‘Do I have to spell out what you have done in words of a single syllable?’ Azrael demanded.
‘Yes,’ Molly traded sharply. ‘How could you possibly say that my grandfather doesn’t exist when I visited him every day I was in London?’
‘Your background was exhaustively researched by the British press and I read the article,’ Azrael informed her. ‘Certain facts about your family tree emerged. You don’t have a living grandfather—’
‘Maurice may be a little confused but I can assure you that he is very much alive and kicking!’ Molly slammed back at him in bemusement.
‘Both your grandfathers are dead, the first before you were born, the second when you were a child,’ Azrael enumerated grimly. ‘So, you lied to me!’
‘No, I didn’t... I have never lied to you!’ Molly flung back at him full volume as the first glimmerings of his misapprehension began to connect the dots for her. ‘And to accuse me of making up a story that I had a grandfather in a care home... I mean, why on earth would I do that?’
‘To engage my sympathies as a means of extracting money from me!’ Azrael gritted in disgust. ‘You should be ashamed—’
‘No, you should be ashamed of your nasty, suspicious mind!’ Molly shouted back at him furiously. ‘I don’t need or want your wretched money and I didn’t ask you for any of it either! How dare you accuse me of being a lying gold-digger?’
‘Those are your words,’ Azrael deflected, calming now that he had vented his angry disillusionment but decidedly confused by her reaction. ‘Not mine.’
Molly dealt him a look of supreme scorn. ‘I can read between the lines, Azrael. I’m not stupid and if this is what you really think of me, it makes me wonder what else you have hidden from me—’
‘I have hidden nothing from you—’
‘One word.’ Molly tossed her coppery head back, ringlets streaming back from her hotly flushed face.
‘What word?’ Azrael queried, feeling increasingly lost in the dialogue and unable to understand how that had happened when he was in the right and she was in the wrong.
‘Nasira,’ Molly framed with dark satisfaction. ‘Now, are you planning to continue blocking the doorway? Or may I leave the room, Your Majesty?’
Azrael frowned. ‘What has Nasira to do with us?’
It wasn’t the guilty reaction Molly had been looking for, indeed even expecting after the argument they had had. ‘You have secrets too,’ she condemned.
‘Not about her,’ Azrael breathed in bewilderment. ‘Only about things you wouldn’t want to know about—’
Molly planted a small hand directly in the centre of his hard muscular chest. ‘Move!’ she told him.
‘Why? Where are you going?’
‘That’s none of your business—’
‘Everything you do is my business...you’re my wife,’ Azrael reminded her without hesitation.
‘You have so much to learn about women,’ Molly responded with saccharine sweetness as she yanked his lean, powerful body out of her path and slid behind him to stalk back to the bedroom. ‘But you won’t be learning it from me—’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Azrael demanded rawly, striding after her, dark golden eyes flaming with frustration even as the sway of her curvaceous hips in that dress attracted his grudging attention.
‘That when you label a woman a lying gold-digger, she’s not going to be your business or your wife any more!’ Molly completed. ‘I’ve had it up to my throat with Djalia and its freaky King—’
‘I am not freaky,’ Azrael enunciated with perfect diction.
‘But you’re not the sharpest tool in the box either,’ Molly hazarded with a downright unpleasant glance in his direction. ‘Your own Djalian bodyguards have accompanied me to the care home every day to visit my non-existent grandfather. Did you think of checking with them before you unleashed all this drama on me? No, you did not think.’
And Azrael was confounded by that statement because he knew it was true. He prided himself on his calm control and logic but both had inexplicably gone missing when he most needed them at his disposal. The belief that Molly had lied to him, made a fool of him and deceived him had eaten him alive and his rarely released temper had taken hold of him. For the first time it occurred to him that he might somehow have got it wrong because Molly was not behaving like a guilty person.
‘So, explain to me how your grandfather is dead and yet not dead,’ Azrael demanded quite seriously and with his usual imperious edge.