beautiful, Kamel.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘So, you think you might be able to stick it here for a few days?’
How few? she wondered. And what happened after that? But then she closed down that line of thought. Better to enjoy the here and now and not think too far ahead.
‘I might cope.’ She looked at the sugar-pink painted villa that seemed to cling to the edge of the cliff.
‘I even know where the kitchen is here.’
She lifted her brows and tried to look serious but a laugh bubbled through. ‘I’m more interested in the pool today.’ She mimed a fanning gesture with her hand.
‘That sounds good.’ He withdrew the vibrating phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. ‘Sorry, I might have to take a rain check on that.’ You did not hang up on a king, even—or maybe especially—if that king was your uncle. ‘I really have to take this. Go have an explore.’
Hannah nodded, lowering her eyes to hide the irrational stab of hurt. It was crazy to mind that she was not at the top of his priorities.
WHEN SHE SLID open the wardrobes that lined one wall of the dressing room and found they weren’t empty, Hannah thought she was seeing an example of Kamel’s famed forward thinking.
The beginnings of a frown began to form on her brow as she lifted the top item on the stack of underclothes. Size-wise—not to mention style-wise—it was really not her! A few moments later as she flicked through the row of expensive garments the frown was fully formed and it had become obvious that even Kamel did not think of everything! She felt her self-righteous anger reach new heights as she picked up the faint but distinctive scent that clung to the garments. He thought it was fine to have his wife share wardrobe space with his mistress...maybe the economy appealed to him!
She felt physically sick, but, in the grip of a masochistic urge she could not fight, Hannah stretched out a shaking hand to the neatly folded stacks of underclothes on the shelf. They were not items that could be classed utilitarian or, by any stretch of the imagination, tasteful.
Hannah pushed the lot onto the floor and, with a vengeful cry, grabbed the most tacky, glittering thing she could see. It turned out to be a gold beaded dress with a designer label, and a split so low on the back the wearer couldn’t possibly have worn any underclothes.
Had she been this angry when she discovered Rob’s multiple infidelities? Hannah was incapable by this point of questioning the degree of her reaction. She was incandescent with rage. Not only did she not want a second-hand G-string, she didn’t want a second-hand man!
How stupid had she been to even begin to let down her guard with him, to trust him? Experience had taught her you couldn’t trust a man.
Eyes flashing, back stiff, she stalked down the glass-roofed corridor that connected the more modern bedroom wing to the main house and into the open-plan living room where she had left Kamel. The room was empty but the echoing sound of her heels on the terracotta tiles drew a call from outside.
‘Come have a swim!’
Responding to the invitation with narrow-eyed determination, she exited the patio doors just as Kamel levered himself from the infinity pool.
Rising in one seamless motion, he stood with the towel he had retrieved from the pool’s edge in one hand, but he made no attempt to dry himself. The water continued to stream down his lean brown body, making his skin glisten like polished copper in the sun.
She caught her breath. Not even a full-blown rage could protect her from her visceral reaction to the sight of six feet four inches of dripping-wet Kamel. She was helpless to control her quivering response to the image of earthy power in his broad shoulders, deeply muscled chest, and strong thighs. She swallowed, knowing she was staring but helpless to stop herself. The moisture clinging to his skin emphasised each individual slab of muscle in his flat washboard torso, and he didn’t carry an ounce of surplus flesh to blur the perfect muscle definition.
Kamel was all hard, primal male; he represented a physical male ideal combined with an earthy sexuality that had made him a deadly combination—the perfect lover. As she stared at him Hannah could feel her anger slipping away, feel the heat build inside her. She sucked in a short shocked breath, her eyes widening in disgust with herself as she recognised what was happening.
He looped the towel around his neck and she turned her head slightly to avoid the rippling contraction that moved across his flat torso as he lifted his arm to drag a hand across his wet hair.
She would not turn into one of those women who put up with all sorts of crap from a man just because he was...well...good in bed. And Kamel was, in her defence. There were probably not enough superlatives to describe just how good he was! She smothered the internal sigh and thought that he’d certainly had enough practice at it. It was not by accident they had dubbed him The Heartbreaker Prince!
One corner of his sensual mouth lifted in a lazy half-smile, but there was nothing lazy about the gleam in his eyes. She pressed a hand to her stomach—not that it helped to calm the fluttering.
‘I think you’re a little overdressed, angel,’ he rasped throatily.
The same could not be said of him. The black shorts he wore low on his hips left little to the imagination—and hers was rioting as she raised the level of her stare.
‘There are some swimsuits in the pool house.’
She closed her mouth with a firm and audible snap. Clutching the dress in one hand and her anger in the other, she slung him a contemptuous look that would have frozen a normal man stone dead in his tracks. The man she had married gave a here-we-go-again look and dragged some of the excess moisture from his hair with one hand, sending a shower of silver water droplets over her heated skin.
‘I just bet there are, but I’m not too keen on wearing other women’s cast-offs—or, for that matter, sleeping with them!’
He responded to her hostility with a long, slow, considering look. ‘Right.’
He didn’t add I see because he didn’t. When she had left him a few minutes earlier the sexual promise in her blue eyes... Well, if she hadn’t left when she had, he had been within an undiplomatic hair’s breadth of doing the unthinkable—slamming the phone down on his uncle with the explanation, I need to make love to my wife.
Acknowledging the strength of that need had been what had driven him to the pool. He hadn’t spared his body—the relentless pace through the water should have left him incapable of breath, let alone lust, but the ache was still there, and now she was looking at him as though he had just been found guilty of waging a hate campaign against kittens!
He ground his teeth at the sheer, unremitting frustration of it all. He tilted his head, a dark scowl forming on his wide forehead as he fished for a word that summed up his life before Hannah had come into it. Centred.
At another time he might have appreciated the black irony of the situation, but at that moment, with frustrated desire clenched like a knot, the humour passed him by. He had married her, resenting both the sense of duty that made him step up and the woman herself. And now, days later, he wanted her so badly he could barely string a coherent thought together.
