‘Oh, come on, Saladin—you haven’t held back from being blunt, so why start now? He was known for dating glamorous women and I’m not. The only thing I had to commend me was the fact that my father owned a beautiful house. This house. My mother was dead and my stepmother long gone—and since I don’t have any brothers or sisters, I stood to inherit everything. From where Rupert was sitting, it must have looked a very attractive proposition and I think he made the assumption that there was lots of money sitting in a bank account somewhere—the kind of money that could have bailed out his failing business.’
‘But there wasn’t?’
‘At some point there was. Before my stepmother got her hands on it and decided to blow a lot of it on diamonds and plastic surgery and then demand a massive divorce settlement. By the time my father died there was nothing left—not after I’d paid for the nurses who helped care for him in his final years.’
‘You didn’t think to tell de Vries that?’
Livvy gave a snarl of a laugh as she picked up the poker and gave the fire a vicious stab. ‘Most brides labour under the illusion that they’re being married for love, not money. It would look a bit pathetic, don’t you think, if one were to have a conversation on the lines of, “Look, I’ve just discovered that I’m broke—but you do still love me, don’t you?” And the truth of it was th
at I didn’t realise how little money there was—at least, not until just before the wedding.’
‘And then you told him?’
‘I told him,’ she agreed. She would never forget the look on her prospective groom’s face. That leaching of colour that had left him with a curiously waxy complexion and the fleeting look of horror in his eyes. In that illuminating moment Livvy hadn’t been able to decide who she was angrier with—Rupert, for his unbelievable shallowness, or herself for having been too blind to see it before. Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to see.
‘I told him and he didn’t like it. I wish he’d told me right then that he’d changed his mind, so that I wouldn’t have to go through the whole pantomime of dressing up in a big white frock with my bridesmaids flapping around me in nervous excitement. But obviously that was something he couldn’t face doing. So there.’ She looked at him defiantly. ‘Have you got the whole picture now?’
There was silence for a moment—the firelight flickering over his ebony hair as he studied her. ‘Not quite,’ he said.
Defensively, she stiffened. ‘You want a blow-by-blow account of my subsequent meltdown?’
He shook his head. ‘I meant that not everything you said is true.’
His words were softer than before, as if they’d suddenly been brushed with velvet. Or silk. Yet despite their softness, all the time Livvy was aware of the underlying steel underpinning them, and that made him sound even more attractive. Dangerously so.
‘Which bit in particular?’
He smiled. ‘That you have nothing to commend you other than a house.’
‘Oh, really?’
Saladin heard the disbelief in her voice and felt a surge of rage that someone as worthless as de Vries had smashed her confidence and made her hide herself away like this.
‘Yes, really.’ His gaze drifted over her. ‘Would you like me to list your more obvious attributes?’
Splaying her hands over her hips, she struck a pose. ‘My old jeans and sweater?’
‘Your complexion, for a start, which makes me think of honey and cream.’ His voice dipped. ‘And, of course, your freckles.’
Her fingers strayed to her nose. ‘I hate my freckles.’
‘Of course you do, but in my country they are highly prized. We call them kisses from the sun.’
‘Well, that’s certainly not what we call them here.’ She gave a nervous laugh and then shivered, as if she had only just registered the sudden plummet in temperature. ‘It’s cold,’ she said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. ‘I should go and make us something to eat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You must be. I am. Starving, in fact.’
He could hear the lie in her voice as she jumped to her feet and picked up one of the candles, as if she couldn’t wait to escape from the sudden intimacy that had sprung up between them.
‘I’ll come and help you,’ he said.
‘No.’ The word was sharp, before she pulled it back with a smile. ‘I’d prefer to do it on my own. Really. You stay here. You look very comfortable.’
He knew why she was trying to put distance between them and that it was a futile exercise. Didn’t she realise that her darkened eyes gave her away and her body was betraying all the signs of sexual excitement? He felt the hard beat of anticipation cradling his groin and suddenly the bright beat of sexual excitement burned out everything except the anticipation of pleasure. ‘Don’t be long,’ he said softly.
Livvy felt almost helpless as she made her way towards the kitchen through the now distinctly chilly corridors. She couldn’t believe she’d just blurted out all that stuff—to Saladin, of all people—and wondered how he’d managed to cut through her defences so effectively. But he had. She had been surprised at his understanding—and then suspicious of it, because it made her feel vulnerable. And she didn’t want to feel vulnerable. She didn’t want to feel any of the stuff that was raging through her body like wildfire. As if she would die if he didn’t touch her. As if her life wouldn’t be complete unless she knew what it was like to have Saladin Al Mektala take her in his arms and kiss her.