beyond sense, this was not a time for questions, answers. Time was suspended. There was no past, no future. This was for now. Only the senses survived-scent, taste, touch-and she reached out and with her fingertips traced the perfection of Kal’s profile.
His wide forehead, the high-bridged nose, lingering to trace the outline of those beautifully carved lips.
The thin clothing pressed between them did nothing to disguise the urgent response of his body and she was seized by a surge of power, of certainty that this was her moment and, leaning into him so that her lips touched his, she whispered, ‘Please…’
As her fingers, her lips touched his, took possession of his mouth, Kalil al-Zaki, a man known for his ice-cold self-control, consigned his reputation to oblivion.
His arms were already about her and for a moment he allowed himself to be swept away. To feel instead of think.
Drink deep of the honeyed sweetness of a woman who was clever, funny, heartbreakingly lovely. Everything a man could ever want or desire.
Forget, just for a while, who he was. Why he was here.
Her mouth was like silk, her body eager, desperate even, but it wasn’t enough and, lost to all sense as he breathed in the scent of her skin, the hollows of her neck, her shoulders, he slowly peeled away the swimsuit to taste the true rosebuds it concealed.
Her response was eager, as urgent as his own, and yet, even as she offered him everything, he could not let go, forget the lies…
How she’d played the virgin, acted the seductress. Was this just another lie to buy his silence?
She whimpered into his mouth as he broke free, determined to regain control of his senses, yet unable to let go as she melted against him.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded helplessly. ‘Why are you here?’ When she didn’t answer he leaned back, needing to look her in the face, wanting her to see his. But her eyes were closed, as if by not seeing, she would be deaf to his words. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘Nothing!’ Then, more gently, ‘I’m sorry.’ And, without looking at him, she slowly disentangled herself and, shivering, clutched her costume to her and said, ‘You can g-go fishing now, Kal. I promise I’ll g-go and sit by the pool like the well behaved young woman I’m supposed to be.’
Torn between wanting her to behave and wanting her to be very, very bad indeed, he reassembled the shattered pieces of his cast-iron self-control, picked up his shirt and, taking her hands, fed them into the sleeves, buttoning it around her as if she were a child.
‘I’m going nowhere until you tell me the truth,’ he said. Then, with a muttered oath, ‘You’re shivering.’ She couldn’t be cold…‘What can I get you?’
‘A proper cup of tea?’ She sniffed and he lifted her chin, wiped a tear from beneath her eye.
Shivering, tears…He wanted to shake her, hold her, yell at her, make love to her…
‘Tea?’ he said, trying to get a grip.
‘Made in a mug with a tea bag, milk from a cow and two heaped spoons of sugar.’ She managed a rueful smile. ‘Stirred, not shaken.’
‘I’m glad your sense of humour survived intact,’ he said.
‘My sense of humour and everything else.’ She lifted her shoulders in a simple up and down shrug. ‘I’ve only come that close to losing my virginity once before, Kal. I’m beginning to think I’m destined to be an old maid and the really bad news is that I’m allergic to cats.’
Better make that two cups of hot, sweet tea, he thought, picking up the phone.
CHAPTER TEN
‘WHO are you?’
Lydia, her hands around the mug of tea he’d rustled up for her, was sitting in the shuttered balcony of her room, bars of sunlight slanting through into a very private space and shimmering off Kal’s naked shoulders.
‘What are you?’
‘Lydia. Lydia Young. I’ve been a professional lookalike pretty much from the moment that Lady Rose made her first appearance.’
‘Lydia.’ He repeated her name carefully, as if memorising it. ‘How old were you?’
‘Fifteen. I’m a few months younger than Rose.’ She sipped at the hot tea, shuddering at the sweetness. ‘How did you know?’ Then, because it was somehow more important, ‘When did you know?’
‘I think that on some level I always knew you weren’t Rose.’ He glanced at her. ‘I sensed a dual personality. Two people in the same body. And you have an unusual turn of phrase for a young woman with your supposedly sheltered upbringing. Then there was the Marchioness slaving over Sunday lunch. And Mrs Latimer.’
‘Year Six French.’ She took another sip of tea. ‘I knew you’d picked up on that. I hoped I’d covered it.’
‘You might have got away with it but once that text arrived you were in bits. It wasn’t difficult to work out that you’d be heading for the beach as soon as you’d got rid of me so, while I waited for you to show up, I took a look at the Internet, hoping to pick up some clue about what the hell was going on.’
‘What was the clincher?’ she asked. Not a Lady Rose word, but she wasn’t pretending any more.
‘You made the front page in that cute little hat you were wearing. The caption suggested that after recent concerns about your health you appeared to be full of life. Positively glowing, in fact. Fortunately for you, they put it down to true love.’
She groaned.
‘I should have done more with my make-up, but we were sure the veil would be enough. And it was all going so well that I might just have got a bit lippy with the photographers. What an idiot!’
‘Calm down. There was nothing in the stories to suggest that you were a fake,’ he assured her. ‘Just a recent photograph of Rose with Rupert and some salacious speculation about what you’d be doing here.’
‘But if you had no trouble spotting the difference-’
‘Only because I’ve become intimately acquainted with your face, your figure,’ he said. ‘I don’t pay a lot of attention to celebrity photographs, but the “people’s angel” is hard to miss and I expected someone less vivid. Not quite so…’ He seemed lost for an appropriate adjective.
‘Lippy?’ she offered helpfully.
‘I was going to say lively,’ he said, his eyes apparently riveted to her mouth. ‘But lippy will do. One look at the real thing and I knew you were someone else.’ Then, turning abruptly, he said, ‘So what’s going on? Where is Rose Napier? With Rupert Devenish?’
‘Good grief, I hope not.’
‘Strike two for Rupert. Lucy isn’t a fan either. I take it you’ve met him?’
‘I’ve seen him with her. He’s an old style aristocrat. Her grandfather,’ she explained, ‘but thirty years younger.’
‘Controlling.’
She thought about it for a moment, then nodded. ‘Rose and I met by chance one day. I’d been booked for a lookalike gig, a product launch at a swanky hotel. I had no idea Rose was going to be a guest at a lunch there or I’d have turned it down, but as I was leaving we came face to face. It could have been my worst nightmare but she was so sweet. She really is everything they say she is, you know.’
‘That’s another reason I saw through you.’ He reached out, wiped the pad of his thumb across her mouth. ‘You’re no angel, Lydia Young.’
She took another quick sip of her tea.
‘How is it?’
‘Just what the doctor ordered. Too hot, too sweet. Perfect, in fact.’
‘I’ll remember the formula.’
She looked at him. Remember? There was a future?
Realising just how stupid that was, she turned away. Just more shocks, she decided, and concentrated on getting through her story.
