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She wasn’t sure she’d heard right. ‘Pardon?’
‘He won’t marry you.’ This time louder so there was no mistaking his words.
‘You can’t know that,’ she accused, her voice amazingly steady while all the time her mind screamed, How do you know? How could he sound so sure, so certain? There was no way he could know something like that.
His eyes told her he did.
Warning bells sounded in her head. ‘What’s this all about?’ she asked, trying to connect the dots between Khaled’s crazy intention to marry her and Paolo’s deep-seated resentment. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but somehow there was a connection. There had to be. ‘Why me? Why did you pick on me to be your bride?’
He shrugged. ‘I saw a picture of you. I heard about your reputation. Everything I learned about you fascinated me. I had to meet you. And when I met you, in the salon, I knew you were the one for me.’
She surveyed him coolly. ‘That’s too unbelievable for words.’
‘Why? Don’t you believe in love at first sight? It happened to my father. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen to me?’
‘Because unlike your mother, I already have a boyfriend. I’m not looking for a husband.’
‘Paolo won’t marry you because he can’t.’
Something inside her snapped. She’d had enough. She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. She didn’t want any more of his mind games. She didn’t need them. Now that he’d let her go she had better things to do with her time—like pack her suitcase and get out of there.
‘I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t know what you think you know and I don’t really care. I’m leaving.’
She turned for the door and his words came after her as sharp as a dagger. ‘Didn’t you hear me? It’s not possible for him to marry you.’
‘I’m not listening,’ she said, shaking her head as she reached for the workshop door to slam behind her. ‘I don’t care.’
She gave the door one hell of a swing, thinking her energies could have been much better directed at connecting her fist with one particularly arrogant sheikh’s jaw, but there was no resounding slam, no satisfying conclusion. She turned, growling in frustration, only to see him right behind her, blocking the space the door should have filled.
‘Don’t you want to know why?’
She put her hands over her ears as she headed for her bedroom. ‘No. I don’t want to hear what you think you know. Don’t you understand? I just want to get out of here. I just want to get away from you!’
‘Then you should care,’ he said, nonchalantly tracing her steps. ‘Because it’s obvious
that, for someone apparently in love with you, he hasn’t been totally honest.’
That got her attention! She swivelled around where she stood, buried in the walk-in wardrobe, her suitcase in hand, already in flight. Just her luck that when she finally got to enjoy a dressing room large enough to swing a suitcase, she would have been more than happy to hit a few walls, or one particular sheikh, just for effect.
‘Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.’ She flipped open the suitcase on the floor, started tearing clothes from hangers and flinging them in while the prick of tears stung her eyes, blurring her vision. But there was no way she was giving in to them. No way. ‘What would you know about honesty? You’ve lied to me from day one.’
‘But I never pretended to be in love with you.’
Her frantic movements stilled, her hands midway to the next item, as the fury inside her reached meltdown. ‘You’re mad!’ she said, dragging the shirt free from its hanger at last. ‘You must be, to think that I would stay here to be your bride. To even talk about love in such circumstances is a joke. I don’t want you as a husband and I certainly don’t want your love.’
She collected up the few remaining items from the shelves and tossed them on top of everything else before pushing past him to get to her bathroom and gather up her toiletries. She jammed the zipper bag on top and then bundled the whole pile to somehow fit the suitcase’s confines.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Where do you think? I’m going home.’ She flipped out the case’s handle, set it right side up on its wheeled base and puffed out her chest defiantly. ‘And then I’m going to marry Paolo.’
She pushed past him, unsure of how exactly she was going to get to the airport and how long she’d have to wait when she got there for a flight, but determined to get out now anyway.
‘That’s after his divorce comes through, I take it.’
She kept walking with barely a hitch, her heeled sandals clicking on the cool tiled floor, suitcase rolling behind. ‘Well, if that’s your trump card,’ she said without raising her voice, knowing he was still close enough to hear every word, ‘you just blew it. I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong Paolo. My fiancé has never been married.’
‘Oh, he never shared that piece of information with you, then?’
