Samira nodded, prising her fingers loose from his arm and sitting back in her seat, willing herself to look calm despite her too-rapid pulse and the sick lurching of her stomach. It was a half-truth, after all, since she’d suffered from indigestion recently. Better to let her guest think it was that bothering her than the discovery she was in love with her husband. A husband who had rejected her.
Pain wrapped gnarled hands around her heart, squeezing tight.
‘I understand.’ Nicholas’s smile was warm. ‘My sister recently had a baby. She said sitting for too long was difficult.’
‘Ah, you do understand.’ Samira prided herself on her light tone, as if she had nothing on her mind but a little heartburn. She’d spent years learning to project grace and charm even when her private world had been a disaster. Desperately she dredged up every lesson she’d learned and gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Tell me...’ She leaned closer. ‘Did your sister have a boy or a girl?’
The next course was being served when Samira looked up to discover Tariq staring down the table. His jaw was tight, his mouth a grim line. And the look he sent Nicolas Roussel should have incinerated the charming Frenchman where he sat.
Samira’s breath stalled as hope fluttered high in her chest. Surely that incendiary stare signalled possessiveness? She’d never seen Tariq jealous, but that fixed glare held an unmistakeable threat.
Her heart took up a quick, excited rhythm.
Until Tariq’s gaze shifted to her and his face went completely blank. One minute she could have sworn she saw bloodlust in his eyes, the next she was left wondering if it had been a trick of the light.
Tariq inclined his head infinitesimally, favouring her with the small, polite smile which was the most animation she ever saw in him now.
How she hated that smile. It reminded her of all they’d once shared and all she still craved.
Then he turned to the ambassador and didn’t look her way again, clearly dismissing her from his thoughts.
Samira was surprised no one at her end of the table noticed the sound of her heart cracking wide open.
* * *
Tariq looked up from the draft treaty document as the door to his private study slammed open. One look at his wife’s taut features and he surged to his feet. She was in the final stages of pregnancy and he was constantly on tenterhooks, wary of a crisis.
‘That will be all for now,’ he told his secretary, his eyes fixed on Samira.
Never had she come to his office without invitation. Their lives proceeded in neat, contained patterns, intersecting only at official functions and when they spent time with the boys.
She looked tense. Was it the baby? Tension knotted his gut. He started towards her, then stopped at the look she sent him. Not pain or distress, but anger.
Tariq frowned. In all the time they’d been married he’d never seen Samira furious. In fact he hadn’t seen anger on her features since she’d been a kid. He hadn’t realised it before but even in her teens Samira had been self-contained, as if she controlled her natural volatility.
Finally they were alone, his secretary closing the door behind him.
‘Won’t you sit down?’
She lifted her chin and regarded him along her pert nose. His breath snagged. She’d never looked more beautiful, more alluring, her eyes glittering bright as gems, her lush body vibrating with passion. He wanted to reach out and stroke away the tension in her shoulders, kiss her into compliance, mould his hands to her deliciously rounded belly and...
‘You cancelled my meeting.’
Tariq blinked, trying to get his mind back into gear.
‘You’re not denying it?’ Her hands went to her hips, pulling the red silk of her loose dress tight, accentuating her heavily pregnant form. Could she feel his baby moving inside?
He cleared his throat and forced his gaze up, stoically ignoring the inevitable tension in his groin. Every time he looked at her he felt it. Every time he thought of her. Keeping his distance was killing him.
‘You’re concerned about a missed meeting?’
‘I’m concerned...’ she paused, dragged in a breath ‘...that you believe you have the right to interfere with my schedule.’
‘Ah. The meeting in the mountain villages.’
She nodded. ‘We were going to discuss the opportunities for local women. Yet I find it’s been removed from my diary with no explanation.’
‘It was to take place at the same time as the redevelopment meeting but as I’m no longer available it will be rescheduled. Besides, it’s a long way to the mountains now you’re so far through your pregnancy. You need to be careful of yourself.’