, her mouth too vulnerable. Overall she looked just too darn fragile to be taking on an arrogant giant like Rafiq Al-Qadim. He’ll step on you and not even notice, she warned her reflection. He’ll do what he did to you the last time and freeze you out with his black opal stare.
Hot-Blooded Husbands Bundle Page 35