The Husband She Never Knew. Кейт Хьюит

of mahogany furniture. A pair of French windows were shuttered against the night, and she wondered where they led. She’d opened the shutter on her bedroom window after her shower, but the only thing the moon had illuminated was the endless, undulating desert and a long drop down to the sand.

      For a short while she said nothing while she ate hungrily. ‘So,’ she said finally, stabbing another piece of meat with her fork, ‘why won’t you return me to Paris?’

      Ammar didn’t answer for a moment. In the candlelight he looked so serious, his eyes dark, his movements controlled and restrained as always. Noelle glanced at the scar snaking down his cheek. Amelie had been right; it did look sexy. He looked sexy, but then he’d always been sexy to her, sexy and gorgeous and infinitely desirable. Even now, when he had lost weight—like she had—and still bore the scars of his accident, she could not deny the pulse of longing she felt for him. Her body remembered how he felt, the solid strength of him, corded muscle and callused skin. Even now, with all that had—and hadn’t—happened between them, her body remembered and wanted more.

      ‘I would like,’ Ammar said, thankfully breaking into the torment of her thoughts, ‘for you to stay here for a little while.’

      Noelle jerked her gaze from its revealingly leisurely perusal of his body back up to his face with its implacable expression. ‘Stay here? For what, a little holiday?’ Her voice was sharp with sarcasm but Ammar simply nodded.

      ‘Something like that.’

      ‘Ammar, you abducted me—’

      He clenched one hand on the table. ‘So you keep reminding me.’

      ‘You think I can just forget it? I told you I had nothing to say to you, and I still don’t. I want to go home.’ To her shame, her voice trembled and she felt tears crowd under her lids. She wasn’t even sure why she was near to crying: because she wanted to go home or because a tiny, treacherous part of her wanted to stay? How shaming. How pathetic. She bit her lip and looked away, not wanting him to see how close to tears she was, but she could not keep a shudder from ripping through her.

      ‘Noelle—’ His voice caught on a note of near-anguish and he reached one hand out to her, as if he would comfort her. How ridiculous was that, to be comforted by her captor? And yet she still longed for him to touch her, could almost imagine the warmth of his hand on her skin. She averted her head and he dropped his hand.

      ‘Please, Ammar.’

      ‘I cannot.’

      ‘You can,’ she insisted, angry now. Anger felt stronger, simpler. ‘You brought me here; you can let me go. You just don’t want to, and I have absolutely no idea why.’ She glared at him, and Ammar gazed steadily back.

      ‘I brought you here because I want to be with you,’ he said, choosing each word with care.

      Noelle blinked. Stared. Her mind seemed to have slowed down, snagged on his meaning. He wanted to be with her? ‘What—’

      ‘I want us,’ Ammar said, ‘to be husband and wife.’