LITMIR.BIZ

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were going to be offered.’

      ‘Then why say it?’ he lashed at her.

      Her small laugh was forced and shrill. ‘You couldn’t make your horror clearer if you were being faced with the end of my brother’s shotgun!’ She angrily derided the question.

      ‘You expect me to be ecstatic?’

      ‘No,’ she said heavily, turning away from him to stare bleakly out across the moon-kissed lake because looking at him now hurt just too damned much. ‘But a bit of tender concern at some point wouldn’t have gone amiss…’

      The dry remark had his chest expanding on a strained intake of air. When he let it out again most of his anger went with it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised gruffly. ‘But, as you can no doubt appreciate, it is going to take me some time to get my head around this.’

      ‘Get your head around what exactly?’ Evie drawled, withdrawing behind her own stone-cold shell of selfprotection. ‘The problematic mistress who has stupidly gone and got herself pregnant?’

      ‘It takes two to make a baby,’ he sighed.

      ‘But only one to bring it safely into the world,’ Evie pointed out. ‘Your part is done. Mine is just starting.’

      A small silence followed that remark. Then Raschid demanded, ‘Are you suggesting that I ignore the fact that you are having my baby?’

      Why? Evie thought bitterly. Are you offering up a suitable alternative? ‘I am suggesting that you get your priorities right,’ she said. ‘And remember your duty.’

      Raschid stood staring into cold-cut lavender-blue eyes set in an excruciatingly beautiful face that showed not a hint of emotion anywhere on it—and at last it began to hit him just what she was saying here.

      ‘Don’t be foolish!’ he snapped. ‘In this case my duty is to you and the child!’ A long-fingered hand flicked out in a grim, tight throw-away gesture. ‘We will have to get married, of course.’

      Still no words of love, Evie noted painfully. Still no words of caring. But oh, so arrogant, she observed. So damned sure of himself—so utterly dismayed by what he was so magnanimously offering.

      ‘We don’t have to do anything,’ she countered, feeling so cold inside now that she wished she hadn’t let his jacket slip to the grass when she’d got to her feet earlier.

      ‘I will have to speak to my father…’ he muttered, too busy lost in his own frowning thoughts to have heard her. ‘It is going to cause problems at home, but that cannot be helped now. I will…’

      ‘Excuse me,’ Evie inserted, and this time the sheer coldness of her voice managed to gain his attention. ‘But the way I see it, Raschid,’ she said firmly, ‘you don’t have a problem here. I do.’

      ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ he jerked out, beginning to look just a little shell-shocked now.

      ‘I’ve never expected marriage from you,’ Evie informed him. ‘And I am not asking you for it now.’

      ‘Are you mad?’ he choked. ‘Of course you will marry me! What else can we do?’

      Oh, his sensitivity knew no bounds! Evie mocked him bitterly as she bent to retrieve her discarded shoes. ‘I wouldn’t marry you, Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah, if you came gift-wrapped in rubies!’ she hissed as she straightened up again. ‘I have too much damned respect for myself, you see!’

      ‘Are you saying that I don’t respect you?’

      ‘Do you?’ Evie flashed back. ‘You see, I find it hard to reconcile the fact that I wasn’t fit to marry before I became pregnant with your child!’

      At last those angry golden eyes began to burn with a pained understanding of what was actually going on here. Remorse tightened his arrogant features.

      ‘Evie…’ he sighed, the hand he used to capture her wrist tense with frustration. ‘I have handled this badly,’ he acknowledged. ‘I apologise.’

      ‘Don’t bother,’ Evie snapped, tugging angrily at her imprisoned wrist. ‘Let go of me,’ she commanded shakily.

      ‘Not until you listen to me,’ he refused. The hand pulled her closer, drawing her fully against his powerful chest. ‘You cannot expect me to pretend to be pleased about a baby when you know as well as I do the kind of problems that are going to erupt around us!’

      ‘Funny really,’ she said, lifting lavender eyes turned into dark purple pools by the sudden flood of tears washing across them. ‘But I expected nothing more than I got from you, Raschid. Which just about says it all, doesn’t it?’

      His sigh was driven, the hand he brought around her waist there to stop her from pulling against her captive wrist. ‘I thought we loved each other well enough to be honest with each other.’

      ‘There is honest and there is brutal,’ Evie said thickly. ‘I feel frightened. I feel vulnerable. I feel as if I’ve ruined both our lives. And all you can do is worry about how this is all going to affect you!’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed yet again.

      But—too late, Evie thought, and pulled herself free of him.

      ‘Listen to me,’ he pleaded. ‘We need—What are you doing?’ he raked out in disbelief as Evie began to walk away. ‘Come back here, you exasperating creature!’ he growled after her. ‘You cannot just walk away from this!’

      Just watch me! Evie thought wretchedly. ‘In the profound words of a certain arrogant swine I know,’ she tossed at him over her shoulder, ‘go to hell!’

      Two people knocked on her bedroom door that night. Both tried the handle when they received no response. Both discovered that the door was locked.

      One was her mother; Evie knew that because Lucinda had called out to her, the usual sharpness honed out of her voice by the thickness of the wood. The other was Raschid. She knew that because he didn’t call out, he just stood on the other side of that door like a silent but dark presence—and used other means to make her aware that he was there and hadn’t given up on this.

      Evie didn’t sleep that night; she merely dozed, shifting restlessly about the lumpy old bed that had been her mother’s idea of a punishment for a daughter who refused to toe the moral line.

      So, what would the punishment be for conceiving an illegitimate baby? she wondered grimly. Total excommunication from the family?

      And Raschid, she moved on to consider with the same sense of wretched derision. Did he really expect her to be grateful for his belated and very reluctant offer of marriage?

      And don’t forget the ever-vigilant press, Evie reminded herself as she lay there in the darkness. They were going to make a real meal out of all of this if or when they ever found out about it. And neither excommunication nor marriage was going to stop their acid pens from writing their poison.

      Maybe the other option was the better one. Maybe a quick if bloody end to this was the only way to save everyone’s embarrassment. But even as the thought popped into her head Evie dismissed it with a telling shudder. She was whole, she was healthy, and she had no excuse—moral or otherwise—to put an end to a life before it had barely started.

      And this little life had been conceived with love, even if that love now lay floundering somewhere between here and the Beverleys’ private lake. She loved this baby. She loved where he came from and who he was going to be. She wanted to be there to watch him become that person. And, no matter what his father, grandmother or even his grandfather thought about it, she would make sure her child grew up feeling pride in his mixed heritage, she vowed fiercely.

      By dawn she’d had enough of lying there trying to sleep when it was clear that sleep was a million miles away. Getting up, she showered in the antiquated bathroom, pulled on fresh underwear, a pair of jeans and a white tee shirt. Brushing her hair back into a simple

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