by Liz Fielding
Unless he’d got it totally wrong and the text had been from Devenish announcing his imminent arrival, urging Rose to convince the paparazzi that she was alone before he joined her.
In which case her eager response to him, the way she had softened in the circle of his arms, surrendered her hands for him to do with what he would, was going to take a little-make that a lot of-explaining.
‘It’s not going to happen,’ she confirmed. ‘I’m afraid they’re going to have to make do with the clichéd Lady Rose, alone on a beach, how sad, picture.’
And it was his turn to feel the tension slide away from his shoulders.
But only halfway.
According to Lucy, Rose was falling apart because of the constant intrusion into her life. Ten years without being able to lift a finger unobserved, she’d said.
He wasn’t getting that impression from Rose. Far from it. She seemed totally relaxed about what could only be construed as a unwarranted intrusion into her private life.
‘And if they aren’t?’ he asked.
A tiny tremor rippled through her and he knew that there was a lot more to this than she was telling him.
‘Trust me, Rose,’ he said. ‘The picture will be a sensation.’ He reached for a towel, taking her hands, drying them one finger at a time. Then, because he was still angry with her, ‘And if I’m wrong you can always go for the topless option tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow will be too late…’
She caught herself, no doubt realising that she should have objected to the ‘topless’, not the ‘tomorrow’. But he had the answer to at least one of his questions.
For some reason she wanted a picture of herself on the front page and for some reason it had to be tomorrow. And he went straight back to that mysterious threat.
Was this what it was all about? Give me a photograph or…Or what?
What on earth could anyone have over the universally loved and admired ‘people’s angel’?
Except, of course, that the woman in his arms was not Rose Napier.
On some subconscious level he’d known that from the moment she’d walked into the VIP lounge at the airport. Right from the beginning, he’d sensed the split personality, the separation between the woman playing a role-and occasionally slipping-and the woman who shone through the disguise, lighting him up not just like a rocket, but the whole damn fourth of July scenario. Whoosh, bang, the sky filled with coloured stars.
He didn’t trust it, knew it was a temporary aberration, nothing but chemistry, but he finally understood why his grandfather had lost his head, lost his country over a woman.
He was here on a one-off last-chance mission and from the moment she’d appeared on the scene this woman had attacked all his systems like a virus taking over a computer memory, supplanting herself in place of everything that was vital, important, real.
Lucy had obviously told him a pack of lies-he was only here to inveigle his way into a meeting with Princess Sabirah, so why would he be bothered with something as important as the truth?
Presumably the real Rose was holed up in some private love nest with Rupert while this woman, this lovely woman who was superficially so like her, was nothing but a plant to keep the press focused on Bab el Sama.
So what had gone wrong? Had someone found out? Threatened to expose the switch? Directing his own personal photo shoot by text?
In which case he had no doubt that the topless scenario would be the next demand. Because, even if she was a fake, that picture would be worth millions to the photographer who delivered it to a picture agency.
‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ he said, tossing the towel aside, not sure who he was most angry with, Lucy or this woman, whoever she was, for putting at risk his own mission.
No, that was wrong. Lucy had used the situation to give him a chance. This woman had lit him up, responding to his kisses as if he was the last man on earth. Lies, lies, lies…
‘I guarantee you that there won’t be a picture editor in London who won’t grab that picture of you for their front page tomorrow.’
Her all too obvious relief flipped something in his brain and he stroked the pad of his thumb over the exquisite rose that curved invitingly across her breast in an insultingly intimate gesture, opened his mouth over her all too obvious response as the bud beneath the costume leapt to his touch.
Her throat moved as she swallowed, doing her best to ignore the intimacy of his touch, but the tiny shiver that rippled through her betrayed pleasure, desire, need and her response was not to pull away but buckle against him.
Too late, he discovered that he was the one caught in a lie, because it didn’t matter who she was, he desired her as he had never desired any other woman. Not just with his body, but with his heart, his soul and simply holding her was not enough.
Nothing could disguise from her how very much it wasn’t enough but, as the wildfire of desire swept through him, he was not alone. Her seeking lips found his neck, trailed moist kisses across his chin, touched his lips, her need as desperate as his.
‘Whoever you are,’ he murmured, looking down at her, ‘you can trust me on that…’
For a moment she looked at him, her mouth soft, her lids heavy with desire and the slow-burning fuse, lit in the moment their eyes had first met, of that unfinished kiss, lay between them.
The air was heavy with the desire of two people for whom the need to touch, to explore, to be one, blotted out memory, bypassed hard-learned lessons, destroyed reason.
Lydia heard him, understood what he was saying, but wrapped in the powerful arms of a man she desired beyond sense, this was not a time for questions, answers. Time was suspended. There was no past, no future. This was for now. Only the senses survived-scent, taste, touch-and she reached out and with her fingertips traced the perfection of Kal’s profile.
His wide forehead, the high-bridged nose, lingering to trace the outline of those beautifully carved lips.
The thin clothing pressed between them did nothing to disguise the urgent response of his body and she was seized by a surge of power, of certainty that this was her moment and, leaning into him so that her lips touched his, she whispered, ‘Please…’
As her fingers, her lips touched his, took possession of his mouth, Kalil al-Zaki, a man known for his ice-cold self-control, consigned his reputation to oblivion.
His arms were already about her and for a moment he allowed himself to be swept away. To feel instead of think.
Drink deep of the honeyed sweetness of a woman who was clever, funny, heartbreakingly lovely. Everything a man could ever want or desire.
Forget, just for a while, who he was. Why he was here.
Her mouth was like silk, her body eager, desperate even, but it wasn’t enough and, lost to all sense as he breathed in the scent of her skin, the hollows of her neck, her shoulders, he slowly peeled away the swimsuit to taste the true rosebuds it concealed.
Her response was eager, as urgent as his own, and yet, even as she offered him everything, he could not let go, forget the lies…
How she’d played the virgin, acted the seductress. Was this just another lie to buy his silence?
She whimpered into his mouth as he broke free, determined to regain control of his senses, yet unable to let go as she melted against him.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded helplessly. ‘Why are you here?’ When she didn’t answer he leaned back, needing to look her in the face, wanting her to see his. But her eyes were closed, as if by not seeing, she would be deaf to his words. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘Nothing!’ Then, more gently, ‘I’m sorry.’ And, without looking at him, she slowly disentangled herself and, shivering, clutched her costume to her and said, ‘You can g-go fishing now, Kal. I promise I’ll g-go and sit by the pool like the well behaved young woman I’m supposed to be.’
Torn between wanting her to behave and wanting her to be very, very bad indeed, he reassembled the shattered pieces of his cast-iron self-cont
rol, picked up his shirt and, taking her hands, fed them into the sleeves, buttoning it around her as if she were a child.
‘I’m going nowhere until you tell me the truth,’ he said. Then, with a muttered oath, ‘You’re shivering.’ She couldn’t be cold…‘What can I get you?’
‘A proper cup of tea?’ She sniffed and he lifted her chin, wiped a tear from beneath her eye.
Shivering, tears…He wanted to shake her, hold her, yell at her, make love to her…
‘Tea?’ he said, trying to get a grip.
‘Made in a mug with a tea bag, milk from a cow and two heaped spoons of sugar.’ She managed a rueful smile. ‘Stirred, not shaken.’
‘I’m glad your sense of humour survived intact,’ he said.
‘My sense of humour and everything else.’ She lifted her shoulders in a simple up and down shrug. ‘I’ve only come that close to losing my virginity once before, Kal. I’m beginning to think I’m destined to be an old maid and the really bad news is that I’m allergic to cats.’
Better make that two cups of hot, sweet tea, he thought, picking up the phone.
CHAPTER TEN
‘WHO are you?’
Lydia, her hands around the mug of tea he’d rustled up for her, was sitting in the shuttered balcony of her room, bars of sunlight slanting through into a very private space and shimmering off Kal’s naked shoulders.
‘What are you?’
‘Lydia. Lydia Young. I’ve been a professional lookalike pretty much from the moment that Lady Rose made her first appearance.’
‘Lydia.’ He repeated her name carefully, as if memorising it. ‘How old were you?’
‘Fifteen. I’m a few months younger than Rose.’ She sipped at the hot tea, shuddering at the sweetness. ‘How did you know?’ Then, because it was somehow more important, ‘When did you know?’
‘I think that on some level I always knew you weren’t Rose.’ He glanced at her. ‘I sensed a dual personality. Two people in the same body. And you have an unusual turn of phrase for a young woman with your supposedly sheltered upbringing. Then there was the Marchioness slaving over Sunday lunch. And Mrs Latimer.’
‘Year Six French.’ She took another sip of tea. ‘I knew you’d picked up on that. I hoped I’d covered it.’
‘You might have got away with it but once that text arrived you were in bits. It wasn’t difficult to work out that you’d be heading for the beach as soon as you’d got rid of me so, while I waited for you to show up, I took a look at the Internet, hoping to pick up some clue about what the hell was going on.’
‘What was the clincher?’ she asked. Not a Lady Rose word, but she wasn’t pretending any more.
‘You made the front page in that cute little hat you were wearing. The caption suggested that after recent concerns about your health you appeared to be full of life. Positively glowing, in fact. Fortunately for you, they put it down to true love.’
She groaned.
‘I should have done more with my make-up, but we were sure the veil would be enough. And it was all going so well that I might just have got a bit lippy with the photographers. What an idiot!’
‘Calm down. There was nothing in the stories to suggest that you were a fake,’ he assured her. ‘Just a recent photograph of Rose with Rupert and some salacious speculation about what you’d be doing here.’
‘But if you had no trouble spotting the difference-’
‘Only because I’ve become intimately acquainted with your face, your figure,’ he said. ‘I don’t pay a lot of attention to celebrity photographs, but the “people’s angel” is hard to miss and I expected someone less vivid. Not quite so…’ He seemed lost for an appropriate adjective.
‘Lippy?’ she offered helpfully.
‘I was going to say lively,’ he said, his eyes apparently riveted to her mouth. ‘But lippy will do. One look at the real thing and I knew you were someone else.’ Then, turning abruptly, he said, ‘So what’s going on? Where is Rose Napier? With Rupert Devenish?’
‘Good grief, I hope not.’
‘Strike two for Rupert. Lucy isn’t a fan either. I take it you’ve met him?’
‘I’ve seen him with her. He’s an old style aristocrat. Her grandfather,’ she explained, ‘but thirty years younger.’
‘Controlling.’
She thought about it for a moment, then nodded. ‘Rose and I met by chance one day. I’d been booked for a lookalike gig, a product launch at a swanky hotel. I had no idea Rose was going to be a guest at a lunch there or I’d have turned it down, but as I was leaving we came face to face. It could have been my worst nightmare but she was so sweet. She really is everything they say she is, you know.’
‘That’s another reason I saw through you.’ He reached out, wiped the pad of his thumb across her mouth. ‘You’re no angel, Lydia Young.’
She took another quick sip of her tea.
‘How is it?’
‘Just what the doctor ordered. Too hot, too sweet. Perfect, in fact.’
‘I’ll remember the formula.’
She looked at him. Remember? There was a future?
Realising just how stupid that was, she turned away. Just more shocks, she decided, and concentrated on getting through her story.
‘Rose spent a little too long chatting with me for Rupert’s liking and when he summoned her to heel she asked me how much I charged. In case she ever wanted an evening off.’
‘How much do you charge?’ he asked pointedly.
‘This one is on the house, Kal. I owe Rose. My father was killed in a car accident when I was ten years old. My mother was badly injured-’
‘Your brave, determined mother.’
‘She lost the man she loved, the use of her legs, her career in the blink of an eye, Kal.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She shook her head. It was a long time since she’d cried for the loss and when he reached out as if to take her hand, offer comfort, she moved it out of reach. Right now, comfort would undo her completely and she was in enough trouble without that.
‘Is this what you do? I mean, is it a full-time job?’
‘Hardly. Two or three gigs a month at the most. The day job is on the checkout at a supermarket. The manager is very good about me swapping shifts.’ She was going to tell him that he wanted her to take a management course. As if that would make any difference…‘The money I earn as Rose’s lookalike has made a real difference to my mother’s life.’
The electric wheelchair. The hand-operated sewing machine. The car she’d saved up for. And the endless driving lessons before she’d eventually passed her test.
‘So, like Rose, you have no other family?’
She shook her head.
‘And, like her, no lover? You are a beautiful, vivid woman, Lydia. I find that hard to believe.’
‘Yes, well, I live a rather peculiar life. My day job is in a supermarket, where staff and customers alike call me Rose despite the fact that I wear a badge with my real name on it. Where most of them can’t quite decide whether I’m fish or fowl. The rest of the time I’m pretending to be someone else.’
‘And taking care of your mother. I imagine that takes a chunk out of your time, too. Who is with her while you’re here?’
‘A friend stays with her sometimes so that I can take a holiday. And I’m not totally pathetic. I do get asked out. Of course I do. But I’m never sure exactly who they think they’re with.’
‘Someone must have got through. If we…If I…If that was the second time.’
She nodded. ‘He said he was a law student. He always came to my checkout at the supermarket. Chatted. Brought me tiny gifts. Wooed me with sweet words and posies, flattery and patience. Endless patience. It was weeks before he asked me out.’
Months before he’d suggested more than a kiss. So long that she’d been burning up with frustration. Ready to go off like a fire-cracker.
‘It was the patience that did it,’ she said. ‘The understanding. How many men are
prepared to put up with the missed dates, always coming second to my mother, the job, the gigs? To wait?’
‘A man will wait for what is precious,’ Kal said.
‘And who could resist that?’ Not her. She’d fallen like a ton of bricks. ‘It was that flash, bang, wallop love thing that you so distrust, Kal. In this case with good reason because when I say precious, I do mean precious. My worth, it seems, was above rubies.’
She could have made a lot of money selling the story to the newspapers but she’d never told anyone what had happened. Not her mother. Not her friends. Not even the agency that employed her. But, sitting here in this quiet space above a beautiful garden carved out of the desert, nothing but the truth would do. She had lied to Kal, hidden who she was, and if she was to win his trust now, win him over so that she could fulfil her promise to Rose, she had to strip herself bare, tell him everything.
‘When he asked me to go away for the weekend I felt like the sun was shining just for me. He made it so special, booked the honeymoon suite in a gorgeous hotel in the Cotswolds. I suppose I should have wondered how a student could afford it, but I was in love. Not thinking at all.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘Nothing, fortunately. The “Lady Rose” effect saved me.’
He frowned. Well, why wouldn’t he? Unless you’d lived it, how would anyone know?
‘An elderly chambermaid-a woman who’d seen just about everything in a long career making beds-thought I was Rose and she waylaid me in the corridor to warn me, told me where to find the hidden cameras.’
She swallowed. Even now the memory of it chilled her.
‘When I confronted my “student” he confessed that he was an actor who’d been hired to seduce me by a photographer who intended to make a fortune selling pictures of “Lady Rose” losing her virginity with some good-looking stud. Someone who worked in the hotel was in on it, of course. He even offered me a cut of the proceeds if I’d go ahead with it since, as he so eloquently put it, “I was gagging for it anyway”. I declined and since then…’ she shrugged ‘…let’s say I’ve been cautious.’