Exotic Affairs. Michelle Reid

      Evie shook her head. ‘I just said I’d got a lift home,’ she explained, forcing her stiff legs to move towards the kitchen.

      She hadn’t wanted to involve Harry’s name in all of this; it would cause too many complications when things were complicated enough. Her mother didn’t need any help to cast Harry in the role of saviour. Give Lucinda an inch and she would take a mile…

      ‘Are you going to call her back?’

      Evie didn’t answer. Instead she picked up the kettle and took it over to the sink to fill it with fresh water. She didn’t want to talk to anyone—not even Harry—though it would be churlish under the circumstances to tell him that.

      ‘Evie…’

      The phone started ringing again, cutting off whatever Harry had been about to say and turning Evie to stone again where she stood clutching the kettle while she waited to hear who was trying to contact her this time.

      A moment after that and Raschid’s voice came, sounding hard and tight and very, very weary. ‘Pick up the phone, Evie,’ he commanded. ‘I know you are there…’

      Evie didn’t move. The seconds ticked by, the silence picking at tautly stretched nerve-ends.

      ‘Evie!’ Impatience roughened his voice now. ‘This is foolish! You are being foolish! Pick up the phone!’

      ‘How does he know you are here?’ Harry asked curiously. ‘Would your mother have told him?’

      Incapable of speech, Evie gave a small shake of her head. Her mother would rather die than tell Raschid anything. No, Raschid must have seen her leave, she decided.

      Like herself, she presumed, he must have spent a lousy sleepless night wondering what the hell he was going to do about her, and had probably been staring out of his bedroom window when she and Harry took off together.

      A disembodied sigh rushed impatiently around the room when her refusal to comply made Raschid angry. Teeth clenched, body—the very muscles that made her heart beat—all locked into a dreadful straining paralysis, Evie waited to hear what was going to come next.

      ‘I am on my way to you,’ he grimly informed her. ‘Make sure you get rid of that fool who is there with you, or I will not be responsible for what may happen to him!’

      ‘What the…?’ Harry burst out in disbelief.

      Snap, the line went dead. Evie jumped, almost dropping the kettle.

      ‘How did he know I was here?’ Harry gasped. ‘Does the man have special powers or something?’

      ‘Or something,’ Evie tightly replied. And from being frozen the muscles around her heart were now accelerating wildly as anger began to take her over. Putting down the kettle, she walked out of the open-plan kitchen and across the sitting room to glance out of the window.

      There were several cars parked in the mews, but only one had somebody sitting inside it.

      ‘He must have seen us leave Beverley together,’ she told Harry as he came to stand beside her. Then she nodded her head towards the occupied car. ‘There is the object of his special powers,’ she dryly concluded.

      ‘You mean—he’s having you watched?’ Harry was beginning to look hunted. ‘But why should he bother to do that? The man is marrying another woman!’

      But this one is having his baby, Evie added grimly to herself as she winced at Harry’s thoughtless reminder.

      ‘Look,’ she said, turning towards him, ‘I’m very grateful to you for bringing me home. But I think you should leave before he gets here.’

      ‘I’m not leaving you alone with him!’ he declared, coming over all macho and protective. ‘The man sounded damned dangerous,’ he added. ‘For all I know, he may have plans to spirit you away to his harem, or something.’

      Evie allowed herself a wry smile at that scenario—though the real joke of it was that Raschid might well be planning to do just that. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t understand him any more. After two years of believing that she knew him inside out and back to front, she was now discovering that he had hidden depths she had never allowed for.

      The main one being his determination to hang on to something that he hadn’t even wanted.

      The baby—the baby. Not Evie or what they felt for each other, but a baby that he deemed as his possession. And it wasn’t in Raschid’s nature to let go of something he believed belonged to him.

      So, maybe the harem theory wasn’t so far-fetched. Maybe he could see her hidden away there with only his eunuchs for company while his new wife lived in complete ignorance of her new husband’s intimate prisoner.

      Or maybe not so ignorant, Evie then amended, remembering his sister Ranya’s meek obedience to the men in her life.

      A different world, a different culture, a different view of life.

      She shuddered.

      ‘He’s started the car engine,’ Harry said.

      Evie turned to see tell-tale blink of an amber indicator—and felt a tiny quiver of alarm go slinking through her blood. It could only mean that Raschid was mere seconds away.

      ‘Harry—!’ she pleaded urgently. ‘Get out of here before Raschid arrives. Please…’

      ‘But—’

      ‘But nothing,’ Evie interrupted, already moving to open the front door. ‘He won’t hurt me, but I can’t say what he may do to you.’

      She was nervous, she was anxious. Harry didn’t like the look of either. And her slender fingers had that open front door in a death grip.

      A black Mercedes drove slowly by them.

      ‘Take the lady’s advice,’ a deep voice dropped smoothly into the tension. ‘She knows what she is talking about…’

      They both jumped, both turned, both stared at the man who was now filling the doorway.

      CHAPTER SIX

      DRESSED entirely in black—black jeans, black tee shirt, soft black leather jacket—he looked mean and he looked dangerous. Evie stared at him and felt her mouth go dry, felt her skin begin to prickle, and felt that terrible sizzle of sexual attraction rush through her blood as it always did when she looked at him.

      ‘Raschid—’ she began warningly.

      He ignored her. His attention was fixed upon poor Harry who was beginning to look a little hot around his shirt collar.

      ‘Evie needed a lift,’ Harry explained, trying to sound belligerent but only managing to sound defensive.

      ‘And we thank you for your time and effort,’ Raschid responded politely. ‘But I believe you have a rather valuable mare in need of your personal attention. So we will understand your desire to rush off…’

      As a dismissal it just about said it all, but what struck Evie harder was the fact that Raschid knew all about Harry’s pregnant mare.

      Maybe he did possess the second sight, she thought a little breathlessly, her eyes locked with unwilling fascination on those narrowed golden eyes of his.

      ‘Now, just a minute…’ Harry decided to dig his heels in.

      Evie flicked her gaze in his direction and almost groaned when she saw the sudden stubborn jut of his chin. Harry might be a shy and self-effacing kind of person, but, like Raschid, he had been born to cherish his own high station.

      ‘You can’t just—’

      ‘No, Harry.’ It was Evie who stopped him, Evie who knew that if it came to a hands-on battle Harry would lose out on all counts, and that included his pride. Without thinking what she was doing, she stepped up to him and touched his cheek with gentle fingertips