ABBY FOUND HERSELF staring at his abs, the muscles perfect enough to make her stomach flutter helplessly in reaction. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, disturbed more than slightly by her body’s helpless reaction to his physicality.
It was mystifying and definitely bad timing! Lord, what was it about this man that made him the one member of the opposite sex capable of awakening her dormant sex drive? Recognising this was a question for later when she was safely back home and far away from temptation, so she huffed out a resigned but determined sigh and lifted her chin, responding to the internal challenge of not acting like a sex addict with as much dignity as she could manage.
‘Fine. So what do you want me to do?’
He almost looked as if he was going to tell her something very different, but at the last second he seemed to regain some control and dragged his eyes off her mouth. ‘I just need to sit down for a minute.’
‘All right, lean on me,’ she said, trying to sound brisk and not breathless at the thought of contact with his hard, lean maleness.
‘No, it’s fine.’
She shot him a glance from under the sweep of her thick, straight lashes, discovering as she did that he was looking tense. ‘You really don’t have the hang of this accepting help thing, do you?’ she sighed out. ‘It was your idea,’ she reminded him. ‘And don’t worry, I’m stronger than I look.’
An image of her landing a right hook on her captor’s jaw flashed into her mind.
‘I remember, cara,’ he said, the look he gave her hinting that he was seeing the same replay in his own head.
The unexpected approving warmth in his voice brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘I don’t normally need rescuing,’ she husked out, not sure why it felt important to establish this upfront, but it did.
The tentative half-smile that had begun to twitch the corners of her mouth upwards wilted then vanished completely as their glances connected. Abby had the weirdest sensation of time slowing as the air seemed to buzz with an invisible static. She had no idea how long the moment lasted, but when she did manage to wrench free she took refuge in resentment.
‘Why didn’t you tell me who you were?’ Had it been some sort of joke to him? she wondered, remembering their smooth negotiation of the security checkpoints, which of course made perfect sense now.
‘I was trying hard to forget myself.’
Abby had not begun to decipher this cryptic response when he moved in closer and laid a hand across her shoulders. She fought against the impulse to tense, the effort making her body quiver as she struggled to focus on the mundane, the ordinary, the smell of antiseptic to distract herself from the massive hormone rush that sent wave after wave of heat through her body.
Whether he was injured or not, the animal magnetism that poured off him had a mind-blanking force.
Get a grip, Abby told herself sternly as she followed her own advice, literally, and slid her arm very carefully around his narrow waist, feeling ludicrously self-conscious.
‘Is that ok?’ she asked, tilting her chin up to look into his face. The veil of his lashes lifted and she was instantly skewered once more by the mesmeric tug of his electric-blue stare. When she managed, after a short delay, to react to his head jerk of acknowledgement, she was too flustered to notice that he looked as disconcerted as she felt.
She cleared her throat. ‘Good, then lean on me and take your time...say when you need to stop.’
She hadn’t wanted him to stop...
The memory surfaced and she felt a stab of shame. Oh, hell, now was not the time to relive a moment that was indelibly printed onto her mind for all the wrong reasons!
Her jaw quivered and her teeth clenched as she closed the door on the memory of the mortifying moment when she had come on to him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and then—as if that wasn’t enough to make her cringe—been firmly rebuffed.
It was an embarrassing memory but that, she reminded herself, was all it was. It wasn’t exactly rocket science—she’d been vulnerable and he hadn’t taken advantage...humiliating at the time and, yes, she had hated him for it then, but now she was glad he’d been a gentleman.
Common sense told Abby that it had been the circumstances as much as the man that had fanned into life instincts she didn’t even know she possessed. Chances were she might never experience a moment like that again. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or depressed by the thought.
At several points during the transfer his breathing sounded laboured but they didn’t stop, their progress slow but steady.
‘Thanks. I’ll be fine now.’ Zain straightened up and took the last steps under his own steam, then lowering himself down onto the edge of the bed. ‘It’s easing.’
She tossed him a sceptical look but shrugged; clearly, showing weakness was not his thing, another reason on the list she’d compiled that he really wasn’t her type. The macho stuff really tried her patience; she liked men who didn’t mind showing their vulnerable side. There was just one vital ingredient missing, however. The thought of kissing them, let alone anything more intimate, left her feeling...well, nothing really.
The silence stretched until Abby decided that getting straight to the point was probably the best policy—she knew what she wanted to say, as she’d been rehearsing it on the journey here, not sure when she’d have the opportunity to deliver her speech and wanting to be ready when it came.
‘I wasn’t sure if you’d be well enough for me to—’
He spread his hands in a mock-submissive gesture. ‘I’m weak but willing.’
She cursed the flush that she felt run up under her skin but tried not to react to it. Being flippant was probably his way of coping; the man had almost lost his life and had seen his brother die, so having a fake wife revealed was the least of his problems but one she had no doubt he could do without.
She took a deep breath and decided that even though he was injured there was no point skirting delicately around the elephant in the room, and she could at least reassure him on some points. ‘I just want you to know that I’ve no intention of...there is no question of me making any claims, if we really are married.’ She paused, shaking her head slowly in an attitude of disbelief—she still couldn’t quite believe they actually were. ‘I’m assuming that under the circumstances an annulment will be straightforward. I can see what you’re thinking.’
* * *
Well, that, Zain thought, made one of them!
‘But you don’t need to worry, I’ll fully co-operate. I’ll sign whatever you need me to sign,’ she added earnestly. ‘Including a confidentiality clause.’ She pressed a finger to the small furrow between her brows as if mentally ticking things off a list. ‘I don’t think I’ve missed anything out.’
‘Is your lawyer here with you?’ Her expression was confirmation that she wasn’t here to negotiate. She didn’t, incredibly, seem to be aware that she had the advantage; she wasn’t thinking about what she could get...she just wanted out.
‘Do I need a lawyer?’
Everyone has an angle.
Zain had probably learnt this fact of life before he had had the ability to communicate it and now he had met someone who, it seemed, hadn’t.
‘And what sort of settlement did you have in mind for delivering these guarantees?’ As he appealed to her avarice part of him wanted to see her fail the test, and silence the soft whisper of his freshly awoken optimism, but to his frustration Abigail Foster didn’t even seem to recognise his gentle prompt; instead she reacted as though he’d just offered her an insult.
‘Settlement...?’ Her puzzled frown faded as the angry heat climbed into her cheeks. ‘Money, you mean? I don’t want anything from you!’
‘Because such things are above you? You expect me to believe money means nothing to you?’ he cut back. Nobody was that wholesome and sweet.
Her chin lifted but she didn’t react to his challenge.
‘I admire your principles’ he said, a scornful curl turning his smile mocking. ‘But are you really in the enviable position to refuse money?’
‘You make it sound as though everything...everyone...is a commodity or has a price.’
‘Oh, in my experience they do, cara, they do.’
‘Then I pity you. I never want to be that cynical.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed, especially when you consider that you are supporting your grandparents.’
She went rigid, her delicate jaw quivering as her suspicious gaze narrowed on his face. ‘Who told you that? What do you know about my grandparents?’
He produced an enigmatic smile that he saw made her teeth clench and intensified the uneasy look on her face.
‘There should be no secrets between husband and wife.’
‘I don’t have any secrets.’
‘True,’ he drawled. ‘The stories of your love life are pretty well-documented. And I’m assuming there has to be a built-in life expectancy to your kind of work.’
She’d gone on the huffy offensive to the suggestion she deserved to profit from the situation but the idea of losing her looks drew a laugh from her.
And he thought he knew women! This one seemed determined to challenge all his preconceptions.
‘Before everything goes south, you mean,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Oh, I don’t intend to stay in the job long enough for that to happen, just long enough to...’ She broke off, giving a self-conscious shrug as her eyes slid from his. ‘It’s not my life’s dream, I sort of fell into modelling. I was spotted at a shopping mall. I actually thought it was a set-up when the photographer approached me. I looked around for hidden cameras and told him the name on the card he gave me meant nothing to me.’
‘I would have thought it was an obvious avenue for someone with your looks,’ Zain observed, expelling a frustrated hiss from between clenched teeth as he gave up trying to fasten the button on his shirt. Apparently it took losing your healthy body to make a man appreciate having everything work. At least his debilitation was temporary, he thought, sending up a silent prayer of thanks for that.
‘You mean the height,’ she held a hand flat on top of her head, ‘and the face?’ She gave a gurgle of laughter.
The attractive sound brought his attention zeroing in on that face, and this time he felt not only his libido stir, which it had done the moment he laid eyes on the supple curves of her luscious body, but also his curiosity. He was forced to accept the seemingly impossible—that there was nothing feigned about her lack of vanity and yet she worked in an industry where looks were everything.
His eyes drifted down the long lines of her superb body. ‘You don’t seem to take your looks very seriously.’
* * *
‘If I’d taken my looks seriously I’d be...’ She paused and brought her lashes down in a protective sweep before adding lightly, ‘I was five-ten at twelve years old. My nickname was freak or giraffe. As for my face,’ her fingers moved lightly across the delicately angled features, ‘someone said I looked like their cat and it kind of followed me, not that I expect you to understand,’ she said without heat—people couldn’t help the way they looked, and he probably didn’t even realise that he made other men feel insecure, especially other men with wives, she mused, not struggling at all to imagine the effect he had on her own sex.
She was just grateful that she possessed the ability to consider her own reaction to his sexual aura with objectivity... Yeah, you carry on telling yourself that, Abby.
‘Why wouldn’t I understand?’
She resisted the temptation to dodge the question while she endured the heat as a flush travelled up her neck, but delivered her reply with as much composure as she could manage.
‘Because I’m doubting you were ever an ugly duckling, Prince...is that what I call you...?’
‘You call me Zain.’
Abby suppressed the childish impulse to tell him she didn’t want to call him anything, she wanted to go back home.
‘You think of yourself that way? As an ugly duckling?’
Abby was thrown enough by the question to miss a beat. Yes, she supposed deep down, no matter how other people saw her, she was still the ugly duckling. It was ironic really that what had set her apart at school had been the reason for her success. The length of her neck or her legs was no longer mocked but admired... ‘Have I wandered into a therapy session?’ How, she wondered, had this conversation got so personal so quickly?
‘Aha!’ He pounced on her response. ‘It’s classic avoidance technique, answering a question with a question.’
A much better technique in her experience was to pretend she didn’t understand the joke, especially when she was the joke. It was the only way to prevent the outside world realising they were getting to her...to that end she’d cultivated a mask, the same mask that was much in demand at photo shoots, only now they called it enigmatic.
And Zain’s reference to her love life being well-documented... She had her agent to thank for that, leaking stories about her ‘romances’ on social media, because, as she put it, ‘Abby, darling. you’re as dull as ditchwater, and beggars can’t be choosers. You’re not one of the elite... Relax. It’s win-win and you’ll get the odd free dinner out of it.’
The romances were usually with male celebrities who needed the publicity because their career had dipped or younger, media-hungry newbies out to make their mark. It was all part of her image.
‘Sorry to disappoint you but I’m not a needy basket case. I always had a warm home to go back to at the end of a bad day.’
‘So what did your parents think of your career move?’
‘My grandparents,’ she corrected, her brow pleating as she recalled his earlier comment. ‘My parents died when I was very young and Nana and Pops supported my decision because they understood that I didn’t want to leave uni with a massive debt. I wanted to be financially independent.’ And after Gregory’s betrayal her modelling career had been the lifeline that had helped keep her virtually penniless grandparents afloat.
‘It was a hard time for them, though, when I first started out. They were swindled out of their life savings and pensions.’ She swallowed as she felt her throat thicken with tears. ‘An investment in a project,’ she continued in a flat voice that she hoped revealed none of the devastation and frustration and guilt she still felt, ‘that never existed and a financial advisor who vanished off the face of the earth.’
His expression was thoughtful as he listened to her. ‘You’re really very good, aren’t you, at pretending it doesn’t hurt?’
Her eyes fluttered wide in shock before she coaxed a laugh from her aching throat. ‘Are you always this sure of your infallibility or is it the medication? Speaking of which...’ Her concern became genuine as she scanned his face; the bruises seemed to have deepened in colour since she’d been in the room, which, now that she thought of it, had to have been a long time ago. ‘I should be going...’
‘Where?’
It was a good question.
‘You missed out one thing in your story. It was your boyfriend who scammed them and stole their life savings.’
Her face flamed with shocked guilt before the colour fled, leaving her lily-pale. ‘Have you got a file on me in a drawer somewhere?’
‘In a safe.’
He said it so casually that her jaw dropped.
* * *
Zain took advantage of her dumbstruck silence. ‘I have a proposition to put to you. How would you like to be in a position to buy back your grandparents’ bungalow and restore their savings?’
He really did know everything! ‘I fully intend to...’ She shook her head. ‘You have a file on me...?’ Her eyes flashed with outrage.
He registered that outrage suited her but didn’t allow his appreciation to divert him. ‘I don’t mean in a year or two years, I mean now, today.’
‘Is that meant to be some sort of joke?’ Expression stony, she pointed to her face. ‘Not sure if you’d noticed, but I’m not laughing.’
‘Eighteen months of your life.’
‘Eighteen months doing what?’ she tossed back.
‘Being my wife.’
The moment of dumbstruck silence was followed by her shaky laughter as she said in a flat voice, ‘I think you have a fever.’
‘Not every woman in the world would consider being my wife such a horrifying prospect.’
‘Can’t imagine what the attraction is unless...oh, let me think...maybe the life of luxury, the private jet, the holidays...not that I’m judging.’
‘Yes, I can tell.’ He smiled as the sarcasm earned him another flash from her magnificent emerald eyes. ‘Look, just hear me out, and then make an...objective decision based on the facts and not on your emotional reaction. As for marriage, we are both on the same page—I don’t want to be married any more than you do.’
Her delicate brows arched. ‘Not ever?’
As his eyes swivelled her way it was clear that she regretted having betrayed her curiosity.
‘Not ever,’ he said flatly. ‘However, my situation requires that, as my father’s heir, I am married. In this situation, custom would normally dictate that after my brother’s death my bride would be his widow.’
It took her a few seconds to process this information. ‘That’s positively...’ The idea of asking a grieving woman to be passed on like a worn-out pair of shoes evoked a response strong enough to lend a sheen of emotion to her eyes. ‘Oh, my God...poor woman.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But you won’t, will you...do that to her?’
‘I will do everything within my power to prevent this from happening, but it’s not just about me; the solution is in your hands.’
‘Mine...?’
‘Well, if I am already married, Kayla will escape this terrible fate.’
‘That’s not fair,’ she protested at his not at all well-disguised display of moral blackmail.
‘Life is not fair; however, I am offering a practical solution, not asking you to bear my children.’
She flushed and pushed away from him.
‘I never thought you were,’ she assured him with a disdain that didn’t fully hide her embarrassment.
‘You’re not the first person to be taken in,’ he began, responding to a need to offer her some comfort that was alien to his nature. ‘You really shouldn’t beat yourself up about what happened to your grandparents.’
She read the pity in his comment and reacted with anger. ‘Like you’d know anything about it!’
‘Fine, carry on berating yourself.’ He gave an offhand shrug, unwilling to admit even to himself that the conflict shining in her beautiful eyes stirred something inside him. ‘Or, alternatively, you could swallow your pride and accept this offer.’ Zain watched as she stiffened and bit down on her full lower lip, her teeth digging into the soft, pink plumpness. Her lashes brushed her smooth cheek as she glanced down but he could see the resentment sparkling through the dark filigree.
* * *
‘Offer or ultimatum?’ she charged, thinking temptation might be a more accurate description.
‘It benefits us both.’
‘It would change my life.’ It would also change her grandparents’ lives—could she ever look at them knowing that she could have given them back the retirement they had planned and saved for and hadn’t?
Could she look at herself?
He didn’t bother denying her assertion. ‘Yes, your life will change.’
Abby could feel her resistance fading but she clung on, not prepared to concede just yet. ‘Isn’t a scandal the thing you want to avoid?’ If their desert marriage was revealed there was going to be one and she was going to be at the centre of it. Saying yes would mean saying goodbye to any semblance of a private life for the next year and a half...could she cope with that? ‘Or are you suggesting people aren’t going to notice my sudden appearance?’
His eyes moved from her vivid face to her auburn hair. ‘These situations can be managed,’ he assured her smoothly. ‘There are people whose job it is to put a positive spin on anything.’
An image of her future life of endless ceremony and presence flashed before her eyes, and it was followed immediately by an equally vivid picture of her grandparents pottering around the garden of their bungalow with a front door that didn’t have six bolts on it.
‘I wish—’ she began.
He cut across her, his tone sardonic. ‘I’m sure that his wife wishes my brother were not dead.’
Abby felt a stab of guilty contrition—she’d been so self-absorbed that she hadn’t even considered how he must be feeling—and her mouth twisted in a grimace of self-condemnation.
‘I am truly sorry.’ Belated but better than not at all, she gave her condolences, not that he seemed to recognise them as such.
‘Sorry?’ he echoed, his dark eyes drawn into an interrogative line above his nose.
‘About your brother,’ she explained awkwardly.
‘Oh...’ he grunted as he eased one long leg onto the bed and then the other, murmuring a soft word of thanks when she pushed a couple of pillows under his head, her tummy quivering in sympathy at the sight of the bruises on the golden expanse of his stomach.
His eyes were closed and for a moment she thought he’d fallen asleep, and she was thinking about creeping away when he opened them again; the electric-blue had a febrile quality.
‘We weren’t close,’ he revealed.
‘But he was your brother.’ She’d always wanted a sibling and had envied the big, noisy family who lived next to her grandparents.
‘Half-brother,’ he corrected, closing his eyes again. ‘So do we have a deal?’
She glanced up from her contemplation of her clenched fists. ‘I need to think.’
‘Fine.’ He closed his eyes.
The tension had barely begun to leave her bunched shoulders when he spoke again.
‘Let me know what you decide in two minutes.’
His eyes opened, the glazed glow in the blue depths doing nothing to ease her stress levels.
‘I didn’t come here to...to...stay married, I came here to disentangle our—’
‘Past, present, future?’
‘We don’t have a future.’ They both heard the questioning upward inflection in the last word.
‘Eighteen months. That’s all I ask.’
Abby, the conflict clearly written on her face, shook her head in a slow negative motion. ‘No... I can’t.’ An image of her grandparents floated into her head with their brave smiles, noisy neighbours and no garden. Pops had so loved his garden.
Her shoulders dropped in defeat as she took the step that sent her over the cliff edge she had been balancing on.
‘Yes, all right, I’ll do it.’ The moment she spoke she knew it was the right, the only response she could have given, but it didn’t stop her feeling sick, literally.
Hand pressed to her mouth, she turned away, in her haste stumbling over the trailing wires that must at some point have been attached to Zain.
That was when the bells started ringing!