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They took off into the sky once more, neither of them speaking. Sweat prickled along the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades. He hated travelling in helicopters since the crash, but his villa didn’t have the space to land a jet and there were no roads.
In any case, he needed to conquer his fear. Grimly, he stared out of the window, even as his stomach churned and memories of the crash danced before his eyes. He remembered the way the world had tilted and the sea seemed to swoop up to meet him. How he’d stared into his father’s grim face, a man he’d loved and hated in equal measure.
‘Ammar.’
He didn’t realise he’d been scrunching his eyes shut until he opened them and saw Noelle. He felt a jolt of panicked confusion, for her face—her smile—had been the last thing he’d seen before impact. No more than a memory, and now here she was in reality. By his force.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked quietly, and he nodded. Gulped.
‘I’m fine.’ And even though he knew he’d revealed a terrible weakness, he couldn’t keep from being glad she’d asked.
They didn’t speak again until the helicopter had landed.
The whole world felt as if it were holding its breath as Noelle stepped from the helicopter. The air was hot and dry and utterly still. Desert stretched in every direction, endless, undulating sand, occasionally strewn with boulders and rocks. She didn’t think she’d ever been in a more remote place.
Silently she followed Ammar into a low, rambling building of sandstone that blended almost entirely into its desert surroundings.
He stopped in the foyer, turned to her with that blank expression she despised. For a moment, in the helicopter, she’d felt a flicker of sympathy for him, knowing he must hate flying in helicopters since his crash. Sitting there so tautly with his eyes clenched shut, Ammar had looked like a man in the throes of a desperate agony.
And now? He looked as stony and remote as the desert surrounding them, and yet still, irritatingly, she felt that flicker. A yearning compassion she couldn’t keep herself from feeling, even though she desperately didn’t want to.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked and, even though she knew she should resist any solicitude, Noelle nodded.
‘Starving.’
‘If you’d like to refresh yourself, there is a bedroom for you upstairs. And clothes, if you wish.’ He glanced at her creased dress. ‘You cannot wear that for ever.’
‘It depends on how long you intend to keep me here,’ Noelle answered bluntly and his expression tightened, eyes narrowing, lips thinning.
‘We can discuss that at dinner.’
‘Fine.’ Noelle lifted her chin. She was strong enough to accept his hospitality—ha—and still keep swinging. With a jerky nod, she turned on her heel and headed upstairs.
She found a sumptuous bedroom behind the first door she opened, with a wardrobe full of clothes and an en suite bathroom with a sunken marble tub and an array of luxurious toiletries. After the day she’d had, she was ready for a good long soak.
Yet once she’d immersed herself in steaming, fragrant bubbles, Noelle felt her resolve—and her anger—start to slip away. She kept seeing that look of yearning on Ammar’s face when he’d woken up, when she’d caught him off guard. She felt the same yearning in herself, a longing for the way he’d been. The way she’d been, with him, so long ago.
That was not going to happen.
She couldn’t start thinking that way, wanting that way. Not after he’d hurt her, not after he’d revealed what kind of man he was—
Do you really know what kind of man he is?
Refusing to answer that question, or even think it, Noelle dunked her head under the water and started to scrub. Too bad she couldn’t scrub away her thoughts. Or that flicker of yearning that threatened to fan into something far more dangerous.
Ammar paced the dining room just as he’d paced the cabin of the plane. He came to his desert retreat for solitude and safety, a place where the rest of his life never intruded, yet he was finding neither tonight.
Should he let her go? The thought had been flitting around in his mind like an insistent insect since Noelle had suggested the very thing. If he let her go, Ammar knew, she would never come back to him. She would never love him again.
And the same thing might happen if you make her stay.
He closed his eyes. He’d felt hopelessness before, God only knew; he’d felt hopelessness for most of his life. Yet it hurt so much more when you felt hope first.
‘Hello.’
He whirled around to see Noelle standing in the doorway.
‘Come in.’ He cleared his throat, took a step forward. He felt tension twang through his body so he felt like a marionette, all awkward, jerky movements. He no longer knew how to be natural with her, but then had he ever? Being natural, he thought with a sudden bitterness, was not natural to a man like him. Yet there had been moments, miraculous, tender moments, where he’d felt himself lighten with the sheer joy of being in her presence. Smiling, even laughing, at her enthusiasm for life, her silly jokes, her sudden laughter. He missed that. He missed the man he’d felt he could be with her by his side.
She walked into the room and he saw she was wearing a caftan he’d ordered for her, along with all the other clothes. It was a pale spring green shot through with silver threads and, though it was basically a shapeless garment, it still somehow managed to emphasise her slender form, her graceful posture. Her hair was still damp from the shower and twisted up in a careless knot, her face flushed from heat—or anger. At that moment it didn’t matter. All Ammar knew was that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
‘I’m glad—’ he began, wanting somehow to articulate how lovely she looked, but she cut him off, her voice flat.
‘I want my clothes back.’
He’d had his housekeeper take them while she was in the bath. He realised now how that might have made her feel even more vulnerable, and cursed himself for not thinking of that before. ‘They’re being laundered. You can have them back as soon as they’re dry.’ He’d regarded her stark grey dress and black tights with a sorrowful bemusement; the woman he remembered from ten years ago had worn bright clothes, cheerful colours. ‘There is a wide selection of clothes at your disposal, in your room.’ In addition to the caftan, he’d bought sweaters, shirts, jeans, even a few dresses, all in the bright colours he liked—and thought she did.
Noelle shrugged, the thin cotton of the caftan sliding off one shoulder. Ammar’s gaze was drawn instinctively to the movement and he felt his insides tighten with long-suppressed desire. Desire he’d never acted on, yet longed to—had always longed to, even now. Her skin was the colour of almonds, creamy and golden with a slight spattering of freckles. ‘None of them fit,’ she said. ‘They’re two sizes too big.’
‘I thought I remembered your size.’ He saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes, like sunlight on water, that he would have ever known such a thing.
‘I’ve dropped a few sizes.’
‘You’ve lost weight—’
‘I’m thinner,’ she corrected, and he frowned, because Noelle had always been slender. Now that he was looking at her properly, he saw how skinny she looked, the bony angles of her elbows and collarbone jutting out even under the voluminous folds of her clothing.
‘Come eat,’ he said and, with her mouth pressed into a hard line, she followed him to the table laid intimately for two.
This wasn’t, Ammar acknowledged, going to be easy. Yet he didn’t want to let her go. He couldn’t. Hope, he knew, was too heady a possibility. Yet what would it take to unbend her? Make her not just listen, but want to listen?
Grimly, he realised he had no idea.
Noelle stepped further into the room, deep with shadows and flickering with candlelight, suppressing the sudden hot flare of awareness she felt at the sight of Ammar’s admiring glance, quickly veiled. If he hadn’t wanted her when she’d been wearing a silk teddy and stilettos, he could hardly want her now, in this tent-like caftan.
In any case, it didn’t matter what he did or didn’t want. She was only here because she was hungry. And she needed to convince Ammar to return her to Paris.
‘Please sit.’ He pulled out a chair and, deciding there was no point in being ungracious, Noelle accepted and sat down. Ammar laid a napkin in her lap, his fingers barely brushing her thighs, yet even so she felt another flare of desire low in her belly. Never mind what he felt, she still had the same instinctive response to him. Lust and longing. Hopeless. How could she feel it now, after ten years, when he’d brought her here by force?
Resolutely, she pushed such thoughts away. Absolutely no point in dwelling on anything but a determination to get out of here.
‘May I serve you?’ he asked, so scrupulously polite, and it reminded Noelle of when they’d been dating in London. They’d got caught in a downpour and she’d brought him back to her flat in Mayfair, hoping he’d stay the night. She’d had a shower while he waited; she’d been far too shy to ask him to join her.
When she’d emerged, swathed in a dressing gown, her hair still damp, he’d asked, in that same serious, polite way, May I brush your hair? She’d nodded, and he’d so carefully, so gently, brushed her hair with long, sensual strokes. She’d had to keep herself from trembling throughout the whole exquisite ordeal, longing to lean back against him, for him to turn her around and take her in his arms. They’d kissed twice so far, that was all. Sweet, aching kisses that had made her want so much more. And for a moment she thought it would finally happen. Her hair finished, he’d laid the brush aside and his hands had slid slowly, deliberately along her shoulders, down her arms, as if he were learning her body. Noelle had remained completely still, mesmerised by his touch, but she could not keep from gasping aloud when Ammar pressed a tender, lingering kiss to the bared nape of her neck. She’d never experienced anything so romantic, so erotic, and so very sweet. They’d remained there for an endless, aching moment, his head bowed, his lips against her skin, and then he’d let out a shudder and stood up. Before Noelle could even say anything he was, in his solemn, restrained way, bidding her goodnight.
Now she glanced up at him, waiting patiently for her response while she lost herself in all these aching memories. She was tired of them, exhausted by the emotions they made her feel. Regret. Sorrow. Longing.
‘Yes, thank you.’
He ladled couscous and stewed lamb on her plate, and Noelle glanced around the room, spare and spacious, with an understated elegance in its few pieces of mahogany furniture. A pair of French windows were shuttered against the night, and she wondered where they led. She’d opened the shutter on her bedroom window after her shower, but the only thing the moon had illuminated was the endless, undulating desert and a long drop down to the sand.
For a short while she said nothing while she ate hungrily. ‘So,’ she said finally, stabbing another piece of meat with her fork, ‘why won’t you return me to Paris?’
Ammar didn’t answer for a moment. In the candlelight he looked so serious, his eyes dark, his movements controlled and restrained as always. Noelle glanced at the scar snaking down his cheek. Amelie had been right; it did look sexy. He looked sexy, but then he’d always been sexy to her, sexy and gorgeous and infinitely desirable. Even now, when he had lost weight—like she had—and still bore the scars of his accident, she could not deny the pulse of longing she felt for him. Her body remembered how he felt, the solid strength of him, corded muscle and callused skin. Even now, with all that had—and hadn’t—happened between them, her body remembered and wanted more.
‘I would like,’ Ammar said, thankfully breaking into the torment of her thoughts, ‘for you to stay here for a little while.’
Noelle jerked her gaze from its revealingly leisurely perusal of his body back up to his face with its implacable expression. ‘Stay here? For what, a little holiday?’ Her voice was sharp with sarcasm but Ammar simply nodded.
‘Something like that.’
‘Ammar, you abducted me—’
He clenched one hand on the table. ‘So you keep reminding me.’
‘You think I can just forget it? I told you I had nothing to say to you, and I still don’t. I want to go home.’ To her shame, her voice trembled and she felt tears crowd under her lids. She wasn’t even sure why she was near to crying: because she wanted to go home or because a tiny, treacherous part of her wanted to stay? How shaming. How pathetic. She bit her lip and looked away, not wanting him to see how close to tears she was, but she could not keep a shudder from ripping through her.
‘Noelle—’ His voice caught on a note of near-anguish and he reached one hand out to her, as if he would comfort her. How ridiculous was that, to be comforted by her captor? And yet she still longed for him to touch her, could almost imagine the warmth of his hand on her skin. She averted her head and he dropped his hand.
‘Please, Ammar.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You can,’ she insisted, angry now. Anger felt stronger, simpler. ‘You brought me here; you can let me go. You just don’t want to, and I have absolutely no idea why.’ She glared at him, and Ammar gazed steadily back.
‘I brought you here because I want to be with you,’ he said, choosing each word with care.
Noelle blinked. Stared. Her mind seemed to have slowed down, snagged on his meaning. He wanted to be with her? ‘What—’
‘I want us,’ Ammar said, ‘to be husband and wife.’
CHAPTER THREE
AS SOON as he said the words, Ammar felt they were wrong. It was too soon; he shouldn’t have revealed so much. He should have waited until she had relaxed a little, trusted him more. Yet how? How? He didn’t know what to do other than issue orders, bark commands. And demand obedience.
Now her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open and she stared at him in what could only be described as horror.
‘That,’ she finally managed in a choked gasp, ‘is impossible.’
Ammar felt the old instinct kick in. Defend. Deny. Don’t ever admit any weakness. And hadn’t he just done that, telling her he wanted to be married? Husband and wife?
Pathetic, romantic notions she obviously scorned. He sat back in his chair, his body rigid, everything in him fighting the awful sense of exposure he felt. ‘Not,’ he said coldly, ‘impossible.’
‘Impossible for me,’ Noelle retorted. She looked angry now, angrier even than when she’d realised he’d had her kidnapped or told her he wouldn’t take her back to Paris. Her cheeks were flushed and underneath the caftan her breasts rose and fell in ragged breaths. ‘I have absolutely no desire to be married to you again, Ammar. To be husband and wife.’ He heard the contempt she put into the words and fury fired through him.
‘This isn’t about what you desire.’
She laughed, the sound hard and sharp. ‘Obviously not, since you drugged and dragged me here—for God’s sake!’ She rose, throwing her napkin down on the table. ‘This is the most absurd conversation I’ve ever had. Did you actually think, for a single second, that I would consent to being married to you again when you had to bring me here by force? When you completely and utterly rejected me in the worst way possible just months after we were married? Why on earth would I ever want a repeat of that heartbreak?’ Her eyes flashed and her body trembled. Thunder and lightning. A storm right here, between them.
Ammar stared at her, his body pulsing with an anger he could not suppress even as he bleakly acknowledged she was right. He could not deny a single thing she’d said. ‘We said vows,’ he said tautly.
‘Vows you broke the same day we spoke them! Where was the love in leaving me alone, waiting for you on our wedding night? Or how did cherish come into bringing me to that wretched island of your father’s and leaving me there for two months?’ Her voice broke and he thought she blinked back tears; her eyes were luminous with them. ‘You hurt me, Ammar,’ she whispered. ‘You hurt me terribly.’
Ammar didn’t answer. He couldn’t; he had no words. He never had the right words, yet he hated that he had hurt her. The thought that he’d caused her so much pain—enough that it still made her cry years later—was unbearable; he forced it away, along with all the other thoughts that he couldn’t face. There were, he knew, far too many of them. ‘Then let me make it right,’ he said. The words felt unfamiliar, awkward, and yet he meant them.
‘How?’ She swiped at her eyes, angry again.
‘By giving our marriage a second chance.’
She stared at him, her eyes wide, like a trapped animal’s. Then she looked away. ‘Our marriage,’ she said flatly, ‘never was. Annulled, Ammar. Like it—we—didn’t exist.’
‘We did exist.’ Sometimes he felt as if his time with Noelle, his self with Noelle, was more real than anything before or after. Yet he was not about to admit such a thing to her now.
She shook her head, her anger replaced by a weary bewilderment. ‘Why do you even want such a thing? You didn’t want to be married to me before. Why now?’
‘I always,’ Ammar said, ‘wanted to be married to you.’
Her mouth dropped open and she looked as if she wanted to argue. Again. He looked away, fought the rush of painful fury he felt at revealing such weakness.
‘I cannot believe that,’ Noelle said flatly. ‘I won’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because—’ She pressed a trembling fist to her mouth, her eyes still so heartbreakingly wide. ‘Because it doesn’t make sense.’
He knew it didn’t. He felt the weight of all the things he hadn’t told her, things he was afraid to tell her because he knew she would look at him differently. She would hate him, perhaps far more than she thought she did now.
‘None of this makes any sense,’ she whispered.
Ammar stared down at the table, took a deep breath. ‘You loved me once.’
Silence. He looked up and saw her staring at him with such confused sorrow that it made everything inside him burn and writhe. Why had he said such a thing?
‘Yes, I did,’ she finally said. ‘Once. But you destroyed that, Ammar, when you rejected me without any explanation. You refused to come to me on our wedding night—or any night after. Do you remember?’
He clenched his jaw so hard his whole head hurt. ‘I remember.’
‘You ignored me day after day, left me to rot on that wretched island without so much as a word of explanation. And then,’ she finished, her voice breaking, ‘when I came to you and tried to seduce my own husband, you sent me away in no uncertain terms!’
Every word she spoke was true, and yet still they made him furious. He rose from the table, laying his palms flat on its surface as he faced her and her accusing glare. ‘Clearly there is no point in continuing this conversation. You may return to your room and we will talk again tomorrow.’
She let out a harsh sound, something caught between a sob and another sharp laugh. ‘What is this, Ammar, The Arabian Nights? Am I to be fetched day after day into your presence until I finally break down and agree to your ridiculous demands?’
His head throbbed and he forced himself to speak calmly. ‘If I remember correctly, Scheherazade gained her own happiness at the end of that tale.’
‘And was threatened with death every day!’
‘I am not threatening you,’ Ammar said, suddenly unbearably weary. He did not want to fight her. He had not wanted this bitter acrimony at all, and yet he recognised it was at least in part his own damnable doing. ‘You are safe here with me, I promise you. But you are too tired and it is too late for you to go anywhere tonight. Rest. Sleep. We will talk tomorrow.’
‘And then you’ll let me go?’
He stared at her, saw the hungry longing in her eyes, and felt a deep sorrow sweep through him. Once she’d looked at him like that, with such desire and even love that it had both humbled and amazed him. And he’d driven her away from him on purpose. At the time it had felt like his only recourse; perhaps it was once again. Perhaps he sought the impossible. To change. To be loved once more, and truly. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ he said again, and to his shame his voice choked a little. He turned away from her and after a long tense moment he heard the gentle patter of her feet, and then the creak and click of the door opening and shutting.
He was alone.
Noelle slept terribly. Anger kept her awake at first, pacing the confines of her elegant bedroom. Ammar’s house was deathly still, the only sound the whisper of wind on sand outside. She felt as if she’d landed on the moon.
And surely the evening’s events belonged on a different planet—she still could not credit that Ammar wanted to restore their marriage. I want us to be husband and wife.
Why did that single statement send an icy thrill of terror and even excitement through her? Or was it simply shock? They’d never been husband and wife, not truly.
Even now Noelle remembered the ache of confusion and misery she’d felt, waiting for Ammar to come to her on their wedding night. They’d married at her family’s chateau and planned to spend their wedding night in a private wing all to themselves. She’d gone to the bedroom, changed into a lacy and virginal peignoir she’d bought at a very exclusive boutique in Paris and, trembling with anticipation, had waited. And waited. And waited some more.
Once the doorknob had turned and Noelle had jolted upright from where she’d lain on the bed, desperate for him to come to her, only to hear someone’s—surely Ammar’s— quiet footsteps pad back down the hall. The rest of the night had been spent in a lonely misery of confusion.
The next day they’d travelled to his father’s home and base, Alhaja Island. Ammar had been horribly remote, barely speaking to her. Hesitantly, Noelle had asked him what had happened and he had said something about a business call, which had made her feel small and unimportant. A business call was more important than his own wedding night?
There had been no time for a proper conversation, and she’d been too young, too inexperienced and confused for a confrontation. She’d kept waiting for Ammar to change back into the man she knew and loved, but he never did.
That evening he’d flown to Lisbon for yet another business engagement. She’d remained on Alhaja, waiting for his return. Before their marriage they’d talked about setting up a house outside Paris, near enough the city for work but a good place for children, for family. She’d had it all planned out, the bookshop she would open in the Latin Quarter, the house they would buy, a cottage really, with wrought iron rails and a blue-painted door. She’d pictured it all, her work, her home, her life, all with Ammar. Dreams, she thought now, the old bitterness corroding her soul. Stupid, foolish dreams. She’d waited for two long, lonely months on Alhaja before she realised Ammar had no plans to return. And in a desperate last-ditch attempt to win her husband back, she’d flown to Rome to meet him.
It hadn’t been easy; she’d had to call her father, coax him into letting her use his private jet. Balkri Tannous did not keep any means of transport on Alhaja, and so she’d been a virtual prisoner with the household staff, a silent, sullen crew. Her father had agreed, surprised yet able to deny her nothing—which Noelle had known—and through several begging phone calls to Ammar’s staff, as well as a helpless-female act with the concierge, she’d contrived to find the name of his hotel and wait in his room dressed only in a silk teddy and stiletto heels.
What had happened afterwards Noelle could not even bear to think about.
Yet now, as she paced her bedroom, she felt her anger desert her and leave a welter of confused regrets in its wake. Why did Ammar want to resurrect their marriage? She had assumed all these years he’d completely forgotten about her but, no matter what either of them felt now, she could not pretend that was true. He hadn’t forgotten. And neither had she.