on the mother’s health so of course she matters. But as for the woman,’ Asim continued smoothly, ‘he accepts now that he is beyond her forgiveness. Which matters little when it is clear that he will never learn to forgive himself.’
‘If you’re trying to play on my sympathies, Asim,’ Evie sighed, reaching out for the flask of water sitting on her bedside cabinet, ‘it isn’t working.’
‘Here,’ Asim offered instantly. ‘Let me do that for you.’
Taking the flask from her, he unscrewed the cap and poured some of the chilled water into a glass before handing it to her. In silence he stood beside her and watched her drink the water, took the glass from her when she had finished and smoothly replaced both glass and flask back on the cabinet.
Then he pleaded soberly, ‘See him, madam. For two nights and a day he has neither slept nor eaten and I am seriously worried about him.’
‘He kept me waiting for two weeks before his henchmen came to evict me.’
‘They were not his henchmen.’ Asim denied the charge. ‘And if you force him to he will wait two weeks in that waiting room just down the corridor, I promise you.’
Evie could believe that, knowing the man as well as she did.
‘Okay,’ she wearily conceded, deciding that she might as well get it over with. ‘I’ll see him.’
‘Thank you.’ Asim sent her one of those bows that reminded her of Crown Prince Hashim’s messengers, and she shuddered.
‘He can have five minutes then you make him leave,’ she added on the back of that shuddering reminder.
‘As you wish.’
What Evie wished for was to never set eyes on Raschid again, but she kept that thought to herself as Asim quickly left the room now he had what he had come for.
The door opened again in seconds, and what she saw as Raschid strode into the room almost—almost caused the shell she was hiding behind to crack.
Not with sympathy but with anger, because if this man hadn’t eaten or slept in two nights and a day, he was looking disgustingly well for it!
Evie felt conned.
Conned by the pristine neatness of the clothes he was wearing, by the clean-shaven smoothness of his face and the arrogance with which he stood there by the closed door studying her with absolutely no hint of remorse written anywhere on his lean dark face.
‘How are you?’ he enquired.
‘I’m sure everyone has told you exactly how I am,’ Evie replied, in no mood for pleasantries.
He nodded politely, taking the words at their face value, then strode smoothly forward to pull out and sit down on the chair beside the bed.
It was only when he came this close to her that Evie saw the slight bruising around his eyes, which showed that the man had been going without sleep—but even those bruises added to his dark brooding sensuality, she noted resentfully.
That gut-wrenching sensuality that had been catching her out from the first time that she’d ever looked at him.
In an effort to stop herself from feeling like that, Evie dragged her eyes away and slid her knees up so she could hug them loosely with her arms. Then, head lowered, mouth clamped shut, she grimly waited for him to say what he had waited around this long to say.
Yet he didn’t speak. He dragged out that silence like a taut piece of string that seemed to be trying to tug her chin up so she would look at him. But Evie refused to look at him, because looking meant communicating, as they had always been able to do with just the merest clash of their eyes. And she didn’t want that kind of communication with him any more.
‘I won’t go away just because you wish it, you know,’ he murmured eventually.
‘I can’t deal with you right now,’ she answered flatly. ‘Anyone with a bit of sensitivity would have understood that and left me to myself.’
‘Because you blame me for what happened?’
Yes, she blamed him. She’d felt used, ignored, abandoned and abused by the time those two men had left her alone. Raschid had promised her protection. He had promised to call her. He had vowed to make everything work for them.
‘I’m sorry my father’s people frightened you so badly.’
‘Your father’s people are also your people,’ Evie reminded him. ‘I don’t particularly want you to differentiate between yourself and them.’
‘Why not?’
Why not? she repeated grimly to herself. ‘Because you are no different, and I don’t want to see you as such any more.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, I have been shown the light,’ she answered with spiked mockery. ‘And will you stop throwing questions at me as if I am the one standing on trial?’ she flashed. ‘In case you haven’t realised it yet—I am the victim here!’
‘And you think I am not just as much a victim?’ His wide chest heaved, lifting and falling on a tense pull of air. ‘I had no idea my father could stoop so low as to pull a lousy stunt like that!’ he said savagely. ‘He now deeply regrets what he did,’ he added, sounding so short and clipped that if she had been anyone else Evie would have read stiff reluctance to offer that information in that haughty tone.
But she wasn’t anyone else. And she knew this man inside out, so she also knew what that tone of voice really meant.
Raschid was struggling to keep his real feelings about his father under tight wraps.
‘He sends you his most sincere apologies—’
‘He’s already done that,’ she clipped, her face going white when she remembered the last person who had said those words to her.
‘And begs your forgiveness,’ Raschid doggedly continued as if she hadn’t spoken.
Evie clamped her lips together and forbore to repeat that his father had also done that before.
‘He will, of course, tell you these things personally as soon as he is fit enough to leave hospital.’
That brought her eyes up and around to stare at him. ‘What hospital?’ she gasped.
‘The one I put him in,’ he replied, the words hard with a mockery that had no hint of humour. ‘When he refused to accept that I intended to marry you and not Aisha,’ he went on to explain, ‘I abdicated my right to succession. The shock almost killed him.’
‘Oh, Raschid, no,’ Evie groaned, and wondered wretchedly how many people this whole horror story was going to hurt before it was done.
‘Still,’ he went on coolly, ‘all’s well that ends well, as you British like to say. My father now has a heart which beats as healthily as my own does, and he is also reconciled to the fact that I will marry where I choose to marry.’
‘Not
