by Kim Lawrence
‘There should be no secrets between husband and wife.’
‘I don’t have any secrets.’
‘True,’ he drawled. ‘The stories of your love life are pretty well-documented. And I’m assuming there has to be a built-in life expectancy to your kind of work.’
She’d gone on the huffy offensive to the suggestion she deserved to profit from the situation but the idea of losing her looks drew a laugh from her.
And he thought he knew women! This one seemed determined to challenge all his preconceptions.
‘Before everything goes south, you mean,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Oh, I don’t intend to stay in the job long enough for that to happen, just long enough to...’ She broke off, giving a self-conscious shrug as her eyes slid from his. ‘It’s not my life’s dream, I sort of fell into modelling. I was spotted at a shopping mall. I actually thought it was a set-up when the photographer approached me. I looked around for hidden cameras and told him the name on the card he gave me meant nothing to me.’
‘I would have thought it was an obvious avenue for someone with your looks,’ Zain observed, expelling a frustrated hiss from between clenched teeth as he gave up trying to fasten the button on his shirt. Apparently it took losing your healthy body to make a man appreciate having everything work. At least his debilitation was temporary, he thought, sending up a silent prayer of thanks for that.
‘You mean the height,’ she held a hand flat on top of her head, ‘and the face?’ She gave a gurgle of laughter.
The attractive sound brought his attention zeroing in on that face, and this time he felt not only his libido stir, which it had done the moment he laid eyes on the supple curves of her luscious body, but also his curiosity. He was forced to accept the seemingly impossible—that there was nothing feigned about her lack of vanity and yet she worked in an industry where looks were everything.
His eyes drifted down the long lines of her superb body. ‘You don’t seem to take your looks very seriously.’
* * *
‘If I’d taken my looks seriously I’d be...’ She paused and brought her lashes down in a protective sweep before adding lightly, ‘I was five-ten at twelve years old. My nickname was freak or giraffe. As for my face,’ her fingers moved lightly across the delicately angled features, ‘someone said I looked like their cat and it kind of followed me, not that I expect you to understand,’ she said without heat—people couldn’t help the way they looked, and he probably didn’t even realise that he made other men feel insecure, especially other men with wives, she mused, not struggling at all to imagine the effect he had on her own sex.
She was just grateful that she possessed the ability to consider her own reaction to his sexual aura with objectivity... Yeah, you carry on telling yourself that, Abby.
‘Why wouldn’t I understand?’
She resisted the temptation to dodge the question while she endured the heat as a flush travelled up her neck, but delivered her reply with as much composure as she could manage.
‘Because I’m doubting you were ever an ugly duckling, Prince...is that what I call you...?’
‘You call me Zain.’
Abby suppressed the childish impulse to tell him she didn’t want to call him anything, she wanted to go back home.
‘You think of yourself that way? As an ugly duckling?’
Abby was thrown enough by the question to miss a beat. Yes, she supposed deep down, no matter how other people saw her, she was still the ugly duckling. It was ironic really that what had set her apart at school had been the reason for her success. The length of her neck or her legs was no longer mocked but admired... ‘Have I wandered into a therapy session?’ How, she wondered, had this conversation got so personal so quickly?
‘Aha!’ He pounced on her response. ‘It’s classic avoidance technique, answering a question with a question.’
A much better technique in her experience was to pretend she didn’t understand the joke, especially when she was the joke. It was the only way to prevent the outside world realising they were getting to her...to that end she’d cultivated a mask, the same mask that was much in demand at photo shoots, only now they called it enigmatic.
And Zain’s reference to her love life being well-documented... She had her agent to thank for that, leaking stories about her ‘romances’ on social media, because, as she put it, ‘Abby, darling. you’re as dull as ditchwater, and beggars can’t be choosers. You’re not one of the elite... Relax. It’s win-win and you’ll get the odd free dinner out of it.’
The romances were usually with male celebrities who needed the publicity because their career had dipped or younger, media-hungry newbies out to make their mark. It was all part of her image.
‘Sorry to disappoint you but I’m not a needy basket case. I always had a warm home to go back to at the end of a bad day.’
‘So what did your parents think of your career move?’
‘My grandparents,’ she corrected, her brow pleating as she recalled his earlier comment. ‘My parents died when I was very young and Nana and Pops supported my decision because they understood that I didn’t want to leave uni with a massive debt. I wanted to be financially independent.’ And after Gregory’s betrayal her modelling career had been the lifeline that had helped keep her virtually penniless grandparents afloat.
‘It was a hard time for them, though, when I first started out. They were swindled out of their life savings and pensions.’ She swallowed as she felt her throat thicken with tears. ‘An investment in a project,’ she continued in a flat voice that she hoped revealed none of the devastation and frustration and guilt she still felt, ‘that never existed and a financial advisor who vanished off the face of the earth.’
His expression was thoughtful as he listened to her. ‘You’re really very good, aren’t you, at pretending it doesn’t hurt?’
Her eyes fluttered wide in shock before she coaxed a laugh from her aching throat. ‘Are you always this sure of your infallibility or is it the medication? Speaking of which...’ Her concern became genuine as she scanned his face; the bruises seemed to have deepened in colour since she’d been in the room, which, now that she thought of it, had to have been a long time ago. ‘I should be going...’
‘Where?’
It was a good question.
‘You missed out one thing in your story. It was your boyfriend who scammed them and stole their life savings.’
Her face flamed with shocked guilt before the colour fled, leaving her lily-pale. ‘Have you got a file on me in a drawer somewhere?’
‘In a safe.’
He said it so casually that her jaw dropped.
* * *
Zain took advantage of her dumbstruck silence. ‘I have a proposition to put to you. How would you like to be in a position to buy back your grandparents’ bungalow and restore their savings?’
He really did know everything! ‘I fully intend to...’ She shook her head. ‘You have a file on me...?’ Her eyes flashed with outrage.
He registered that outrage suited her but didn’t allow his appreciation to divert him. ‘I don’t mean in a year or two years, I mean now, today.’
‘Is that meant to be some sort of joke?’ Expression stony, she pointed to her face. ‘Not sure if you’d noticed, but I’m not laughing.’
‘Eighteen months of your life.’
‘Eighteen months doing what?’ she tossed back.
‘Being my wife.’
The moment of dumbstruck silence was followed by her shaky laughter as she said in a flat voice, ‘I think you have a fever.’
‘Not every woman in the world would consider being my wife such a horrifying prospect.’
‘Can’t imagine what the attraction is unless...oh, let me think...maybe the life of luxury, the private jet, the holidays...not that I’m judging.’
‘Yes, I can t
ell.’ He smiled as the sarcasm earned him another flash from her magnificent emerald eyes. ‘Look, just hear me out, and then make an...objective decision based on the facts and not on your emotional reaction. As for marriage, we are both on the same page—I don’t want to be married any more than you do.’
Her delicate brows arched. ‘Not ever?’
As his eyes swivelled her way it was clear that she regretted having betrayed her curiosity.
‘Not ever,’ he said flatly. ‘However, my situation requires that, as my father’s heir, I am married. In this situation, custom would normally dictate that after my brother’s death my bride would be his widow.’
It took her a few seconds to process this information. ‘That’s positively...’ The idea of asking a grieving woman to be passed on like a worn-out pair of shoes evoked a response strong enough to lend a sheen of emotion to her eyes. ‘Oh, my God...poor woman.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But you won’t, will you...do that to her?’
‘I will do everything within my power to prevent this from happening, but it’s not just about me; the solution is in your hands.’
‘Mine...?’
‘Well, if I am already married, Kayla will escape this terrible fate.’
‘That’s not fair,’ she protested at his not at all well-disguised display of moral blackmail.
‘Life is not fair; however, I am offering a practical solution, not asking you to bear my children.’
She flushed and pushed away from him.
‘I never thought you were,’ she assured him with a disdain that didn’t fully hide her embarrassment.
‘You’re not the first person to be taken in,’ he began, responding to a need to offer her some comfort that was alien to his nature. ‘You really shouldn’t beat yourself up about what happened to your grandparents.’
She read the pity in his comment and reacted with anger. ‘Like you’d know anything about it!’
‘Fine, carry on berating yourself.’ He gave an offhand shrug, unwilling to admit even to himself that the conflict shining in her beautiful eyes stirred something inside him. ‘Or, alternatively, you could swallow your pride and accept this offer.’ Zain watched as she stiffened and bit down on her full lower lip, her teeth digging into the soft, pink plumpness. Her lashes brushed her smooth cheek as she glanced down but he could see the resentment sparkling through the dark filigree.
* * *
‘Offer or ultimatum?’ she charged, thinking temptation might be a more accurate description.
‘It benefits us both.’
‘It would change my life.’ It would also change her grandparents’ lives—could she ever look at them knowing that she could have given them back the retirement they had planned and saved for and hadn’t?
Could she look at herself?
He didn’t bother denying her assertion. ‘Yes, your life will change.’
Abby could feel her resistance fading but she clung on, not prepared to concede just yet. ‘Isn’t a scandal the thing you want to avoid?’ If their desert marriage was revealed there was going to be one and she was going to be at the centre of it. Saying yes would mean saying goodbye to any semblance of a private life for the next year and a half...could she cope with that? ‘Or are you suggesting people aren’t going to notice my sudden appearance?’
His eyes moved from her vivid face to her auburn hair. ‘These situations can be managed,’ he assured her smoothly. ‘There are people whose job it is to put a positive spin on anything.’
An image of her future life of endless ceremony and presence flashed before her eyes, and it was followed immediately by an equally vivid picture of her grandparents pottering around the garden of their bungalow with a front door that didn’t have six bolts on it.
‘I wish—’ she began.
He cut across her, his tone sardonic. ‘I’m sure that his wife wishes my brother were not dead.’
Abby felt a stab of guilty contrition—she’d been so self-absorbed that she hadn’t even considered how he must be feeling—and her mouth twisted in a grimace of self-condemnation.
‘I am truly sorry.’ Belated but better than not at all, she gave her condolences, not that he seemed to recognise them as such.
‘Sorry?’ he echoed, his dark eyes drawn into an interrogative line above his nose.
‘About your brother,’ she explained awkwardly.
‘Oh...’ he grunted as he eased one long leg onto the bed and then the other, murmuring a soft word of thanks when she pushed a couple of pillows under his head, her tummy quivering in sympathy at the sight of the bruises on the golden expanse of his stomach.
His eyes were closed and for a moment she thought he’d fallen asleep, and she was thinking about creeping away when he opened them again; the electric-blue had a febrile quality.
‘We weren’t close,’ he revealed.
‘But he was your brother.’ She’d always wanted a sibling and had envied the big, noisy family who lived next to her grandparents.
‘Half-brother,’ he corrected, closing his eyes again. ‘So do we have a deal?’
She glanced up from her contemplation of her clenched fists. ‘I need to think.’
‘Fine.’ He closed his eyes.
The tension had barely begun to leave her bunched shoulders when he spoke again.
‘Let me know what you decide in two minutes.’
His eyes opened, the glazed glow in the blue depths doing nothing to ease her stress levels.
‘I didn’t come here to...to...stay married, I came here to disentangle our—’
‘Past, present, future?’
‘We don’t have a future.’ They both heard the questioning upward inflection in the last word.
‘Eighteen months. That’s all I ask.’
Abby, the conflict clearly written on her face, shook her head in a slow negative motion. ‘No... I can’t.’ An image of her grandparents floated into her head with their brave smiles, noisy neighbours and no garden. Pops had so loved his garden.
Her shoulders dropped in defeat as she took the step that sent her over the cliff edge she had been balancing on.
‘Yes, all right, I’ll do it.’ The moment she spoke she knew it was the right, the only response she could have given, but it didn’t stop her feeling sick, literally.
Hand pressed to her mouth, she turned away, in her haste stumbling over the trailing wires that must at some point have been attached to Zain.
That was when the bells started ringing!
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘SORRY... SORRY... HOW do I turn it off...?’ Abby picked up the loops of wire she’d sent flying and looked at the space-age machine lit up by red flashing lights.
Before Zain could respond to her frantic question the first white-coated figure burst through the door, several more followed in quick succession and the sheer volume of people pushed a bewildered Abby against a wall, where she stood watching as Zain responded to the medical attention with increasing irritation.
He raised his voice to be heard above the din of the alarms and the medical babble. ‘I’m not dead—the fact I’m breathing is the first clue. Will someone please turn that damned thing off?’
The sudden cessation of noise created a freeze-frame moment. Zain broke the silence to order the rapid departure of all the white coats and before she knew it Abby and Zain were alone once again.
‘Sorry about that.’ She lifted her chin in challenge. ‘I’m very clumsy.’ Surely he could see now that she was not princess material.
‘I noticed. Do you fall off the catwalk often?’
‘I’m a professional.’
‘Then direct the same professionalism to our contract and there will be no problem.’ He gestured towards the chair she had just vacated.
She didn’t accept the invitation bu
t stood there, her hands clasped across her stomach and her brow pleated with a furrow of consternation. ‘You know this is crazy—people are never going to believe...’ Her hand moved in a descriptive arc from him to herself. ‘Nobody will believe that we are married.’
‘Why not? It’s true.’
A tiny flicker of a smile moved shadow-like across her face. ‘There were times when I convinced myself I dreamt it.’ Her chest lifted in a tiny little sigh of resignation. ‘So how would it work? What are you going to tell people?’
‘How will it work?’ he emphasised, before adding with some of the hauteur she remembered from their previous encounter, ‘My father is the only person I am required to explain myself to, and I will explain to him that you are my soulmate.’ His expressive lips curved into a cynical half-smile that left his eyes cold as he continued to reveal their fictional back story. ‘We fell in love, and there was a falling-out; I shall be vague on this but we are both, you see, passionate people and so these things happen...then the news of my accident had you rushing to my side because you realised that your life was nothing without me.’
‘You should write fiction...or fairy stories,’ she husked back.
‘Any good writer knows you target your story to your audience.’ His voice carried no discernible inflection but the cynicism in his azure stare was painfully pronounced as he explained, ‘My father is a firm believer in fairy tales. Are you?’
Unprepared for the abrupt and vaguely accusing addition, she looked confused. ‘Am I what?’
‘A believer in fairy tales, cara?’ he drawled.
She clenched her teeth. ‘What if I am? It’s not a crime,’ she shot back. ‘And will you stop calling me that—has someone told you Italian makes you sound sexy or something? For the record, it doesn’t!’ she lied.
After a startled silence his low, husky laughter rang out. ‘I wasn’t aware I was using it; I’ve recently spent some time with my mother...the language kind of rubs off.’ The long weekend in Venice had turned into a fortnight when the diva had been forced to cancel a booking at the Met due to a throat infection which she had been convinced was about to end her career. Her harassed, much younger live-in lover had been unable to cope with the dramatic declarations that her career was over and so had begged Zain to extend his stay.
