LITMIR.BIZ

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and was striding towards the boot.

      She climbed out too, the sunlight just managing to seep over the rooftops feeling warm on her icy face. Walking to the back of the car, she waited until Harry had closed the boot lid then went to take her bag from him.

      ‘Thanks for the lift, Harry. I…’

      The bag was swung out of her reach. ‘I’m coming in with you,’ he insisted.

      ‘But your foal. You should…’

      ‘The least you can do is offer me a cup of coffee for my trouble,’ he pointed out gently.

      ‘Of course, I’m sorry,’ she murmured contritely, and turned to cross the pavement to her white-painted front door.

      The telephone was ringing even as she stepped into the house with Harry right behind her. Evie froze where she stood, counting off the rings until the answering machine took over. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears as the machine chanted out her recorded message. A moment after that and her mother’s voice came whipping across the room towards her.

      ‘Evie, I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, walking out like this. God knows what the Beverleys are going to think!’ A sigh rasped like sandpaper across the room. ‘I don’t care what a mess your private life is in, this is so bad-mannered! Now I suppose I will have to make up excuses for you. It just isn’t fair, Evie! Don’t you think I spend enough time making excuses for you as it is?’

      Another sigh, then came a few tense moments when nothing happened while her mother seemed to be getting a hold on her temper. ‘Look,’ she said, sounding marginally less aggressive. ‘Call me here when you get home. I need to know you arrived there safely…’

      ‘You didn’t tell her you came away with me?’ Harry asked when the call had finished.

      Evie shook her head. ‘I just said I’d got a lift home,’ she explained, forcing her stiff legs to move towards the kitchen.

      She hadn’t wanted to involve Harry’s name in all of this; it would cause too many complications when things were complicated enough. Her mother didn’t need any help to cast Harry in the role of saviour. Give Lucinda an inch and she would take a mile…

      ‘Are you going to call her back?’

      Evie didn’t answer. Instead she picked up the kettle and took it over to the sink to fill it with fresh water. She didn’t want to talk to anyone—not even Harry—though it would be churlish under the circumstances to tell him that.

      ‘Evie…’

      The phone started ringing again, cutting off whatever Harry had been about to say and turning Evie to stone again where she stood clutching the kettle while she waited to hear who was trying to contact her this time.

      A moment after that and Raschid’s voice came, sounding hard and tight and very, very weary. ‘Pick up the phone, Evie,’ he commanded. ‘I know you are there…’

      Evie didn’t move. The seconds ticked by, the silence picking at tautly stretched nerve-ends.

      ‘Evie!’ Impatience roughened his voice now. ‘This is foolish! You are being foolish! Pick up the phone!’

      ‘How does he know you are here?’ Harry asked curiously. ‘Would your mother have told him?’

      Incapable of speech, Evie gave a small shake of her head. Her mother would rather die than tell Raschid anything. No, Raschid must have seen her leave, she decided.

      Like herself, she presumed, he must have spent a lousy sleepless night wondering what the hell he was going to do about her, and had probably been staring out of his bedroom window when she and Harry took off together.

      A disembodied sigh rushed impatiently around the room when her refusal to comply made Raschid angry. Teeth clenched, body—the very muscles that made her heart beat—all locked into a dreadful straining paralysis, Evie waited to hear what was going to come next.

      ‘I am on my way to you,’ he grimly informed her. ‘Make sure you get rid of that fool who is there with you, or I will not be responsible for what may happen to him!’

      ‘What the…?’ Harry burst out in disbelief.

      Snap, the line went dead. Evie jumped, almost dropping the kettle.

      ‘How did he know I was here?’ Harry gasped. ‘Does the man have special powers or something?’

      ‘Or something,’ Evie tightly replied. And from being frozen the muscles around her heart were now accelerating wildly as anger began to take her over. Putting down the kettle, she walked out of the open-plan kitchen and across the sitting room to glance out of the window.

      There were several cars parked in the mews, but only one had somebody sitting inside it.

      ‘He must have seen us leave Beverley together,’ she told Harry as he came to stand beside her. Then she nodded her head towards the occupied car. ‘There is the object of his special powers,’ she dryly concluded.

      ‘You mean—he’s having you watched?’ Harry was beginning to look hunted. ‘But why should he bother to do that? The man is marrying another woman!’

      But this one is having his baby, Evie added grimly to herself as she winced at Harry’s thoughtless reminder.

      ‘Look,’ she said, turning towards him, ‘I’m very grateful to you for bringing me home. But I think you should leave before he gets here.’

      ‘I’m not leaving you alone with him!’ he declared, coming over all macho and protective. ‘The man sounded damned dangerous,’ he added. ‘For all I know, he may have plans to spirit you away to his harem, or something.’

      Evie allowed herself a wry smile at that scenario—though the real joke of it was that Raschid might well be planning to do just that. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t understand him any more. After two years of believing that she knew him inside out and back to front, she was now discovering that he had hidden depths she had never allowed for.

      The main one being his determination to hang on to something that he hadn’t even wanted.

      The baby—the baby. Not Evie or what they felt for each other, but a baby that he deemed as his possession. And it wasn’t in Raschid’s nature to let go of something he believed belonged to him.

      So, maybe the harem theory wasn’t so far-fetched. Maybe he could see her hidden away there with only his eunuchs for company while his new wife lived in complete ignorance of her new husband’s intimate prisoner.

      Or maybe not so ignorant, Evie then amended, remembering his sister Ranya’s meek obedience to the men in her life.

      A different world, a different culture, a different view of life.

      She shuddered. ‘He’s started the car engine,’ Harry said.

      Evie turned to see tell-tale blink of an amber indicator—and felt a tiny quiver of alarm go slinking through her blood. It could only mean that Raschid was mere seconds away.

      ‘Harry—!’ she pleaded urgently. ‘Get out of here before Raschid arrives. Please…’

      ‘But—’

      ‘But nothing,’ Evie interrupted, already moving to open the front door. ‘He won’t hurt me, but I can’t say what he may do to you.’

      She was nervous, she was anxious. Harry didn’t like the look of either. And her slender fingers had that open front door in a death grip.

      A black Mercedes drove slowly by them.

      ‘Take the lady’s advice,’ a deep voice dropped smoothly into the tension. ‘She knows what she is talking about…’

      They both jumped, both turned, both stared at the man who was now filling the doorway.

      CHAPTER SIX

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