NINE
KARIM hadn’t been away the three days he had said, but an entire week.
He had got back the day before the reception to introduce Eva to the great and good was scheduled. An event that had taken on awesome and daunting significance in her mind.
Now, about to accompany him to the reception, she said, ‘I can’t do this.’ And he was a selfish monster to imagine she could. Back and not a damned word about where he’d been or with whom!
Karim tore his eyes from her neckline and the creamy cleft between her breasts. ‘You don’t have to do anything. Just be charming.’
The instruction made her roll her eyes in angry despair that was not feigned. ‘How?’
‘If in doubt say nothing.’ It was not as easy as it sounded. Saying nothing when he had wanted to say all he could think about was sinking into her, or saying nothing when he wanted to tell her he wanted to kiss her and have her taste him in her mouth had not been as easy as it sounded.
It had been hell!
He felt simultaneously torn and guilty—torn between his duty to his father and his desire to be with his new wife, and guilt that the duty weighed so heavily.
He had arrived to discover that his father’s condition had indeed deteriorated, to a degree that was painful to observe. To see the once robust man a broken and frail shadow of his former self had made him want to turn and run like a coward, but of course he had not followed his shameful base instincts—he had kissed his father and soothed him when he flinched.
It had taken time but after a week, and with several changes in his drug regime, he had left his father as well as he would ever be.
Now he was back and all the talk was of this damned reception. Dieu, he could not understand why he had arranged it. To make Eva’s transition easier by introducing her to his world had been his idea … Right now the last thing he felt like doing was sharing her. The hunger in his body roared like a furnace.
‘That should make a great impression—a dumb wife.’
It amazed her that as an intelligent man it hadn’t occurred to him that a simple confidence-boosting lie—You look incredible—would have worked fine and might have given her the courage and confidence she needed.
A kiss might have helped, but that wasn’t going to happen unless she asked … It had to be her choice, a choice made all the more difficult by the obvious fact—it was hard to interpret his disappearing act any other way—Karim intended to carry on with his life just as he had before he had married.
She had to face facts and not carry on clinging to a fantasy.
When she had asked Tariq outright where Karim was, to say the man had been cagey was an understatement. He had dripped guilt.
His response that he wasn’t sure would not have fooled a baby—Tariq always knew where Karim was. He was generally one step behind, so Karim wanted his privacy—to Eva’s way of thinking there was only one possible reason for his strange behaviour: Karim had been with a mistress.
It all fitted.
And yet last night she had gone to his room … what was wrong with her? Her cheeks burned with mortified heat at the memory. Of course it had been with the intention of laying down some rules of her own—her story and she was sticking to it.
He’d asked her to think about what she wanted and she had and she wanted an exclusive relationship or no relationship at all. Fighting talk, but who knew what she would have accepted? She had a tendency to forget she had any pride when it came to Karim, she thought miserably. He had entered her blood like a virus and she was consumed by the fever.
Well, she’d never know because she had gone to his room only to find his bed empty and untouched. She had returned to her own bed and lain there wondering where and, more importantly, with whom he had slept that night. It didn’t seem likely that a virile and highly sexed man like Karim spent any night alone.
She had predictably cried herself to sleep, hence the puffy-eyed look today.
‘A dumb wife—that really would make me the envy of every man present.’ Karim knew he would already have the envy of every man present because they imagined that he was sharing a bed with his wife.
Not doing so was driving him slowly out of his mind.
Looking at him, tall and commanding, in his formal traditional clothes looking like the quintessence of virile masculinity, Eva knew she would be the envy of every woman present and also the focus of mass speculation.
There would be a lot more speculation if they knew that her husband didn’t share her bed.
Eva cringed inwardly at the idea of anyone discovering her secret.
‘Funny man,’ she drawled. ‘Do you have to work at being a total sexist?’
The question drew no reply.
As she walked with him towards the ballroom where the reception was being held she felt her resentment rise. No wonder she had no confidence—not only did her husband not want to sleep with her, but he kept mistresses, possibly an entire harem! When she had walked into his study in her finery he had looked her up and down, and made no comment.
She had interpreted his silence as disappointment, which was a blow because frankly this was as good as it got!
Eva told herself that it wasn’t that she needed his approval, just a little support when she was facing the daunting prospect of being judged by, if not the entire world, his world.
‘Ready?’
Glancing in the full-length mirror behind Karim, she saw a total stranger standing there.
A stranger with upswept hair. She touched the stunning emeralds that Karim had casually presented to her as if they were no big deal to wear around her neck.
Panic growing in the pit of her belly, she started to shake her head … ‘No, I’m not ready. I can’t do this … I …’
Karim knew she was speaking, he could see her lips, but he could not hear for the roaring of the pressure inside his head.
A pressure that had been building for the past weeks, but when she had appeared wearing that dress and he had wanted to do nothing but peel it off it had cranked up several painful notches.
He had been shaking so hard that he was amazed she didn’t appeared to notice; he had not trusted himself to speak. His control had teetered on a knife’s edge.
Now as he looked down into her beautiful face he knew that tonight he was going to spend the night in her bed; last night he had held back from going to her only because she had looked at him with such obvious resentment when he had offered no explanation for his absence.
He had wanted to, but a lifetime’s habit was hard to break and he didn’t know how to share his grief, but he did know that if he had gone to her last night the story of his week with his father would have come out.
Eva would have seen his pain … A man should be able to deal with what life threw at him.
