LIVVY WATCHED AS Saladin walked across the room to answer his phone, not seeming to care that away from the fierce blaze of the fire the unheated room was icy cold on his naked body. Or maybe his careless, almost sauntering journey was deliberate. Perhaps he thought that the sight of him without any clothes would set her heart racing and cast some kind of erotic spell on her. And if that was the case, he was right.
Beside her Peppa gave a plaintive meow, but for once Livvy’s stroking of the cat’s abundant fur was distracted, because how could she concentrate on anything other than the sight of the magnificent sheikh?
She found herself watching him hungrily in the way that Peppa sometimes watched a beautiful bird as it hopped around the garden. The powerful shafts of his thighs rose to greet the paler globes of buttocks, leading to the narrow taper of his hips and waist. Livvy swallowed. The proud way he held his head and broad line of his shoulders reminded her of a statue she’d once seen in a museum. It seemed impossible that moments before he’d been deep inside her, making her cry out with pleasure.
A man she barely knew—yet one who ironically knew her m
ore intimately than anyone. She’d told him about still being a virgin and then, very slowly—he had made love to her.
She wrapped the blanket round her as he picked up the vibrating phone and, after clicking the connection, began speaking rapidly in an unknown language she assumed was his native tongue. She noticed that he listened for some—not much—of the time, but mostly he seemed to be barking out commands. She gave a wry smile as she lay back on the rug. She guessed that was what sheikhs did.
Resting her head against her folded arms, she waited—her newfound sense of torpor making her aware of her glowing skin and her sense of satisfaction. And Saladin was responsible for that. For all his arrogance and sense of entitlement, he had proved the most considerate and exciting first lover a woman could wish for.
Lazily, she turned her head and looked out of the window. The snow had stopped falling but there were no signs of a thaw. The landscape looked as pretty as a Christmas card—unreal and somehow impenetrable, as if they were in their own private little bubble and nobody else could get in. Inside, the lack of electricity was beginning to bite and it was starting to get cold. The decorated tree looked strange without the rainbow glow of fairy lights, and despite the blaze of the fire the room had taken a distinct drop in temperature. She dreaded to think how icy it must be upstairs. Some of her euphoria began to leave her as Livvy started to consider the more practical concerns of the power cut. Eight guests were due to arrive the day after tomorrow and she had no electricity!
Her torpor forgotten, she jumped up and grabbed the silky knickers that were lying in a heap on the floor, and had just slithered them on when she felt a light but proprietorial hand on her bottom.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
She turned round and steeled herself against the glint of displeasure in Saladin’s dark eyes.
‘I’m getting dressed.’
‘Why?’ With possessive intimacy, he trailed his finger down over the silk-covered crack between her buttocks. ‘When I want to make love to you again.’
‘Because...’ Furious at the way her concerns about the electricity should have morphed into concerns about the very different kind of electricity that was sparking from her skin where he touched her, Livvy tried to pull away. ‘Because there’s no power and my freezer will be defrosting, and the roads might be cleared at any time. And there are eight guests who will be arriving for Christmas who won’t have any croissants for breakfast if the freezer defrosts!’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘And while these might not be the kind of problems that would normally enter your radar, this is the real world, Saladin—and it’s a world in which I have to live!’
‘And how does getting dressed solve anything when your guests aren’t due today?’
She met the mocking expression in his eyes. It stops me from getting too close to you again. It stops me from feeling any more vulnerable than I’m currently feeling.
Livvy never knew how she would have answered his question because suddenly the electricity came on in a flurry of light and sound. The tree lights blazed into life and three small lamps began to glow. Somewhere in another part of the house a distant radio began playing and Peppa jumped to her feet and gave a growling little purr.
‘The power’s back on,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she answered, in a strange flat voice.
And then the landline started to ring—its piercing sound shattering the silence of their haven. Livvy stared at Saladin, aware of a sinking sensation that felt awfully like disappointment. The outside world was about to intrude and, right then, she didn’t want it to.
‘Better answer it,’ he said.
Clad in just her knickers, Livvy scooted across the room to pick up the phone and nodded her head as she listened to the voice on the other end.
‘No, no. That’s quite all right, Alison,’ she said, aware that Saladin was putting a guard in front of the fire. ‘Honestly, it really doesn’t matter. I quite understand. I would have done exactly the same in your position. Yes. Yes, I hope so. Okay. I will. Yes. Of course. And a merry Christmas to you, too. Goodbye.’
Slowly, she replaced the receiver as Saladin straightened up and suddenly a part of his anatomy was looking like no museum statue she’d ever seen, and it was all still so new to her that she didn’t know whether it was rude to stare—even though she was finding it very difficult not to stare.
‘Who was it?’ he questioned and Livvy wondered whether she’d imagined that faint note of amusement in his voice, as if he was perfectly aware of her dilemma.
She shrugged. ‘My guests. Someone called Alison Clark who was due to arrive with a load of her polo friends. They rang to say that the weather forecast is too dodgy and they’re not coming after all. They’ve decided to spend Christmas at some fancy hotel in London instead.’
‘And are you disappointed?’ he questioned smoothly.
‘I don’t know if disappointed is the word I’d use,’ she said, aware that a long and empty Christmas now loomed ahead of her. And wasn’t that one of the reasons why she always stayed open during the holiday? Because being busy meant she didn’t have to look at all the things that were missing in her own life. ‘It means I won’t get paid, of course.’
There was a pause as he glittered her a smile. ‘But that is where you are wrong, Livvy,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t you see that fate has played right into our hands? You are now free to take up my offer and return to Jazratan with me. You can forget about niggling domestic duties over the holidays and use your neglected healing powers on my horse, for which I will reward you handsomely.’
The sum he mentioned was so large that for a moment Livvy thought he was joking, and for a moment she was seriously tempted. Yet some stubborn sense of pride made her shake her head. ‘That’s far too much.’