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

Her sarcasm was acute; his sigh revealed his impatience with it. ‘Don’t deride yourself like that,’ he snapped.

‘Why not?’ she countered. ‘It’s the truth after all—or at least it is the truth as everyone else is going to see it once this mess gets out.’

‘Don’t be foolish!’ he rasped. ‘You are overwrought and overreacting! Once we marry no one will give a damn when or why our baby was conceived!’

Oh, very tactful, Evie thought acidly. ‘I think I’ve said this to you before,’ she flashed back at him. ‘But this time I mean it—I wouldn’t marry you now if you came gift-wrapped in rubies! I would never be able to live with what you were secretly thinking about me, you see!’

‘I do not suspect you of getting pregnant deliberately!’ he ground out angrily.

Evie didn’t answer, but her cynical expression said a lot as her trembling fingers struggled to capture the final strands of gold hair that had escaped the ribbon she had tied the rest in.

‘Okay,’ he conceded with a heavy sigh. ‘There was a moment—a very brief moment—when the suspicion did occur to me,’ he admitted. ‘What man wouldn’t consider such a proposition given the circumstances of our relationship?’

‘A man who knew me well enough to know I would rather die than use those kind of tactics to trap him?’ Evie suggested.

The sound of his sardonic huff of laughter had Evie spinning around to stare at him. ‘It seems to me that it is you who feels trapped by this situation, Evie, and that is what is really eating away at you.’

Was it? she wondered. Then heavily admitted to herself that he was most probably right. She did feel trapped in a situation that there was no way out of unless she seriously took on board the only other option open to her.

An ice-cold shudder went ripping through her; Raschid saw it and released a heavy sigh. ‘Look…’ he said, walking towards her. His hands came up, gripped her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. But—don’t you think we have enough problems to deal with between us, without you and I fighting with each other?’

‘It all feels so ugly,’ she shakily confessed. ‘And it’s only promising to get uglier.’

She meant once his father was involved, and Raschid instinctively understood that. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘I will turn this to our advantage if it is the last thing I do.’

But at what expense? His father’s pride? His country’s pride? Their own wretched pride?

‘Already your dear mama is feeling most unexpectedly maternal,’ he added softly.

Lifting her lashes, Evie found herself looking into warm, dark, wryly amused eyes.

‘Her final command to me before she left,’ he explained, ‘was to be sure I took precious care of her daughter or I would have her to contend with.’ He smiled. ‘I think we found a common ground for the first time ever when we both offended you as we did.’

‘You are both more alike than you think,’ Evie murmured. ‘You are both arrogant, both pushy, both too full of yourself.’

‘While you are nothing more than our tragically misunderstood victim; is that what you’re saying?’

Evie grimaced. Put like that, she had made herself sound pathetic. ‘Your own father still has to have his say in this,’ she reminded him.

‘He isn’t some kind of ogre, Evie,’ Raschid replied soberly. ‘If the idea of you carrying a baby can soften your mother’s attitude towards me, then there is a good chance it can soften my father’s attitude to you.’

‘What—so we can all play happy families together?’ Her tone alone said she didn’t see much hope of that ever happening.

‘At least you can give him a chance before you completely condemn him.’

A chance? Oh, yes, Evie could at least give him that. But she didn’t really hold out much hope for a happy ending to this.

‘So, what happens next?’ she asked.

Raschid removed his hands from her and straightened his shoulders in a way that reminded Evie of those occasions she had watched him donning his official robes.

‘I go home to Behran to break the news to him,’ he replied.

‘What—now—today?’

‘Yes.’ He took a quick glance at his watch. ‘In the next ten minutes to be more precise.’ He looked at her then, golden eyes darkened by questions.

‘I really caused you a lot of problems when I didn’t tell you about the baby two weeks ago, didn’t I?’ she murmured penitently.

His shrug said it all. ‘I could have diverted my father from this course he has taken if I had known then, yes.’

‘I was such a miserable coward,’ Evie admitted.

‘No, you were not,’ he denied. ‘You were shocked, you were anxious, and you were trying to do what you believed was the right thing with your brother’s wedding day so close.’

‘Trying to please everyone and pleasing none,’ she translated with a rueful grimace.

‘Well, please me now,’ Raschid requested. ‘And stay here while I am away. As it is, your personal possessions are on their way here from your cottage as we speak, and Asim has agreed to stay here with you. He will vet any visitors or telephone calls.’

Be her guard, in other words. ‘Is he a eunuch?’ she asked dryly.

‘No.’ His mouth twitched appreciatively at the reference. ‘But I trust him with my life so I can therefore trust him with your virtue.’

‘But can you trust me with his?’ Evie threw back provokingly.

His answer came quick and fast—so fast she didn’t even see it coming until she was locked in his arms and being utterly consumed by the kind of kiss only Raschid could issue.

‘I can trust you,’ he affirmed as he drew away.

And why could he sound so smugly confident about that? Because she was clinging to him, lost in him, drowning in him—as always.

But then Raschid had trouble dragging himself away from her, and it was some consolation to feel his mouth come back to hers for a hot, hungry, final kiss before he could bring himself to remove her hands from around his nape and reluctantly step away.

‘I must go,’ he said gently. ‘My flight plan has been filed and I dare not miss my slot.’

Which meant he was intending to fly himself to Behran, Evie realised with a small shaft of alarm that had its roots in the frightening fear that, with their luck right now, anything might happen to him during the long flight.

‘Take care, won’t you? And call me, whenever you can!’

‘I’ll call,’ he promised. ‘And I will see you again within the week.’

Fine words, sincere words. But he didn’t call her, and neither did she see him within the next two weeks.

CHAPTER NINE

BY THEN the isolation was beginning to get to her. She hadn’t dared to so much as step out of the apartment for fear of being waylaid by the press or people she did not want to see.

Oh, her mother called her up every day on the telephone. In her own way, Lucinda was trying to be supportive, but it didn’t come easily to her. And really it was Evie who found herself ladling out calm reassurance to her mother when each new day went by without hearing a single thing from Raschid.