The Sheikh's Prize(21)

'Yes,' Saffy acknowledged, passing on as soon as she could into less   aggressive company, anger licking like fire at her composure. Mine   first? No, he had been hers, her husband and then her ex-husband before   he became anyone else's. But the truth that he had sought amusement in   other beds could still slash like a knife turning in her breast. She   glanced back at Natasha, beautiful and reputedly sexually voracious,   struggling not to picture Zahir entwined in her arms, and the nausea she   had never experienced until that moment turned her stomach into a   washing machine and sent sickness hurtling up her throat. Her skin   clammy with perspiration, she rushed off to the cloakroom and made it   just in time. She was horribly sick and it took a few minutes for her to   freshen up and lose the unsteadiness that afflicted her in the   aftermath.

When she emerged, Topsy was waiting for her. 'Are you OK? Zahir saw you leaving and asked me to check.'

Zahir didn't miss much, Saffy reflected wretchedly. 'I think I just got   bitten by morning sickness.' And a very tall shrewish blonde.

But Saffy was no fan of ducking reality and she knew she had to deal   with life as it was. Zahir had been with other women when he was no   longer married to her and that was his business, not hers. His past was   his own, just as hers would have been had she lived a little more   dangerously since their first marriage. But unfortunately there had not   been a cure for the fact that she had still found Zahir and her memory   of him far more attractive than other men. What did that say about her?   He was like a habit she had never managed to shake, her one and only   fantasy, and the men who had pursued her over the years had never   managed to cause her a single sleepless night. With the exception of   Zahir, she had never pined for a phone call or a smile from a man, had   truly never contrived to rouse that much interest, and perhaps that was   why she had fallen so easily back into bed with him. Was it a kind of   persistent physical infatuation? Had he somehow spoiled her for other   men? She stared at him as she crossed the floor of the ballroom.

He was lithe, powerfully built and supremely sophisticated in his light   grey morning suit with his luxuriant ebony hair fanning back from his   brow; his dark deep-set eyes were riveting in his lean, bronzed face. He   was drop-dead gorgeous and always had been a very hard act to follow.   But as her body stirred with responses far removed from nausea, her   brea**sts swelling and peaking beneath her bodice and a dull ache   expanding in her pelvis, she was furious with herself for being so   susceptible to a male who neither loved nor even truly wanted her.

'What's wrong?' Zahir asked softly.

'Why would anything be wrong?' she traded tartly, ice in her cool   scrutiny and edging her voice. 'You tell me...film festival two years   ago, Ukrainian blonde by the name of Natasha, ring any bells?' That   scornful and provocative question just leapt off Saffy's tongue before   she was even aware she was going to voice it.

The faintest hint of colour edged Zahir's chiselled cheekbones but his   dark golden gaze did not waver from hers. Indeed if anything he stood a   little straighter. 'I will never lie to you.'

Even when you should, she almost screamed at him, wanting, needing to know and yet fearing what knowing more would do to her.

'There weren't many and there was nothing serious,' Zahir breathed in a   harsh undertone. 'This is not a conversation I want to have on our   wedding day.'

'It's not something I want to talk about either!' Saffy launched back at him, her eyes a very bright blue lit with anger.

His stubborn jaw line squared. 'Before you judge me, ask yourself if you   have any idea of what state I was in after our divorce.'

Saffy came over all defensive. 'How would I know?'

'When you're ready to tell me what changed you out of all recognition in   the bedroom, I'll tell you why I did what I did.' His brilliant dark   eyes glittered. It was a challenge, blunt and simple, and it only made   Saffy angrier than ever.                       
       
           



       

He had divorced her. He had made that choice. He could not expect her to   accept the consequences or feel responsible for a situation that had   not been of her making. As for what had changed her into a normal   sexually able woman, that was not something she was willing to share   with him. It was too private, too personal, might well affect the way he   looked at her and that very possible outcome made her cringe.

'Are you two actually arguing?' Kat came up to demand in dismay.

'We always did have a fiery relationship,' Zahir admitted.

'Not so different from our own,' Kat's husband, Mikhail, teased his   wife. 'It takes time to adjust to living with another person.'

'Time and buckets of patience,' Zahir added, an authoritative look   stamped on his lean dark face that only made Saffy want to slap him   hard.

'Your guests are waiting for the bride and groom to start the dancing,' Kat informed them more cheerfully.

Saffy wasn't in the mood to dance, especially not with Natasha smirking   at the side of the floor, but she owed her sister too much to risk   upsetting her and she gave way with good grace.

Zahir was a great dancer with a natural sense of rhythm but Saffy felt   as if someone had welded an iron bar to her spine and she was stiff in   the circle of his arms, holding herself at a distance. Glimpses of   Natasha watching them did not improve her mood. Yes, she had known he   had made love to other women, but actually having a face to pin to one   of those anonymous women was another turn of the torture screw. She had   never thought of herself as the jealous type and now she was finding  out  different. Once Zahir had been hers, entirely hers, and even though   things had gone wrong in the bedroom she had rather naively trusted  him  not to stray. Now she was wondering crazy things, such as how she   compared to his other lovers, and she was regretting her lack of   experience and her honesty on that score. Yet how could she have lied   when her child's paternity hinged on telling the complete truth? That   reminder cooled the fizz in her blood, settled her down and made her   seek another topic of conversation.

'I thought you might have invited your brother and sister and possibly even Azel to the wedding,' she remarked gingerly.

'One of Hayat's children is in hospital with complications following on   from a bout of measles. Akram is standing in for me at an OPEC meeting   and my sister-in-law, Azel, no longer lives with us. She remarried last   year and now lives in Dubai,' Zahir explained. 'You will meet what   remains of my family tomorrow.'

'I'll look forward to it,' Saffy said politely. 'Do they know about the baby?'

'Only my siblings. When we chose to marry in such haste, it made sense to be honest,' Zahir said wryly.

Hot pink burned like a banner across her cheeks at the thought that his   strictly raised siblings might assume that she was a total slut for   succumbing so quickly and easily to their brother's attractions.

'You know, when you blush, the tip of your nose turns pink as well,' Zahir husked. 'It's cute as hell.'

'You know what happened in the desert...the baby,' Saffy said sharply. 'It's all your fault.'

A sizzling, utterly unexpected smile played across Zahir's wide sensual   mouth and startled her. 'I know. But out of it I gained a very  beautiful  wife and we have a baby in our future and I can't find it  within my  heart to regret anything we did.'

Her eyes prickled and she blinked rapidly, knowing that her acid and   pointless comment had not deserved so generous a response. Suddenly her   tension gave and she rested her head down on his broad shoulder,   drinking in and loving the familiar scent of him-warm clean male laced   with an evocative hint of sandalwood. She was momentarily weak with the   sheer amount of emotion pumping through her and so confused, still so   desperately confused about what she felt, what she truly thought. With   every passing moment, her feelings seemed to swing to one side and then   violently to the other. So much had happened between them in such a   short time frame that she was mentally all over the place.

Saffy was half asleep by the time they left for the airport. She had   changed into a very elegant shift dress and jacket almost the same   colour as her eyes and let her hair down to flow round her shoulders in a   golden mane. Relaxation was infiltrating her for the first time that   day. Drowsily she studied the platinum ring on her finger. They were   married again: she couldn't quite believe it.

'I think I'll sleep all the way to Maraban,' Saffy told him apologetically as they boarded the private jet.