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

‘Your father will hate me.’ Evie was in no mood to be consoled right now. ‘My mother will hate me…’

‘Shut up,’ Raschid said. ‘Or I may just decide to exert other methods to rid you of your melancholy.’

Lavender eyes that he expected to slice him in two at such an audacious threat were instead blunted by a vulnerability even Raschid had never seen in them before.

It moved him to see it, touched a painful chord deep inside him that wrenched free the impassive mask he had been wearing, and replaced it with a complexity of emotions, all of which revolved around several different kinds of frustration.

‘Oh, what the hell?’ he muttered to himself, and with a slick economy of movement his tee shirt came off over his head to reveal that wonderful polished bronze breastplate set between wide, muscled shoulders.

Evie watched him wordlessly as he stripped himself naked, let her eyes feast on every beautiful inch of him as he lifted the sheet and slid into the bed. Her arm lifted in welcome; he coiled himself around her. Their mouths touched briefly, then not so briefly.

‘This really isn’t the time for this.’ Evie made a halfhearted attempt to stem what was already rushing through both of them.

‘I blame you,’ he informed her arrogantly. ‘Seeing you lying here looking so vulnerable and knowing you nurture my child inside you has made me feel most disgustingly macho.’

‘I can tell,’ she drawled in mocking acknowledgement as her hand slid down the flat plane of her stomach to cover the warm, tight evidence of his feelings.

A shiver ripped through him, the kind of shiver that was always his response to her initial touch of him. ‘Then you tell me,’ he murmured in sudden seriousness, ‘how we give this up when we can’t even control it while the world falls in on us.’

‘I don’t know,’ Evie sighed heavily.

‘Well, I do,’ he said as he pushed her on to her back then carefully placed her bandaged arm out of harm’s way before he came to lean over her. ‘We stay together. Somehow, some way, I will make it happen,’ he vowed. ‘You are mine. This child you carry is mine. I will lay claim to you both with pride and with honour. And that, my darling, is my promise to you.’

Fine words, wonderful words. But could he bring them to fruition? And if he could, at what cost to all of those other things in his life he held so dear to him?

Evie let herself be drawn down into that deep well of sensuality where Raschid’s loving always took her, but her mind didn’t follow; that remained locked in the tight coil of their problems even as they flew.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EVIE came swimming up from the deep dark slumber she had escaped into after Raschid had moved away from her, and frowned as her ears picked up on the muffled sound of voices raised in anger.

One was Raschid, sounding cold and cutting. The other was…

‘Oh, no.’ Her mother.

Groaning, she pulled herself up and out of the bed.

In a flurry of urgency she grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a raspberry-coloured long silk wrap that Raschid must have left out for her, which she dragged on and began tying around her as she hurried, barefoot, towards the bedroom door.

The moment she was out in the hallway she could hear clearly what was being said.

‘Love?’ her mother was deriding icily. ‘Love doesn’t take and take without giving back! What have you given back during this affair, Sheikh Raschid?’ she demanded. ‘For I don’t see your reputation lying in shreds at your feet, or you becoming the object of everyone’s pity!’

Pity? White-faced and shaken to the roots by the very sound of the word, Evie pulled to a halt beneath the open archway that connected the sumptuous living room with the hallway which led to all the other rooms in Raschid’s vast apartment.

Her mother was standing there wearing a snow-white suit that was so dramatically effective against her milk-white skin and pale blonde hair—while Raschid was draped from neck to ankles in the flowing dark blue robes of his native culture.

And the two of them were facing up to each other like two very dangerous substances that should never, ever be allowed to mix. Mutual hostility and dislike was rife.

‘Yesterday was supposed to be a very special day for my family,’ Lucinda Delahaye continued angrily. ‘And, to give Evie her due, she tried her level best to make it that! But you had to come. You had to upstage the bride and groom by getting yourself in the papers as usual. You calmly danced with my daughter while the rumours flew thick and fast about your coming marriage to another woman. And if that wasn’t enough your own father had made sure the whole world knew what a gullible little fool Evie is where you are concerned!’

‘Try trusting her judgement for a change,’ Raschid coolly suggested. ‘You never know, you may find that Evie can pleasantly surprise you.’

‘Not while she continues this shameful affair with you, she won’t.’

‘Our shameful affair is none of your business.’

‘Why don’t you just go home to your oil-rich desert—marry your cousin of a cousin and leave my daughter alone?’ her mother cried.

To Evie’s horror, Raschid laughed. ‘If only you knew,’ Raschid murmured dryly.

‘Frankly, I don’t want to know,’ her mother said dismissively. ‘All I want to do is speak to my daughter.’

‘Evie is resting.’ Raschid refused. ‘She was feeling—unwell,’ he explained. ‘She—’

‘I’m here,’ Evie said, quickly cutting off whatever Raschid might have been going to say by stepping into the room.

They turned together—and slid their gazes over her together, the cold blue eyes in stinging condemnation, while the gold ones were carefully hooded so she couldn’t read what they were seeing as they checked her out.

Still, it was like being scrutinised by two tough critics.

So much so that one hand went up to clutch at the gaping lapels of her robe while the other hand ran self-conscious fingers through her tumbled hair.

‘What’s supposed to be wrong with you?’ her mother demanded with deep suspicion.

‘N-nothing,’ Evie replied, carefully avoiding Raschid’s gaze as she stepped further into the room. ‘I w-was tired, that’s all. Wh-what do you want, Mother?’ she asked.

‘What do I want?’ Lucinda repeated. ‘I want to know what you think you are doing, lying in this man’s bed while he plans his wedding to another woman! Have you no pride—no shame? Have you even bothered to consider what it has done to your reputation to have openly come here with him today knowing full well what he intends to do?’

‘Your tone, Lady Delahaye, leaves a lot to be desired,’ Raschid inserted grimly.

‘My tone, young man,’ Evie’s mother countered haughtily, ‘is none of your business. I was talking to my daughter, not to you.’

If the antagonism between the two of them got any worse, Evie had a horrible feeling they would start telling each other what they really thought, and she didn’t think she could cope with that right now.

‘Raschid…’ It was to him that she turned to plead anxiously. ‘Would you mind giving us a few minutes alone—please?’

He didn’t look happy. In fact, he didn’t look anything but hard and cold and utterly offended by the request. But Evie couldn’t let herself be moved by that look. She might not have the perfect relationship with her mother, but she had no wish to see her demolished by him, which Lucinda certainly would be if Raschid decided to take her on.

‘If you wish.’ He agreed to her request with an icy politeness that made Evie shiver. And with a stiff bow of his head in her mother’s direction he strode from the room, leaving the kind of tension behind him that threatened to suffocate.

‘That man is so arrogant, he makes my blood boil,’ Lucinda said tightly.

‘Your own arrogance wouldn’t pass scrutiny,’ Evie returned heavily. ‘This is Raschid’s home,’ she pointed out. ‘Yet you treated him as if he were the intruder here.’

Stiffening slightly, her mother had the grace to take the criticism without defending herself. ‘I don’t like him,’ was all she said.

And the feeling, Evie thought, is entirely mutual.