He gave a brief, hard smile. It had been clear that she had not wanted him to find her. She had changed her job and changed her flat—no, the message to stay away had been quite clear. ‘It was not difficult.’ He shrugged.
Not for him, no—of course it wasn’t. ‘Did you get Philip to search for me?’ she mocked.
‘What did you expect me to do?’ he retorted. ‘Scour the pages of the telephone directory myself? Running a country takes up almost all of my waking hours, Rose.’
‘Of course. I shouldn’t have been so flippant.’ Her voice trembled. ‘H-how is Maraban?’
‘Lonely,’ he said with the brutal honesty which seemed to come so easily around her.
She quashed the foolish flare of hope which leapt in her heart. She had never allowed fantasy to get in the way of reality where he was concerned, and she wasn’t about to start now. ‘Oh? So no suitable bride been found for you yet?’
‘No,’ he agreed equably, because the waspish way she asked that question told him that maybe her message of wanting him to stay away had been ambivalent. That maybe she still cared. ‘No wife.’
‘But not through lack of trying, I imagine?’
He was not going to tell her lies, nor to play games with her. ‘That’s right.’ He allowed his mind to briefly dwell on every available high-born Maraban woman who had been brought before his critical eye. And how every doe-eyed look of submission had only emphasised the equality he had shared with Rose.
‘But none of them came up to your exacting standards, Khalim?’
‘Not one.’ He smiled. ‘That’s why I’m here today.’
She reminded herself of what his terms had been before he’d left, and they would not have changed—why should they when the circumstances were exactly the same as before?
‘Would you mind making yourself a little clearer?’
He owed her this. The unadorned truth. The only words which would express the only thing which mattered.
‘I love you, Rose.’
The words rang in her ears. Alien words. Secretly longed-for but inconceivable words…words from which she would never recover if they weren’t true. She met the lancing black stare and her heart began to pound. Because it didn’t matter what logic or common sense told her—Khalim would not use words like that if he didn’t mean them. Why would he?
Khalim narrowed his eyes as he watched the wary assessment which had caused a frown to appear between the two delicate arches of her eyebrows. Had he imagined that she would fall straight into his arms the moment that those words were out of his mouth?
‘Shall I say it again?’ he questioned softly. ‘That I love you, Rose. I have always loved you. I shall love you for the rest of my days, and maybe beyond that, too.’
She shook her head distractedly. It didn’t matter—because fundamentally nothing had changed. ‘I can’t do it, Khalim,’ she whispered. ‘I just can’t do it.’
Black brows knitted together. ‘Do what?’
‘I can’t be your mistress—I just can’t—because it will break my heart.’ Maybe if she appealed to his innate sense of decency, he might go away and leave her alone. Stop tempting her into breaking every rule in the book. She sucked in a huge, shuddering breath. ‘You see, I love you, too—I love you in a way I didn’t think it was possible to love.’
‘And that’s a problem, is it?’ he asked gently.
‘Of course it’s a problem! I can’t say I’m not tempted to become your mistress—of course I am! I’ve ached and ached for you since you went back to Maraban, and just when I thought I might be getting over it—’
‘Are you?’ he questioned sternly. ‘Getting over me?’
The truth was much more important than remembering not to pander to his ego. ‘No, of course I’m not,’ she admitted. And she didn’t think she ever would. ‘But what chance do I have if we become lovers again? I’ll just get sucked in, deeper and deeper, and then sooner or later there will be a Maraban woman who you will want to make your wife—’
‘Never!’ he said flatly.
‘You can’t say that!’
‘Oh, yes, I can,’ he corrected resolutely. ‘There is only one woman who I could ever imagine making my wife. One woman who I have every intention of making my wife, and that woman is you, Rose. It only ever has been you.’
She stared at him in disbelief, telling herself tha
t she had not heard him properly. Words of love and commitment she had only ever listened to in her wildest dreams. And dreams didn’t come true—everybody knew that. ‘You can’t mean that.’