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The other kids had used to mock him-but Xavier had never answered, for he had not known his father's identity.
Ground vividly into his childhood memory was his mother's tight-lipped fear whenever he had ventured to ask a question about him. Her reluctance to talk.
'He is a powerful and dangerous man who will try to take you away from me.
Forget him, Xavier' was all she would say.
Xavier had been afraid of no one-yet what choice had he had other than to accede to her wishes? How could he have gone against the woman who had given him life, who had given up all her own ambitions in order to fend for him? Perhaps a part of him had thought she might mellow with age, but his mother had died five years ago-leaving behind nothing but a faded piece of pink ribbon and a gold and ruby ring-and in a way Xavier had felt that he was honouring her memory by letting her secrets die with her.
After that, he had convinced himself that some things were better left alone- that it freed him from burden and complications not to have known the man who was his biological father.
And now this English woman had come here today and was claiming that she knew his identity! Suddenly Xavier felt anger rising in him, and without warning he reached out and caught hold of her, his fingers gripping into the soft silk which covered her arms. He hauled her up close-close enough to smell the faint scent of lilac she wore, and to see the pulse which beat convulsively against the paper-thin skin at her temple.
'How can my father be a sheikh when I am a Frenchman to every fibre of my being'?' he hissed. 'What fairytales do you concoct'?' Laura froze in his grip as his dark features swam in front of her, his breath hot on her face. His eyes were flashing black fire, and she could detect the raw scent of animal passion which clung to his skin. She felt dizzy with his proximity and shook her head, which felt heavy as lead-as if her slender neck did not have the strength to bear the weight of it.
'It isn't a fairytale,' she breathed. .I swear it isn't'
'Your word means nothing to me-why should I believe you'?' Yet the cold and logical side of his character was already assessing the possibility of the redhead's bizarre declaration being true. No. He brought her even closer. 'Who sent you'?' he demanded.
His dark-skinned face was so close that her senses were swimming, and Laura could barely get the words out. .
‘I am acting on the Sheikh's wishes-though he made them known through another.'
'Through another'?' he repeated, as if she were speaking in a language he could not understand.
Laura nodded, wishing that her usual crystal-sharp thought processes hadn't deserted her-but how could she concentrate when this man's powerful masculinity seemed to be seeping into her very pores? 'Yes. The Sheikh is old and frail, and thus I dealt mainly through one of his sides.' Laura hesitated. 'His ill-heaIth is one of the reasons he wished to make contact.'
Xavier scowled. The Sheikh's constitution was of no interest to him, but he could not stop the unfamiliar word she had used from stabbing at his heart. Father. It was as likely as looking up into the night sky and discovering that the moon had been made of blue cheese all along. As his take on reality shifted and changed irrevocably, he tightened his grip.
'Liar! This man is not my father-how can he be'?' She felt his fingers biting into her flesh.
'It's true, I tell you-it's true. Please. Let me go. '
'Not yet.' He loosened his grip slightly, but he did not set her free. He could see the tremble of her lips and the rush of emotions which her outrageous claim had released were such that he was tempted to drown them all in the sweet oblivion of a punishing kiss.
He could feel the hard, angry nudge of an erection, and for one brief second he wondered how long it would take him to enter her. How quickly could he make her wet with desire and rock against her, relieving these sharp, painful questions with the sweet oblivion of sex? But as the primitive and powerful animal reaction overwhelmed him, he used his steely will to banish the desire. For now. Because sex would weaken him, would briefly have him in her thrall-and he would not risk that happening until he was acquainted with all the facts.
'TeII me what you know,' he grated.
Laura knew that she had to assert herself before this went any further. That his proximity was too distracting to allow herself any more of it-and it was with a shock like a slap to the face that she recognised that the danger she felt was in part sexual. That she
was guilty of desire in a professional setting-and that she was jeopardizing all that she had worked for. Oh, Laura-slop it, she told herself.
She lifted her chin and her green eyes burned into him. 'Only if you take your hands off me.'
He stared at her for a long, considering moment, his angry black gaze clashing with the emerald fire of hers. 'As you wish,' he ground out.
He dropped his hands so suddenly that Laura was almost caught of balance.
Her breath, she realized, was coming in short and unsteady gasps, as if she had come to the end of some long race-but the race, she knew, was only just beginning.
'Now begin' he ordered, but already rogue thoughts had begun to swim into his mind. Would this woman's statement make some sense of the many questions which had dogged his early years? And yet, in a way, wasn't it almost better if those questions remained unasked?
At the moment Xavier's life was perfectly ordered and exactly as he liked it. He called the shots and had all the control-but now this Englishwoman threatened to lay before him a nest of vipers which one by one would reveal their slithering bodies...
Laura bit her lip. 'Your father is-'
'No!' His voice rang out like a lash of steel. 'You will refer to no one as my father.
