The Husband She Never Knew

She stilled, the cover sliding from under her nerveless fingers. ‘You haven’t,’ she said after a long charged moment, ‘been my husband for ten years.’ And he’d never truly been her husband, never in the way that mattered most.

‘I know that.’ He looked away again, everything about him—his voice, his expression—seeming to harden. ‘We’ll talk of this later. We’re about to arrive, and I’m sure you’d like a moment to compose yourself.’ He rose from the chair. ‘There are clothes in the wardrobe. I’ll meet you out in the main cabin when you are ready.’ He spoke coolly, issuing these instructions with every expectation of being obeyed. It reminded Noelle of the man he’d been after their marriage, and she hated it. Hated remembering how different Ammar had seemed, how different she’d been with him, confused, needy and so unhappy, her dreams turning to dust, hopes to ash.

‘I’ll stay here.’ It was a small act of independence, but in her current situation it was all she could manage.

Ammar shrugged, then nodded his assent. ‘Very well.’ And then he was gone.

Ammar paced the main cabin of the plane, feeling as trapped as Noelle surely was. Nothing was going the way he had hoped. He’d handled everything wrong, he saw now, from the moment he’d accosted her in the hotel, to the clumsy abduction of her from the street, to the conversation he’d just had. He was a man who had millions at his disposal, thousands of employees to do his bidding and even more people who regarded him with both awe and fear, yet one slip of a woman defeated him. All the words he wanted to say, all the things he felt, tangled up inside him so he couldn’t get any of it out. He didn’t even know the words. He missed her, he wanted her, he needed her, but how he did tell her that without issuing a command?

Never show weakness. Never beg or even ask.

The rules his father had drilled into him were impossible to break or ignore. He’d learned them the hard way, by his father’s fist, starting on his eighth birthday when Balkri Tannous had taken him from the playroom and his brother’s side and, in the sanctified solitude of his study, hit him hard across the face without warning.

It had begun then and there, his education, the forming of his very self. How did he shed it? How did he change?

‘Mr Tannous?’ Abdul, one of his staff, appeared in the doorway. ‘We land in ten minutes.’

‘Very good.’ He glanced back at the door to the bedroom and, after a second’s hesitation he rapped on it sharply. ‘We’re about to land, Noelle. It would be safer for you to sit in here, in a proper seat.’

The door was wrenched open and Noelle stood there, still wearing her crumpled grey dress. She’d washed her face and brushed her hair, but he still saw dark shadows under her eyes, the anger flaring in their hazel depths.

She didn’t speak as she moved past him and sat down, buckling the lap belt. Ammar sat across from her. He tried to think of something to say, some words to bridge the gulf between them, but nothing came. Kidnapping her had been just about the worst way to go about this. Yet how to make amends?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said abruptly, and she turned to face him, surprise flaring in her eyes.

‘Sorry for what?’

‘For … abducting you.’

‘And do you think I should accept your apology?’ She let out a short, unfriendly laugh and rolled her eyes. ‘No problem, Ammar. Mistakes happen.’ She shook her head, seeming disgusted, and fury flared through him.

‘You wouldn’t listen.’

‘And you wonder why.’

He shouldn’t have started this conversation. It was too soon. Ammar turned to stare out at the sky, an endless stretch of blue. He felt his stomach dip as the plane moved lower and then, a few minutes later, with the pair of them still sitting in taut silence, the plane bumped to a landing.

They didn’t speak as they moved from the plane to the waiting helicopter. As they came out on the tarmac Ammar saw Noelle scan the empty expanse and wondered if she’d actually make a run for it. If she did he knew he could catch her easily and in any case he had half a dozen staff waiting for his command. Besides, they were in Marrakech and a woman alone with no money, no passport and no phone wouldn’t get very far. Danger lurked everywhere.

For the first time he realised just how vulnerable she must feel, and regret lashed him again. He reached for her elbow, meaning to steady her, but she jerked away from him.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she snapped.

Ammar dropped his hand. Wordlessly he ushered Noelle towards the helicopter and then climbed in after her.

They took off into the sky once more, neither of them speaking. Sweat prickled along the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades. He hated travelling in helicopters since the crash, but his villa didn’t have the space to land a jet and there were no roads.

In any case, he needed to conquer his fear. Grimly, he stared out of the window, even as his stomach churned and memories of the crash danced before his eyes. He remembered the way the world had tilted and the sea seemed to swoop up to meet him. How he’d stared into his father’s grim face, a man he’d loved and hated in equal measure.

‘Ammar.’

He didn’t realise he’d been scrunching his eyes shut until he opened them and saw Noelle. He felt a jolt of panicked confusion, for her face—her smile—had been the last thing he’d seen before impact. No more than a memory, and now here she was in reality. By his force.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked quietly, and he nodded. Gulped.

‘I’m fine.’ And even though he knew he’d revealed a terrible weakness, he couldn’t keep from being glad she’d asked.

They didn’t speak again until the helicopter had landed.

The whole world felt as if it were holding its breath as Noelle stepped from the helicopter. The air was hot and dry and utterly still. Desert stretched in every direction, endless, undulating sand, occasionally strewn with boulders and rocks. She didn’t think she’d ever been in a more remote place.

Silently she followed Ammar into a low, rambling building of sandstone that blended almost entirely into its desert surroundings.

He stopped in the foyer, turned to her with that blank expression she despised. For a moment, in the helicopter, she’d felt a flicker of sympathy for him, knowing he must hate flying in helicopters since his crash. Sitting there so tautly with his eyes clenched shut, Ammar had looked like a man in the throes of a desperate agony.

And now? He looked as stony and remote as the desert surrounding them, and yet still, irritatingly, she felt that flicker. A yearning compassion she couldn’t keep herself from feeling, even though she desperately didn’t want to.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked and, even though she knew she should resist any solicitude, Noelle nodded.

‘Starving.’

‘If you’d like to refresh yourself, there is a bedroom for you upstairs. And clothes, if you wish.’ He glanced at her creased dress. ‘You cannot wear that for ever.’

‘It depends on how long you intend to keep me here,’ Noelle answered bluntly and his expression tightened, eyes narrowing, lips thinning.

‘We can discuss that at dinner.’

‘Fine.’ Noelle lifted her chin. She was strong enough to accept his hospitality—ha—and still keep swinging. With a jerky nod, she turned on her heel and headed upstairs.

She found a sumptuous bedroom behind the first door she opened, with a wardrobe full of clothes and an en suite bathroom with a sunken marble tub and an array of luxurious toiletries. After the day she’d had, she was ready for a good long soak.

Yet once she’d immersed herself in steaming, fragrant bubbles, Noelle felt her resolve—and her anger—start to slip away. She kept seeing that look of yearning on Ammar’s face when he’d woken up, when she’d caught him off guard. She felt the same yearning in herself, a longing for the way he’d been. The way she’d been, with him, so long ago.

That was not going to happen.

She couldn’t start thinking that way, wanting that way. Not after he’d hurt her, not after he’d revealed what kind of man he was—

Do you really know what kind of man he is?

Refusing to answer that question, or even think it, Noelle dunked her head under the water and started to scrub. Too bad she couldn’t scrub away her thoughts. Or that flicker of yearning that threatened to fan into something far more dangerous.

Ammar paced the dining room just as he’d paced the cabin of the plane. He came to his desert retreat for solitude and safety, a place where the rest of his life never intruded, yet he was finding neither tonight.

Should he let her go? The thought had been flitting around in his mind like an insistent insect since Noelle had suggested the very thing. If he let her go, Ammar knew, she would never come back to him. She would never love him again.

And the same thing might happen if you make her stay.

He closed his eyes. He’d felt hopelessness before, God only knew; he’d felt hopelessness for most of his life. Yet it hurt so much more when you felt hope first.