‘The condom split,’ Rafiq admitted flatly. ‘But there is no risk involved for you. I have never had unprotected sex and I cannot father children.’
Izzy was shocked by the sheer size of that admission and the hard, shuttered look on his lean, darkly beautiful features as he made it. ‘How do you know you can’t father children?’ she couldn’t help asking.
‘Because I was married for a long time and it didn’t happen,’ he confided tautly. ‘So, no risk involved for you in that field.’
End of discussion, she recognised, shaken that he had been married for what he deemed a long time when he was still seemingly so young. ‘How old are you?’ she prompted helplessly.
‘Twenty-eight.’
So a very youthful marriage that had presumably ended in divorce—not her business, she had to remind herself when other questions threatened to brim from her lips, and she swallowed them back hard to reassure him with her information.
‘I’m on the pill,’ she told him quietly.
Rafiq frowned in surprise. ‘But...why?’
Hugging the sheet, Izzy sat up, copper corkscrew curls springing up like a halo around her flushed face. She wasn’t prepared to tell him the whole truth, not when it revolved around her mother. ‘My sister and I know someone who had an unplanned pregnancy and we never wanted it to happen to us that way, so we chose instead to be prepared for all eventualities.’
‘Are you staying?’ Rafiq enquired, ignoring the explanation that only emphasised to him that they lived in very different worlds, he in a world where pregnancy would have been an unashamed joy but she in one where it would have been an apparent punishment of some kind.
Just being asked that question freaked Izzy out. In ten seconds, she was out of the bed and gathering up her clothes at the speed of a fleeing squirrel.
‘I was hoping you would stay,’ Rafiq rephrased, accepting that he had been clumsy. ‘But I have to leave very early in the morning and would likely be gone by the time you awake.’
‘Leaving the UK?’ Izzy queried tightly, without warning feeling as though he had buried an axe between her shoulder blades.
‘Yes...’
Izzy slid past him into the bathroom and shut the door. He knocked on it and with reluctance she opened the door a crack.
‘I don’t want us to be so brief...but I don’t have a choice.’
‘Why?Whydon’t you have a choice?’ Izzy pressed in desperation.
His ridiculously long black lashes shielded his stunning gaze. ‘I can’t explain that.’
‘You know what? That’s fine. I’m going to have a shower and go home,’ Izzy told him with quiet dignity even though her stomach was already in the mood to heave.
It wasover. In fact, it had been virtually over even before it had got to begin, she reckoned, stricken. She had dimly assumed that she was on a date when in reality she had been succumbing to a one-night stand and that made her feel very,verystupid and naïve. She hadn’t realised that he was only in Oxford for one night and that tomorrow she would be receiving a text from the cleaning agency to do the changeover clean again. Best not to be in the apartment alone when that text came, she reasoned dully, as no doubt sleeping with the client was yet another fireable offence.
Dear heaven, how had she contrived to be so dumb? How had she managed to decide to sleep with him and somehow idealise the decision into something it wasn’t and could never be? And she hadbelievedthat, of the two of them, Maya was the romantic dreamer?
Showered and dressed, Izzy emerged from the bathroom in record time.
Back in his jeans but barefoot, Rafiq extended the handbag she had left behind in the lounge, proving that he was surprisingly at home with a woman’s needs. The gesture only increased her suspicions. ‘Are you sure you’re not still married?’ she demanded thinly.
‘I am not married but—’ Rafiq breathed in deep, like a male mustering his strength ‘—I will be married again some time soon.’
‘You bastard...you’re engaged and you slept withme?’ Izzy exclaimed and she hit his shoulder with her handbag as she swung it like a weapon.
Rafiq said nothing because there was nothing he could say without revealing his true identity. Being struck by someone for the first time ever shocked him, but not enough for him to rebuke her because the evening had turned into an irrefutable disaster and he didn’t blame her for the way she felt. He was rigid as he extended an envelope to her.
‘What’s this?’ she questioned.
‘The money I promised you,’ Rafiq advanced warily. ‘I pay my debts.’
‘I don’t want the money now!’ Izzy framed shakily, her face very white. ‘Not after what we’ve just done!’
In a sudden movement, Rafiq snatched the bag out of her nerveless hand, opened it and dug the envelope into it before handing it back to her.