The Sheikh's Prize Page 7

  ‘Yes?’ Saffy prompted tightly, not having wanted to see him again because seeing him hurt, made her think of the other women he had been with and, even though it wasn’t fair or even rational when she had been unable to consummate their marriage while they were together and they were now divorced, she hated him for having found pleasure and satisfaction when she could not.

  ‘I must have hurt you…there’s spots of blood on the sheet,’ Zahir informed her grimly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Hot colour flew into her cheeks like a banner of scarlet. It had not occurred to her that there might be any detectable physical proof of her innocence and she was mortified by his discovery. ‘You didn’t hurt me…er, it’s been a while for me, so perhaps that explains it,’ she muttered awkwardly through clenched teeth of discomfiture.

  ‘Why has it been a while for you?’ Zahir demanded bluntly. ‘You live with a man.’

  Somehow he contrived to voice that statement in a manner and tone that implied she regularly sold her body on street corners. ‘That’s my business,’ Saffy responded flatly, her eyes veiled.

  ‘You should see a doctor,’ Zahir informed her curtly. ‘I can contact someone—’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Her cup of humiliation now truly running over and threatening to drown her, Saffy moved towards him and opened the door for his exit. ‘Excuse me, I’d like to get dressed.’

  ‘Sapphire…’ Frustration stamped on his lean dark features, Zahir glowered down at her, smouldering golden eyes alight. ‘Why are you behaving like this? Is this a habit of yours? Do you often indulge in casual sex?’

  She refused to look at him and her lush mouth compressed so hard that her lips turned bloodless. ‘That would be kissing and telling, which I definitely don’t do.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SAFFY RESTED BACK in her cream leather reclining seat in Zahir’s incredibly opulent private jet, but beneath the skin her every muscle was tense and she could not relax.

  Even so, Zahir had certainly ensured that she was travelling back to London in style. She frowned at the acknowledgement because she would have preferred to consign every image and conversation of the past twenty-four hours to a mental dustbin sealed with a good strong lid. She had slept with her ex, no big deal, she told herself with rigorous resolve. It was only a major event for her because having sex had been something she had, until relatively recently, been afraid she couldn’t ever do. She had used him. That was how she had to look on what had happened. If he knew that his temper would have gone nuclear because Zahir expected everything on his own terms. In that spirit he had married her and in the same spirit he had decided to divorce her again. Nothing had ever been equitably discussed: he had been happy to make his mind up for both of them.

  Five years ago, they had landed in Maraban as a newly married couple and that too had been very much on his terms, with her not having the first clue about the dysfunctional royal family she had joined. His father, King Fareed, had been livid that his younger son had married a foreigner and had initially refused to even meet her. She had met Zahir’s older brother, Omar, and his wife, Azel. Omar had died in a car crash a few months after Saffy arrived. As Omar and his wife had been childless, Zahir’s importance to his father had mushroomed once he became the heir-in-waiting and Saffy had seen even less of her husband as he was forced to take on the ceremonial roles that had once been his brother’s.

  Staying in the royal palace just outside the city limits, Saffy had been sentenced to a very boring and hidden existence. As her father-in-law refused to accept her as part of the family and was determined to keep the presence of a Western blonde in the palace a secret, she had not been allowed to go out and about in Maraban and explore freely. Indeed aside of a few stolen shopping expeditions in the company of her widowed sister-in-law, Azel, Saffy had barely gone out at all. Zahir had declared that eventually his father would accept her as his wife but that she would have to be patient. But twelve months living like the invisible woman had convinced Saffy that her marriage had been a major mistake, particularly when things between her and Zahir had gone badly awry as well.

  ‘You’re very unhappy here,’ Zahir had acknowledged the very last time she saw him during their marriage. ‘You’ve been telling me that you wanted a divorce for the past six months and now I must agree.’

  ‘Just like that you suddenly agree?’ Saffy had yelled at him incredulously, shock at his change of heart winging through her in sickening waves as she realised he had clearly had enough of her and their marriage. ‘But you swore that you still loved me, that we could work it out…’

  ‘But now I want you to go home to London as soon as it can be arranged. I want to divorce you and set you free,’ Zahir had countered as stonily as though she had not spoken.

  It was true that for weeks whenever they argued she had hurled the threat of a divorce at him on a fairly frequent basis. But she had never really meant it, had simply been dramatising herself and struggling to make her young husband take her unhappiness seriously. But she had somehow still expected Zahir to continue to refuse to even consider divorce as the answer to their problems. Coming at her out of the blue like that, his volte-face had shocked her and pleading in the face of his clear determination to get rid of her had been more than she could bear. For so long, regardless of their difficulties, she had clung to her conviction that Zahir still loved her no matter what and that what they had together was still worth fighting for. Deprived of that consolation and cruelly rejected by the divorce that swiftly followed, Saffy had been heartbroken and not surprisingly had felt abandoned.

  Her older sister, Kat, who had raised her from the age of twelve, had tried to comfort Saffy, pointing out that King Fareed’s opposition to their marriage must finally have worn Zahir down while reminding Saffy that neither she nor Zahir had foreseen the very real difficulties that would arise in Saffy’s struggle to adapt to life in a different country, far from family and friends. Saffy didn’t want to remember how appallingly she had missed Zahir after she left Maraban or how many months had passed before she could enjoy the freedom she had reclaimed and stop thinking about Zahir at least once every minute. She had genuinely loved him and it hurt to appreciate that he had moved on from her so much more easily than she had moved on from him. Maybe he had never really loved her, Saffy conceded painfully. Maybe it had always been about the sex and only the sex. Certainly, given his behaviour in shipping her out to the desert for seduction, that looked like the most viable explanation. It was equally agonising to admit that had she been capable of doing what she had just done with him five years earlier they might still have been together. Or would they have been? Was that just fantasy land? Perhaps all along she had only been a fling in the form of a wife for Zahir.

  But didn’t she have rather more pressing concerns in the present? What about that contraceptive accident they had had? Saffy tensed, her appetite evaporating in front of the beautiful lunch she had been served as her skin chilled with complete fright at the idea of being faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Once she had believed she would never have children because she wasn’t able to have sex or even handle the concept of artificial insemination. Now she knew differently and knew her future had opened up another avenue once barred to her. So, if she did fall pregnant, what would she do about it? She had friends who would rush to request the morning-after pill after such a mishap to ensure that no conception took place, but if against all the odds new life did begin inside her, Saffy registered that she was totally unwilling to consider a termination. In that moment she was suddenly realising with a heart that felt full enough to burst that a baby would mean the sun, the moon and the stars to her and that there was nothing she would cherish more. It might be a disaster as far as her current clients were concerned, but it would only be a short-term one and surely her earning power wouldn’t die overnight. She breathed in deep and slow, both terrified and enervated by the risk she was prepared to take with her own body. If conception happened, she decide
d, it would happen and she would embrace it without regret.

  Having dropped off the film of the shoot with the exceedingly relieved production company, Saffy caught the tube back to the two-bedroom apartment she had bought with Cameron. Cameron, a keen cook, was in the kitchen dicing vegetables, but it was the sight of the small brunette perched on the counter chatting nineteen to the dozen to him that startled Saffy.

  ‘Saffy!’ Topsy cried, velvety somber eyes full of warmth as she leapt off the counter like a miniature whirlwind and threw herself exuberantly into her much taller sister’s arms. At slightly less than four feet eleven inches tall, Topsy was tiny. ‘I wish you hadn’t been away this week. I wanted to go out with you to celebrate the end of my exams!’

  Saffy’s eyes stung as she gratefully accepted her youngest sister’s affectionate hug. Topsy always wore her feelings on her sleeve. At eighteen years of age, having just finished school, Topsy was much less damaged by their disturbed childhood and more outgoing than her older sisters. She was also exceptionally clever and overflowing with an irrepressible joie de vivre that few could resist. Yet as Saffy studied the younger woman she saw shadows below her eyes and a tension far removed from Topsy’s usual laid-back vibe and she wondered what was wrong.

  ‘How did you find out that I was back so quickly?’ Saffy prompted.

  ‘She’s been phoning here every day…I texted her after you called me from the airport,’ Cameron, a tall attractive man with close-cropped dark curls, told her from his position by the state-of-the-art cooker.

  ‘I assumed you’d want to stay on at Kat’s with Emmie,’ Saffy remarked.

  ‘No, Kat and Mikhail are hosting a big dinner tonight and I wasn’t in the mood to play nice with loads of strangers,’ Topsy confided with a slightly guilty wince. ‘And Emmie has already gone home again.’

  Saffy’s heart sank at that news because it was obvious to her that once again her twin had chosen to dodge meeting her. Her estranged twin was still avoiding her, Saffy acknowledged unhappily, wounded by Emmie’s reluctance to even be in her company. Was she that bad? Was she truly so hateful to her twin? Or was it a simple if unpalatable fact that her past sins were beyond forgiveness?

  ‘Emmie’s gone back to Birkside?’ she checked, referring to Kat’s former home in the Lake District, the farmhouse her elder sister had inherited from her late father.

  Kat was the daughter of their mother Odette’s first marriage, the twins the daughters of her second marital foray while Topsy was the result of their mother’s short-lived liaison with a South American polo player. By the time the twins reached twelve years of age they were a handful and Odette had placed all three girls in foster care. Kat, then in her twenties, had made a home at Birkside for all three of her sisters and Odette had had very little to do with her children since then. In every way that mattered, Kat had become the loving, caring mother her sisters had never really had.

  ‘Should Emmie be on her own up there?’ Saffy questioned the younger woman anxiously. ‘I mean, it’s a lonely house and now that she’s pregnant…?’

  Topsy rolled her eyes. ‘Emmie always does her own thing and she has friends up there and a job,’ she pointed out breezily. ‘I also think that just at the minute Kat and Mikhail being so lovey-dovey makes them hard for Emmie to be around.’

  Even while Saffy adored the fact that Kat had found happiness with a man who so obviously loved her, she too had felt like a gooseberry more than once in the couple’s company. If her twin’s solo pregnancy was the result of a recent relationship breakdown, Emmie was probably feeling a great deal more sensitive to that loving ambiance.

  ‘Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,’ Cameron announced.

  ‘I’ve got time to get changed, then?’

  ‘Yes. Let’s go into your room,’ Topsy urged, tugging at Saffy’s arm.

  A frown indented Saffy’s brow at her sister’s obvious eagerness to get her alone. ‘What’s up?’ she asked as she closed her bedroom door.

  Topsy, all liveliness sliding from her expressive face, sank down on the edge of the bed, hunched her shoulders and muttered, ‘I found out something I wasn’t prepared for this week and I didn’t want to bother Kat with it,’ she admitted.

  Saffy dropped down on the stool by the dressing table. ‘Tell me…’

  ‘You’ll probably think it’s really silly,’ Topsy confided.

  ‘If it’s upset you, it’s not silly,’ Saffy declared staunchly.

  Topsy pulled a face. ‘I don’t know if I am upset. I don’t know how I feel about it—’

  ‘How you feel about what?’ Saffy prompted patiently.

  ‘A few weeks ago, my dad, Paulo, asked me to agree to a DNA test. I’m eighteen. We didn’t need Kat’s permission,’ Topsy explained as Saffy raised her brows in astonishment at the admission. ‘Apparently Dad had always had doubts that I was his child and since he got married he and his wife have had difficulty conceiving—’

  ‘Your dad’s got married? Since when? You never told us that!’ Saffy exclaimed.

  Topsy sighed. ‘It didn’t seem important. I mean, I’ve only met him a half-dozen times in my whole life. With him living in Brazil, it’s not like we ever had the chance to get close,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘Anyway, his new wife and him went for testing when she didn’t fall pregnant and it turns out he’s sterile.’

  Saffy stiffened at the news. ‘Hence the DNA testing…’

  ‘And it turns out that I couldn’t possibly be his kid,’ Topsy confided with a valiant smile. ‘So, I went to see Mum—’

  Saffy gave her a look of dismay, for Odette was a challenging and devious personality. ‘Please tell me you didn’t!’

  ‘Well, she was the only possible person I could approach on the score of my parentage,’ Topsy pointed out ruefully. ‘First of all she tried to argue that in spite of the DNA evidence I was Paulo’s kid—’

  ‘I doubt if she wanted the subject dug up after this length of time,’ Saffy remarked stiffly, cursing their irresponsible and selfish mother and hoping she had dealt kindly with her youngest daughter.

  ‘She definitely didn’t,’ Topsy admitted with a grimace of remembrance. ‘She just said that if Paulo wasn’t my father, she didn’t know who was. Did she really sleep with that many men that she wouldn’t know, Saffy?’

  Saffy reddened and veiled her eyes. ‘There were periods in her life when she was very promiscuous. I’m sorry, Topsy. That was an upsetting thing for you to find out. How did Paulo react?’

  ‘I think he had already guessed. He didn’t seem surprised. Let’s face it, I don’t look the slightest bit like him. He’s over six foot tall and built like a rugby player,’ Topsy reminded her companion ruefully. ‘Now I’ll probably never find out who my father is but why should that matter to me? After all, you and Emmie have a father who lives right here in London but who still takes no interest in you.’

  Saffy groaned. ‘That’s different. Mum and him had a very bitter divorce. She dumped him because he lost all his money. When he built a new life and remarried and had a second family he didn’t want anything more to do with us.’

  ‘Does that bother you?’

  ‘No, not at all. You can’t miss what you’ve never had,’ Saffy lied, for that was another rejection that still burned below the layer of emotional scar tissue she had formed. When she and her twin had been at their lowest ebb, their father, just like their mother, had turned his back on them and had said he wanted nothing to do with them.

  ‘You’re evil…just like your mother. Look what you’ve done to your sister!’ he had told Saffy when she was twelve years old, and even the passage of time hadn’t erased her memory of the look of dislike and condemnation in his gaze.

  ‘Sorry to land you with all this,’ her kid sister muttered guiltily.

  Beyond the door Cameron called them for dinner and Saffy seized the chance to give her kid sister a comforting hug, wishing she had some clever reassurance to offer Topsy on the topic of absent fathe
r figures. Unfortunately, not having normal caring parents left a hole inside you and even Kat’s praiseworthy efforts to fill that hole for her sisters had not proved entirely successful. Saffy had simply learned that when bad things happened you had to soldier on, hide your pain and deal with the consequences in private.

  Only when Topsy had returned to Kat and Mikhail’s home for the night with her spirits much improved did Cameron turn with a concerned look in his shrewd eyes to ask Saffy suspiciously, ‘What—or should I say who—kept you unavoidably detained in Maraban?’

  Saffy visibly lost colour. ‘It’s not something I want to talk about right now.’

  ‘You know that’s not a healthy attitude,’ Cameron, who was a firm believer in therapy, warned her.

  ‘Talking about anything personal will never come easily to me,’ Saffy admitted tightly. ‘I spent too many years locking everything up inside me.’

  She was extraordinarily tired and she went to bed and lay there with her eyes wide open in the darkness, struggling to suppress the images of Zahir stuck inside her head. Fighting thoughts teemed alongside those unwelcome images. She would get over that little desert rendezvous in Maraban and leave Zahir behind her…in the past where he truly belonged.

  * * *

  Ten days later, Saffy wakened because while she had slept she had slid over onto her tummy and her breasts were too tender to withstand that pressure. With a wince, she sat up, wondering if it was time to use the pregnancy kit she had bought forty-eight hours earlier, but she was still strangely reluctant to put her suspicions to the test. Could she have enjoyed intimacy just one time and conceived when her unfortunate sister, Kat, had been trying without success to fall pregnant for many months? It struck her as unlikely and she had only bought the test in a weak moment of dreaming about what it might be like to become a mother.