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Oh, he would hold her tightly and bury his lips against her damp skin and tell her that she was amazing. Once he even told her that she was the best lover he’d ever had. But to Leila, his words seemed empty and she was scared to believe them. As if he was saying them because he knew he ought to say them, rather than because he meant them.
She would lie there hugging her still-trembling body while he went off to take a shower, forcing herself to remember that she was only here because of the life growing inside her. A life so new that sometimes it didn’t seem as if it were real...
One morning they were lying amid a tumble of sex-scented sheets after a long and satisfying night of lovemaking, when she rolled onto her stomach and looked at him.
‘You know, you’ve never even told me how you made your fortune.’
He stretched out his lean, tanned body and yawned. ‘It’s a dull story.’
‘Every story has a point of interest.’
He looked at her. ‘Why do you ask so many questions, Leila? You’re always digging, aren’t you?’
She met his cool gaze. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t keep asking if you actually tried answering some of them for a change.’
She could see the wariness in his eyes, but for once she refused to be silenced or seduced into changing the subject. Even if their marriage wasn’t ‘real’ in the way that Sara and Suleiman’s was—didn’t her position as his wife give her some kind of right to know? To find out whether, beneath that cool facade, Gabe Steel had a few vulnerabilities of his own?
‘So tell me,’ she murmured and dropped a kiss on his bare shoulder. ‘Go on.’
Gabe sighed as he felt her soft lips brushing against his skin. He had never planned to marry her. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. Reluctantly, he had taken what he considered to be the best course of action in circumstances which could have ruined her. He had done the right thing by her. Yet instead of showing her gratitude by melting quietly into the background and making herself as unobtrusive as possible, she had proved a major form of distraction in ways he had never anticipated.
From the moment she opened her eyes in the morning to the moment those long black lashes fluttered to a close at night, she mesmerised him in all kinds of ways.
The way she rose naked from the rumpled sheets—a tall, striking Venus with caramel skin and endless legs. The reverse-heart swing of her naked bottom as she wiggled it out of the room. The way she slanted him that blue-eyed look, which instantly had his blood boiling with lust.
But he knew that women often mistook a man’s lust for love; and that lust always faded. In the normal scheme of things, that wouldn’t matter, but with Leila it did. He couldn’t afford to let her fall in love with him and have the all too predictable angry outcome when she realised it wasn’t ever going to be reciprocated. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want her to start thinking that he could feel things, like other men did. She was the mother of his child and she wasn’t going anywhere. He might not have wanted to become a father, but he was going to make damned sure that this baby was an enduring part of his life. Which he guessed was why he found himself saying, ‘What exactly do you want to know?’
‘Tell me how you first got into advertising,’ she said. ‘Surely that’s not too difficult.’
‘Look it up on the internet,’ he said.
‘I already have.’ She remembered how she’d checked him out before that fateful meeting in Simdahab. ‘And although there’s lots of stuff about you winning awards and riding motorbikes and being pictured with some of the world’s most beautiful women—there’s not much in the way of background. Almost as if somebody had been controlling how much information was getting out there.’ She stroked her finger down his cheek. ‘Is that down to you, Gabe?’
‘Of course it is.’ His response was economical. ‘I’m sure your brother controls information about himself all the time.’
‘Ah, but my brother is a sultan who rules an empire and has a lot of enemies. What’s your excuse?’
She saw the flicker of irritation which crossed his face—a slightly more exaggerated irritation than the look she’d seen yesterday when he’d discovered a dirty coffee cup sitting on the side of his pristine bathtub and acted as if it were an unexploded bomb.
‘My excuse is that I try to remain as private as possible,’ he said. ‘But I can see that you’re not going to let up until you’re satisfied. Where shall I begin?’
