“Our health care system is excellent,” he assured her.
“Perhaps. But Elena spoke to me of Mashana, a hospital in the old town.”
“I have heard of it,” he said, frowning so that a small crease formed on his forehead.
“It’s not excellent. It’s badly out of date.”
“Elena told you this?”
“Yes, but I went there to see for myself as well.”
“You did what?” He stared into her face with consternation. “You had better tell me you at least took security.”
“Yes. I would have no idea how to get out of this palace, and certainly not into the city.”
The unpleasant sense of having her captive played on his mind.
“The hospital is as she’d described. And so I gave them money. I gave them almost everything you gave me.”
“Laurie,” he murmured, shaking his head slowly, a smile on his lips. “You did not need to do that.”
“Trust me, Afida, the hospital needs funds.”
He waved a hand dismissively in the air. “And if you’d come to me, I would have arranged it. That money was for you.”
“Yes. Good. I was hoping you’d say that. Because the hospital will need ten times what I donated. Possibly more. It’s overcrowded, with beds in the corridors. The nurses are harried, the walls are peeling, the equipment makes strange buzzing and lurching noises.”
“And you want to fix it,” he suggested, a slightly teasing tone in his gruff voice.
“Yes. In my mother’s name, I want to fix it.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?” Her eyebrows shot up, and her smile was possibly the most beautiful thing Afida had ever seen. He swallowed his own smile, keeping his countenance reserved.
“Yes, fine. I presume you will want to have input in its development.”
“Yes.” Her smile turned into a laugh. “Oh, yes!” She threw her arms around his neck, engulfing him in her. Her fragrance, her happiness and her soul. “I’m so grateful. If you could see this place …”
He disentangled himself from her gently. “I trust you.”
Out of nowhere, it occurred to her that she was, quite literally, throwing herself at him. “I’m sorry,” she shuffled backwards, putting some space between them. “I’m just so relieved. I’ll go back this evening and tell Fatima.”
“Stop.” He held up a hand, causing her breath to snatch in her throat. “I have one condition.”
“You do?” Her heart began to thump against her rib cage. “What is it?”
“Swim with me now.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Afida,” she bit down on her lip. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“No.” He answered honesty. “I think it is stupid and I will regret suggesting it, but also that it is hot, and I will regret even more if you leave me here.”
She moaned softly. “It’s crazy.”
“It is simply a swim.”
Neither of them believed that. The silence hummed with the promise of what might happen if she succumbed to his suggestion.
She exhaled a sigh. “I …”
“Come. It is very warm. You will feel better.”
He held his hands out to her and pulled her to standing with him. With his eyes on her face, he reached around with the intention of unzipping her dress. But the shame she’d felt on their wedding night was a difficult sensation to shake. “You were angry with me.”
“Angry? When?”
“The night we married.”
“I was surprised,” he replied, his face dark.
“I wanted to tell you.”
“But I didn’t listen,” he supplied with a rueful smile on his handsome lips.
“What happened here?” She lifted a finger to his cheek, tracing the scar.
“Swim with me and I’ll tell you.”
“I’m sorry.” Her eyes were bleak. “The other night, I was caught off guard. As you now know, I’m not very experienced at all. I can’t lie to you. I find this overwhelming. You just have to look at me and I go weak at the knees.”
“Weak at the knees?” He was teasing her, his lips twitching with a masked smile.
“Yes,” she ploughed on regardless. “I wish I didn’t. I wish I didn’t feel this way. Because I can’t be with you again. I can’t flirt with you and let you make love to me. I can’t let you kiss me. I don’t want you to touch me.”
“You don’t?” He pushed, already wanting to wrap his arms around her and kiss some sense into her.
“No. I know this isn’t a real marriage. I’m no one to you. An inconvenience.”
“Laurie ---,”
“I heard you, remember? I know it to be true. And that’s okay. Like I’ve said, I’ll always be grateful to you for what you’ve done for dad. But this marriage is just … Even though it’s a sham, I still don’t condone infidelity. You have a lover. Maybe more than one, I don’t know. But I’m definitely not the kind of woman who can share a man.”
“I am not asking you to.”
“No. You’re expecting me to do so without the courtesy of asking. And I won’t do it. Do you have any idea how awful I’ve felt after our wedding? I swore to May that I wouldn’t get in the middle of what you guys have, and then I begged you to make love to me.” She spun away from him, her anguish obvious. “I don’t really know her, but I know what I would expect her to do if our positions were reversed. I can’t let that happen again.” She squared her shoulders and stepped away from him with steely determination. At the entrance to the stairwell, she turned back to him. Without meeting his eyes, she said firmly, “I presume I’m safe to relay your financial support to Fatima?”
He stared at her in complete silence.
This woman had a dangerous skill when it came to surprising him. He nodded finally, a slow movement that was, apparently, all she was waiting for. She was gone, and yet the sticky question of their marriage remained.
His impressions of her had been formed from very impartial information. He had garnered the most basic facts and made his own snap judgements about her worthiness and character. He’d used their marriage to punish her, because he’d thought her to be a cheap, sexually loose, morally questionable woman who didn’t give a crap about the man who’d raised her.
And now?
She was a fucking saint.
A woman who’d buried herself in debt to provide her mother with the best possible care; a woman who’d lied to her father to save him the mortification of realising he could no longer help; and a woman who’d agreed to marry a stranger out of love for her father. She was a woman who was brimming with compassion for everyone she met, even his mistress.
Yes, he’d erred, and there was no easy way to set it to rights.
9
“I need to speak with you,” Laurie’s face was as white as a sheet, and her hair, usually perfect these days, was loosely braided down her back. It was like the first time he’d met her. He stared at her with a sense of nostalgia.
“Did you go to the hospital?”
“Yes. Last night.” She frowned. “Fatima was thrilled. Of course.”
“I am pleased. What is it I can help you with now? A school you want to save?”
She smiled at him tartly and stepped closer, her hands wringing in front of her. “No.”
Something in her tone conveyed to him that this was a serious matter.
“Laurie, what has happened? Has someone upset you?”
She shot him a furious look. “Yes, frankly.”
“What? Who?”
“Your lover,” she spat.
Afida froze. It was not possible for Laurie to be jealous. He’d seen for himself how relaxed she was at the very idea of his relationship with May. A lesser man would have been offended by her lack of interest in him.
“Yes?” He prompted warily.
“I can accept her place in your life …”
“So long as I don’t touch you again?�
�� He interjected softly.
“Yes.” She lifted her fingers to her temples and rubbed as though she could physically relieve her swimming head. “But I don’t want her speaking to my father.”
Afida froze. “To David? May is speaking to David?”
“In the garden. I was just jogging,” he looked down and noticed her outfit for the first time.
“You know we have a gym,” he interrupted, distracted momentarily by the way the lycra hugged her legs. “An excellent one.”
She waved a hand through the air, dismissing his comment. “And I saw them in the quince grove. May was laughing at something he’d said. I watched them for ten minutes. They looked like old friends.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “I know you don’t intend to give her up. I heard you say as much, and I know I don’t have the right to ask you to. But this is too much.”
He was tempted to point out how unusual it was that May’s interactions with David should upset her more than an affair with Afida, only he didn’t. It just served to underscore that she didn’t consider herself to have any claim on him. Her husband.
“Why does it upset you?” He said quietly.
“It’s disrespectful.”
“To you? This I find hard to believe. You’ve all but begged me to continue having an affair with the woman without batting an eyelid …”
“Yes. That’s between you and me, and you and her. My father cannot find out about us. He can’t know that this marriage is fake. I won’t have her make a fool of him the way she is of me.”
She had said way too much. In truth, she hadn’t even known she felt that way.
Afida’s face was dark. “I have had enough of this.” He spoke harshly. “Come with me.”
“Where are we…?” He paused at the door and fired a series of instructions in his own language to a servant. Laurie was picking up more and more of the language, yet she couldn’t catch even the gist of what he’d said.
He kept a hand on her elbow as he moved her through the palace and then up another flight of ornately carved stairs, onto a rooftop. There was a shimmering black helicopter in the distance; it glowed in the afternoon light. “Get in.”
“Excuse me,” she stopped walking, her eyes round in her face. “Stop bossing me around.”
“Get in the damned helicopter, Laurena.”
“No. Not until you tell me where we’re going.”
He made a grunt of anger. “You drive me crazy, do you know this? No one in my life has ever spoken back to me the way you do.”
“You’re the one who believes I’m too British to be egalitarian, and so it might surprise you to learn that I consider myself your equal. I do not feel like I can’t speak back to you. Especially when you’re behaving like an idiot.”
A muscle in his jaw flecked.
“May is in my past.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure.”
He compressed his lips. “We were together a long time. I didn’t realise, immediately, that I could not have her and you at the same time. I didn’t realise that I would even want you.”
Laurie’s breath caught in her throat. “She told me…”
“She told you what a jealous woman would tell her ex-lover’s new wife. And you bought it, hook line and sinker. In fact, you all but invited her to continue in my life.”
“I … thought it to be what you wanted.”
“Do I strike you as a man who would find it hard to express his desires?”
Her cheeks flushed. “I don’t know. I don’t really know you.”
“Then know this.” He gripped her elbow and leaned his face close to hers. “I want only you. I want to make your body mine. I fantasise about bringing you back to life in my arms. So get in the helicopter and let me take you somewhere private. Somewhere distant from this madness.”
“You don’t want me,” she challenged.
“Your experience is limited, zivzel, but believe me, you are a fire in my soul. I want you and I have no hesitation in telling you that I will want you for a long time to come.”
She wrapped her arms around her chest, her mind lurching from reality to confusion. “I don’t believe you.”
“Get in.”
She shook her head, and he made a guttural sound of annoyance before scooping her over his shoulder and walking with her to the Airbus. He pulled the door open and settled her onto the beige leather seat, then stalked around to his side.
It was Laurie’s first time in a helicopter, and she was momentarily thrown off kilter by the surprising luxury of the fit out. Far from utilitarian, it felt like she was sitting in a top of the line Rolls Royce. Elegant wood panelling met the pale interior, and she noticed – before he moved his frame into the pilot’s seat – that there were golden royal emblems on the seat backs. She tossed a quick look over her shoulder and saw more hallmarks of unimaginable wealth. More pale leather seats, these like four arm chairs all facing one another, with phones in each arm rest, and a small fridge between two of them. She could see it was stocked full, but could only make out the label of a famous French champagne.
Her attention was called back to the windows in front of her, which stretched from the very top of the helicopter down to where her running shoes met the floor. Her view was unimpeded, except by Afida, who was lifting the straps over her shoulders and latching them into the port between her legs.
His eyes glowed as they met hers. “You should not fight me all the time. Occasionally, allow me to be right.”
She glared at him mutinously. “I heard you tell Elon …”
His face was so close she could see the detail of his scar up close, and the thickness of his long, black lashes that seemed to form a line around his eyes. “You heard the ramblings of a man swinging from one disastrous statement to another. I did not know how to justify my behaviour to him – Elon knows me better than anyone, and he knew that my plan was insanity brought to life. I said what I needed to in order to explain my actions.”
Laurie settled back into the chair, but she was far from convinced.
“My father and May …”
Afida pulled large black earphones over his head, his expression grim. “Elon will go to them.”
“Why is she even here?”
He flicked several of the buttons and switches and then sent her a simmering look. “Later.”
The rota blades were too loud to allow any further conversation. The helicopter lifted with a small shudder, up high in to the sky and away from the palace. The deserts stretched without a visible break for miles and miles.
Laurie stared down at the crisp white sand, her hands clasped in her lap. But when Afida veered the chopper sharply to the right, and the white sand began to ripple, giving way to hundreds of water formations, she gasped audibly and fumbled for her own earphones. She pulled them on with a sense of wonder and fascination. “What is this place?”
Her smile was breath taking, because in spite of the unpleasant circumstances that had brought about their escape, they had escaped.
“The dunes of Alija,” he said. “I grew up with these in my backyard and yet still they stun me every time I fly over them.”
The water was the most perfect shade of turquoise, and the sand a sparkling white. They stretched as far as the eye could see. Further afield, there were soft white dunes forming mountains against the azure sky.
He began to bring the helicopter down lower, closer to the sand, and Laurie craned as far forward as her seatbelt would allow. As they got closer, the water seemed to sparkle more vividly, as though its very surface was covered in diamonds.
“We’re landing,” she murmured, unable to halt the smile on her lips.
“We’re landing.” He confirmed, expertly dropping the craft onto the soft sand with barely a thud.
The rota blades slowed to a stop while Afida set about pressing more buttons and switches and then he unhooked his ear pieces.
“You ready?”
“What?”
His lips curved in a
delicious sign of amusement as he reached across and removed hers, too. She looked so like the woman he’d first met, it was almost like time had wrapped around them and given him a second chance. Almost, but not quite. Going back wasn’t possible; nor was undoing the past. But in that moment, with the sun bathing her in golden light, she looked innocent and as he would always remember her.
His stomach flipped in a way that was foreign to him, and he reached over and unbuckled her seatbelt, keeping his touch brief.
But Laurie was nervous.
Her tension was a palpable force vibrating from her. He ran a hand over her head, until her eyes lifted to his. They were withdrawn. She was with him, but she was guarding herself.
A wise precaution.
He jumped from his side of the copter then moved swiftly to hers. If he wanted this to work then he would need to overwhelm her with the one thing she couldn’t control. She had an emotional strength that he couldn’t fathom, but when it came to her need for him, she was weak, and he was not above exploiting that.
His hands around her waist were strong and commanding, and little fires of lust burned through her body. He was just helping her out of the helicopter, and yet the contact was what she’d been craving. She stared into his eyes, helpless and lost as her hands lifted to his chest.
Something passed between them. An understanding that was bigger than both of them. Her throat was dry and her lips tingled; she wanted him to kiss her. She needed him to kiss her.
“Can you smell it?”
“Smell it?” She stared at him in confusion. What could she smell? All of her senses were blinded by this man. He was a shield to anything other than desire.
She blinked and inhaled, and her face lit up with surprise. “It’s so sweet. What is that?”
He kept his hands on her hips, his eyes locked to hers. “It’s the water.”
“The water?” She smiled in disbelief. “It smells like raspberries.”
Clare Connelly Pairs II Page 10