by Kim Lawrence
‘Layla has a successful career in interior design,’ explained her proud father, who was, it transpired, one of Karim’s economic advisors, as well as the head of one of the country’s oldest and most powerful families.
Her credentials, as well as her curves, were impeccable.
‘My daughter is very talented. She could have done anything.’
And if her great career failed she could make a fortune in advertising uplift bras—not that the gorgeous brunette needed one, Eva thought, hitching her bodice a little higher on her more modest cleavage and gathering the light embroidered silk stole she wore over it a little tighter.
‘She and Karim were virtually brought up together,’ he confided as they watched Karim kiss first one of her bejewelled hands and then her cheeks.
‘And some people,’ he continued, ‘thought that after Karim overcame his bereavement they might…’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘But Karim is a rule unto himself, as I am sure you know.’
He bowed and moved away, leaving Eva to wonder if he had intended to plant the idea that the pair had been virtually engaged in her head and was it true?
Had Layla been the reason that three days had turned into seven? Had he been unable to tear himself away from her side? Would Karim have married the lovely and very suitable Layla if things had not happened as they did?
Stomach churning, she pushed the question away and responded to the French Ambassador’s wife who had introduced herself as Julia and was admiring the emeralds and comparing them to Eva’s eyes.
When Karim appeared at her shoulder she greeted him like an old friend and repeated the compliment, adding, ‘Your wife’s French is quite, quite excellent and isn’t she coping well? I remember the first Embassy Ball I hosted—my smile had to be surgically removed.’
Eva felt warmed by the compliment, but the glow of pleasure faded abruptly when, after acknowledging that her French was adequate, Karim added, ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t take too long to master Arabic, Julia.’
Eva’s chin went up. ‘I hope so too. Then people will have to be out of earshot when they talk about me.’ She could not shake the conviction that the lovely Layla’s laughter had been aimed at her or the image of her in bed with Karim.
Karim arched a brow and said, ‘Paranoia, Eva?’ And left her standing there feeling like a total idiot.
Julia took her arm and patted her hand. ‘Layla is what I’d call a man’s woman…’
Eva shot her a startled glance. Were her thoughts that transparent?
‘Men look,’ Julia continued with a Gallic shrug. ‘It is in their nature.’ Her grin deepened and she added with mock sympathy, ‘Poor lambs. You know, when I married Alain I went through agonies thinking he lusted after every woman he smiled at. Alain could have anyone he chose, you see, then one day it finally struck me—he chose me.’
Eva bit back the impulse to assure the Frenchwoman that as far as she was concerned Karim could smile at any woman he pleased, but she could hardly reveal to her sympathetic and obviously romantic friend that she was no more in love with her husband than he was with her.
‘It’s a steep learning curve,’ she admitted. The Frenchwoman had no idea how steep!
She wondered what her new friend’s reaction would be if she explained that Karim had only married her because honour had demanded it and it wasn’t politically expedient for him to alienate his influential neighbour.
Of course, as far as she was concerned Karim could romance whom he liked, but he might at least have the decency and good manners not to rub her nose in it!
Eva’s resentment and sense of isolation increased when Karim, presumably having adopted a sink-or-swim policy, left her to her own devices for the next half-hour.
It was not relief she felt when she caught sight of her tall, supremely elegant husband returning. Her heart rate began to thud with a confusing mixture of excitement, resentment and apprehension.
He reached her side and bent forward, bringing his face close to hers; for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her again.
He didn’t.
‘Smile, and stop looking at me as if I’m the wolf and you’re Little Red Riding Hood.’ His hooded glance slid to the hint of creamy cleavage pressing against the pale satin and he wondered if her skin tasted as good as it looked.
It would not be so very difficult to eat her up. ‘You’re meant to be enjoying yourself.’
Shaking a little from the anticlimax, she fixed him with a narrow-eyed glare. ‘Well, I’m not—not enjoying myself.’
‘You seemed to be enjoying yourself when you were talking to my cousin.’
‘Cousin? Could you be a bit more specific? You do have hundreds.’
‘Hakim.’
‘Oh, the doctor—yes, he’s really nice.’
‘That’s what all the girls think before he breaks their hearts.’
She watched him walk away with a puzzled frown. Anyone who didn’t know the circumstances might have confused his attitude with jealousy. Next time she saw him the orchestra had struck up a slow number that drew several couples to the floor.
Eva, uncertain of the protocol, turned to him for clarification and found he was watching her with an expression that she struggled to decipher. ‘Are we meant to dance?’
Karim, already in a state of arousal, was skeptical of his ability even in his loose robes to hold her in his arms and not reveal the fact to everyone present.
‘I don’t dance,’ he said, but he did other things well and tonight he planned to show her.
That had been ten minutes earlier and she could still see his face when he said it, still hear his dismissive tone.
She was hearing it as she listened to what Julia’s extremely handsome and charming husband was saying. Eva’s own smile had become fixed and strained—she hoped in an intelligent way, but the fact was she was finding it virtually impossible to concentrate on what her companion was saying.
Rage and a strong sense of misuse made her chest tight. She struggled against a suffocating sensation to get her breath…was he trying to humiliate her?
Don’t let anyone see you care. Don’t let him see you care. Her lips compressed as her glance was once again drawn to the dance floor. She looked quickly away, a smile frozen on her face, thinking, Don’t let anyone see you care.
Don’t let him see you care!
Why did she care?
Presumably Karim’s non-dancing stance only applied to dancing with her, because for someone who didn’t dance he was managing rather well as he circled the floor with the highborn beauty in his arms.
They moved as one, bodies close, dark heads closer, the diamonds around Layla’s wrists and lovely neck catching the lights of the chandeliers overhead.
Eva had struggled hard against the irrational dislike she had felt earlier when the brunette had been introduced, but she now stopped trying—call it a personality clash.
Call it jealousy, said the voice in her head.
Logically she had no reason to dislike a woman she had not exchanged more than a dozen words with, if you discounted the way she touched Karim at every opportunity and spoke to him in that husky voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear, but obviously what she said was witty because Karim laughed more than once, looking younger and more relaxed as he did so than Eva had ever seen him.
The music stopped and Eva expelled a relieved sigh that drew an amused look from the man beside her. She said something to cover the moment, aware in the periphery of her vision of Karim bowing his head to his dance partner, but before he could leave Layla took his hand, tilting her head and pouting as she moved in close and whispered something in his ear.
Eva gave up all pretence of making conversation and watched, her eyes as hard as the emeralds around her neck as Karim shook his head, trying—not very hard, it seemed to Eva—to leave before he allowed his partner to drag him back to the centre of the dance floor. She could hear from where she was standing the tinkling sound of the brunette’s
laughter as she laid her fingers against Karim’s neck.
Eva watched them dance, but she wasn’t the only one who did so. She knew that several glances were cast in her direction and the voltage of her smile and the level of her animation rose in direct proportion to the interest.
Finally when she laughed too loudly at something, Alain leaned forward with an expression of genuine concern and asked softly, ‘Are you all right?’
It was at that moment it hit her.
She shook her head slowly, a stunned look on her face as her glance slid towards the dance floor where Karim was moving, his grace and co-ordination matched by those of his partner.
‘No, I’m not all right.’ I’m in love with my husband.
Now how stupid was that?
She shook her head. It wasn’t possible!
She obviously had spoken the latter aloud because though Alain was looking at her with concern it was not the sort of alarm someone would reserve for a bride who was having a breakdown at the possibility she was in love with her husband.
‘Shall I get someone…Karim…?’
The suggestion made her eyes widen with horror. ‘No, not Karim!’
Her vehemence appeared to take the Frenchman aback, but he smiled and said tentatively, ‘A glass of water?’
‘That would be nice,’ she said, thinking, Pull yourself together, Eva, at least until you get out of here. ‘There’s no need to worry Karim,’ she added.
Alain nodded, but did not look entirely convinced by her addition and, catching sight of herself in the reflective surface of a plate-glass window, Eva was not surprised. The only colour in her face was the green of her eyes, which looked enormous in her pale face.
She pressed her fingers to her temples where the thudding intensified as the pressure in her head increased.
Getting out of here was her one coherent thought in a brain that was seething with confusing and ambiguous thoughts. As soon as the Frenchman moved out of view she made her way towards the open glass doors.
People had spilled out into the enclosed courtyard where the sound of tinkling fountains was a pleasant background noise to conversation.
Her heels clicked on the mosaic floor as she exchanged a few comments with people. She had no idea what she said, but presumably she must have made sense, unless they were just politely ignoring the fact that she was talking gibberish.
As she stepped through a large metal-banded door and into the corridor beyond, closing the door behind her, the almost monastic silence hit her.
Chapter Ten
CLOSING HER EYES AS she pressed her shoulders into the wall, Eva felt the tears begin to seep from under her lashes.
Angrily she brushed them away and straightened up.
She sniffed and inhaled. ‘Don’t get hysterical, Eva. This isn’t love…it’s sexual attraction and it will pass.’ She began to laugh as the irony struck her that she was upset because there was a possibility she was in love with her own husband.
‘Now how crazy is that?’ she asked the painting that showed a stern man with a nose like Karim’s looking noble astride a flashing-eyed stallion.
He didn’t comment, neither did any of the servants she encountered as she walked through a maze of corridors with no particular idea of where she was going. Being the boss’s wife had some perks and there was no sign of her shadows.
When some time later she found herself outside and near a gated entrance to the compound, the idea of escaping, at least temporarily, was too strong to resist.
Maybe outside without people watching her every move she’d be able to think straight? She held her breath as she walked past the armed guards and expelled it again when they made no attempt to detain her as she left the palace compound that was situated a few miles outside the capital, whose lights illuminated the horizon to the south.
When she had last passed along this well-lit palm-lined avenue it had been seething with people; now it was totally deserted. Recalling Karim’s rather stern lectures on security and the dangers of the desert, she felt a faint twinge of anxiety but she pushed it away.
This was not the desert, it was a street with electric lights. She could have been anywhere except there was no litter, and there were no sprawling suburbs—civilisation stopped abruptly and gave way to desert. Karim himself had told her that there was virtually no crime here.
She was perfectly safe and she was allowed to take a walk if she felt like it. She lifted her chin to a defiant angle. Karim probably wouldn’t even notice she wasn’t there.
And if she was needed Eva had no doubt Layla would be only too happy to deputise.
You’re not in prison, Eva, she told herself.
But she was—a beautiful luxurious prison, but nonetheless that was what it was and what made it worse was she had walked inside, locked the door, thrown away the key and fallen for her jailer!
She shook her head and muttered, ‘No, it’s just sex.’
Her brooding thoughts returned to the reception. Was it just sex with Layla or was Karim in love with the curvaceous brunette?
Perhaps that was why a sexless marriage did not seem to bother him in the slightest—he had the lissom Layla to keep him warm when the sun went down.
The graphic images that went with this line of speculation made Eva’s stomach churn sickly. Her hands balled into fists as she barred her teeth in a determined grimace; she was going to get the truth out of him if it killed her!
She had been here long enough to know how palace gossip worked and she was sure that if Layla was his mistress she was probably the only person who didn’t know! The humiliation of being an object of pity was something she just could not bear.
She couldn’t bear their unconsummated marriage, and the irony was that her celibacy had never bothered her before. She had occasionally speculated on what she was missing—now what she was missing was driving her slowly insane.
The trouble was it wasn’t exactly a level playing field. He was the world’s sexiest man and not exactly inexperienced, while her experience consisted of a couple of goodnight kisses and a narrow escape from a supposed friend who had turned into a groper when they’d shared a taxi.
How did you confess to a man who thought you were some sort of sexual expert that you were in fact clueless?
A clueless virgin!
Did he know she couldn’t think of anything else but him?
Of course he knew…With a grimace of self-disgust she shook her head angrily. You could only take self-deception so far…and Karim not knowing that her bones ached with longing when he was near was about as likely as him not touching her because he was afraid of rejection!
And now there was the further complication of Layla, who was not clueless or flat-chested and had possibly spent the last week in his bed.
An emotional rush of misery rushed up to clog Eva’s throat and with a sniff she hitched her narrow skirt that was making it hard to walk above her knees and tucked a long strand of hair that had been pulled free of her elegant topknot behind her ear.
The strong warm wind that blew in from the desert immediately swept it back into her eyes.
With a disconsolate sigh she left it there and thought…Are they having an affair?
The possibility brought a militant light to her eyes; if he thought she was going to put up with him installing Layla as his official mistress, he could think again! Eva’s pace quickened in response to the energising rush of anger that swept through her body.
Karim should have told her about Layla; she had a right to know before she committed herself. Though as not committing herself would have made her responsible for destabilising an entire region and destroying economic progress it was extremely doubtful that her decision would have been different.
This was not what she had signed up for.
She had been so lost in her dark reflections that Eva had walked on several hundred yards before she realised she had run out of streetlamps.
With a sigh she turned and began to
reluctantly retrace her footsteps, slowly now as the anger that had consumed her had burnt itself out.
As she walked she became aware that the buffeting wind had increased in strength and while it should be on her back now it was actually everywhere, hitting her from all sides.
She bent her head as the sand in the air stung her face.
She had not gone a few feet before she became aware that she was in trouble: the lights above were barely visible through the sand that stung and bit into every exposed inch of her skin. She couldn’t see where the road surface ended and the desert began and the tall turrets and gleaming spires of the royal palace were barely visible.
Mind-numbing panic running just beneath the surface of her paper-thin stoic calm, she refused to recognise it as she told herself that it was lucky she had not strayed from the highway or walked far.
All she had to do was walk in a straight line.
‘How difficult can that be?’
A few minutes later she was forced to acknowledge that her forced jovial comment had been a classic case of tempting fate. The surface she now stumbled over was not tarmac, it was uneven and rocky. Even if she had been able to lift her head there was no point—the visibility was nil, the world was black and the sand cut into every exposed inch of tender flesh without mercy.
She coughed, unable to breathe as she dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around herself in a futile attempt to protect her face.
There was nothing in her world but the noise of the storm, a roar all around…inside her head, everywhere. A strange sense of calm descended over her as she huddled there. Someone who was going to die ought not to feel so calm.
Eva began to lift her head…the expected sting on her face was not as bad as she had anticipated. Had the storm abated slightly? A tiny grain of hope took root and somewhere deep inside the instinct for survival stirred.
‘I can’t die! I don’t want to die!’
If she died Karim would marry Layla.
‘That’s not my plan, either.’
When he had first spotted what looked like a bundle of rags Karim had thought the worst, then as the bundle had moved and he’d heard her speak a surge of relief had flooded his body.
