Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride / The Spanish Husband / The Bellini Bride

Well, she wasn’t together now, Evie thought painfully. She was literally coming apart at the seams. Her arm hurt, her body hurt and her heart hurt. ‘I w-won’t marry you,’

she choked out, his remark reminding her why she had ended up scalding herself like this.

The hand clamped around her slender wrist tightened its grip, then grimly lowered the arm into a sink now full of icy water before he let go of her. The tap was switched off, Evie wilted weakly against the unit, her body sliding away from his until she was hunched over the sink with her arm immersed up to the armpit.

Leaving her standing there weak and shaking, fighting to keep the sickness, the dizziness and now the onset of wretched tears at bay, Raschid strode angrily away. A moment later she heard him running up the stairs, and a minute after that and he was back with the first-aid box from her bathroom and a snowy white towel, both of which he angrily tossed down on the unit beside her.

Then he was gently lifting her arm out of the water and laying it on the towel. He didn’t speak as he bent over to inspect the damage, but his face was cast in stone, his eyes glittering from between lushly curling lashes, his mouth nothing but a thin tight line.

She watched his brown fingers move gently over the reddened area of her arm, watched him carefully cover it with the towel then turn to open the first-aid box.

Most of the heat had been neutralised by the water by then, although Evie still could not stop shaking. Producing a tube of antiseptic, he deftly unscrewed the cap then began lightly smearing the ointment on her arm.

‘Does that hurt?’

She shook her head in answer.

‘If it blisters we will have to call in a burns specialist. But at the moment you seem to have been lucky.’

Lucky, Evie thought. There had to be an irony in that somewhere though she didn’t feel like looking for it.

‘Raschid—please listen to me,’ she pleaded. ‘You can’t—’

He glanced up, those golden eyes so hard they silenced her utterly. ‘Don’t force me to get tough with you,’ he warned. ‘For you will not like the tactics I will employ.’

‘Was that a threat?’ she gasped.

He didn’t answer, didn’t need to while he continued to look at her like that. Raschid had a ruthless streak running through him that could, when invited, become quite cruel—though until now Evie had never been a party to that side of him.

‘The child is mine.’ He reinforced the main points of conflict here. ‘You are mine. I have not the slightest intention of giving either of you up. Which means I must make your place in my life official.’

‘And damn the consequences?’

He grimaced but nodded. ‘And damn the consequences,’ he flatly confirmed.

The phone began to ring, slicing through the tension like a knife.

‘Do you want me to answer it?’ Raschid asked quietly.

Evie shook her head, her eyes lowered while she waited for the answer machine to take over.

It was her mother again. ‘Have you seen this morning’s paper?’ Her shrill voice slashed across the room. ‘I have never been so embarrassed in all my life! If it isn’t bad enough that you disappear without a word of thanks to anyone, that wretched man only goes and does the same thing—then I have to contend with the pair of you staring out at me from the front page of the newspaper!’

Evie looked up at Raschid, a question in her eyes, but he shook his dark head in grim answer.

‘I’m telling you, Evie,’ her mother said tightly. ‘I am so darned angry with you I could very easily disown you! Front page you stand wrapped in his arms! Centre page he stands with his father announcing his upcoming marriage to another woman!’

Raschid hissed out an acrid curse, his big frame taut as he strode across the room towards the telephone. He was about to snatch it up to demand what the hell Lucinda was talking about when her voice came again.

‘And where is the picture of Julian and Christina?’ she demanded tearfully. ‘Nowhere to be seen! Scandal—that’s all you’ve ever brought me, Evangeline! Pain, disillusionment, embarrassment and scandal! The Beverleys are upset and trying not to show it! I am upset and trying not to show it! But where are you? That’s what I would like to know! With him somewhere? Are the pair of you nicely holed up enjoying your last passionate tryst before he dumps you to marry someone else? Perhaps you would like the press to cover that shocking event too!’

The connection was severed. In the drumming silence that followed it, Evie stood cradling her towel-wrapped arm against her and wondered bleakly what her mother was going to say when she found out about the coming baby.

A loud knock suddenly sounded on the front door. Evie jumped violently, the air shivering out of her lungs as she automatically walked forward to go and answer it.

‘No,’ Raschid bit out forcefully. ‘Check who it is first.’

Diverting towards the window, Evie glanced out then gave a gasp of surprise. ‘It’s the press!’ she exclaimed, and began quickly dragging the curtains across the glass when half a dozen of them saw her and began converging on the living-room window.

Within seconds the noise was unbelievable, people knocking on the door and on the window, calling out her name and shouting out questions. White-faced, she turned towards Raschid. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked bewilderedly. ‘What was my mother talking about? Why are they here?’

‘I don’t know.’ Frowning, he was already lifting the telephone up and stabbing in a set of numbers.

Evie stood, still trembling with shock from her scalding without the added confusion that was now taking place outside her home. Raschid’s voice was tight with anger as he spoke in his own language to whoever it was he had contacted, his dark face growing darker by the second, while the thumping on the door and window grew so loud Evie could barely hear herself even think.

On a violent curse, Raschid slammed down the receiver. At the same moment a newspaper was pushed through the letterbox. It landed on the doormat with an ominous thud. Evie went to get it but Raschid was there before her.

‘Do you have anything to say about this, Miss Delahaye?’ a muffled voice shouted through the letterbox. ‘Front page. Can’t miss it!’ the voice added helpfully.

Front page. Can’t miss it.

Evie stood by Raschid’s arm and simply stared at what she was seeing. It was a photograph of herself and Raschid kissing beneath the wedding canopy at Beverley. Above it the headline read: ‘Is This Farewell?’ Below it was the sub-heading: ‘Behran Embassy announces the forthcoming marriage of Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah to neighbouring sheikh’s daughter! The marriage will unite two of the most powerful sheikhdoms and effectively put Evie Delahaye out in the cold.’

‘This has not been announced with my approval!’ Raschid insisted forcefully. ‘My father is attempting to force my hand!’

‘Oh, no,’ Evie whispered, sinking into the nearest chair when her legs went weak beneath her.

Raschid stood gripping the newspaper between white-knuckled fists while he read on, his dark face locked up like a steel trap. Neither spoke again; neither needed to. They both knew very well what this was going to mean to them.

For, no matter how much he would like to deny what his father had announced, Evie knew Raschid dared not. To deny it would be tantamount to insulting both his own father and Aisha’s family.

So this is it, Evie concluded hollowly. Her instincts had been sending her all the right signals, and this was the end for her and Raschid.

No more mouthing words that she didn’t really mean. No more pretending she wouldn’t marry him. For it was only now as she sat here accepting that she could never marry him that she realised she had been pretending to herself.

And it hit her hard, so hard she could barely function.

The telephone began ringing again. Neither of them heard it. Just as they didn’t hear the pounding on the front door and the window any more. For those few stark minutes the very walls could have come tumbling down around them and neither would have moved a muscle.

Then the letterbox flew up and a pair of eyes appeared in the opening. ‘Did you know about this yesterday, Miss Delahaye?’ a voice demanded. ‘Is that why you and the Sheikh were careful to avoid each other at your brother’s wedding?’

Not careful enough, was Evie’s hollow answer to that as she thought of that revealing photograph. And we didn’t avoid each other, she reminded herself as, with glassy eyes, she watched Raschid throw down the newspaper and angrily reach for one of her cream linen easy chairs. Picking it up, he rammed it against the door, effectively trapping the letterbox shut.

We danced together, her own train of thought went on uninterrupted. We made love in my room before we went to the ball together.

Raschid had been angry with her for avoiding him. He hadn’t known about this then, she was sure of it. For, whatever he was, he was not devious.

Angry again later, yes, when she told him about the baby, she acknowledged. Seeing all the problems a baby was going to cause because his father was already laying the pressure on him to marry Aisha.