The Desert Bride

‘Oddly enough, no, because you never quite got around to mentioning it,’ she mumbled, then looked up, and her impressionable heart spun like a merry-go-round as her gaze collided with the deep, inner glow of those burning golden eyes trained compellingly on her. ‘I honestly believed you had struck this devil’s bargain with your father that meant we could only be together for a little while.’

‘I was prepared to accept a little while if that was all I could have.’

‘I have a lifetime to offer.’

‘And a baby,’ Razul remarked abstractedly, as if that fact was only now sinking in. ‘This news astonishes me. I can hardly believe it.’

‘You’re not even a bit annoyed that I lied the way I did?’

‘How could I be?’ A blazing smile suddenly drove the last evidence of strain from his lean features. He strode across the room, came down on the edge of the bed and breathed with- unhidden emotion, ‘What greater proof of your love could you give me than to desire my child?’

‘True,’ she agreed, giving up on a seemingly unnecessary need to appear remorseful.

‘I thought you knew how much I loved you. I thought my love was embarrassingly obvious,’ he confessed in a sudden surge of explanations. ‘What did you think I was telling you in the hospital when I said that you were my dream?’

‘I thought it was only—well... sex.’ She flushed as she admitted it, finding fault with her own cynicism.

‘In truth I am severely challenged being this close, to restrain my desire for you,’ Razul murmured, with a rueful quirk of his sensual mouth. ‘But nothing less than love would have driven me to lure you out here and browbeat you into a marriage within days. All I wanted was the chance to prove that I could make you happy—’

‘And you had to fight your father for that chance—’

‘I fell very deeply in love with you two years ago.’

Her eyes swam. ‘I couldn’t admit that I felt the same way. I was too scared.’

‘My father was pressing me to choose a bride when he heard rumours about you. He confronted me and I told him that you are the one I love.’

‘You are the one’... She rested her head against a broad shoulder and tightened her arms around him.

‘The only woman I would ever love, the only woman I wanted to marry. He was profoundly shocked. He reasoned, he threatened and then he gave in with very bad grace and forecast disaster—’

‘Misery loves company,’ Bethany slotted in, but she was shaken by the awareness that he had fought for her, risking...indeed expecting to suffer ultimate rejection and his father’s righteous censure.

‘I am miserable no longer. And I do not even have to work out a subtle approach to the subject of having children. You have done it all for me.’ With a glittering smile of slumbrous amusement Razul pressed her down onto the pillows. ‘Three solid days in bed... I admire such strong commitment to a goal as much as I revelled in your passion. And this week—it has been the longest, most agonising week of my life.’

‘Did your father say “I told you so”?’

‘No...he was morosely sympathetic, which was worse. He asked me how he could blame me for making the same mistake that he did.’ Razul grimaced at the memory.

‘Didn’t he ever want to meet me?’ Bethany asked tautly.

‘You were to meet after our wedding, but you were in such a mood, how could I risk it?’

Guilty recollection supplied her with a memory of the strained phone call that Razul had been engaged in when they’d arrived back here the day of the wedding. ‘I’m sorry, but I was in shock.’

‘He was too... The marriage was not to take place for some weeks but I lost my nerve to wait.’ A faint line of colour had accentuated Razul’s hard cheek-bones. ‘I should have waited,’ he conceded. ‘I should have had more patience.’

‘I’m not sure patience would have worked with me,’ she admitted. ‘But why did you stop mentioning the fact that we were married?’

‘I believed that constantly reminding you that we were man and wife was making you feel trapped. I wanted you to see that we could be truly happy. But how will you manage without your work?’

She thought about it and smiled. ‘I shall probably start writing books...but not right now. Maybe you find it hard to accept but I was a workaholic so long simply because there was nothing else in my life, and now there are lots of other things I’d like to take time out to enjoy.’

‘Will you find occasionally entertaining foreign dignitaries very boring?’

‘No.’

‘My father does not like to be troubled with these duties unless the guests are personal friends. Furthermore, many men bring their wives these days and my father is not accustomed to such gatherings.’

‘I think I could quite enjoy myself playing hostess. It would beat the hell out of watching TV and gossiping,’ she said wickedly. ‘Was it Fatima who was lined up to take my place?’

Razul frowned. ‘That is a joke in very bad taste,’ he scolded with mock sobriety. ‘No. My father did once consider Fatima when she was younger but as time revealed her character he changed his mind, and when she took you out into the desert and assaulted you—’ his strong face clenched hard ‘—he was quite appalled, as was I. She has agreed to marry a Saudi prince and I understand she is quite content. It was only ambition which made Fatima throw herself at me... I have never been more embarrassed in my thirty years of existence than I was that day, and that you should witness such a scene—’

‘And misinterpret it in the most unkind way—’

‘Cruelly unkind.’ But he smiled that heart-stopping smile, and he took her mouth with drowning sweetness.

A loud knock landed on the door. With searing impatience Razul sprang off the bed. He had a short exchange with whoever had interrupted them, but when he turned back from the door he was smiling with amusement. He was holding the exquisite bonsai tree she had admired at the old palace.

‘Such a gift from my father quite takes my breath away,’ he confided. ‘These trees are like his children.’

‘You’d better give it back fast. All the leaves keep falling off the ones I have at home!’ she admitted. ‘They’re hanging onto life by a slender thread.’

‘Even better. He loves to instruct.’

‘I’m frightened to death of him!’ she gasped.

‘But you must have impressed him deeply.’ Razul gathered her back into his arms. ‘Import the dying ones. They will be a challenge to him.’

He kissed her again.

‘You know...I really do love you,’ she whispered, glowing with contentment.

‘But not enough to take me with two hundred concubines,’ Razul lamented.

‘You’ve got your hands full with me,’ Bethany told him sternly.

‘This is true...this is wonderfully true,’ he agreed, covering her soft mouth again with his, drinking in her response with glorying pleasure. ‘You divinely precious woman...I have one small confession to make...’

‘Hmm?’

‘The helicopter waiting to take you to the airport that day...had you climbed aboard it, it would have suffered mechanical breakdown and failed as a means of transport.’

Her lashes fluttered.

‘I had decided that half an hour was not long enough for you to make such a serious decision.’

‘You had no intention of letting me go!’ Bethany registered in a daze.

‘I will never let go of my dream.’

Winding her into the strong circle of his arms, Razul suited his passionate embrace to the assurance, and the rising thunder of her heartbeat and the hot race of her pulse made her quite forget what she had been about to say. Instead she luxuriated in the wonderful feeling that she had finally come home.