LITMIR.BIZ

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in the photographs in silence. Sapphire was pale as death and silent and her family, aside of the little bouncy one in green, who had smiled brightly at him, were clearly hostile and suspicious. No doubt her family had taken their cues from Sapphire. She didn’t want to be married to him again; he could feel it in the tension that gripped her every time he touched her. That made him angry and bitter, roused memories better left buried. But he had royally screwed up by allowing his primal instincts to triumph and there was always a price to be paid for recklessness, he reminded himself darkly. He had got her back. That was, at least, a beginning, and only time would tell whether or not she would continue to hold the threat of a divorce like a gun to his head.

      ‘You look stunning,’ Zahir told her belatedly as she scrambled into the limo that would whisk them from the church to the embassy to undergo a Muslim marriage ceremony. ‘How are you feeling?’

      ‘I’m not ill, only pregnant,’ Saffy countered defensively, wishing he hadn’t reminded her of her condition, reluctant to be viewed as in any way in need of special treatment.

      The second ceremony was brief, witnessed by embassy officials and a posed photograph was taken afterwards. They returned to Mikhail and Kat’s house where a reception was being held in the ballroom. After the wedding breakfast, they circulated. Surrounded by the familiar faces of the models she often worked with, Saffy began to relax a little, bearing up well to comments about how quiet she had been about her supposed long-term relationship with Zahir and striving to behave more like a normal bride.

      ‘Of course, I shouldn’t mention it,’ trilled Natasha, a six-foot-tall Ukrainian blonde, well on her way to supermodel status. ‘But Zahir was mine first.’

      It was said so quietly and with such a sunny smile that it took several seconds for that spiteful confession to sink in on Saffy. She stared back into Natasha’s very pale blue eyes and murmured, ‘Really?’ as politely as if the other woman had commented on the weather.

      ‘Yes, a couple of years ago now. A fling at a film festival,’ Natasha confided with a little shrug of a designer-clad shoulder. ‘But he was hard to forget.’

      ‘Yes,’ Saffy acknowledged, passing on as soon as she could into less aggressive company, anger licking like fire at her composure. Mine first? No, he had been hers, her husband and then her ex-husband before he became anyone else’s. But the truth that he had sought amusement in other beds could still slash like a knife turning in her breast. She glanced back at Natasha, beautiful and reputedly sexually voracious, struggling not to picture Zahir entwined in her arms, and the nausea she had never experienced until that moment turned her stomach into a washing machine and sent sickness hurtling up her throat. Her skin clammy with perspiration, she rushed off to the cloakroom and made it just in time. She was horribly sick and it took a few minutes for her to freshen up and lose the unsteadiness that afflicted her in the aftermath.

      When she emerged, Topsy was waiting for her. ‘Are you OK? Zahir saw you leaving and asked me to check.’

      Zahir didn’t miss much, Saffy reflected wretchedly. ‘I think I just got bitten by morning sickness.’ And a very tall shrewish blonde.

      But Saffy was no fan of ducking reality and she knew she had to deal with life as it was. Zahir had been with other women when he was no longer married to her and that was his business, not hers. His past was his own, just as hers would have been had she lived a little more dangerously since their first marriage. But unfortunately there had not been a cure for the fact that she had still found Zahir and her memory of him far more attractive than other men. What did that say about her? He was like a habit she had never managed to shake, her one and only fantasy, and the men who had pursued her over the years had never managed to cause her a single sleepless night. With the exception of Zahir, she had never pined for a phone call or a smile from a man, had truly never contrived to rouse that much interest, and perhaps that was why she had fallen so easily back into bed with him. Was it a kind of persistent physical infatuation? Had he somehow spoiled her for other men? She stared at him as she crossed the floor of the ballroom.

      He was lithe, powerfully built and supremely sophisticated in his light grey morning suit with his luxuriant ebony hair fanning back from his brow; his dark deep-set eyes were riveting in his lean, bronzed face. He was drop-dead gorgeous and always had been a very hard act to follow. But as her body stirred with responses far removed from nausea, her breasts swelling and peaking beneath her bodice and a dull ache expanding in her pelvis, she was furious with herself for being so susceptible to a male who neither loved nor even truly wanted her.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ Zahir asked softly.

      ‘Why would anything be wrong?’ she traded tartly, ice in her cool scrutiny and edging her voice. ‘You tell me…film festival two years ago, Ukrainian blonde by the name of Natasha, ring any bells?’ That scornful and provocative question just leapt off Saffy’s tongue before she was even aware she was going to voice it.

      The faintest hint of colour edged Zahir’s chiselled cheekbones but his dark golden gaze did not waver from hers. Indeed if anything he stood a little straighter. ‘I will never lie to you.’

      Even when you should, she almost screamed at him, wanting, needing to know and yet fearing what knowing more would do to her.

      ‘There weren’t many and there was nothing serious,’ Zahir breathed in a harsh undertone. ‘This is not a conversation I want to have on our wedding day.’

      ‘It’s not something I want to talk about either!’ Saffy launched back at him, her eyes a very bright blue lit with anger.

      His stubborn jaw line squared. ‘Before you judge me, ask yourself if you have any idea of what state I was in after our divorce.’

      Saffy came over all defensive. ‘How would I know?’

      ‘When you’re ready to tell me what changed you out of all recognition in the bedroom, I’ll tell you why I did what I did.’ His brilliant dark eyes glittered. It was a challenge, blunt and simple, and it only made Saffy angrier than ever.

      He had divorced her. He had made that choice. He could not expect her to accept the consequences or feel responsible for a situation that had not been of her making. As for what had changed her into a normal sexually able woman, that was not something she was willing to share with him. It was too private, too personal, might well affect the way he looked at her and that very possible outcome made her cringe.

      ‘Are you two actually arguing?’ Kat came up to demand in dismay.

      ‘We always did have a fiery relationship,’ Zahir admitted.

      ‘Not so different from our own,’ Kat’s husband, Mikhail, teased his wife. ‘It takes time to adjust to living with another person.’

      ‘Time and buckets of patience,’ Zahir added, an authoritative look stamped on his lean dark face that only made Saffy want to slap him hard.

      ‘Your guests are waiting for the bride and groom to start the dancing,’ Kat informed them more cheerfully.

      Saffy wasn’t in the mood to dance, especially not with Natasha smirking at the side of the floor, but she owed her sister too much to risk upsetting her and she gave way with good grace.

      Zahir was a great dancer with a natural sense of rhythm but Saffy felt as if someone had welded an iron bar to her spine and she was stiff in the circle of his arms, holding herself at a distance. Glimpses of Natasha watching them did not improve her mood. Yes, she had known he had made love to other women, but actually having a face to pin to one of those anonymous women was another turn of the torture screw. She had never thought of herself as the jealous type and now she was finding out different. Once Zahir had been hers, entirely hers, and even though things had gone wrong in the bedroom she had rather naively trusted him not to stray. Now she was wondering crazy things, such as how she compared to his other lovers, and she was regretting her lack of experience and her honesty on that score. Yet how could she have lied when her child’s paternity hinged on telling the complete truth? That reminder cooled the fizz in her blood, settled her down and made her seek another topic of conversation.

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