this occurrence, it was hardly surprising that she was rather subdued when she arrived at the palace to meet her stepdaughter, trying hard as she did so not to think about Karim’s formal cold reception at the airport. Like a new over-hyped blockbuster, it had been a major anticlimax.
Even the incredible atrium with the mosaic ceiling of lapis lazuli failed to awaken her enthusiasm—she just kept seeing his expression when he had walked out to meet her on the tarmac.
Karim had looked at her as though she were a stranger, or at least someone he wished were a total stranger rather than the wife he had to take home to meet his daughter. Someone he was saddled with for the rest of his life.
The little girl, though, didn’t notice any atmosphere between the adults. She showed no sign of illness as she literally bounced with excitement when she saw Eva.
She immediately became entranced by the colour of Eva’s hair and announced she wanted her own hair to be that colour when it grew back, just like her new mama.
Eva had a lump in her throat when she told her that she had always wanted black hair and people rarely liked what they had. The little girl was allowed to have tea with them before she was ushered away for a nap by her nurse.
With a spontaneous display of affection she climbed on Eva’s knee and hugged her before her nurse dragged her away.
‘She’s lovely.’ Eva had been conscious of Karim’s silent presence, but while the child was there she had not been forced to actually look at him.
She did so now and she could do this. She wanted him, so why pretend? Even the scent of his skin from this distance was driving her totally crazy.
‘Yes, she’s a charmer.’
Obeying a compulsion he could not resist, his hooded glance slid over the soft contours of her face, greedily drinking in the details. Her skin was softer and even whiter than he remembered. The dimple in her cheek, though, was absent; she was not smiling.
She had not been smiling except for a faint tragic flicker when he had met her on the tarmac. The greeting had borne no resemblance to the one in his head, the one where she had flung herself into his arms.
It was ironic that what had displeased him would have pleased the small but vocal minority in the capital he had spent the last week identifying. After identifying them he had made a point of explaining that he would not look favourably on people who spread tales about his wife’s past. They had been suitably chastened, but the situation would bear watching. It would be hard enough for Eva to adapt without the moral majority who thought a virgin bride was the only suitable mate for a future King talking behind their hands.
They could think what they liked, but he made no bones about how vigorous his response would be if he heard them.
Conscious that if he touched Eva his ability to pull back was in doubt, Karim had ignored the cheek she offered him. He had also ignored the discussion of the weather.
He had had more trouble ignoring her warm mention of Luke, who apparently had let her know that her tutor was extremely pleased with the final draft of her thesis.
If the man had been within his grasp he would have taken more than a little pleasure from spoiling his pretty face.
For a man who had always prided himself on his control it was shocking to suddenly have none, though not in the same shocking league as the almost audible sound of the floodgates that had held back his emotions for years buckling when he had seen her standing there on the tarmac.
Looking so small and lost and vulnerable, her hair like a beacon.
He had never wanted a woman in a way that defied logic and reason—he did now.
He had spent the previous three weeks since they had last been together—it would have been two if he hadn’t arrived back and found more than a little bad feeling directed towards his new wife—alternating between feeling furious that he had allowed himself to be trapped for a second time into a marriage that was not convenient for him, and being furious with Eva for choosing to spend that time with her family and not with him and more specifically in his bed.
The fact he had made no attempt to stop her and had not disagreed with King Hassan’s suggestion only increased the level of Karim’s sense of impotent fury.
It was a lot of fury.
And at one level Karim was conscious that it was a lot easier to be angry than actually examine his feelings in any great depth. As they had driven in silence in the car with three feet and a wall of silence separating them he had repeated to himself like a mantra, This is just sex, this is just sex.
And when it was more than imagined sex he would be sane again.
Even repeating it twice did not make it sound true.
‘And she’s well.’
‘Total remission,’ he confirmed, dragging his thoughts from her mouth.
‘That’s marvellous,’ Eva said, struggling to maintain a wary smile in the face of his grim forbidding expression. His body language was so rigid she could see the fine muscles just under the surface of the golden skin in his neck quivering.
Someone had to break the ice.
‘I was wondering if perhaps we could … eat together tonight and … catch up?’ Tonight she would come clean and admit her sexual inexperience was a lead weight around her neck.
She also planned to admit that sex with him and only him was not something she would have a problem with.
Karim, feeling the tension that he always felt preceding a visit to his father, a tension on this occasion made a hundred times worse by the fact he wanted her so badly he could taste it, shook his head.
He would have delayed the visit had the nurse in charge of the team who cared for his father not confided her concerns about the King’s health. Just what did deterioration mean?
‘I’m afraid that I have plans. I’ll be away until Friday,’ he said, struggling to make small talk because he was seeing her naked and underneath him … and on top of him.
Eva swallowed and smiled through the rejection, determined he would never guess how much he had hurt her. The message could not have been clearer. First he had bundled her off to her grandfather, been back home a week before he bothered suggesting she join them, and now she had arrived he couldn’t wait to leave.
Well, this time she was taking the hint!
‘Would you like to see this garden? Amira has this idea that she—’
He was pretending to be polite. He had clearly spent the last three weeks wishing this marriage had never happened, comparing it no doubt with his first marriage, and Eva couldn’t bear it another second.
Her voice cold and crisp, she cut across him. ‘No … that is, actually I’m pretty tired. I could do with a nap … if you’ll excuse me.’ Let it never be said I don’t have lovely manners, she thought as she walked straight-backed from the room.
And lovely posture, and who, she asked herself, needs sex when they have posture? At least she could look royal even if she didn’t
