What was happening to her? She was a cool-blooded woman who analysed, rationalised and resisted any kind of damaging behaviour to herself. And yet here she was…
‘Just how long is this sandstorm going to last?’ she asked abruptly.
The dark eyebrows rose. ‘One day…two…three…’
‘Three!’ Mariella was aghast. Apart from the fact that Tanya would be beside herself if she could not get in touch with her, what was the prince going to think if he returned and she wasn’t there?
‘I have to feed and change Fleur.’
Luckily she had brought the baby bath with her as well as the changing mat, and Fleur’s pram cum carry-cot, mainly because she had not been quite sure what facilities would be available at the oasis.
‘Since it is obvious that you will have to stay the night, it is probably best that you and the child sleep in my…In the sleeping quarters,’ Xavier corrected himself. Mariella’s mouth went dry.
‘And…where will you sleep?’ she asked him apprehensively.
‘In here, of course. When you have fed and bathed the child I suggest that we both have something to eat. And then—’
‘Thank you, but I am perfectly capable of deciding for myself when I eat,’ Mariella told him sharply.
* * *
SHE WAS FAR more independent, and a good deal more fiery, than he had anticipated, Xavier acknowledged broodingly when Mariella had disappeared with Fleur. And quite definitely not his younger cousin’s normal type.
Thinking of Khalid made his mouth tighten a little. He had been both furious and disbelieving when Khalid had telephoned him to announce that he had fallen in love and was thinking of marrying a girl he had met in a dubious nightclub. Khalid had been in love before, but this was the first time he had considered marriage. At twenty-four Khalid was still very immature. When he married, in Xavier’s opinion it needed to be someone strong enough to keep him grounded—and wealthy enough not to be marrying him for his money.
His frown deepened. It had been his cynical French grandmother who had warned him when he was very young that the great wealth he had inherited from his father would make him a target for greedy women. When he had been in his teens his grandmother had insisted that he spent time in France meeting the chic daughters of her own distant relatives, girls who in her opinion were deserving of inheriting the ‘throne’ his grandmother would have had to abdicate when Xavier eventually married.
Well born though they were, those girls had held very little appeal for him, and, practical though he knew it would be, he found himself even less enamoured of the idea of contracting an arranged marriage.
Because of this he had already decided that it would be Khalid who would ultimately provide the heir to his enormous fortune and, more importantly, take his place as leader of their historically unique tribe. But he hadn’t been in any hurry to nudge Khalid in the direction of a suitable bride—until he had learned of his plans vis-à-vis the impossible young woman who had forced her way into his private retreat!
He didn’t know which of them had angered him the most! Khalid for his weakness in disappearing without leaving any indication of where he had gone, or the woman herself who had boldly followed up her pathetic attempt at blackmailing him via the letter she had sent Xavier, with a visit to his territory, along with the baby she was so determined to claim his cousin had fathered!
Physically he had not been able to see any hint in the child’s features that she might be Khalid’s; she was as prettily blonde as her mother, and as delicately feminine. The only difference was that, whilst her mother chose to affect those ridiculous, obviously false turquoise-coloured contact lenses, the baby’s eyes were a warm hazel.
Like Khalid’s?
There was no proof that the child was Khalid’s, he reminded himself. And there was no way he was going to allow his cousin to marry her mother, without knowing for sure that Khalid was the father, especially now that he had actually met her. It was a wonder that Khalid had ever fallen so desperately in love with her in the first place!
‘She has the grace of a gazelle,’ he had written to him. ‘The voice of an angel! She is the sweetest and most gentle of women…’
Well, Xavier begged to differ! At least on the two eulogising counts! Had he known when he had seen her at the airport just who she was he would have tried to find some way of having her deported there and then!
Remembering that occasion made him stride over to the opening to the pavilion, pulling back the cover to look outside. As had been forecast the wind was now a howling dervish of destruction, whipping up the sand so that already it was impossible to see even as far as the oasis itself. Which was a pity, because right now he could do with the refreshing swim he took each evening in the cool water of the oasis, rather than using the small shower next to the lavatory.
It both astounded and infuriated him that he could possibly want such a woman—she represented everything he most detested in the female sex: avarice, sexual laxity, selfishness—so far as he was concerned these were faults that could never be outweighed by a beautiful face or a sensual body. And he had to admit that, in that regard, his cousin had shown better taste than he had ever done previously!
Xavier allowed the flap of the tent to drop back in place and secured it. It irked him that Mariella should have the gall to approach him here of all places, where he came to retreat from the sometimes heavy burden of his responsibilities. A thin smile turned down the corners of his mouth. From what Khalid had described of the luxury-loving lifestyle they had shared, he doubted that she would enjoy being here. However little he cared about her discomfort, though there was the child to be considered.
The child! His mouth thinned a little more. Little Fleur was most definitely a complication he had not anticipated!
* * *
WITH FLEUR FED, clean and dry, Mariella suddenly discovered just how tired she felt herself.
She had not expected Xavier to be pleased to be confronted with her accusations regarding his treatment of Tanya and Fleur, but the sheer savagery and cruelty with which he had verbally savaged her sister’s morals had truly shocked her. This was, after all, a man who had very eagerly shared Tanya’s bed, and who, even worse, had sworn that he loved her and that he wanted her to share a future with him!
In her opinion Tanya and Fleur were better off without him, just as she had been better off without the father who had deserted her!
Now that she had confronted him, though—and witnessed that he was incapable of feeling even the smallest shred of remorse—she longed to be able to get away from him, instead of being forced to remain here with him in the dangerous intimacy of this desert camp where the two of them…
* * *
THOSE RIDICULOUS TURQUOISE eyes looked even more theatrical and unreal in the pale triangle of her small exhausted face, Xavier decided angrily as he watched Mariella walking patiently up and down the living area of the pavilion whilst she rocked Fleur to sleep in her arms.
No doubt Khalid must have seen her a hundred or more times with her delicate skin free of make-up and those haunting, smudged shadows beneath her eyes as he lay over her in the soft shadows of the early morning, waking her with his caresses.
The fierce burst of anger that exploded inside him infuriated him. What was the matter with him? When he broke it down what was she, after all? A petite, small-boned woman with a tousled head of strawberry-blonde hair that was probably dyed, coloured contact lenses to obscure the real colour of her eyes, skin the colour of milk and a body that had no doubt known more lovers than it was sensible for any sane-thinking adult to want to own to, especially one as fastidious in such matters as he was.
It would serve her right if he proved to Khalid just exactly what she was by bedding her himself! That would certainly ensure that his feckless cousin, who had abandoned his desk in their company headquarters without