He stiffened. ‘You’re ill?’
‘Not ill.’ For the first time she struggled to hold his gaze. ‘You asked me if I trust you and the answer is yes, I do. Totally and absolutely. I know you always have my back—that’s one of the things I love about you. Of course, there are an awful lot of things about you that drive me crazy but they don’t matter because I love you...’ She gave a quivering smile. It hadn’t been as hard as she had anticipated, speaking the words that had been locked within her heart. ‘The whole package. You.’
This was the moment when in her dreams he confessed his love for her. But this wasn’t a dream; it was real. And he stood there, every muscle in his stark white face frozen, tension pulling the skin tight across the bones of his face.
Hannah walked into the wall of pain and kept going, her expression fixed in a reasonable mask. No matter how hard she wanted it, it just wasn’t going to happen.
‘It’s all right. I know that love was not part of the deal. I know that Amira...you will always love her, but it doesn’t have to be a deal breaker, does it?’
She felt the tension leave his body. ‘Say it again. I want to hear it.’
The glow in his eyes was speaking not to her brain, which was counselling caution, but directly to her heart. It stopped and then soared, and she smiled.
‘I love you, Kamel.’ She left a gap and this time he filled it.
‘Je t’aime, ma chérie. Je t’aime. I have been too stubborn, too scared to admit it to myself.’
‘Amira...?’
‘I loved Amira, and her memory will always be dear to me. But what I felt for her was a thing that... If I thought you loved another man I would not let you go to him. I would lock you up in a tower. I am jealous of everyone you smile at. That damned chef creep...’
‘Jealous? You... You’re not just saying that because of the baby?’ She saw his expression and gave a comical groan. ‘I didn’t mention that part yet, did I?’
‘Baby...there is a baby? Our baby?’
She nodded.
He pressed a hand to her stomach. ‘You do know how much you have changed my life?’
‘I thought that was exactly what you didn’t want.’
He shrugged. ‘I was a fool. And you were charming and infuriating and brave and so beautiful. You swept into my life like a cleansing breeze, a healing breeze.’
He opened his arms and, eyes shining, she stepped into them, sighing as she felt them close behind her. ‘I love you so much, Kamel. It’s been an agony not saying it. It got so that I couldn’t even relax properly when we made love—I was so scared of blurting it out.’
‘So it was not that you had tired of me?’
She laughed at the thought. ‘That is never going to happen.’
He put a thumb under her chin, tilting her glowing face up to him. ‘You can say it as often as you wish now. In fact, I insist you say it.’
She was giggling happily as he swept her into his arms, and still when the security guard accompanied by a grim-faced Rafiq found them.
‘Kamel, stop him. He’s calling a doctor. Tell him I’m not ill,’ she urged as her husband strode on, refusing her requests to be put down.
‘You have had a stressful day and you are pregnant and I think it might be a good idea if a doctor gives you a check-over.’
‘And I suppose it doesn’t matter what I say?’
‘No.’
She touched the hard plane of his lean cheek.
‘You’re impossible!’ she said lovingly.
‘And you are mine,’ he said simply.
* * * * *
Penny Jordan
He wants to hate her, but he’s passionately attracted to her…
Just who is Lily Wrightington—cynical fashion photographer or studious art historian? Prince Marco di Lucchesi can’t hide his haughty disdain for this Englishwoman—or his strong attraction to her!
As they tour the captivating palazzos of northern Italy together for Lily’s work project, the atmosphere between them sizzles with dislike and sensual promise…until shadows from Lily’s past turn up to taunt her. But if Marco drops his guard and offers the protection Lily is seeking, the passion he’s trying to keep firmly under wraps might just unleash itself, too….
PENNY JORDAN, one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors, unfortunately passed away on December 31st, 2011. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over 100 million books around the world. Penny wrote a total of 187 novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour and Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the New York Times bestseller list. Loved for her distinctive voice, she was successful in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan, ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters.’ It is perhaps this gift for sympathetic characterisation that helps to explain her enduring appeal.
LIFTING her head from her camera, through which she had been studying a model posing provocatively in matching bra and briefs, Lily recoiled instinctively from the scene in front of her.
Almost naked male and female models—the girls all fragile limbs and pouting mouths, some of them open in conversation, or drinking water through straws so as not to spoil their carefully applied make-up, and the boys with their gym-toned bodies—stood together as they submitted themselves to the attentions of hovering hair and make-up artists. Fingers tapped away on mobile phones, gleaming tanned skin contrasted with the catalogue client’s underwear all the models were wearing for the shoot. Heavy beat music boomed out into the small space despite the fact that some of the models were listening to their own iPods.
In other words it was a normal chaotic studio fashion shoot.
‘Has that last male model arrived yet?’ she asked the hairstylist, who shook her head.
‘Well, we can’t hold the shoot any longer. We’ve only got the studio for today. We’ll have to use one of the other male models twice.’
‘I can spray on some dye that will darken the blond guy’s hair, if you like?’ the stylist offered, reaching out to steady the rail containing more underwear to be modelled as it swayed dangerously when one of the models pushed past it.
Looking around, Lily felt her heart sink. She had grown up in this world—until she had turned her back on it and walked away—and now she disliked, almost hated it, and all that it represented.
Given free choice, this cramped, shabby studio with its familiar smell—a mix of male pheromones, sweat, female anxiety, cigarettes and illegal substances that seemed to hang invisibly in the air—was the last place she wanted to be.
Edging past a chattering group of models to get to the door, she put down her camera on a nearby table and went to check the pose of the pretty girl with the wary charcoal-grey-eyed gaze, wondering as she did so how many young hopefuls had entered the industry imagining that they would leave with a contract to model in a top fashion magazine only to discover a much seamier side to modelling.