AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘How did you find out where I was?’ Kirsten exclaimed, busily engaged in buttoning her coat in an instinctive attempt to conceal her protruding stomach.
‘Ways and means. Are you feeling all right?’ Shahir stared down at her, a frown pleating his ebony brows. ‘You’re very pale.’
‘Am I? This light makes everyone look weird,’ she gabbled, striving to act normally. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you.’
She folded her arms, discovered her tummy got in the way of what had once been her waist and hastily dropped her arms again. ‘Why?’ she asked baldly.
‘I did ask you to stay in touch. I was concerned when I didn’t hear from you. Let me give you a lift.’
‘No, really—there’s no need.’
‘There is every need. You’re shivering with cold.’
She blinked, and realised that he was correct: she was shivering, and her light coat offered little defence against the winter chill. She was cold and she was tired and her back was hurting. And, what was more, she thought wretchedly, it was entirely his fault that she was cold, tired and pregnant. Why on earth was she trying to conceal her tummy from the man who had got her into this condition?
In a sudden movement that took him by surprise she stepped past him and clambered into the limousine. The warmth and comfort of the opulent vehicle felt like a cocoon to her weary bones.
‘We could dine at my hotel,’ Shahir murmured.
‘I’d have to go home first…’ As Kirsten heard herself virtually agreeing to his invitation, she was disconcerted to appreciate that her tongue seemed to be running ahead of her brain.
Without comment, Shahir asked for her address and passed it to his chauffeur. She watched him from below her lashes the whole time, devouring every aspect of his appearance with a voracious craving for detail. Even the way he sat was graceful, with his proud dark head at an angle, his broad shoulders relaxed back, long lean limbs arranged with careless masculinity. She loved the way he dressed too, with a style that was both elegant and fashionable. His designer suit was perfectly tailored to his powerful physique. He always looked as if he had stepped straight out of a glossy magazine.
He really was incredibly good-looking…sin personified in male flesh, she conceded ruefully. It was little wonder she had fallen stupidly in love and even more stupidly into bed with him.
‘I’ll only be ten minutes.’ Kirsten hurried into the terraced house where she lived.
She lived in a grimy street lined with rundown housing. Shahir had to resist the urge to accompany her. At his nod the bodyguard in the front seat got out and alerted the security team in the car behind. He breathed in slow and deep, his brilliant dark eyes bleak, for he was very much shocked by the change in her appearance. Nothing could steal the haunting loveliness from her flawless face, but her skin was as white as milk and as transparent as glass, while her eyes were hollow and darkly shadowed. She had also become painfully thin. She looked ill.
Kirsten fed Squeak. She knew that she was going to tell Shahir about the baby. Not because it felt like the right thing to do, or because it was silly to feel humiliated by a pregnancy that he had inflicted on her. No, primarily she was going to tell Shahir that she was pregnant because she knew it would ruin his day. There it was—a mean, petty, vengeful and absolutely shameful motive. But that was how she felt at that moment.
All of a sudden she was wondering how many other women he had been with over the past seven months. Had he wined and dined them too? Of course she had just been a lowly cleaner, and while he might have been prepared to take that lowly cleaner to bed he had not been democratic enough to offer to take her out for a meal. Or give her a flower…or, for that matter, even a little magazine! She could not even regard herself as having been a cheap date, because there had not been a date to begin with. That acknowledgement did nothing to raise her sagging self-esteem.
She was convinced that while she had been struggling to survive Shahir had been partying. Household gossip had always implied that he led an astonishingly quiet and boring life at Strathcraig. Didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, did nothing but work, work and work, what free time he did have absorbed by the charitable foundation he had set up.
Kirsten, however, was unimpressed by that account of clean and decent living. Shahir might not have brought women he slept with to the castle, but he owned other properties round the world, and he had asked her to be his mistress, hadn’t he? He had also got her into bed faster than the speed of light, which signified no small amount of experience, she reasoned bitterly. Any man who kept a mistress was a womaniser. He might be a discreet womanizer, but he was a womaniser nonetheless.
Now she had stoked her hatred to new and heady heights, she saw that it was time that he knew exactly what she thought of him!
Squeak had arthritic joints, and had to be lifted into the limousine. Once on board, he curled up in the cosiest corner of the carpeted floor and went straight back to sleep. Kirsten sank heavily into the leather seat opposite Shahir and closed her eyes while she planned the speech she would make to him. Exhaustion weighed her down like a heavy blanket…
The unfamiliar sound of Squeak growling wakened Kirsten from her heavy slumber. Blinking drowsily, she gazed down at Squeak who, having stationed himself protectively in front of her, was baring his teeth at Shahir, leaning forward.
‘I was trying to wake you. He is a good watchdog,’ Shahir advanced dryly. ‘We’ve arrived at the hotel.’
‘Sorry—I must have dozed off.’ Running an uneasy hand through her rumpled hair, Kirsten took hold of Squeak’s lead. ‘Where are we?’
‘In the hotel’s underground car park. Did you think I was abducting you?’
Kirsten forced a laugh. ‘Don’t be daft.’
As she walked into the lift, Squeak, agitated by his unfamiliar surroundings, crossed in front of her and she stumbled over his lead. Shahir closed firm hands to her shoulders to steady her before she could tumble forward. ‘Careful…’
Without appreciating how close he was to her, Kirsten spun nervously round to face him again. Unfortunately her tummy got in the way of her smoothly completing the movement and rubbed against his hip. She glanced down and was transfixed by the way the fabric of her coat had pulled taut over her projecting midsection to define her fecund shape with cruel accuracy.
Bemused by her tense silence, Shahir followed the path of her gaze. Everything that had confused him fell into place: her ill-health, her unusually clumsy gait, the slowness with which she now moved.
