Marriage on the Rebound

‘I wondered how long it would take you to ask that.’ Rafe’s smile was tight. ‘A long way,’ he answered. ‘To Hong Kong, to be exact.’

Hong Kong? She blinked. ‘How long will that take us?’

‘Fifteen hours if we’re lucky, seventeen if we’re not.’ He hailed a passing hostess and ordered some soft drinks, then sat back, fishing in his jacket pocket for something. ‘Here, take these.’

Automatically she held out her hand to receive the two small pills. ‘But…’

‘No buts,’ he said. ‘It’s a hell of a flight; better to sleep as much of it away as you possibly can.’

The hostess returned with their drinks; she had a gentle smile and oriental eyes. Rafe took the drinks and held one of the glasses to Shaan’s lips. ‘Pop the pills, Shaan,’ he ordered flatly.

Without bothering to argue, she did as he told her, then drank to wash them down.

‘And maybe it’s a good time to warn you that those two pills are the last you’re going to get,’ he informed her as she settled back into her seat with a sigh. She turned her head to look at him questioningly. ‘It’s time to begin standing on your own two feet, Shaan,’ he explained quietly. ‘Pill-popping only dulls problems; it doesn’t cure them.’

‘I never wanted the pills in the first place,’ she reminded him. ‘It’s you who’s been forcing them onto me.’

‘Well, not any more,’ he promised. ‘Now, tell me about your parents,’ he requested. ‘Your father was a Lebanese doctor, wasn’t he?’

How did he know that? she wondered as she nodded in confirmation. ‘But he trained here in London,’ she informed him. ‘Which is where he met my mother. Sh-she was a nurse working at the same teaching hospital… They were killed,’ she murmured, a fine-boned hand drifting up to her throat to close over the little gold locket she always wore there. ‘By a car bomb in Beirut whilst they were out there working for an international aid agency.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Thirteen.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I was staying with my aunt and uncle at the time, so I simply—went on staying with them. They’ve been very good to me,’ she added on a soft sigh.

‘But you still miss your parents,’ he quietly concluded.

‘Yes.’

‘Shh,’ he murmured, when her dark eyes glazed over with a wall of warm moisture.

He did a strange thing then. He reached up to gently take the gold locket from her fingers, lifted it up, brushed it against her lips like a kiss, and carefully lowered it back to her throat again.

‘Go to sleep,’ he commanded gently.

It was the last thing she remembered.

* * *

The lift she was travelling in suddenly dropped ten floors in as many seconds. Her eyes flew open, that awful sinking sensation leaving her stomach alive with butterflies. Then she just stared, completely bewildered as to where she was. It took several more troubled seconds to remember, then that now familiar feeling of desolation washed over her. If needed several more minutes of grim, taut stillness before she managed to contain it enough to take an interest in her surroundings.

The cabin was in darkness, the distant hum of the plane’s powerful engines barely impinging on the quietness surrounding her. Someone had reclined her seat and covered her with a lightweight blanket, and a pillow had been positioned beneath her cheek. The shutters were down on the porthole windows, but it only took a glance in that direction to realise it was as dark outside as it was inside the plane.

Turning her head slowly, she found herself looking directly into Rafe’s sleeping face. His unexpected closeness caught at her breath. For some reason she hadn’t expected him to be asleep. Over the last few days she had never seen him anything but aggressively alert, and she found it rather disconcerting to see him like this.

Like her own, his seat was reclined, his dark head relaxed on his shoulders and facing her way. He had removed his jacket at some point during the flight and his tie had gone too. The top few buttons of his shirt had been tugged loose and the sleeve-cuffs rolled up to reveal the crisp, dark covering of hair on his tanned forearms. His hands lay in a loose link across the flatness of his stomach, the gold ring he had insisted she place on his left hand gleaming softly in the dimness.

She glanced at her own hands, clasped in a similar way to his, and studied the matching ring she was wearing.

Married, to a stranger.

A wry smile touched her lips and she turned to look back at him. What did he think? she wondered. What did he really think about the crazy liaison they had embarked upon?

His face told her nothing, as usual. Even in repose it still kept its thoughts to itself. Yet, with his winter-grey eyes hidden beneath lowered lashes that formed two shadowed arches against his high cheekbones, there was a gentler look to him, while those tough lines of aggressive determination were eased away by sleep. And his mouth looked softer, kinder, the lips forming a smooth bow shape that suddenly struck her as surprisingly sensual.

Surprising because she had never thought of Rafe in that way before. But now she felt something begin to stir inside her, something like the fine brushing of fingertips on the lining of her stomach, and her heart gave a low, droning thud in response.

No; she denied it and closed her eyes again, blocking it out—blocking him out. Rafe might have made himself virtually indispensable to her very existence at the moment, but she didn’t want to start feeling like that about him. It smacked too much of desperation.