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

      Raschid said nothing, waiting patiently for her to go on. Evie could see his face reflected in the darkened window. He looked grave, the smoothly handsome lines of his features so very still that she knew he had already prepared himself for something dire to come.

      And, to her wretched despair, she found she couldn’t do it. He was too important to her. She loved him so deeply that she discovered she couldn’t risk the chance of losing him.

      Not yet, she thought achingly. Please, not yet.

      ‘My mother wants you to find an excuse not to attend my brother’s wedding,’ she said, dragging the half-truth out from the depths of a real desperation.

      Another silence. Evie watched that face via its darkened reflection and saw a frown mar its smooth lines. Her heart began to beat with a sickly pump. He wasn’t a fool, this man of hers. His highly tuned instincts where she was concerned had been warning him of something far more disastrous than a silly problem with her mother.

      Oh, there was truth in the lie, she grimly acknowledged as she stood there waiting for his response. Her mother had spent the whole of their lunch together today telling Evie in no uncertain terms how much she would prefer it if Sheikh Raschid stayed away from Julian’s high-profile wedding in two weeks’ time.

      ‘The notoriety that the two of you generate is bound to shift emphasis away from the bride and groom and on to yourselves,’ Lucinda Delahaye had predicted. ‘If he had the smallest amount of sensitivity he would have realised that himself and graciously declined the invitation. But since he has no sensitivity I feel it is your place to tell him.’

      But, as both Raschid and her mother knew, Evie was not open to that kind of petty manipulation. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have even bothered mentioning such a conversation to Raschid.

      So, what had been normal about today? she asked herself starkly as she watched that reflected face shift from puzzlement into annoyance. Within minutes of her getting up this morning the whole day had gone rocketing out of control. Since then she’d felt as if she’d been in a car accident, so shocked and dazed that she’d been barely able to function on a normal level.

      In fact, the whole day had gone by in a fog. Until Raschid had taken her to bed of course, she mused ruefully. There the fog had cleared up remarkably—only to be replaced with a different kind of fog.

      The glorious fog of loving.

      Now even that fog had cleared, she noted heavily, and Raschid was standing behind her looking as if she had really let him down after such a tense build-up.

      Which was, in effect, what she had just done.

      ‘Is that it?’ he said eventually.

      ‘Yes,’ she confirmed, pitifully aware of the depth of her own wretched cowardice.

      ‘Then go to hell,’ he murmured succinctly, refusing the request without any compunction. And turned his back on her to walk away.

      Her heart took a lurching leap to her throat. The way he had said that told her he knew she had just chickened out over something. She turned too, staring anxiously after him as he crossed the room with that long, lithe, graceful stride of his that always set her pulses racing no matter what the mood was like between them.

      ‘Raschid, you—’

      ‘I refuse to discuss it,’ he cut in, sounding annoyed, offended and just downright disgusted, which made Evie wonder how he would have reacted to what she had cravenly backed out from saying. ‘Your mother is not your keeper and she certainly isn’t mine!’

      ‘It’s a fair request,’ she said, surprising herself by jumping to the defence of her mother. It seemed that anything was better than confessing the truth, she ruefully acknowledged. ‘You know as well as I do the kind of interest we generate when we go anywhere together. In this case, it has to be Julian and Christina my mother must consider, not your feelings or mine.’

      ‘And my father is a very close friend of Christina’s father,’ Raschid coldly countered. ‘In fact, Lord Beverley is almost solely responsible for helping my father overcome some very awkward political and diplomatic obstacles in his quest to reform and modernise my country. I will not offend Christina’s father simply because your mother wants me to.’

      The chin was up, Evie noted. The passionate lover was now in full Noble Prince mode.

      ‘In the face of my father’s failing health,’ Prince Raschid concluded, ‘it is my duty to be there as my father’s representative.’

      Duty. Evie knew all about Raschid’s dedication to duty! It was a shame that sense of duty did not extend to encompass the woman who was his lover.

      ‘So be it,’ she said, suddenly sounding as cold as ever she could sound when she felt like it. ‘But don’t be surprised if I put into place some contingency plans of my own to keep the gossip to its minimum.’

      His eyes narrowed on her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

      Evie shrugged. ‘Duty,’ she quoted right back at him. ‘I have a duty to ensure that my brother and his bride maintain centre stage on the day of their wedding.’

      ‘And how do you intend to do that?’ he mocked her. ‘By pretending I don’t exist?’

      ‘Would you notice if I did?’ Evie threw back cynically.

      She could have bitten off her tongue when his sharp eyes narrowed. ‘Was that it?’ he demanded. ‘Was that remark a big hint to what is actually eating at you tonight, Evie?’ He clarified the question. ‘That I don’t give you enough of my attention?’

      So he had guessed that she’d just dissembled. Evie smiled to herself and wondered how he would react if she told him he couldn’t be any further from the truth.

      ‘Would you care that much if it was?’ she countered, throwing him yet another red herring.

      He didn’t answer—which was, she supposed bleakly, an answer in itself.

      ‘I’m tired,’ she said wearily. ‘I think I’ll go home…’

      Which was just another provoking remark he let float pointedly by him. ‘I have to go away tomorrow,’ he informed her instead. ‘I will be gone for about a week. When I get back I think we need to talk.’

      Evie shivered, feeling the icy fingers of a terrible foreboding go trailing down her spine. ‘Fine,’ she said, moving towards the door.

      He said not a word, but his eyes did as they followed her passage across the room. He was sharp, he was shrewd, he had a mind like a multi-million-dollar computer that was programmed to make very accurate assessments at lightning speed.

      He knew as well as she knew that there was something going on here that she wasn’t telling him.

      ‘Evie…’

      He was a master of timing, too, Evie tagged on to her list of attributes as she paused in the doorway. She didn’t turn, and the silence between them lengthened like a wire being stretched to its absolute limit. Unspoken emotions beating out a throbbing tattoo that made her want to just break down, right here and now, and sob her wretched heart out.

      ‘I would care,’ he murmured gruffly.

      It was too much. On a whisper of silk, Evie turned and ran to him.

      I love you so very much, she wanted to cry out, but didn’t dare in case the evocative words started the avalanche she knew would bury that love without a single trace.

      So instead she wrapped her arms around him and buried her misery in the warmth of his solid presence.

      I’ll tell him after Julian’s wedding, she promised herself weakly. It can easily wait until then…

      CHAPTER TWO

      IT HAD been billed as the wedding of the year, and anyone who was anyone