by Jane Porter
He looked scandalized. “I have never bought anyone fake stones.”
“But these must be a fortune.”
“I can afford a fortune.” He took one out of the box and loosened the back. “And you deserve a fortune.”
“I don’t.”
“Let’s see what they look like on you,” he said as though she hadn’t spoken. “You’re not wearing anything tonight.”
“The silver earrings Izba had for me last night wouldn’t have looked right with this gown.”
“I know. I told her to make sure you couldn’t wear the silver earrings tonight.”
“You’re awfully bossy.”
“That shouldn’t be news to you,” he said, stepping closer so that he put the diamond chandelier on her. His fingertips felt deliciously warm and her ear felt deliciously sensitive. She suppressed a shudder of pleasure as he twisted the back to keep the heavy earring from falling out.
“Now the other ear,” he said.
More tingling sensations as he attached the second earring and then gave her head a little shake, hearing the stones click, and feeling the earrings move. “How do they look?”
“You look beautiful.”
“I’m afraid this is far too extravagant. I’ll wear them tonight, but I can’t keep them.”
“Don’t say things like that. It’s not polite.”
“You can’t give me gifts that cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
“You’re supposed to love them, not argue with me.”
“Maybe Florrie and Seraphina like presents like this—”
“Oh, they most definitely do. They wouldn’t dream of refusing a token of my affection.”
“I’d rather have your real affection.”
“You do. You had proof of that last night.”
“You’re making me very angry,” she said.
“Don’t be angry. It’s a lovely night. Just look at the sunset.”
She turned to look out over the valley. The setting sun had painted the red mountains rose, lavender and gold. “It is beyond breathtaking,” she said after a moment.
“It is quite spectacular,” he agreed. “I wish I hadn’t waited so long to return. It’s good to be back.”
She glanced up at him. “Did you think it wouldn’t?”
In the elegant black evening shirt, his skin looked more olive and his eyes appeared an even lighter gold. It was funny how she’d always thought of him as so very English, and yet here in Mehkar, he exuded heat and mystery, as well as an overwhelming sensuality.
“I was worried,” he admitted after a moment. “I was worried about what it’d be like here without Andrew and my mother. I’d never been here without them, but you’ve made it easy for me.”
“Are you going to see your grandfather while we’re here?”
“I should, but haven’t made any plans to do so yet.”
“Tell me about your relationship with him.”
“There’s not much to understand. I live in England. He lives in Mehkar.”
“And yet you’re here in Mehkar, and we were in Gila, albeit briefly.”
“It’s complicated,” he said brusquely.
“That’s your code for you don’t want to discuss it.”
“It really is complicated. I don’t even know how to talk about it. One day this place was my home. It was my favorite place in the world. And then suddenly it wasn’t part of my life anymore, and the people here were cut off, too. It was bad enough losing my mum and brother, but to lose your grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles? It hurt more than I can say. It’s still not easy to talk about.”
“Who cut them off? Your father or your grandfather?”
He shoved a hand through his black hair, rifling it. “Does it matter?”
She looked down into the shimmering pink of her cocktail, the color so very similar to the walls of the Kasbah. “I guess I have this crazy idea that if I understand your past, then maybe I’ll understand you.”
He gave her a look she couldn’t decipher. “I’ve spent all these years burying the memories. I don’t know that it’s wise to dig them all up.”
“Buried memories mean buried emotions—”
“My favorite kind,” he said darkly.
“Don’t you want to feel anything?”
“No. But apparently, you do.” He finished his drink and set the glass down on the wall next to his hip. “It was June eleventh. We’d just finished the school term and were out on holiday. Mum came to pick us up, as she always did. We were on our way to the airport to come here when the accident happened.” He paused before saying slowly, clearly. “The accident that killed my mother and Andrew.”
It took her a moment to piece it together. “You were on your way here? To Jolie?”
“We always flew here straightaway on our last day of school. It was our tradition. We couldn’t wait to come. At least I couldn’t wait. Andrew had wanted to stay home that summer with Father but Mother insisted. Grandfather wanted to see Andrew.” He frowned, brows flattening. “Andrew was the oldest of my grandfather’s grandchildren, important to both sides of the family.”
He looked up right into her eyes, expression still intense. “Until that day, I’d had a very different childhood from Andrew. He was the heir. I was just a boy...a free-spirited, rather sensitive, second son.”
She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t try to speak.
Dal added after a moment, “It wasn’t ever the same after that. Not in Winchester. Not here.”
“It wouldn’t be, would it?” she said sympathetically before adding, “So you chose not to come back?”
“It was my father’s decision to cut contact with my mother’s family. After the funerals, I didn’t see or hear from anyone from Mehkar for ten years.”
“Why?”
“My father blamed my mother for the accident, and so by extension, he blamed her family.”
“Was she at fault?”
“No. The other driver was distracted. They said he was on the phone, ran a red light and smashed into our car head-on.”
“Mother died immediately. Andrew died at the hospital. And I survived with just cuts and bruises.”
“Your poor grandfather,” she sighed. “It must have been devastating to lose his daughter and his eldest grandson on the very day they were to return home.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him. My grandmother, his wife, had died just months before in an accident. He’d been eager to have my mother return for the summer.”
“So your grandfather has never reached out to you since your mother’s funeral. If you were eleven that has been nearly twenty-four years!”
“No. He reached out. I was rude. I rebuffed him, and even though I was at fault, I have chosen not to apologize or make amends.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe that. I think you do know. And I’d like to know.”
“So you can have additional proof of what a cool, unfeeling ass I am?”
She gave him a reproving look. “I already know who you are, and what you are, which is why I want to know why you—someone I know does have feelings, only you keep them very deeply buried—would rebuff someone you apparently once loved very much?”
His shoulders shifted impatiently. “Because I did love him. And I didn’t understand why he left me there, in England. I hated England. I hated my father—” He broke off, jaw grinding, shadows darkening his eyes. “It doesn’t matter, and I shouldn’t admit that I hated my father. My father had problems. He couldn’t help himself.”
“But you can help yourself. Reach out to your grandfather. See him. Apologize. Make amends.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. Don’t be stupid and proud. Tell him you’re sorr
y, because one day he won’t be here and then it’ll be too late.”
Dal didn’t say anything for the longest time. He finished his drink and she finished hers and they watched the shadows swaddle the mountains, the rose and gold light fading to lavender and gray.
After a long silence Dal glanced at her, lips curving. “You’re the only person that ever tries to tell me what to do.”
“You could be a really, truly lovely man if you tried.”
“That sounds terribly dull.”
“I like dull men. I’m looking for a dull man, someone who will cuddle with me on the sofa while we watch our favorite program on the telly.”
“You would hate that after a while.”
“Not if it was a good program.”
“You almost make watching television sound fun.”
Fun. In all her years of working for him, she’d never once heard him the use the word fun. Discipline, duty, responsibility, yes. But fun? Never. “You have changed,” she said. “You’re already very different from just a few days ago.”
“It seems I had to. Randall Grant was an arse.”
“Is Dal better?”
“He’s trying.”
She glanced at him from beneath her lashes and felt a little shiver as he looked right back at her, his golden gaze locking with hers and holding. He didn’t look away, not even when one of the stewards invited them to the dinner table.
“Why didn’t you try before?” she asked softly. “Why didn’t you try for Sophie?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because she didn’t bring out the best in me. Not like you.”
“I bring out the best in you?”
His dense black lashes dropped, his lovely mouth curving. “Perhaps I should say you bring out the better.”
Her chest squeezed, her insides wobbly. He made her feel so much and it wasn’t fair. When he dropped his guard and had a real conversation she felt close to him. Connected. Too connected. How was she to leave him when he felt like hers?
One of the stewards approached them and spoke quietly in Arabic to Dal. Dal answered and then turned to Poppy. “I have a phone call I must take. It won’t take long, just a couple minutes. Please have another drink and I’ll meet you at the table.”
True to his word, he was gone less than ten minutes, and when he returned she was waiting at the beautiful table with the rose-pink tablecloth and the gleaming white candles.
“I tried to make it quick,” he said, sitting down at the table with her.
“Is everything okay?”
“It was Florrie.”
Poppy’s chest squeezed tight. “Oh?”
“She’s heading to Gila for the polo tournament and she had some questions about the tournament and packing and appropriate dress for the royal box.”
“I didn’t realize you were a fashion consultant.”
He leaned back in his chair, his lips quirking. “You’re jealous.”
“I’m not.”
“No, you shouldn’t be. I’ve asked you to marry me—”
“You’ve never asked. You told me we were to marry. That’s not a proper proposal.”
“So is that all that’s keeping you from saying yes? Are you wanting romance? Flowers? Candlelight?”
She became very aware of the romantic dinner under the stars, and the fragrant roses on the table, along with the candles glimmering everywhere.
“You threw your list together,” she said. “There was very little thought put into it, and I wish you would have considered more possibilities. Women who are not Sophie’s friends. Women who might actually want to stay at home with you and have dinner with you, or maybe grab a book and read in the evening near you—”
“I don’t need a nanny, Poppy.”
“No, you just need a woman with hips and a womb.”
When he didn’t contradict her, she felt her temper spike. “You are so infuriating! You know you haven’t tried hard to find a great wife. You’re simply settling—”
“Not settling at all. You’re on the list.”
“At the number three position, which makes me think that the names on your list are there by default. I’d hazard to guess that all three names made it because that’s all you could remember in a pinch.”
He grinned at her, a sexy, powerful, masculine smile. “Your name was not added because I was in a pinch. You were added because we suit each other—”
“So annoying,” she muttered under her breath.
“Why can’t you accept a compliment?”
“Because I know you. You don’t compliment people, and you most certainly don’t compliment me.”
“Let me put it another way. I can barely tolerate most people but I haven’t just tolerated your company for the past four years. I’ve enjoyed it.”
“And you wonder why I have absolutely no desire to marry you!”
“It wouldn’t hurt for you to be a little more logical and a lot less fanciful.”
“How about we focus on the two women still on your list? You can’t court both Florrie and Seraphina at the same time. It’s not practical when you’re down to fourteen days, and so I recommend at this point in time you focus on one. With Florrie en route to Gila, just settle on her and be done with it. I am sure once she learns that you’re not just the Earl of Langston but Prince Talal she’ll jump through the hoops and marry you right away.”
“I had no idea Florrie was your clear favorite.”
“She’s not my favorite. In fact, of the two, she’s my least favorite.”
“Is she? Why?”
“She’s—” The least monogamous woman I know. But Poppy bit back the words, uncomfortable with the truth. “She just doesn’t seem quite ready to settle down.”
“I don’t know. Maybe she hasn’t yet met the right person.”
“Maybe,” Poppy answered sourly.
“What else do you know about them? Who would I enjoy more? No. Scratch that. Which one would be a more natural mother?”
Poppy shuddered. “Neither. They are both too self-absorbed.”
“You’re sounding very catty right now, Poppy. It’s not attractive. I thought these were your friends.”
“Sophie’s friends.”
“Is there nothing positive you can say about either?”
Poppy ground her teeth together and lifted her chin. “Seraphina loves fashion and clothes. She spends twenty thousand or more each season on new clothes.”
“You’re supposed to be giving me positives.”
“That is a positive. She’s always beautifully dressed. Oh. And she keeps herself very slender. Very, very slender.”
“Is that your way of saying she has an eating disorder?”
“No. It’s my way of saying she just doesn’t eat. She has a liquid diet. Mostly green drinks and cleansers. Things like that.”
“I’m sure she’d indulge in cheese plates and chocolate now and then.”
Poppy frowned, trying to remember when she’d ever seen Seraphina actually eat anything. She nearly always had a bottle in her hand, or purse, filled with one of those drinks that smelled of lemon and parsley, cucumber and ginger. “I’ve never actually seen her eat anything sweet. Or anything with carbs. Or any kind of meat.”
“So she won’t share a steak and kidney pie with me?”
“Oh, no. Never. The crust alone would make her faint.”
“What about Florrie? Would she eat a steak and kidney pie?”
“Probably.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yes.” But Poppy couldn’t feign enthusiasm. Florrie would not be a good wife for Dal. She wasn’t even a good girlfriend. She didn’t understand the meaning of faithful, juggling her polo player lovers with disconcerting ease.
“Now, come on, Poppy. What’s wrong with Florrie? If
I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were jealous and wanted to be my countess.”
He was right, of course. She was jealous, but she’d never let him know that. “Fortunately, you do know me better and know I’ve absolutely zero desire to be your countess.”
“Why?”
“I hate that you dangle money and possessions and make it sound as if those material things are the basis for a good marriage, when we both know that nothing is more important than affection, kindness and respect.”
“If I wasn’t the Earl of Langston, but a vicar in a Cotswold parish, would you consider my proposal?”
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment but she held his gaze. “If you were a vicar in the Cotswold, would you love me?”
“I don’t know how to answer because I don’t believe in love. It’s a fantasy concocted in the twentieth century by advertising giants to sell more things to more people.”
“That is such rubbish.”
“But I do believe passion and desire are real.”
“And I believe that passion without love is just sex. And I wouldn’t ever marry a man just to have sex. I could have sex now if that’s what I wanted.”
“Sex with whom?”
She lifted her chin, absolutely brazen. “You.”
* * *
Her words stole his breath. And all rational thought. Her eyes shone with light while her cheeks glowed with color and her expression was nothing short of defiant.
Who was this woman? When had she become so confident and provocative?
It didn’t help that the lush outline of Poppy’s breast was playing havoc with his control.
He’d managed his physical side for five and a half years, clamping down tightly on all needs or wants, shutting himself down so that he could be the elegant, chivalrous man Sophie desired.
But with Sophie gone, and Poppy here, he felt anything but elegant and chivalrous.
What he felt was ravenous, his carnal side awake and hungry. After years of not feeling or wanting or needing, he needed now. He needed her. And his body ached morning, noon and night with desire.
