The black car he always used when visiting the country had been brought to the airfield and, after briefing his bodyguards, he set off on the familiar roads towards Francesca’s Surrey home, just as dusk was descending.
Fairy lights twinkled in garden bushes and blazed from the windows of the houses he passed—so that the usually subdued suburban roads seemed to resemble some sort of carnival. And then he remembered that it was December, and Christmas—when the whole of the western world seemed to come alight with colour and joy. He glanced down at his watch to read the date.
December twenty-fourth.
The night before Christmas.
Zahid narrowed his eyes. Wasn’t that a big deal? When stockings were hung at the ends of beds and carols sung in churches, and, for some European cultures, a feast of fish eaten at midnight? Wasn’t this the time when families came together to celebrate and to remember? Close units united against the outside world …
For a moment, a terrible wave of longing washed over him and he almost turned back—until he remembered that Francesca had no family with which to sit around a festive table. She was as alone as he was …
But as he turned into the familiar driveway and flashed at the following bodyguards to instruct them to lay in wait by the gates he almost collided with a saloon car which was roaring in the opposite direction.
And in the driving seat, his face tight with fury, was Simon Forrester.
Zahid had only met Francesca’s fiancé once—but once had been enough to remember the sullen curl of his mouth and the handsome, pampered face. He felt something like a dark rage twisting in his gut.
What the hell was he doing here?
Screeching to a halt in front of the house in a spray of gravel, Zahid leapt out of the car and strode up to the house—hammering on the door until it opened and a startled looking Francesca stood blinking up at him. He saw the colour drain from her face and the tip of her tongue dart out to moisten those petal lips. She looked as if she had just seen a ghost. Or was that guilt he read on her face? he thought grimly.
‘What the hell was that creep Forrester doing here?’ he demanded.
Frankie’s senses were in disarray, her heart beating so loudly that it threatened to deafen her as she stared at her Sheikh lover. Ex-lover, she reminded herself bitterly. And ex for a good reason. Because a man who wanted four wives and who would always be a desert sheikh in the most traditional sense of the word was not the right kind of man for her. She just had to keep convincing herself of that.
She swallowed. ‘You can’t just turn up out of the blue, sounding like some B-rated detective, Zahid!’ she protested. ‘Why … why are you here?’
‘Why do you think I’m here?’ His voice was unsteady as he stared at her and noticed the deep shadows beneath her cheekbones—and how loose the pale sweater and jeans looked on her narrow frame. ‘To talk to you.’
Frankie’s heart gave a flare of hope which she did her best to ignore as she reminded herself of how many nights she had wept into her pillow over him. ‘You mean you want to interrogate me about who I’m seeing?’ she demanded.
‘So you are seeing him?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ A ragged sigh of inevitability escaped from her lips. She knew that she was going to listen to what he had come to say—for how could she turn him away? But one thing was for sure. She was going to be strong. Very strong. The last time he had seen her she had been on the brink of tears and now she needed to show him that she could cope perfectly well without him. ‘You’d better come in.’
He noticed that she didn’t offer him tea and she didn’t take him to the kitchen with its warm range and faded comfort either. He followed her into the room where he’d carried her on the day she’d discovered her fiancé’s duplicity, and once there she looked at him with a proud expression on her face.
And Zahid felt the sudden unfamiliar shimmering of apprehension. Surely there could only be one reason why she could look so secure?
‘You are back with him?’ he questioned, unprepared for the savage lurch of his heart.
‘Of course I’m not back with him! Do you really think I am as shallow as that?’
‘Then why is he here?’
She could see the angry fire spitting from eyes which were narrowed into onyx chips. She thought that if Zahid were suddenly called upon to take a part in the pantomime which was playing to packed houses in the local theatre, he would have made a superb fire-breathing dragon.
‘Actually, he was here on a mission,’ she said. ‘He’d heard I was back from Khayarzah and he came asking for his engagement ring back.’
Zahid remembered the Englishman’s furious expression as their cars had passed at the end of the drive and, instinctively, he glanced at her bare hand. ‘Which you gave to him?’
‘Well, I would have done, if only I could find the damned thing.’ She read the question in his eyes and shrugged. ‘I seem to have mislaid it somewhere around the house. At any rate, it’s missing, and when I told Simon he demanded that I give him the twenty-five thousand pounds he’d paid for it.’
Zahid stilled. ‘But you didn’t, did you?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Frankie gave a short laugh. ‘Even if I had that kind of money—there’s no way I would have given it to him. I asked him to produce a receipt which he should have had for a sum that big but, of course, he couldn’t—because the ring’s a fake.’ She met his eye
s with a challenging look. ‘Something which you knew all along, didn’t you, Zahid?’ she questioned quietly.