between them flare into life again, but there were practicalities that had to be considered.
‘Mariella.’ The abrupt note in his voice caught her attention. ‘Because of my position as leader of our tribe, I have always believed that I do not have the… freedoms of other men. I could never commit myself to a relationship with a woman who might not be able to understand or accept my duties and responsibilities to my people. Nor could I change my way of life, or…’
‘Xavier, there’s no need for you to say any more,’ Mariella checked him swiftly. Her heart was pounding heavily, a sharp, bitter little pain, piercing her even though she was fighting against admitting to it, stubbornly refusing to listen to the message it was trying to give her.
‘I would never ask you or any other man to do any such thing! And I can assure you that you need have no fear that I might misconstrue what’s happened. I shan’t. I am most definitely not looking for any kind of commitment from you.’
Only the commitment of conceiving his child, she admitted inwardly.
‘In fact, commitment is the last thing I want.’ Assuming a casualness that defied everything she had always inwardly believed in, she gave a small shrug and told him, ‘We are both adults. We wanted to have sex. To satisfy a… a physical need… And… now that we have done so, I don’t think there is any purpose in us holding a post-mortem, and even less in getting involved in needless discussions about the wherefores of why neither of us want a committed relationship. Truthfully, Xavier, I don’t want to marry you any more than you want to marry me! In fact, I shall never marry.’ Mariella delivered the words in a strong voice underpinned with determination.
‘What?’
Why was Xavier looking at her like that? Where was the relief she had expected—the cool acceptance of her claim that they had come together merely to slake their sexual appetite for one another? Xavier was looking at her with a mingling of barely controlled fury and bitterness.
‘What are you saying?’ she heard him demanding savagely. ‘You are not your sister, Mariella! You are not one of those shallow, surface-living women who think only of themselves; who give in to their need to experience what they want when they want, who go from man to man, bed to bed without… whose whole way of life—’ He paused and shook his head.
‘You are not like her! You don’t even know what you are talking about! Mere physical sex is not something…’
Mariella could see and feel the intensity of his growing anger, and she could also feel her own increasingly disturbing reaction of panic and pain to it, but she refused to allow herself to be intimidated by them.
‘I am not going to argue with you, Xavier. I know how I feel, and what I do and don’t want from life.’
Well, that was the truth, wasn’t it? She did know what she wanted, and she had every hope that last night had given her…
‘Do you really expect me to believe that you drove all the way out here just because you wanted sex?’
‘Why not?’ Mariella shrugged. ‘After all, I could hardly have come to your room at the villa, could I?’ she pointed out, trying to make herself react as though she were the woman she was trying to be—a woman who thought nothing of indulging her sexual appetite as and when she wanted to do so!
‘This was the perfect opportunity!’
Xavier was looking at her as though he would dearly love to make her take back her words, Mariella recognised uneasily. It had to be his male pride that was making him react in such an unexpected manner, she decided. Men were quite happy to use women for sexual pleasure without being emotionally committed to them, but apparently they didn’t like it very much when they thought that they were the ones being used.
Her legs began to tremble shakily as she mentally digested his reaction and tried to imagine what he might say—and do if he knew that she hadn’t even actually wanted him out of sexual lust, and that the desire that had really driven her had been her own female need to conceive his child!
Somehow instinctively she knew that the reaction she was seeing now would be nothing when compared with what he was likely to do were he ever to discover the truth!
The unexpected shrill sound of his mobile ringing broke into the thick silence stretching tensely between them.
Out of good manners Mariella turned away whilst he answered the call, but she could tell from the sound of his curt replies that it involved some kind of crisis.
Her instincts were confirmed when he ended the call and told her abruptly, ‘There is a problem with the tribe—a quarrel between two of the younger men, which needs to be dealt with. I shall have to drive out to do so immediately.’
‘That’s okay. I can find my own way back to the city,’ Mariella assured him.
‘This matter isn’t closed yet, Mariella,’ he told her grimly. ‘When I do return to the villa, we shall discuss it further!’
Mariella didn’t risk making any response. There wasn’t any need, not unless she wanted to provoke a further quarrel. The frieze was finished; there was nothing now to keep her in Zuran, no reason or need for her to stay, and she had already decided that she was going to make immediate plans to return home!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘ELLA, you have to go! The prince will be mortally offended if you don’t and, besides, just think of the potential commissions you could be losing. I mean, I’ve done some discreet checking on the guest list for this do, and everyone who is everyone in the horse-racing world will be there, plus some of the classiest A-list celebs on the planet! This is going to be the most prestigious event on the racing calendar this year, and here you are announcing that you don’t want to go! I mean, why? You already know just how impressed the prince is with your frieze, and this is going to be its big unveiling. If you’d been hired by the National Gallery itself you couldn’t have got yourself more publicity for your work!’
Mariella could hear the exasperation in her agent’s voice, and ruefully acknowledged inwardly that she could perfectly understand Kate’s feelings.
However, Kate did not know that she had two very good reasons for her reluctance to return to Zuran.
Xavier… and… Instinctively she glanced down her own body. At three months, her pregnancy was not really showing as yet. She and the baby were both perfectly healthy, her doctor had assured her, it was just that being so slight she was not as yet showing very much baby bulge.
‘Just wait another couple of months and you’ll probably be complaining to me that you feel huge,’ she had teased Mariella.
Even now sometimes when she woke up in the morning she had to reassure herself that she was not fantasising, and that she actually was pregnant.
Pregnant… With a baby she already desperately wanted and loved. Her baby! Her baby and Xavier’s baby, she reminded herself warily.
But Xavier would never need to know! No one looking at her could possibly know!
And if she was not careful she could potentially be in danger of arousing more suspicions by not returning to Zuran for the extravaganza that was to be the opening of the new enclosure and the first public airing of her frieze than by doing so.
Tanya
