She had wanted more—all along she had wanted more, even when she’d been fighting with him and telling him that she didn’t believe in marriage. She had had her dreams too, even if she hadn’t acknowledged them. She had wanted him for ever, she had wanted him to love her, she had wanted him to prove to her that marriage could work between them against all the odds...and that was immeasurably more naive than anything he had expected, she conceded painfully. Cinderella gets her prince, the ultimate fairy tale...who would ever have believed that prosaic Bethany Morgan could harbour such a dream?
‘What is your decision? I must know,’ Razul prompted very quietly.
Thank heaven for his fear of embarrassing his family, she thought. ‘I’ll stay,’ she said unevenly, and fished around for a reasonable excuse. ‘I can do my research.’
‘Of course...your research,’ Razul said flatly.
But that wasn’t all she planned to be doing, Bethany decided with an abrupt flash of decisiveness which startled her. Right now Razul had the impression that the end of the summer couldn’t come quickly enough for him. He had had enough. He had been disappointed.
He felt that he had made a fool of himself. He had given up on his dream. Well, she wasn’t planning to give up on him that easily. If she was about to spend the rest of her life hopelessly in love with another woman’s husband, she was going to have some worthwhile memories to take home with her! Right now he was her husband and the way Bethany felt—and she felt incredibly vindictive—Fatima was always going to feel second-best, and Razul was going to be languishing after his first wife for the rest of his days!
‘I’ve been thinking a lot since I’ve been lying in this bed,’ Bethany informed him in an impulsive rush, and there was considerable truth in the admission. Deprived of Razul for twenty-four hours, she had had time to come to terms with her feelings.
‘You never stop thinking,’ Razul said grimly, as if it were the worst possible offence that a woman could commit.
‘My research means so much to me but it’s terribly inconvenient that I don’t speak Arabic,’ Bethany sighed. ‘You see, my research assistant did. That was why I picked him, and I realise that you’re probably very busy but I was wondering if we could make a trip together—’
‘A trip?’ The apparently compulsive view beyond the window which he had been glued to suddenly lost his concentration. He swung back to her.
‘Into the desert. So that I could get a real feel for the nomadic way of life. Of course, I would want the experience to be authentic—’
‘Authentic?’ he questioned, studying her with an obvious effort to conceal how stunned he was by the suggestion that she had just made.
‘Basic and back to nature...just you and me against the elements without a cohort of guards and servants. They would rather get in the way of authenticity, don’t you think?’ she queried less confidently.
‘But you would be alone with me,’ Razul pointed out very drily, his black lashes very nearly hitting his cheek-bones as he surveyed her with compelling intensity. ‘I had not thought you would wish to be subjected to such unwelcome intimacy.’
Bethany took a deep breath, her cheeks hotting up to scarlet as she studied his feet. ‘When did I say it would be unwelcome? It’s not as though I hate you or anything like that.’
A silence had never been so thunderously loud in her ears.
‘You would trust me not to touch you? I am not sure I could withstand the temptation of being alone with you.’ It sounded as if admitting that physically hurt him.
‘I was hoping not...’ Bethany licked her dry lips as the silence got even noisier and her face got even hotter. She was beginning to wonder if she was quite sane. She had the feeling that he was wondering too. Green light...then red stop-light, she recalled, writhing with mortification.
‘You were hoping I would not withstand temptation?’ he framed raggedly.
Dumbly she nodded, silenced by shock at what she had just told him.
Razul gave her the fright of her life. He groaned something volatile in Arabic and grabbed her out of the bed, drip and all, just as the door opened.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Laila enquired in disbelief.
‘I am taking my wife home,’ Razul announced aggressively, as if he was expecting a fight. ‘I will take a nurse too.’
Laila was struggling to keep her face straight. ‘Honeymooriers. You make me feel every year of my age’
As his sister left to make the arrangements Razul enveloped Bethany in a smouldering golden scrutiny that entrapped her. ‘I will make this the happiest summer of your life,’ he swore passionately.
And a shard of pain as sharp as a sliver of glass tore at her. The end of the summer loomed like a fate worse than death. Why did Razul have to keep on mentioning it? It was like pouring salt on an open wound, but then there was no point in avoiding reality, she reminded herself painfully.
CHAPTER NINE
LATE afternoon, Razul strolled across the grass towards her, fluidly graceful in his desert robes but wearing that slight frown-line between his aristocratic brows which told her that he was about to be difficult.
‘You are usually taking a nap at this hour,’ he reminded her, tawny eyes sweeping over her where she reclined in the shade of the trees with a book.
‘I’m feeling as fit as a fiddle.’
‘You still look pale...and strained.’
Bethany bowed her head. Only a week ago she had dropped her defences, burnt her bridges and thrown herself at Razul’s head. Never in her worst nightmares had she imagined sacrificing her pride to such an extent. And with what result? she asked herself, with the furious and bewildered resentment which had begun to rise in her over the past week.
For some reason, Razul had gone from that brief instant of seeming jubilance at the hospital into a cool, distant mood. He was extremely polite and remarkably attentive. He brought her flowers and books and visited her several times a day, but he might just as well have been a gracious host calling in on an ailing house guest for there was nothing more intimate in his attitude towards her.
‘When are we going into the desert?’ she murmured bluntly.
‘Perhaps next month when the temperatures begin to fall. You could not tolerate the current levels of heat—’
‘I am quite sure I could—’
‘But then you do not know what you are talking about,’ Razul incised with steely cool. ‘And you will surely allow that I do? At this time of the year the desert is a furnace, and to undertake such a trip would be utter madness.’
Bethany set her teeth. ‘You can have your own tent...if that’s what’s worrying you!’ And then the minute she’d said that she wanted to crawl under the recliner and cringe. But the most deeply humiliating suspicion had begun to torment her. After she had transformed herself from an exciting challenge into a positive pushover at the hospital, had it then dawned on Razul that he no longer found her madly desirable? Was he now cursing the situation in which he found himself, longingly wishing that he could get rid of her and fervently embrace Fatima without delay?
Involuntarily she glanced up, and caught the feral gleam in his golden eyes and the grimly amused twist of his sensual mouth. ‘Does your bed become lonely?’ Razul drawled slumbrously.
She flushed to the roots of her hair.
‘I am become a sex object. I do not find this role entirely unfamiliar. Other members of your sex have viewed me in this light. But you are my wife—’
‘Temporarily!’ Bethany lashed back, awash with furious embarrassment at the fact that he could read her so easily.
‘And though I have no desire to be offensive—’
‘But you do it so well, don’t you?’ she spat, fit to be tied.
‘I am not your stud.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Bethany was so outraged that she could hardly get the words out.
‘You would like it very well if I came to your bed every night in silence and departed equally silently b
y dawn. You could have the physical pleasure without yielding me a single glimpse of your inner self. I will not be used in such a fashion. When you learn to talk to me, I will share your bed—’
‘I don’t want to talk to you...I don’t want you in my bed...in fact I wish you’d take a running jump off the nearest cliff!’ she launched at him, quivering all over with raw mortification.
‘But I know that none of this is true,’ Razul delivered with gentle emphasis. ‘You simply cannot bear to be thwarted. Were you never disciplined as a child?’
Bethany’s mouth fell open.
‘I ask,’ Razul murmured smoothly, ‘because I threw such tantrums once...but I was disciplined. It did me a great deal of good.’
Bethany clasped her hands together tightly and slowly counted to ten.
Razul sank down fluidly into a chair opposite her. ‘I would like a cool drink.’
Bethany lifted the iced jug beside her and proceeded to pour.