Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride / The Spanish Husband / The Bellini Bride. Michelle Reid

out to check the alleyway before he opened the rear door of a silver Mercedes then quickly urged Evie inside.

      ‘Right—go!’ he commanded the driver as he got in beside her.

      It was the sheer urgency in his voice that made Evie turn to look through the car’s rear window. A man with half a dozen cameras hanging around his neck had just appeared at the other end of the alleyway. He was desperately trying to bring one of those cameras up to his face as they took off across the cobbles at speed.

      ‘It’s all right,’ Raschid soothed, seeing Evie’s anxious expression. ‘He is on foot. By the time he has collected his own form of transport we will be gone.’

      ‘But he now knows you’re with me,’ she pointed out heavily. Which made for just another bit of delicious scandal for them to feed upon.

      ‘I will always be with you,’ he replied with a flat-voiced sincerity that only helped to heighten her anxiety.

      For how could he make a pronouncement like that knowing it was only going to cause more distress for all of them?

      ‘Raschid—’

      ‘No.’ His hand came out, reaching across the small gap separating them to close warmly around one of her own tightly clenched hands. ‘We will not discuss this now,’ he ordained. ‘You are too upset and I am too confused by what my father has done for either of us to discuss anything constructively.’

      ‘But—’

      ‘But,’ he intruded, turning dark eyes on her that issued one very dire warning, ‘you are carrying my child, Evie, which is one fact we are not in any confusion about. And that child will have my name no matter how many problems we have to surmount to reach that goal.’

      A vow from the soul that filled her breast with warm honeyed love for this man who valued her so dearly.

      But it didn’t stop her mind from gnawing away at the problems they were about to face as the car reached the end of the alleyway and shot out on to the main street, heading towards the river.

      The sound of Raschid’s mobile phone bursting into life brought her sharply to attention. His hand left hers, and for the next few minutes he talked at length in his own language. His voice sounded hard, the answers he was receiving to any questions he shot out doing nothing to ease his temper.

      ‘They’re all over the place,’ he muttered when he eventually sat back again. ‘Besieging my apartment block as well as your cottage! I could really have done without all of this!’

      He could? Evie’s head was beginning to swim with it all. ‘You got me out of my house so fast, I haven’t even got my purse,’ she said, adding to his problems. ‘And we didn’t lock the doors behind us.’

      ‘Your cottage will have been secured within minutes of us leaving,’ Raschid assured her. ‘And you can survive without your purse, surely?’

      He was terse to the point of being cutting, and Evie turned her face sideways and pretended he wasn’t there. She wasn’t hurt or offended by his tone; in fact she sympathised with it. The whole situation had exploded into something way beyond what either of them could control, and that was what was so hard to swallow.

      Being out of control.

      ‘How is your arm?’

      Evie glanced down at it, rather confused to see it was still wrapped in the white towel. ‘It still burns a little,’ she replied.

      But then, so did her eyes; they felt sore and gritty through lack of sleep and a dire need to sob her heart out. Perhaps he knew it, because, on a heavy sigh, Raschid slid across the gap separating them so he could pull her against him.

      ‘Asim will take care of your arm as soon as we reach my apartment,’ he murmured. ‘All we need to do first is get past the press waiting for us there, and that should be easy enough when they cannot follow us underground, into the car park.’

      ‘Then what?’ she asked. ‘Do we hide away like fugitives in your apartment instead of my cottage?’ There didn’t seem to be much difference between the two locations to Evie.

      ‘At least I can protect you there,’ he countered. ‘Because,’ he then added very grimly, ‘this is only the beginning of it all, not the end of it.’

      The beginning, not the end. Evie shuddered. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d never met you,’ she sighed.

      Surprisingly he laughed, albeit ruefully. ‘Only sometimes?’ he mocked. ‘There is a chance for us yet, then.’

      It was merely one of those light, throw-away remarks people made in times of trouble that really did not mean anything in particular. But still, it weighed heavily on Evie’s mind as the car swept up to the security-protected entrance to his basement car park, because she didn’t think they had a chance whichever way you looked at it.

      Evie sank deeply into the rear seat when she saw the gaggle of press people standing around waiting for them, and Raschid’s arm drew her tighter against him as he clipped out a terse order to his driver to run them over if he had to.

      Luckily such a dire response wasn’t necessary; as the car drove towards them the rat-pack parted, their cameras flashing against the car windows as it forged its way down into the relative sanctuary of the basement.

      The car stopped and Raschid jumped out to stride around the car so he could open Evie’s door for her. The lift waited; they entered it together and travelled upwards in complete silence. It stopped and the doors slid open directly into Raschid’s private white marbled foyer.

      Asim was standing there waiting for them. When he saw the way Evie was cradling her towel-wrapped arm he gasped in horror. ‘Someone has harmed you, Miss Delahaye?’ he asked sharply.

      ‘I did it myself,’ Evie dryly replied.

      ‘Hot tea,’ Raschid inserted tightly. ‘From that urn you gave to her.’

      It was a rotten thing to say, especially when poor Asim suddenly looked as if he’d poured the stupid tea over her himself. ‘Stop taking your bad temper out on Asim!’ she snapped. ‘It’s not his fault your life is in such a mess!’

      ‘What a damned mess!’ he had rasped at her last night. And just now he had added an apt little rider to that with his, ‘This is only the beginning of it all, not the end of it.’

      Without waiting for instruction, Asim quietly bade Evie to follow him into the living room where he sat her down on one of the chairs then squatted in front of her so he could gently unwrap her burned arm.

      The skin looked red, but it hadn’t blistered, although when he touched a cool fingertip to it she jumped in pained response. ‘It is still hot?’ he asked.

      Evie nodded her head, weak tears suddenly flooding her eyes.

      ‘Do something about it!’ Raschid grated from behind the older man.

      ‘Of course.’ As impassive as ever in the face of Raschid’s anger, Asim rose up and moved quietly away.

      ‘You’re horrible to him,’ Evie snapped out accusingly. ‘Ever speak to me like that and I will slap your face!’

      ‘Before you burst into tears or after?’ he countered. Then sighed and turned his back on her, his stance taut and angry. ‘I don’t like to see you hurting,’ he tagged on gruffly.

      Well, I’m hurting in a whole lot of other places you don’t even know about, Evie thought bleakly.

      Asim came back. Raschid looked relieved. Squatting down in front of her again, the older man unscrewed the top off a jar and began gently smearing a clear ointment on her scalded skin.

      It was delicious, so cooling. Evie sighed softly and relaxed back in the chair to close her aching eyes. A few minutes later a moist bandage was being carefully wrapped around her arm.

      ‘The heat is receding?’