The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

her shift of attitude, sensed he had lost his power, his expression darkened. ‘That’s not true and we both know it.’

      ‘Look, Rob, Dad wanted you to be here and that’s fine. But you and I are never going to be friends. Let’s settle for civil...?’ She gave a sigh and felt relief. This was the moment she had been dreading—coming face to face with the man she had considered the love of her life only to discover he meant nothing.

      Her relieved sigh became a sharp intake of alarm as Rob lumbered drunkenly towards her, forcing Hannah to retreat until her back hit the tree trunk. She winced as the bark grazed her back through the thin fabric of her gown.

      ‘You were meant to be with me. We are soul mates... What went wrong, Hannah?’

      A contemptuous laugh came from Hannah’s lips. She was too angry at being manhandled to be afraid. ‘Maybe all my friends—the ones you bedded after we were engaged?’ She made the sarcastic suggestion without particular rancour. Rob was pathetic.

      ‘I told you, they meant nothing. They were just cheap...’ His lips curled. ‘Not like you—you’re pure and perfect. I was willing to wait for you. It would have been different after we were married. I would have given you everything.’ He clasped a hand to his heart.

      The dramatic gesture caused Hannah’s discomfort to tip over into amusement. He looked so ridiculous.

      His eyes narrowed at her laugh, then slid to the jewels that gleamed against the skin of her throat. ‘But I wasn’t enough for you, was I?’

      She swallowed; the laugh had been a bad idea. ‘I think I’d better go.’

      ‘A love match, is it? Or should that be an oil deal?’ He saw her look of shock and smiled. ‘People talk, and I know a lot of people.’

      On the receiving end of his fixed lascivious stare, she felt sick. ‘Well, I’m not pure or perfect but I am extremely pis—’

      Rob, in full florid flow, cut across her. ‘A work of art,’ he raved. ‘Sheer perfection, my perfect queen, not his—he doesn’t appreciate you like I would have. I’d have looked after you...the other women, they meant nothing to me,’ he slurred. ‘You must know that—you are the only woman I have ever loved.’

      How did I ever think he was the man of my dreams? she wondered, feeling queasy as he planted a hand on the tree trunk beside her head and leaned in closer.

      Struggling not to breathe in the fumes, she countered acidly, ‘Well, you know, you can’t miss what you’ve never had.’

      Having followed the spiky imprints of her heels across the wet grass, Kamel took only a few minutes to locate the couple in the tree. He didn’t pause. Unable to see them, he heard their voices as with a face like thunder he charged straight through a shrub.

      This wasn’t a moment to stop and consider, not a moment for subtlety. He’d bent over backwards to be reasonable but she wasn’t a woman who responded to reasonable. Was she pushing boundaries, checking just how far she could push him? Or maybe she simply lacked any normal sense of propriety? This wasn’t about jealousy. It was one thing to have a pragmatic approach to marriage, but she had not just crossed the line, she had obliterated it!

      The couple came into his line of vision about the same moment that he mentally processed the interchange he had just heard. It was astonishing enough to stop him in his tracks.

      ‘Well, he’s welcome to you!’

      Hannah struggled and failed to swallow a caustic retort to this petulant response. ‘Well, the idea that I was your soul mate didn’t last long, did it?’

      ‘Bitch!’ Rob snarled. ‘You think you’ve landed on your feet now, but we all know what happens to people when they get in your husband’s way...’

      Hannah was shaken by the malice and ugly jealousy in his face. Jealousy...! She shook her head in disbelief. Perhaps he’d been acting the injured party so long he actually believed it.

      The full realisation of just how lucky she had been hit home. She could have been married to him.

      Her stomach gave a fresh shudder of disgust as she pulled in a breath, trying to surreptitiously ease away from him. As nice as it would have been to drop the icy dignity that had got her through that awful day, this wasn’t the time and definitely not the place, she thought, to have the last word.

      This could get ugly.

      ‘They have a habit of disappearing.’ He mimed a slashing action across his throat. ‘So watch yourself.’

      The sinister comment drew a startled laugh from her. It was clearly not the reaction Rob had wanted, as his face darkened and he grabbed for her. Things happened with dizzying speed so that later when she thought about it Hannah couldn’t recall the exact sequence of events.

      Kamel surged forward but Hannah was quicker. Unable to escape, she ducked and her attacker’s head hit the tree trunk with a dull thud.

      Her attempt to slip under his arm was less successful, and by the time Kamel reached her the man, with blood streaming from a superficial head wound, had caught her arm and swung her back.

      ‘Bitch!’

      Hannah hit out blindly with her free hand and then quite suddenly she was free. Off balance, she fell and landed on her bottom on the wet grass. When she looked up Rob was standing with one hand twisted behind his back with Kamel whispering what she doubted were sweet nothings into the older man’s ear, if the white-lipped fury stamped on his face was any indication.

      Rob, who had blood seeping from a gash on his head, seemed to shrink before her eyes and started muttering excuses in full self-preservation mode.

      ‘If I ever see you in the same postcode as my wife...if you so much as look in her direction...’ Kamel leaned in closer, his nostrils flaring in distaste at the smell of booze and fear that enveloped the man like a cloud, and told him what would happen to him, sparing little detail.

      Hannah struggled to her feet imagining the headlines. ‘Don’t hurt him!’

      The plea caused Kamel’s attention to swivel from the man he held to Hannah.

      ‘Please?’

      A muscle along his jaw clenched as he stared at her. Then, with a nod that caused two invisible figures to emerge from the trees, he stood aside and the trio walked away.

      ‘Sure you don’t want to go and hold his hand?’

      ‘I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting you.’ Why are you explaining yourself to him? she wondered. It’s not as if he’s going to believe you and it’s not like you care what he thinks.

      A look of scowling incredulity spread across his face. ‘Me? You are protecting me?’ He had no idea why her caring about someone who was clearly an abusive loser bothered him so much, but it did.

      Her eyes moved slowly up the long, lean length of his muscle-packed body. It was hard to imagine anyone who looked less like he needed looking after.

      ‘The press could dub you something worse than The Heartbreaker Prince.’ She paused and saw him absorb her comment. His anger still permeated the air around them but it simmered now where it had boiled before. ‘Rob likes to play the victim. I can just see the headlines now...’

      ‘I wasn’t going to hit him, but if I had he wouldn’t have been running to any scandal sheet,’ he retorted, managing to sound every bit as sinister as Rob had implied he was. While Hannah believed Rob’s comments were motivated by malice, there was no escaping the fact that she knew very little about the man she had married and what he was capable of.

      Unwilling to release his image of her as a cold-hearted, unapproachable ice bitch, he asked, ‘What the hell were you thinking of meeting him out here?’

      What the hell had she been thinking about getting involved with him to begin with? The man had been mentally filed in his head as a victim. Stupid, but