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‘And?’ he prompted at last. He sounded impatient, giving her a kernel of hope. Did he really care what she had to say? Would it make a difference?
‘And it happened. I didn’t want it to. I even tried to fight it. But it was no good. There was nothing I could do to stop it. Then when the jet was attacked and I feared for your life, I knew I was wrong not to have told you.’
‘Hold on,’ he said, holding a finger to her lips. ‘Take a deep breath. What should you have told me?’
She blinked and sucked in a lungful of air, hoping for a burst of courage to go with it. ‘I love you, Khaled. Somewhere along the way, in the midst of all that has happened, I fell in love with you.’
‘You did?’ He looked as if he didn’t quite believe her.
She nodded. ‘My pride wouldn’t let me tell you. I was still so angry about everything that had happened. But pride and anger are such worthless emotions when so much is at stake. When I thought you’d been attacked and I feared for your life, I knew then that even if you never loved me in return, if you survived, I needed to let you know the truth. I needed to be honest with you.’
‘But I don’t understand. What do you mean, if I never loved you? I told you I loved you. You knew that.’
She gazed up at him. ‘I thought you only said that to prevent me from leaving.’
‘No.’ He touched the tip of her nose with one finger. ‘I told you that because I loved you.’
‘But that was before I opened Paolo’s letter. You never once told me after that—when we argued and you said you’d take me to the airport—you never mentioned it. You made me think it was just another ploy, another tactic to keep me here.’
‘Not a ploy.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘But I understand why you would think so. I have never treated anyone as badly as I have treated you.’
She opened her mouth to protest—there were reasons why he acted the way he did, she knew that now. But two fingers on her lips shushed her.
‘I cannot ask for forgiveness, it is too much. I planned to cold-heartedly steal you from one man and take you for my own—’
‘No, Khaled, don’t.’ She brushed his hand aside, only to have him muffle her objections with his kiss.
‘Please, let me explain,’ he said, finally lifting his lips from hers, asserting his will instead with his dark eyes. ‘I need to tell you these things. If you can bear to hear them.’
Her teeth scraped her bottom lip. She’d told him she loved him and he’d confirmed that he loved her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more, certainly not if that risked changing the balance, but she nodded anyway. There must be no more secrets. Just as he needed to tell her these things, she needed to hear them.
‘At first I set out to have you because of Paolo, that much is true. I had seen photos, I knew you were attractive and successful, but I had no doubt I could bend you to my will and make you go along with my plan. A month would be all I’d need.’
He took a deep breath. ‘But from the moment I met you, my plan was in trouble. I began to want you, right from the start, and not just because you belonged to someone else. It was almost as if there was something between us—a wire—invisible and tightly strung, that pulled tighter and tighter the longer we were together.’
‘I felt it too,’ she offered. ‘I couldn’t get you out of my head, even when I thought I was designing a wedding dress for another woman—another bride.’
‘You did? Of course, I suspected as much.’ Hi
s smile turned suddenly serious. ‘But still, the way I treated you was inexcusable. Even though I couldn’t get enough of you. It was the ultimate irony that the woman I had stolen to get back at another man had gone and stolen my heart.’
He sighed. ‘You made me risk the entire plan by telling you two weeks early.’
‘I did that?’
He nodded. ‘Believe it. You needled and bullied and refused to give in to my excuses for not having a fitting. You drove me so crazy with your demands that I wanted to throw you off balance.’ He smiled. ‘And I did,’ he said, earning him a quick punch in the arm.
‘I thought you were mad,’ she said.
‘It was a form of madness,’ he agreed. ‘I was so mad for you. And when you said you were going home to Paolo, I just got madder still. How could you prefer him over me?
‘And if the airport hadn’t been closed yesterday, I would have let you go home then, so deep did you seem affected by the pain of betrayal. Except…’
He paused and she waited expectantly.
‘Except what?’
‘Except, even then…’ his voice sounded tenser, more strung out ‘…even then the drive for revenge was so strong. I knew that if you came to me of your own free will then my revenge on Paolo would be that much sweeter.’
