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‘Why did Sophie come to see you?’
Arkim dragged his brain back into some kind of functioning order. ‘She told me everything.’
CHAPTER NINE
THE CAR WAS moving at a snail’s pace in the early-evening Paris traffic as Arkim’s words sank in. And even though Sylvie was preoccupied by what he was saying, and what it meant, she was acutely aware of that big, powerful body so close to hers. Legs spread, chest broad.
She had to get it together. Sophie. Hesitantly she asked, ‘When you say “everything”, do you mean—?’
‘I mean,’ Arkim said, cutting her off, ‘I know that she’s gay, Sylvie. She told me everything. About how she was afraid to come out. About how she was railroaded into marriage by her parents because they thought it would sweeten the deal for me. I’d made no attempt to hide the fact that I wanted to settle in England, and I wasn’t averse to settling down with a suitable wife.’
The kind of wife who would remove Arkim permanently from his sordid past... Sylvie thought to herself, with a lurch of pain near her heart.
He continued, ‘She told me about her girlfriend in college, and how she was too terrified to stand up to her mother...that she’s always had trouble standing up to her.’ Arkim’s mouth twisted. ‘I can understand why.’
Sylvie reeled. ‘My God...she really did tell you everything.’
Arkim nodded. ‘She also told me that she’d refused to let you do anything at first, because she didn’t want you to damage your already contentious relationship with your father and stepmother, and they’d inevitably blame you even though it had nothing to do with you... But the week of the wedding she was panicking so much that she accepted your offer to step in at the last m
inute if she needed it. Which is what you did...in your own inimitable way.’
Sylvie blushed, thinking of that daring moment again. Arkim looked equable enough right now, but she knew how deep his emotions went, and how he simmered.
Trepidation gripped her. ‘Were you angry with her?’
For a second he just looked at her, and then he said with faint incredulity, ‘Even now your first concern is whether or not I got angry with her?’
Sylvie squirmed. ‘Well, I know how intimidating you can be.’
Arkim’s mouth thinned. ‘At first I was angry, yes.’ He reacted to the look that crossed Sylvie’s face. ‘I had a right to be. Both of you made me a laughing stock. If Sophie had just come to me and explained I would have understood. I’m not such an ogre. Hell.’
He turned away in disgust, to look out of the window. Sylvie felt immediately chastened. She knew that he wouldn’t have taken it out on Sophie...all of Arkim’s anger was only ever for her.
She pushed down the sense of futility. ‘You’re right,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I should have come to you myself and said something... If we’d been able to stop the wedding a week before it would have avoided the messy scandal it became. But I knew how unlikely it was that you’d believe anything I said...’
Some of the tension seemed to leave his shoulders. He turned back, those black eyes like pools of obsidian. To Sylvie’s surprise, his mouth quirked ever so slightly on one side.
‘I guess I have to give you that... I would have seen it as just another jealous attempt to make me notice you.’ His expression became shuttered. ‘I believed you were jealous...you let me believe that, like a fool.’
She knew she owed him total honesty now—especially after Sophie’s bravery—albeit belated. She forced herself to look at him. ‘The truth is...as much as I was doing it for Sophie I was jealous. I wanted you...for myself.’
She hadn’t even properly admitted that to herself until this moment. Her head felt light.
Arkim’s eyes gleamed. He breathed out. ‘I knew it...’
For a second she thought he was about to reach for her, and her whole body tingled, but then a discreet tap came from nearby. It took a minute for her to figure out that the driver was knocking on the partition, alerting them to the fact that they’d pulled up outside a building on a quiet street.
Sylvie felt a little dizzy. She looked out of the window and didn’t immediately recognise much, except for the fact that they were in a very expensive part of Paris. Her voice was husky. ‘Where are we?’
‘My apartment building on the Île Saint-Louis.’
She looked back to Arkim. She felt confused, she wasn’t sure where they stood any more.
He said, ‘I have something for you upstairs.’
She joked weakly, ‘That’s not a very original chat-up line.’
He was serious. ‘It’s not a chat-up line. I really do have something for you.’
