Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

The sensation, the need slicing white-hot through her threw her into shocked panic. She couldn’t be feeling like this. Should not be feeling like this. Should not be feeling this all-absorbing need to feed hungrily on the sight of every familiar feature, every slight nuance of expression, too greedy for them to savour them with luxurious slowness, aching for them; aching for him so intensely that the pain was sharply physical.

As the girl she had been before, she had fantasised naively about that wanting and about him, imagining, exploring in the privacy of her thoughts the potential of her secret yearnings for Xavier—she had never guessed where those feelings could lead.

But as she was now sharply aware she was not that girl any more. She was now a woman, a woman looking at the man who had been her lover, knowing just how his flesh lay against his bones, how it felt, how it tasted… how he touched and loved. And as that woman she was overwhelmed by the sheer force of her need to go to him, to be with him, to be part of him. Her knowledge of him, instead of slaking her desire, was actually increasing it, tormenting her with intensely intimate memories. She was no longer seeing him as a powerful distant figure, but as a man… her man!

But that wasn’t possible. What did that mean about her feelings for Xavier?

‘Xavier, I was just telling Ella how alike you and she are,’ she heard Tanya commenting.

‘Alike?’

Mariella could feel his gaze burning into her as he focused on her.

‘In your attitudes to things,’ Tanya explained. ‘Ella, you really ought to have children of your own,’ Tanya added ruefully. ‘You are a natural mother.’

‘I totally agree with you, Tanya.’ Madame Flavel nodded.

Mariella could feel her face and then her whole body burning as they all turned to look at her, but it was Xavier’s grim scrutiny that affected her the most as his glance skimmed her body, resting on the baby she was holding in her arms. The unbearable poignancy of knowing that in six months’ time she would be holding his child as she was holding Fleur right now made her eyes burn with dangerous tears. What on earth was wrong with her? She was behaving as though… reacting as though… as though she were a woman in love. Totally, hopelessly, helplessly in love. But she wasn’t! She wasn’t going to let herself be!

Bleakly Xavier watched as Mariella cuddled Fleur. He had told himself that the discovery that she did not return his feelings would be enough to destroy them. And it should have been! But right now, if they had been alone…

The sickening feeling that had accompanied her unwanted thoughts was refusing to go away, and Mariella began to panic. She had suffered some morning sickness in the early weeks of her pregnancy, but these last few weeks she had felt much better. This nausea, though, wasn’t anything to do with what was happening inside her body. No, this nausea was caused by her emotions! And what emotions! They surged powerfully inside her, inducing fear and panic, making her want to turn and run.

Automatically she had turned away from Xavier, unable to trust herself to continue facing him. Tanya had run to greet her husband who had just arrived.

‘Ella,’ Khalid greeted her warmly. ‘We are so pleased that you are here, and I warn you that now that you are we shall not allow you to go easily. Tanya is already making plans to persuade you to move permanently to Zuran. Has she told you?’

Move permanently to Zuran! The shock of his disclosure made Mariella sway visibly, her face paling.

Xavier frowned as he saw her reaction. She looked as though she was about to pass out!

‘Khalid, get some water,’ Xavier demanded sharply, going immediately to Mariella’s side and taking Fleur from her.

Just the feel of his hand touching her bare arm made her shudder with longing, and it seemed to Mariella as though the baby in her womb ached with the same longing that she did, for his touch and for his love.

She was vaguely conscious of being steered towards a chair and instructed to sit down, and then of a glass of water being handed to her.

‘There’s nothing wrong. I’m perfectly all right,’ she protested frantically. The last thing she needed right now was to arouse any kind of suspicions about her health!

‘Ella, you do look pale,’ Tanya was saying worriedly.

‘I’m just a bit tired, that’s all,’ Mariella insisted.

‘You will probably feel better once you have had something to eat. We are going to have an informal family dinner this evening.’

‘No,’ Mariella refused agitatedly. The last thing she felt able to cope with right now was any more time spent in Xavier’s company.

‘Tanya, I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel up to it. I’m rather tired… the flight…’

‘Of course, petite, we understand,’ Madame Flavel was assuring her soothingly, unintentionally coming to her rescue. ‘Don’t we, Xavier?’ she appealed.

‘Perfectly,’ Mariella heard Xavier agreeing harshly.

Abruptly Mariella opened her eyes. Her heart was thumping heavily. She had been dreaming about Xavier. She looked at her watch. It was only just gone ten o’ clock. The others would probably just be sitting down for their evening meal. Her throat ached and felt raw, tight with the intensity of her emotions.

As she slid her feet out of the bed and padded to the window to look out into the shadowy garden she shivered in the coolness of the air-conditioning. It was there by the pool that Xavier had massaged her aching shoulders, and she had realised how much she’d wanted him. Because she had wanted his child, not because she loved him.

Her eyes burned dryly with pain. What she was feeling, what she was having to confront now, went way, way beyond the relief of easy tears.

So she was her mother’s daughter, after all! She was to suffer the same pain as her mother—a pain she had inflicted on herself! How could she have been so stupid? How could she have been so reckless as to challenge fate? How could she have ignored everything that she knew about herself? Surely somewhere she must have realised that it was impossible for her to give herself to a man with the passionate intensity she had given herself to Xavier and not love him?

All she had wanted was to have a child, she insisted stubbornly. A child? No, what she had wanted was Xavier’s child. And that alone should have told her, warned her…

With appalling clarity Mariella suddenly realised what she had done. Not so much to herself but to her child!

One day her child was going to demand to know about its father. When that happened, what answers was she going to be able to give?

Now she could cry. Slow, acid tears of guilt and regret, but it was too late to change things now.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, her hands on her stomach. ‘Please, please try to forgive me… I love you so much…’

She had stolen the right to choose fatherhood from Xavier, and she had stolen from her child the right to be fathered… loved.

It was gone midnight when she finally stopped pacing the room and crawled into bed to fall into a shallow, exhausted sleep, riddled with guilt and anguished dreams.

‘Well, what do you think? How do I look?’ Tanya demanded excitedly as she twirled round in front of Mariella in her new outfit.

‘You look fabulous,’ Mariella assured her truthfully.

‘And so do you,’ Tanya told her. Mariella forced a smile.

Her own dress with its simple flowing lines did suit her, but she was far more concerned about how well it concealed her shape than how well she looked in it. In less than half an hour they would be on their way to the gala opening of the prince’s new hospitality suite at the racecourse, and Mariella would have given anything not to have to be there!

Tanya, on the other hand, couldn’t wait, her excitement more than making up for Mariella’s lack of it.

The last three days had been total torture for her. It would have been bad enough simply discovering that she loved Xavier without the additional emotional anguish of having to endure his constant presence. Every time she looked at him the pain grew worse and so did her guilt.

She had hardly been able to eat because of her misery and anxiety, and she couldn’t wait to get on the plane that would take her home!

Under different circumstances, although she would have been nervous about the thought of the coming event, it would have been a very different kind of nervousness, caused purely by her anxiety about people’s reaction to her work. Right now, she recognised ruefully, she hardly cared what they thought!

‘Come on,’ Tanya urged her. ‘It’s time to go.’

Reluctantly, Mariella got up.

She could feel Xavier’s gaze burning into her as she walked into the courtyard where he and Khalid were already standing beside the waiting car.

The hot desert wind tugged at the thin silk layers of her full-length dress and immediately Mariella reached anxiously to hold them away from her body.