The Sheikh's Prize(20)

'Saffy?' the attractive redhead pressed. 'You know, it may be your   wedding day but it's still not too late to change your mind. You don't   have to marry Zahir. You don't have to do this to please anybody.'

Looking reflective, Saffy breathed in deep. 'I really do want to give   our baby the chance to have two parents. None of us ever had that. My   sisters and I had you and you were a brilliant stand-in Mum,' she told   Kat warmly. 'But I'd like to try it the old-fashioned way before I try   to go it alone.'

Kat frowned. 'You're not in a very optimistic mood for a new bride.'

'I'm being realistic. Zahir will commit to being a father-I know that   about him and I respect him for it. If marriage works for us, it works,   and if it doesn't work, at least I'll have tried,' Saffy muttered   ruefully.

'I just can't believe you got involved with him again. It's like fatal   attraction without the bunny boiler. I mean, five years ago Zahir broke   your heart and I don't want him doing it again.' Her sister sighed   unhappily. 'Mikhail has checked him out and he says Maraban is stable   now and that Zahir seems to be one of the good guys.'

'I could've told you that,' Saffy interrupted heatedly.

'And there's no sleazy stories about him either,' Kat added in a   suitably quiet undertone. 'Obviously there's been women but not in the   kind of numbers you need to worry about.'

Saffy ground her teeth together in silence, wishing that her Russian   billionaire brother-in-law had minded his own business when it came to   Zahir. Even as she thought it she knew she was wronging the man.   Undoubtedly Kat's concerns about her sister's bridegroom had prompted   Mikhail's investigation into Zahir's reputation. 'He would never be   sleazy,' Saffy declared, suppressing her recollection of that invitation   to be his mistress.

'Are you upset about Emmie refusing to come today?' Kat asked ruefully.

'No.' Saffy lied sooner than add additional worry to Kat's caring heart.   'I can understand her not wanting to get into a bridesmaid's frock  when  she's so pregnant and I can also understand her saying that she's  not  in the mood.'

'Some day soon, you two need to sit down and talk and sort out the aggro between you.'

'Easier said than done with Emmie always avoiding me like the plague,'   Saffy countered ruefully. 'I phoned her and said I understood her not   wanting to be a bridesmaid but would love her to come just as a guest   and she said she wasn't feeling well enough to travel.'

'Well, she has had a pretty tough time being pregnant, so that probably   wasn't a lie,' Kat conceded. 'It makes me wonder if I'm wise to be   considering IVF in case that kind of sickness and nausea in pregnancy   runs in the family.'                       
       
           



       

'I'm not feeling sick...not yet, anyway,' Saffy pointed out bracingly,   smiling as Topsy bounced into the room, bubbling with excitement in her   glittering green bridesmaid's dress and quite unaware of the serious   chat her older sisters had been involved in. It seemed natural to the   three sisters that neither Saffy's mother nor her father were taking   part in the coming ceremony. Saffy had had virtually nothing to do with   her mother, Odette, or her father since they had abandoned her to  foster  care when she was twelve years old. Her parents had divorced  when she  was much younger and the bitterness of their estrangement had  had an  inevitable effect on her father's attitude to his twin  daughters. He had  left them behind and moved on. Although Kat had  encouraged Saffy to  foster a forgiving attitude towards their mother,  Saffy had too many  memories of childhood neglect to do so. Odette  simply wasn't a loving  parent and never had been.

The wedding took place at the church only a few doors down from Kat and   Mikhail's London home. The church's rather gloomy interior had been   transformed with an abundance of white and pink flowers and knotted   ribbons. Saffy walked down the aisle on Cameron's arm, her heart banging   like a drum at a rock concert when she finally got close enough to see   Zahir's imperious dark head at the altar. How did he feel about this?   How did he really feel? Throughout the past crazy busy week while she   packed up her life in London her only contact with Zahir had been by   phone. She had rung him after the doctor had confirmed her pregnancy. He   had rung her several times to find out about the wedding schedule.   There had been nothing intimate about those exchanges.

She had also ploughed through a half-dozen frustrating meetings with her   agent and various clients as the reality of her condition forced the   need for urgent rethinks on previously planned shoots. A couple of   clients had taken the opportunity to drop her because her pregnancy   meant that she was in breach of contract. Desert Ice, however, had   retained her services because they were more than halfway through their   campaign. She was grateful for that because it was mainly her earnings   from the cosmetics company that funded the orphanage she supported.

Zahir's stunning black-fringed golden eyes met hers as she drew level   with him and she felt painfully vulnerable, which she didn't like at   all. Unfortunately wounding memories of their first wedding were   assailing her, reminding her of a day when she had not had a doubt in   the world about becoming a wife, had indeed innocently overflowed with   feelings of love and happiness. The wedding ring slid onto her finger   and she breathed in deep, conscious that Zahir retained a hold on her   hand. It was done, the die was cast, she told herself soothingly. What   was she afraid of happening? What was there to fear now? That he didn't   love her-well, she knew he didn't love her, didn't she? Unfortunately   the awareness that he was marrying her to give their baby a name and a   home was no more welcome to her heart or her pride.

On their passage back down the aisle, Zahir pressed a supportive hand to   her spine. 'You feel very shaky,' he admitted when she cast him an   enquiring glance.

And it was true, she did feel shaky, had ridden roughshod over her   misgivings to marry him, trying at every step to put her child's needs   ahead of her own.

Zahir participated in the photographs in silence. Sapphire was pale as   death and silent and her family, aside of the little bouncy one in   green, who had smiled brightly at him, were clearly hostile and   suspicious. No doubt her family had taken their cues from Sapphire. She   didn't want to be married to him again; he could feel it in the tension   that gripped her every time he touched her. That made him angry and   bitter, roused memories better left buried. But he had royally screwed   up by allowing his primal instincts to triumph and there was always a   price to be paid for recklessness, he reminded himself darkly. He had   got her back. That was, at least, a beginning, and only time would tell   whether or not she would continue to hold the threat of a divorce like a   gun to his head.

'You look stunning,' Zahir told her belatedly as she scrambled into the   limo that would whisk them from the church to the embassy to undergo a   Muslim marriage ceremony. 'How are you feeling?'

'I'm not ill, only pregnant,' Saffy countered defensively, wishing he   hadn't reminded her of her condition, reluctant to be viewed as in any   way in need of special treatment.

The second ceremony was brief, witnessed by embassy officials and a   posed photograph was taken afterwards. They returned to Mikhail and   Kat's house where a reception was being held in the ballroom. After the   wedding breakfast, they circulated. Surrounded by the familiar faces of   the models she often worked with, Saffy began to relax a little,  bearing  up well to comments about how quiet she had been about her  supposed  long-term relationship with Zahir and striving to behave more  like a  normal bride.                       
       
           



       

'Of course, I shouldn't mention it,' trilled Natasha, a six-foot-tall   Ukrainian blonde, well on her way to supermodel status. 'But Zahir was   mine first.'

It was said so quietly and with such a sunny smile that it took several   seconds for that spiteful confession to sink in on Saffy. She stared   back into Natasha's very pale blue eyes and murmured, 'Really?' as   politely as if the other woman had commented on the weather.

'Yes, a couple of years ago now. A fling at a film festival,' Natasha   confided with a little shrug of a designer-clad shoulder. 'But he was   hard to forget.'