to me that it is you who feels trapped by this situation, Evie, and that is what is really eating away at you.’
Was it? she wondered. Then heavily admitted to herself that he was most probably right. She did feel trapped in a situation that there was no way out of unless she seriously took on board the only other option open to her.
An ice-cold shudder went ripping through her; Raschid saw it and released a heavy sigh. ‘Look…’ he said, walking towards her. His hands came up, gripped her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. But—don’t you think we have enough problems to deal with between us, without you and I fighting with each other?’
‘It all feels so ugly,’ she shakily confessed. ‘And it’s only promising to get uglier.’
She meant once his father was involved, and Raschid instinctively understood that. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘I will turn this to our advantage if it is the last thing I do.’
But at what expense? His father’s pride? His country’s pride? Their own wretched pride?
‘Already your dear mama is feeling most unexpectedly maternal,’ he added softly.
Lifting her lashes, Evie found herself looking into warm, dark, wryly amused eyes.
‘Her final command to me before she left,’ he explained, ‘was to be sure I took precious care of her daughter or I would have her to contend with.’ He smiled. ‘I think we found a common ground for the first time ever when we both offended you as we did.’
‘You are both more alike than you think,’ Evie murmured. ‘You are both arrogant, both pushy, both too full of yourself.’
‘While you are nothing more than our tragically misunderstood victim; is that what you’re saying?’
Evie grimaced. Put like that, she had made herself sound pathetic. ‘Your own father still has to have his say in this,’ she reminded him.
‘He isn’t some kind of ogre, Evie,’ Raschid replied soberly. ‘If the idea of you carrying a baby can soften your mother’s attitude towards me, then there is a good chance it can soften my father’s attitude to you.’
‘What—so we can all play happy families together?’ Her tone alone said she didn’t see much hope of that ever happening.
‘At least you can give him a chance before you completely condemn him.’
A chance? Oh, yes, Evie could at least give him that. But she didn’t really hold out much hope for a happy ending to this.
‘So, what happens next?’ she asked.
Raschid removed his hands from her and straightened his shoulders in a way that reminded Evie of those occasions she had watched him donning his official robes.
‘I go home to Behran to break the news to him,’ he replied.
‘What—now—today?’
‘Yes.’ He took a quick glance at his watch. ‘In the next ten minutes to be more precise.’ He looked at her then, golden eyes darkened by questions.
‘I really caused you a lot of problems when I didn’t tell you about the baby two weeks ago, didn’t I?’ she murmured penitently.
His shrug said it all. ‘I could have diverted my father from this course he has taken if I had known then, yes.’
‘I was such a miserable coward,’ Evie admitted.
‘No, you were not,’ he denied. ‘You were shocked, you were anxious, and you were trying to do what you believed was the right thing with your brother’s wedding day so close.’
‘Trying to please everyone and pleasing none,’ she translated with a rueful grimace.
‘Well, please me now,’ Raschid requested. ‘And stay here while I am away. As it is, your personal possessions are on their way here from your cottage as we speak, and Asim has agreed to stay here with you. He will vet any visitors or telephone calls.’
Be her guard, in other words. ‘Is he a eunuch?’ she asked dryly.
‘No.’ His mouth twitched appreciatively at the reference. ‘But I trust him with my life so I can therefore trust him with your virtue.’
‘But can you trust me with his?’ Evie threw back provokingly.
His answer came quick and fast—so fast she didn’t even see it coming until she was locked in his arms and being utterly consumed by the kind of kiss only Raschid could issue.
‘I can trust you,’ he affirmed as he drew away.
And why could he sound so smugly confident about that? Because she was clinging to him, lost in him, drowning in him—as always.
But then Raschid had trouble dragging himself away from her, and it was some consolation to feel his mouth come back to hers for a hot, hungry, final kiss before he could bring himself to remove her hands from around his nape and reluctantly step away.
‘I must go,’ he said gently. ‘My flight plan has been filed and I dare not miss my slot.’
Which meant he was intending to fly himself to Behran, Evie realised with a small shaft of alarm that had its roots in the frightening fear that, with their luck right now, anything might happen to him during the long flight.
‘Take care, won’t you? And call me, whenever you can!’
‘I’ll call,’ he promised. ‘And I will see you again within the week.’
Fine words, sincere words. But he didn’t call her, and neither did she see him within the next two weeks.
CHAPTER NINE
BY THEN the isolation was beginning to get to her. She hadn’t dared to so much as step out of the apartment for fear of being waylaid by the press or people she did not want to see.
Oh, her mother called her up every day on the telephone. In her own way, Lucinda was trying to be supportive, but it didn’t come easily to her. And really it was Evie who found herself ladling out calm reassurance to her mother when each new day went by without hearing a single thing from Raschid.
‘If he lets you down in this, I’ll kill him,’ Lucinda vowed when a full week had gone by with no word from Raschid.
‘Trust him, Mother,’ Evie replied. ‘I do. He loves me as much as I love him and he wants this baby. With that kind of incentive men can move mountains.’
But, as the days went by without any word from Raschid, for the first time ever Evie found herself wishing the newspapers would give her some clue as to what was going on in Behran. But they were frustratingly empty of any reference to either Sheikh Raschid or Evie Delahaye for a change. It was a matter of priorities to them. A juicy scandal had suddenly blown up involving two government ministers and the media were busy covering that.
Asim didn’t help. For he too clamped up whenever Evie tried to grill him, feigning no knowledge of what Raschid was doing and advising her to be patient. But he knew more than he was admitting to, Evie was absolutely sure about that, and the fact that he wasn’t prepared to speak could only mean the information filtering back to him from Behran had to be bad.
Oh, he tried his very best to make the wait bearable. In fact, she and Asim became quite close friends during those two wretched weeks. He had duties to attend to at the Behran Embassy for part of each day, but otherwise he devoted his time exclusively to her.
They walked together each morning on the roof garden attached to the apartment. And in the evenings he encouraged Evie to reacquaint herself with the game of chess—something she had played often with her father before he’d been tragically killed in a horse-riding accident when she was only ten years old.
Her arm healed quickly under Asim’s care. He was a good man, a kind man, a pleasant companion, and it was during those two weeks that