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'The one I put him in,' he replied, the words hard with a mockery that had no hint of humour. 'When he refused to accept that I intended to marry you and not Aisha,' he went on to explain, 'I abdicated my right to succession. The shock almost killed him.'
'Oh, Raschid, no,' Evie groaned, and wondered wretchedly how many people this whole horror story was going to hurt before it was done.
'Still,' he went on coolly, 'all's well that ends well, as you British like to say. My father now has a heart which beats as healthily as my own does, and he is also reconciled to the fact that I will marry where I choose to marry.'
'Not if that marriage includes me, you will not,' Evie said stiffly.
His dark head turned, and it was only as it did so that Evie realised that he too had been avoiding all eye contact between them.
But not now. Those liquid gold eyes now pierced her with a deep, dark, grim intent. 'You will marry me,' he proclaimed. 'I have not spent millions of pounds and too many precious days scouring the Middle East searching for a suitable substitute to take my place as Aisha's husband, nor did I almost put my own father in his grave and place at risk both you and the child you carry simply to hear you now tell me it was all for nothing!'
'Did I ask you to do all that?' Evie countered tersely. 'Yes!' he declared. 'Every time you told me you loved me, you asked me to do those things!' he rasped. 'Every time w
e simply look at each other, we are demanding from the other that we go to any lengths necessary to be together!'
He got up, the passion sounding in his voice reflected in the angry movement of his body as he walked across the room to stand glaring out of the window. While Evie sat, stunned into utter silence by his vehemence. And the worst of it was that he was right! The kind of love they had shared during the last two years had demanded that they go to any lengths to hold on to it!
But not any more, Evie thought on a shudder. Recent events had gone too far and turned too nasty to hang on to romantic ideals that had no place in reality.
'I can learn to live without your love,' she told him huskily. 'I can even live without people's respect!' Hadn't she been doing that very successfully for two whole years now? 'But I've discovered that I cannot live with hatred.'
'My father doesn't hate you,' he sighed. 'He simply saw you as a pawn he could use in the battle he was waging with me.'
'That makes it all right, does it?' Evie flashed back bitterly.
'No,' he heavily conceded.
'And I wasn't the real pawn,' Evie added. 'My baby was.'
'Our baby,' Raschid grimly corrected.
But Evie shook her head. 'No matter how you want to cover it up, Raschid, your father wanted this baby dead. I can't forgive that. I refuse to forgive that! So as far as I am concerned for him this baby is dead,' she announced. 'I will not acknowledge you as his father, and he will not bear your name. I will not place his life at risk like that from anyone again.'
'And I have no say in this? Is that what you're saying?' 'I am saying,' Evie wearily asserted, 'that if you care for this child then you will do the right thing by him and forget you ever conceived him.'
He didn't say anything for a long time after that. And the silence pealed like the toll of a funeral bell while Evie waited to find out what he was going to do.
And he looked every inch the heir to a kingdom, she noted helplessly. Body straight, chin high, that lean dark aquiline profile revealing absolutely nothing when in actual fact she knew she had just cut deep into the very heart of him with those brutal words.
'So be it,' he said suddenly, turned and walked stiffly to the door.
It came as such a shock, such a terrible, terrible shock to have him concede defeat like that that it literally smashed her control to smithereens. And her shrill cry of, 'Raschid no!' filled the room with more agonised despair than it could accommodate.
It made him reel around in its shock-waves, dark face certainly showing emotion now as he strode back to the bed and bent over her, his skin wiped clear of any colour, golden eyes ferocious.
'I should damn well think so!' he ground out savagely. 'I am your other half, don't you dare discard me like that again!'
Her arms were already clutching at his shoulders, his sliding beneath her so he could scoop her out of the bed.
'Now we talk sense,' he gritted, sitting down on the bed with her then, using hard fingers to angle her face so she could see the power of his fury. 'For if you think I have risked so much only to concede surrender to your sudden cowardice, then you don't know me as well as you ought to do by now!'
'You set me up!' she sobbed out accusingly. 'I am supposed to avoid that kind of stress!'
'Your stress,' he said angrily, 'was there because you were playing the ice-princess to the hilt again!'
His chest heaved on a taut rasp of air; Evie clutched all the harder at him. 'What your father did was unforgivable!' she choked.
'Then don't forgive him!' he declared with a shrug that completely dismissed the problem. 'But you will marry me, Evie,' he grimly ordained. 'Proudly and openly. We will bring up our child together and he will bear my name!'
