worry, it isn’t serious. Just a very nasty bruise, that’s all,’ the nurse comforted her cheerfully. ‘You were lucky, though, and the little boy you rescued was even luckier.’
The child! Petra sat up anxiously and then gasped as pain ripped through her shoulder.
‘Are you sure he’s okay?’ she pressed the nurse.
‘He’s fine—in fact I think his father is in a worse state of shock than he was. They are related to the Royal Family, you know. Cousins, I think. The father couldn’t sing your praises highly enough. He is convinced that if you hadn’t acted so promptly the horse might have killed his son.’
‘It wasn’t the horse’s fault!’ Petra protested. ‘The yard was busy, and he was obviously nervous… Ouch!’ She winced as the nurse readjusted the strapping holding the protective pad in place against her skin.
‘Don’t worry, I’m just checking to see if you’ve stopped bleeding.’
‘Bleeding?’ Petra frowned.
‘The horse’s shoe caught your shoulderblade, and as well as inflicting a wonderful-looking bruise it’s also broken the skin. It looks fine now, though.’
‘Good—in that case, I can get dressed and go home,’ Petra said.
‘Not until the doctor has given you the all-clear,’ the nurse warned her.
Half an hour later Petra was sitting fully dressed on the side of her bed, frowning mutinously at the young doctor confronting her.
‘Look, I can’t stay in overnight,’ she told him firmly. ‘We’re less than a week away from Race Week, and I’ve got a hundred things I have to do. You’ve said yourself that you’re ninety-nine per cent sure that I don’t have concussion, and—’
‘I would still prefer you to stay in overnight, just to be on the safe side,’ the doctor was telling her insistently.
Petra shook her head.
‘There really isn’t any need. I promise you I feel fine.’
‘We should at least alert your husband to what has happened,’ the doctor persisted.
Rashid. Petra tensed. Right now he was in London, overseeing some problem with the alterations to the hotel which the Royal Family had just acquired to add to their portfolio of hotel properties. He wasn’t due back for another two days, and she could just imagine how he was going to feel if he was dragged back on account of a wife who emotionally meant nothing whatsoever to him at all!
Determinedly she set about convincing the young doctor that there was no reason why Rashid should be unnecessarily alarmed about a mere minor accident, when he would be home within a couple of days anyway, and to Petra’s relief he seemed to accept her argument.
When it came to allowing her to go home, though, he was harder to persuade, but in the end he gave in and said that provided she was not going to be left on her own, and that there was someone there to keep an eye on her, he would agree to discharge her.
Assuring him that there was, Petra held her breath whilst he checked her bruised shoulder, and then wrote her a prescription for some painkillers, before finally agreeing to her discharge.
An hour later she was on her way home, gritting her teeth against the unexpectedly intense pain in her shoulder as she was driven slowly and carefully back to the villa by her very protective and anxious young driver.
Once there, she was fussed over by Rashid’s staff to an extent that made her grit her teeth a little and insist that they stop treating her as though she was a fragile piece of china.
Within an hour of her return she had received so many concerned telephone calls that she was refusing to take any more, and the largest reception room of the villa was filled with floral tributes—including an enormous display from the Royal Family, thanking her for rescuing one of their family.
Ignoring the dull, nagging ache which even the strong painkillers she had been given at the hospital had not totally suppressed, Petra went into the room she used as her office and started to go through the sample menus submitted to her by the hotel’s senior chef.
Their guests would be dining in one of the hotel’s private dining rooms, and Petra worked into the evening, meticulously checking the profiles she had been given of their guests against the chef’s suggested menus, stopping only to eat the light meal which Rashid’s housekeeper brought her and to reassure her that she was feeling completely fine apart from having an aching shoulder. At midnight Petra decided that she had had enough and tidied away her papers before making her way to her suite.
The live-in staff had their own quarters, separate from the main villa. Quite what the housekeeper thought of a newly married couple who slept apart Petra had no idea, but the housekeeper had confided to her that Rashid had had her suite of rooms completely redecorated prior to their marriage, even though the villa was brand-new and the rooms had previously been unoccupied.
The villa embraced the best of both Eastern and Western cultures, and had a clean, almost minimalistic look that reminded her of certain exclusive West Coast American homes belonging to friends of her parents, where modern simplicity was broken up and softened by the intriguing addition of single antique pieces. In the case of Rashid’s villa, there was an underlying sense of traditional Moorish décor which really appealed to Petra’s senses. Even the colours he had chosen were sympathetic to the eye and the landscape: pale sands, soft terracottas, a delicate watery blue-green here and there to break up the neutral natural colours.
Stunning sculptures and pieces of artwork made subtle statements about Rashid’s wealth and taste, fabrics made to delight the touch as well as the eye softened any starkness—and yet the villa felt alien and unwelcoming to Petra.
Despite its elegance and comfort, something essential was missing from it. It was a house empty of love, with no sense of being a home, of having a heart! To Petra, acutely sensitive about such things, it lacked that aura of being a place where people who loved one another lived.
She winced a little as she removed the bandage from her back and shoulder, but when she peered over her shoulder to study her reflection in the mirror in her bathroom she was relieved to see that, despite the livid bruising swelling her skin, the raw scrape on her flesh looked clean and had stopped bleeding. As she stood beneath the warm spray of a shower that was large enough for two people to share with comfort she winced a little with pain. She would have some discomfort for some days to come, the doctor had warned her.
It was the horse she felt most sorry for, Petra decided ruefully a little later as she discarded her wrap and slid naked into her bed. The poor animal had been nervous enough before the incident.
Her bed felt deliciously cool. It had been made up with clean, immaculate linen sheets that day. Forlornly Petra turned onto her side. The bed was huge, making her feel acutely conscious of the fact that, despite her marriage, she was still living the life of a partnerless woman. A woman whose husband did not want her, did not desire her, did not love her. Whilst she…
Whilst she had not gone one single night since her marriage without longing for Rashid to be here with her, without giving in to the hopeless, helpless temptation to recreate those hours she had spent in his arms at the oasis. Tiredly Petra closed her eyes against the slow fall of threatening tears.
Abruptly
