He looked down at the shady step where she’d left her phone.
Lydia stood for a moment at the edge of the water, lifting her face to the sun, the gorgeous feeling of wet sand seeping between her toes taking her back to childhood holidays when her father had been alive, memories of her mother laughing as the waves caught her.
She remembered one holiday when she’d collected a whole bucket full of shells. By the end of their stay, they had smelled so bad that her father had refused to put them in the car. To stop her tears at the loss of her treasures, her mother had washed the most special one, given her a heart-shaped box to keep it in.
She still had her memory box. It contained a picture of her father, laughing as she splashed him with a hosepipe. Her mother with the world famous couturier she’d worked for before the accident. The newspaper picture of her in the very first ‘Lady Rose’ outfit her mother had made when she was fifteen.
There had been a rush of additions in that brief spell when she’d thought she was in love. All but one of those had been tossed away with many more tears than the shells when she’d realised the truth. She’d kept just one thing, a theatre programme, because all memories were important. Even the bad ones. If you didn’t remember, you didn’t learn…
After that the memories had nearly all involved her lookalike gigs. Her life as someone else.
Looking around, she saw the edge of an oyster shell sticking out of sand washed clean by the receding tide.
She bent to ease it out, rinsed it off in the water, turned it over to reveal the pink and blue iridescence of mother-of-pearl. A keepsake to remind her of this moment, this beach, Kal al-Zaki kissing her fingers as he taught her Arabic numbers. A memory to bring out when she was old and all this would seem like a dream that had happened to someone else.
The last one she’d ever put in that old box, she vowed. She was never going to do this again, be Rose. It was time to start living her own life, making her own memories. No more pretence.
She stood for a moment, holding the shell, uncertain which way to go. Then, choosing to have the wind in her face, she turned right, towards the sea, wishing that Kal was walking with her to point out the landmarks, tell her the story behind a crumbling tower on the highest point on the far bank. To hold her hand as she turned through the curve that had taken Kal out of sight that morning.
Until now Kal had been able to dismiss the turmoil induced by his charge as nothing more than the natural response of a healthy male for a woman who had hit all the right buttons.
He was thirty-three, had been surrounded by beautiful women all his life and was familiar with desire in all its guises, but as he’d got older, become more certain what he wanted, he’d found it easy to stay uninvolved.
That he’d been knocked so unexpectedly sideways by Lady Rose Napier was, he’d been convinced, no more than the heightened allure of the unobtainable.
All that went out of the window in the moment she stepped out of his sight.
Lydia continued for as long as she dared, scanning the creek, hoping for some sign that there was someone out there.
Then, because she doubted it would be long before someone realised that she wasn’t where she was meant to be and start looking for her, she turned back, relieved to be picking her way across the soft sand to the shade, the anonymity of the giant rock formation near the foot of the steps.
She’d half expected to find Yatimah standing guard over her book, her phone, her expression disapproving, but her escapade had gone unobserved. Relieved, she pushed her feet into the leather thong sandals, then turned to carefully lift the kaftan from the branch.
It wasn’t there and she looked down to see if it had fallen.
Took a step into the shadows behind the rocks, assuming that it had been caught by a gust of wind and blown there.
And another.
Without warning, she was seized from behind around the waist, lifted clear of the sand, her body held tight against the hard frame of a man.
As she struggled to get free, she pounded at the arm holding her, using the edge of the shell as a weapon, opened her mouth to scream.
A hand cut off the sound.
‘Looking for something, Lady Rose?’
She stilled. Kal…
She’d known it even before he’d spoken. Knew that woody scent. Would always know it…
As soon as she stopped struggling he dropped his hand and, knowing he was going to be mad at her, she got in first with, ‘I thought you were going fishing.’
‘And I thought you were going to curl up by the pool with a good book.’
He set her down and, with the utmost reluctance, she turned to face him.
‘I am.’ Head up. And Lady Rose, the Duke’s granddaughter at her most aristocratic, she added, ‘I decided to take a detour.’
‘And give one of your paparazzi army tomorrow’s front page picture?’
She instinctively glanced at the phone lying defenceless on top of her book. ‘Have you been reading my messages?’ she demanded.
‘No need. You’ve just told me everything I need to know.’
‘No…’
‘What is it, Rose?’ he asked. ‘Are you a publicity junkie? Can’t you bear to see an entire week go by without your picture on the front page?’
She opened her mouth to protest. Closed it again.
His anger was suppressed, but there was no doubting how he felt at being deceived, made a fool of, and who could blame him? Except, of course, he hadn’t. He’d been ahead of her every step of the way. Instead, she shook her head, held up her hands.
‘You’ve got me, Kal. Bang to rights.’ She took a step back. ‘Can I have my dress back now?’
As he reached up, lifted the kaftan down from the place he’d hidden it, she saw the blood oozing from his arm where she’d slashed at him with the shell she was still clutching.
She dropped it as if it burned, reached out to him, drew back without touching him. She’d lied to him and he knew it.
‘I hurt you,’ she said helplessly.
He glanced at the wound she’d made, shrugged. ‘Nothing that I didn’t ask for.’
‘Maybe, but it still needs cleaning.’ Ignoring the dress he was holding out to her, she began to run up the steps. ‘Sea shells have all kinds of horrible things in them,’ she said. ‘You can get septicaemia.’
‘Is that right?’
Realising that he hadn’t followed her, she stopped, looked back. ‘Truly.’ Then, realising that perhaps that wasn’t the best choice of word, ‘I’ve been on a first aid course.’ She offered her hand but, when he didn’t take it, said, ‘Please, Kal.’
Relenting, he slung the dress over his shoulder, stooped to pick up the book and phone she’d abandoned in her rush to heal, adding the number of his mobile phone to her contact list. Adding hers to his as he followed her up to the house, the bedroom where he’d left her sleeping a few hours earlier, into the huge, luxurious bathroom beyond.
‘I’ve put my number in your phone,’ he said, putting them on a table. ‘In case you should ever need it.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Sit there!’
He obediently settled himself on a wide upholstered bench while she took a small first aid box from a large cupboard that was filled with the cosmetics and toiletries she’d brought with her and searched through it for sachets containing antiseptic wipes.
‘Why did you do it?’ He addressed the top of her head as she bent over him, cleaning up the scratches she’d made.
‘This is nothing,’ she said. ‘I did a self-defence course and you’re really lucky I wasn’t wearing high heels.’
‘I wasn’t referring to your attempt to chop my arm off. Why did you strip off for that photographer?’
‘I didn’t strip off!’ she declared, so flustered by the accusation that for a moment she forgot what she was doing. Then, getting a grip, ‘I took a walk on the beach in a swimsuit. A very modest swimsuit.’
