free the larger dollops of mud that clung to the heel. His brows suddenly lifted.
‘What?’
‘I never realised,’ he said, his glance transferring from the wrecked shoe to her foot and back again, ‘that you actually have really big feet.’
Hannah’s jaw dropped.
‘As for women being weaker...Have you ever seen a tigress protecting her young?’ It was not the image of a tigress that formed in his mind, though. It was Hannah with a baby in her arms at her breast.
‘I suppose you have.’ There was an air of resignation in her response. He’d done all the things she hadn’t... An image that she had seen in a magazine during her last hairdresser’s appointment superimposed itself over his face: the gorgeous scantily clad model strutting her stuff at a red-carpet event while her escort looked on indulgently.
‘I have no doubt that a woman can be fierce in defence of what she considers hers.’
‘You’re not mine,’ she blurted, embarrassed by the suggestion and slightly queasy. In her head the damned supermodel was now doing things to the man she had married that Hannah knew she never could...which was a good thing, she reminded herself.
‘And I’m not fierce. I’m...I just like to pay my debts.’
‘And you shall.’
Promise, threat...Hannah was beyond differentiating between the two even in her own head. ‘By having sex with you?’
Anger drew the skin tight across his hard-boned features. ‘I have no intention of negotiating sex with my own wife,’ he asserted proudly.
‘You think I’m going to have sex with a man I don’t like or respect?’ She barely spoke above a whisper but her low voice sounded loud in the charged silence.
‘You don’t have to respect or like someone to want to rip off their clothes.’
‘My God, you do love yourself.’
‘This isn’t love, but it is a strong mutual attraction.’
Heart thudding, she dodged his stare and snatched the shoe from him, grimacing as she slid her foot back in. ‘Thank you.’ She managed two steps before the heel snapped and threw her off balance. The jolt as she struggled to stay upright caused her chignon to come free, effectively blinding her. She took several more lopsided strides forward before she stopped and swore.
Throwing him a look that dared him to comment, she took off both shoes and threw them in a bush. Hitching her skirt a little higher, she continued barefoot, feeling his eyes in her back.
‘Go on, say it!’ she challenged him.
‘Say what?’
‘Say whatever sarcastic little gem you’re just aching to say. Go ahead,’ she said, opening her arms wide in invitation. ‘I can take it.’
Their eyes connected and her challenging smile vanished. She dropped her arms so fast she almost lost her balance. She would have lowered her gaze had his dark, glittered stare not held her captive. The silence settled like a heavy velvet blanket around them. She had to fight for breath and fight the weird compulsion that made her want to...
‘You want to take me, ma belle?’ His eyes cancelled out the joke in his voice.
She could feel the heat inside her swell and she thought, Yes, I do. ‘You can’t say things like that to me.’
‘What do you expect? You are a very confrontational woman.’
‘I’m cold.’
‘So the rumour goes, but we both know different. What were you doing with a man who wants to put you on a pedestal and worship you from afar?’
‘Many girls dream of that.’
‘Not you, though. You want to be touched and you looked like you’d seen a ghost when you saw him.’ Kamel had made it his business to find out who the man was who was responsible for her shaken look.
Hannah heaved in a deep breath. She longed to be touched. She shivered; he saw it and frowned. ‘You’re cold.’
‘Oh, and I was just getting used to the idea of being hot,’ she quipped back.
He threw her a look. ‘I will explain to the guests that you are feeling unwell. Rafiq will see you to your room.’
On cue the big man appeared. Hannah was getting used to it—she didn’t jump, but she did accept with gratitude the wrap he placed across her shoulders.
HANNAH ACTUALLY PERSUADED Rafiq to leave her in the hallway and made her way upstairs alone. It was an area of the house that no guests had entered and it was very quiet. She found herself walking past the door to the guest suite, drawn by a need to experience the comfort of familiar things. She took the extra flight of narrow winding oak stairs hidden behind a door that led up to the next floor.
The attic rooms had been the servants’ quarters years before. Later on they became the nursery and more recently a semi self-contained unit, complete with mini kitchen. She opened the door of her old bedroom and stepped inside. The paintwork was bright and fresh but it was the same colour scheme she had chosen when she was twelve. The bed was piled high with stuffed toys, and the doll’s house she had had for her tenth birthday stood on the table by the window. It was like being caught in a time warp.
She picked up a stuffed toy from the pile on the bed and flicked the latch on the doll’s house. The door swung open, automatically illuminating the neat rooms inside.
She stood there, a frown pleating her brow, and waited. She didn’t even recognise she was waiting until nothing happened. There was no warm glow, no lessening of tension. She didn’t feel safe or secure.
In the past, she realised, this room had represented a sanctuary. She had closed the door and shut out the world. But even though the familiar things that had given her a sense of security were still the same—she had changed.
She closed the door of the doll’s house with a decisive click. It was time to look forward, not back.
* * *
In the guest suite she showered and pulled a matching robe on over her silk pyjamas. Her hair hung loose and damp down her back. Leaving the steamy bathroom, she walked across to the interconnecting door and, after a pause, turned the key. Locked doors were no solution. Hugging a teddy bear had not helped, and hiding from the situation was not going to make it go away. Would talking help? Hannah didn’t know, but she was willing to give it a try.
So long as he didn’t construe the open door as an invitation to do more than talk.
She cinched the belt of her robe tight and walked across to the bed, trying not to think about the flare of sexual heat in her stomach as she heard his voice in her mind—You don’t have to respect or like someone to want to rip off their clothes.
‘Oh, God!’
She didn’t know if the dismayed moan was in her head or she’d actually cried out, but when she opened her eyes there was no room for debate—he was no creation of her subconscious. A very real Kamel stood framed in the doorway, one shoulder wedged against the jamb, as he pulled his tie free from his neck.
‘I’m glad that’s over.’
He sounded almost human. He was human, she realised, noticing the lines of fatigue etched into his face—a fatigue that was emphasised by the shadow of dark stubble across his jaw. So he could get tired. It was a tiny chink in his armour, but she still struggled to see him suffering the same doubts and fears as the rest of the human race, and it went without saying that fatigue didn’t stop him looking stupendously attractive. No, beautiful, she corrected, her eyes running over the angles and planes of his darkly lean face, a