Read the book: «12 Gifts for Christmas»

12 Gifts for Christmas
His Christmas Captive
Caitlin Crews
A Christmas Refuge
Rebecca Winters
Naughty is Nice
Tawny Weber
The Bodyguard’s Bride
Brenda Harlen
Seduced by the Season
Merline Lovelace
Christmas Evie
Karen Templeton
Cherokee Christmas
Sheri Whitefeather
The GP’s Christmas Miracle
Alison Roberts
Wrapped and Ready
Julie Kenner
A Home for Christmas
Laura Marie Altom
Stroke of Midnight
Julie Kistler
Midnight Reunion
Anna Depalo

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His Christmas Captive

About the Author

CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle-school social life. And so began her lifelong love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

Look for new novels from Caitlin in Mills & Boon^®’s Modern^™ series.

CHAPTER ONE

“I’M leaving you.” Lucy Qaderi forced the words out before she could convince herself not to say them. Even if she had not yet dared to turn around and say them to his face.

She’d sensed the moment he’d stepped into this opulent bedroom suite they had once shared, high up in the mountains over the tiny Eurasian country of Alakkul. His country.

She would know him anywhere, this brooding, ruthless man. Rafi Qaderi. The leader of his ancient family, responsible for maintaining the Qaderis’ many international interests and vast wealth while his celebrated cousin prepared to take over the throne of Alakkul from the ailing King Azat. Rafi was a financial wizard, a shrewd businessman. Noble and proud. Her husband.

“Thank you, Lucy.” His tone was dark, sardonic, with that undercurrent of patience sorely tried. “I was able to gather as much from your packed luggage in the front hall.”

She should hate him. At times, she did. And yet that voice moved over her like a wave of heat, making her feel itchy, her chest tight.

Lucy stared out the window. Fiercely. The great Alakkulian Valley was like something out of a fairy tale for a girl who’d grown up with nearly nothing in a small village near Manchester. The crystal-blue mountain lakes shimmered with ice, the bright fields were piled high with the latest December snowfall and far, far below was the rush and clatter of the ancient capital city, bristling with white-capped heights as it stretched out from the foot of the royal palace.

The Qaderis, Lucy thought, preferred to look down on the country they’d helped guide and rule for so many centuries from the remove of this house that was very near a fortress, so high above it all.

Just as Rafi looked down on her, and always had. She was a fool.

“Am I to discern secret messages from the way you present your back to me?” His tone was like a lash, rich and bitter, and she stiffened against it. “Or is it your silence that I should pay attention to this time?”

Hateful man. Hateful, beloved man. Lucy gathered her shaky courage as best she could, and turned to face him.

And wished she hadn’t. Seeing him was a blow. Hard, hot. Straight to her midsection.

Rafi lounged in the doorway, his mocking gray eyes trained on her, the expression on his implacable face grim. She was shocked anew by the power that emanated from him, like an electrical current. It made him seem much bigger—broader and taller than he already was—and he was dressed impeccably in a dark suit that clung to his lean, strong body. He was like some lethal angel, she thought wildly, all that ink-black hair and harsh black brows drawn low over his stormy eyes. She shivered in helpless reaction and her traitorous heart stuttered in her chest. She bit at her lower lip.

“Where exactly will you go?” His voice seemed to caress her even as it taunted her, moving over her like silk. She shifted on her feet, and wished he did not have the power to do this to her—to make her fidget as if she were an errant child.

“Do you care?” She threw the words back at him. But, sadly, she already knew the answer.

“I am an extraordinarily busy man,” he said, his voice harder. Darker. His gray eyes connected with hers. She caught her breath. “I do not have time to dance attendance on you simply because you are having another one of your little attention-seeking fits. My aide told me this was an emergency.”

“Your aide tells you whatever he thinks you want to hear,” Lucy said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. She thought of all the calls she’d made to Rafi that had been blocked by his aide, Safir, of the man’s snide and smug tone, of all her messages that she suspected had never been delivered at all. But Rafi would hear no word against Safir, and certainly not from her. “He is an excellent gatekeeper, and no doubt keeps you adequately protected from anything you might not like. You chose him well.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence in my business decisions.” His voice was sarcastic. Cool. It made her throat ache with tears she would not shed, words she dared not say. “But I still don’t see anything that I would classify as an emergency.”

He moved into the room, and Lucy regretted suddenly that she was already standing with her back to the wall of windows. There was nowhere else to go. She swallowed and felt her pulse race, as if she were nothing more than prey. He stalked toward her, dangerous and male, and Lucy could do nothing but watch him and pretend she didn’t wish for all the things she could never have. That she knew she shouldn’t even want. Not with him.

“That depends on your definition of an emergency,” she said, as he drew close and loomed over her, making heat bloom in her cheeks—and in other, secret places. “It is Christmas, after all. And your wife is leaving you. Some men might consider that an emergency.”

“I don’t see a head wound,” he said, his voice that same sardonic lash, his eyes flicking over her, cold and cruel. “No trauma of any kind. You appear to be in perfect health, Lucy. As ever. And for this I raced home from Berlin.”

For a moment she couldn’t speak. His fingers rose, almost brushing against the skin of her cheek, making her want to weep. It had been so long since he’d touched her. It had been so long. But she couldn’t let herself think about that. About the sweet madness of his kiss, his touch. Of the incandescent heights she had never dared dream of before this man had taken her there.

He dropped his hand. She told herself he had no doubt meant to check for a fever.

“I’m surprised you remembered this place at all,” she managed to say, calling on some deep well of determination and courage she hadn’t known she possessed. That he had forced her to find. “You haven’t been here in so long I had begun to think you’d forgotten about it entirely.”

“I see your flair for the melodramatic is with you still,” he said evenly, his gaze hard on hers. “What do you really want, Lucy? What is the purpose of all this theater?”

“I told you,” she snapped at him. “I’m leaving you, Rafi. And unlike you, I am not doing it the cowardly way—by inference. I’m not making sure to be ‘away on business’ for the better part of three months. I’m not going to make you sit and wonder what it means when I disappear, or take exactly one phone call from you and then be unavailable ever after. I’m saying it to your face. Right now.”

His dark eyes moved over her, and his mouth twisted.

“Did you just call me a coward, Lucy?” he asked, his voice deceptively light as his jaw knotted—warning signs she knew she should heed. “Did I hear that correctly? Shall I share with you my thoughts regarding pots versus kettles?”

“I am your wife, Rafi,” she ventured. “And yet you haven’t set foot in this house in months. You refuse my calls. Your horrible aide speaks to me as if I’m part fractious child and part evil, scheming witch.”

“Is this your rendition of the neglected, sorely abused wife?” Rafi interrupted coldly, his brows raised. “The performance needs work. And an audience unaware of the truth.”

“I’m not like you!” Lucy cried, unable to control herself, to keep all of her misery at bay. Not when she could feel the heat of him—see the light at the back of those mysterious, impossible eyes. “I can’t pretend!”

Rafi let out something resembling a laugh, hollow and frozen.

“On the contrary,” he said, shaking his head slightly, his gaze trained on her face—making her feel so small, so alone. “All you do is pretend.”

“I’m not the liar you’ve convinced yourself I am, Rafi!” she hissed at him. “I never have been!”

He was too close, then. His eyes like fire, his mouth a grim, condemning line.

“I know every lie you’ve ever told, Lucy,” he said. “And most of them to me. You should just count yourself lucky that I have a particular weakness for the lie of your body.”

CHAPTER TWO

“I DON’T care what lies you think I’ve told you,” Lucy said bravely.

Rafi almost admired her. Almost.

“And it doesn’t matter anyway,” she continued. “I’m still leaving you. I should have done it a long time ago.”

She looked so small. So fragile. Her arms were crossed over her chest as if she were holding herself together by sheer force of will. Her coffee-colored eyes were huge and dark beneath her pale blond curls, giving her the look of an innocent. That was her deepest deception, the one that he had believed so fiercely no matter what those closest to him—including all of his staff and Safir—had told him when he’d first fallen under her spell. No matter what proof they’d claimed to have of her manipulative ways.

Until that phone call three months ago when she had revealed the truth in that hollow, shameless way, and he had been more devastated than he could remember ever being before.

Sometimes he thought he still was.

Rafi stepped away from his wife before he did something he would regret. Like taste her again. Hadn’t that been what had caused all this trouble in the first place?

He was a man who prided himself on his rigid code, his steely commitment to his duty. He lived for his name, his honor, his family and the responsibilities that were his by virtue of being the oldest male Qaderi of his generation. His cousin Adel might have been the current king’s chosen successor, but Rafi was charged with making sure the future king’s family maintained its wealth and power, the better to serve and support Adel when he ascended the throne. Rafi considered it an honor.

More than that, he was a man hewn of the very mountains of Alakkul itself, like his ancestors before him. Many empires had tried—and failed—to take this little valley, to use it for their own ends. But Alakkulians did not bend. They did not break. Rafi felt the truth of that like the very blood that ran through his veins, marking him, defining him.

And then one day he’d glanced up at a cocktail waitress in a club in Manchester, England, and lost his head. Lost himself. It was those damned eyes, soft and vulnerable, over a mouth that made him hard every time he looked at it. Even now.

And what a pretty mess she’d made of him, hadn’t she?

“I know it’s important to you to believe the worst of me,” she said, her voice clipped, color flooding her porcelain cheeks. “After all, how better to excuse your own appalling behavior?”

“My behavior?” Temper pounded through him, threaded with that desire for her that never left him, no matter how much distance he put between them. He bit out a laugh. “I’m sure that in your mind, your deceit and betrayal is as nothing.” He held her gaze until her skin reddened. “Unfortunately for you, Lucy, I live in the real world.”

He realized they were too close when his hands found their way to her upper arms, holding her there. He let go as if electrocuted. But he could not dismiss the beguiling satin feel of her skin as easily. He let his eyes travel over her.

It took a moment, but the difference in her appearance filtered through. She looked … perfectly appropriate. Her messy curls were tamed into a chignon, which only drew his attention to her mouth. The dress itself was exquisite, tailored to showcase her femininity without broadcasting her sensuality.

He felt a pang in the vicinity of his chest, but thrust it aside. She had been all bold colors, garish and exotic, when he’d brought her here. Hadn’t that been what had lured him in when he’d met her, in the midst of all that British rain? Her artless delight. Her simplicity.

But, of course, that had all been a lie, too. Hadn’t it? He shouldn’t mourn its loss. He should be pleased that his uncultured wife had bettered herself in his absence and now more closely suited the image of what his wife should be. So why did he want to thrust his fingers into her hair and shake it from its bonds, see it wild and free?

“Are you in costume?” he asked, without knowing he meant to speak. He indicated her clothes with a jerk of his chin. “You almost appear to be what you are not. The dutiful wife appropriate to my station.”

She flinched as if he’d slapped her and he felt as if he had, vile and low. Hot, red heat washed over her face, and her full lower lip trembled, but she did not bow her head. She did not look away from him, though he saw the hurt in her brown eyes. Rafi hated himself. But that never seemed to be enough to tamp down the poison inside of him, the great swell of bitterness and rage at what she’d done to him. He feared it defined him.

“You delight in being cruel,” she said, her words too careful, as if they cost her. “But I am not going to stand here and be your punching bag. I wanted to tell you I was leaving you to your face, assuming I ever saw it again, and now I have.” She pulled in a shaky breath, and her mouth twisted slightly. “Goodbye, Rafi.”

He let her walk away from him. He was barely aware of the room around them, so inured was he to the trappings of the Qaderi wealth and consequence. The ancient, sumptuous tapestries that cascaded down the walls were lost on him; they served only to frame Lucy in reds and golds as she moved over the deep carpet, past the magnificent four-poster bed that rose like an edifice in the middle of the room.

He watched that mesmerizing sway of her hips, and could not help but admire the perfect hourglass lushness of her body, her voluptuous curves. She had mesmerized him back in Manchester, and she bewitched him now.

She was a wild magic, this woman, and he had lost everything because of her. His self-respect. The politically advantageous marriage he’d been plotting for years. His standing in his particular Alakkulian circle of high-ranking ministers and power brokers, all of whom had expected better from Rafi Qaderi than a shotgun wedding to a woman like her. In some parts of Alakkul, it might as well still be the twelfth century—and to those of his countrymen, some of whom graced the halls of power for all that they were hidebound, a cocktail waitress might as well be a scarlet-painted whore. Even his own staff had been appalled that he could fall so low.

She had ruined him. But the greater sin was that he had let her.

“I appreciate the high drama of this performance, Lucy, I truly do.” He did not bother to raise his voice. She stopped walking, though she did not turn around. “But it is wasted on me. I fly back to Germany in the morning.” He shook his head. “Assuming your great emergency does not conveniently strike in the dark of night, of course.”

She did turn then. He had the strangest notion that she was someone else for a moment—the woman she was pretending to be, all elegance and affront, staring at him from across the lavish room as if he had gravely disappointed her. Again. It was no doubt the incongruity that made him feel something perilously close to shame.

“I am not playing games, Rafi.” Her voice was quiet, but he heard the faint tremor in it.

Why should that affect him? And yet something moved through him, acid and heavy, that felt too much like regret.

“My flight to Manchester leaves tomorrow,” she said, still in that cool, detached tone. “I’ve hired a car to pick me up and take me to the airport in the city. Soon it will be as if I was never here at all.”

“It is far too late for that, much as we both might wish it otherwise,” he said, and he almost did regret the coldness of his tone and the way she visibly steeled herself against it, as if she expected nothing more from him. “But I have no intention of letting you go, Lucy.”

“You have no choice—” she began, that hectic color working over her pale skin again, and he should not have taken such satisfaction in that.

“There will be no separation, no divorce, no hint of scandal at all,” he said softly, watching her brace herself against each word. “This is the marriage you wanted, Lucy. The one you worked so hard to achieve. I suggest you enjoy it. We are both stuck in it for the rest of our lives.”

She only stared at him for a moment, her expression unreadable, and then she turned and left the room.

CHAPTER THREE

LUCY settled herself in the small sitting room off the master suite later that evening, fighting to get her riotous emotions under control. She only had to make it through this one night, she reminded herself, and in the morning she would get on that flight and put all of this—this painful, impossible chapter of her life—behind her. She couldn’t wait. She curled up on her favorite settee, and let her thoughts run wild as she looked out at the thick, dark night that had fallen outside.

Rafi was her husband, and there was no denying that he was a powerful man—but he was not the god she’d believed him to be once upon a time, not by a long shot. If she wanted to leave him, to divorce him—and she did, she told herself fiercely, of course she did—then she would do so. He could not control her. He could not—

“What is this?” His voice was dry, amused. “A strategic retreat?”

Lucy stiffened. She turned to look at Rafi as he moved into the room in that low, confident way of his. He had changed and showered; he smelled of the scented soap he preferred and his dark black hair gleamed. He’d traded his perfect suit for dark trousers and a simple long-sleeved shirt that showcased his impossibly breathtaking physique. He was, quite simply, the most beautiful man she had ever known.

Lucy remembered, suddenly, the first time she’d seen him. She’d been covering a friend’s shift at the Manchester nightclub where she worked, and she’d been dead on her feet. Oh, she’d smiled and flirted with the punters by rote, but she’d been counting down the minutes to closing time. She hadn’t seen him come in; she’d only noted the new group of men at one of her tables. Corporate swells, from the look of them, she’d judged, and she’d plastered on her best smile.

Rafi had been sprawled across the banquette, careless and nearly regal in his indolence. She’d noticed that confidence first. And then he’d glanced up at her, and everything had stopped. The noise of the crowd, the music, the boisterous sounds of his friends. All gone. There had only been that arrested look in his thundercloud gaze, and that faintly dazed expression on his harshly masculine, impossibly beautiful face as they’d locked eyes. And that sweet, addictive pulse, long and low and insistent, in her blood. Her throat. Between her legs.

She’d asked for his drink order and lost herself, then and there.

It was no different now, Lucy realized helplessly. She jerked her gaze away from his body, wishing her own did not ready itself for him so quickly, so thoughtlessly. As if nothing had happened between them at all. As if none of it mattered.

“It’s almost Christmas,” she said instead of responding to him. She pulled the wrap she wore tighter around her, and looked out the window instead of at him. “Only a few days to go now.”

“That generally happens around this time of year,” he agreed, though she told herself his voice was not as cold as it had been before. “It is unavoidable, apparently.”

Lucy heard the derision in his voice, and thought, not for the first time, how little she knew this man who had changed the whole of her life. That should not have made her feel too big for her own skin, and yet it did.

“I love Christmas,” she said softly. She sensed more than saw him drop into the chair closest to her, and then he stretched out his long legs and she could scarcely avoid them. Even so, she kept her eyes trained on her own lap. “Growing up, there wasn’t any money for gifts, so on Christmas morning Mum would tell us stories instead. About how we would be princesses when we were older, how we’d never be cold again and how we would eat whatever we liked in golden palaces, bathed in sun and laughter.” She smiled. “That was my favorite part. Even when there were gifts, I preferred the stories. I used to lie by the fire and imagine they all came true.”

She didn’t know why she’d told him that. Surely she should have learned better by now. He was not at all what she wanted him to be, and she could not understand why she insisted on testing that theory. It never ended well.

“I suppose that your story did come true,” he said after a moment, and there was an odd note in his voice. She looked up and found herself snared in his dark gaze. She caught her breath. He waved a hand at the room surrounding them, the paintings on the walls, the lavish furnishings. But then his cruel mouth crooked into that smirk she recognized too well, and whatever warmth she’d started to feel disappeared. “How enterprising of you.”

“Not at all,” she said, squaring her shoulders against that dry, insinuating tone. Meeting his eyes as if he had no power to hurt her, when they both knew better. But what else did she have? What else could she do? “In the stories my mother told me, the handsome man who inevitably swept me away from my former life was kind.”

His dark gray eyes gleamed, but she still did not look away. Whole hours could have passed. Days. And still he gazed upon her as if he were reading into the most shadowed corners of her soul. Lucy was far too afraid of what he might find there.

Restless and something else, something she was afraid to name, she got to her feet and moved away from him. Distance was good, she thought. Safer. She went and stood by the fire that crackled invitingly in the grate, and welcomed the heat of the flames against her skin. Better to be burned by fire than by Rafi. Burns from a flame healed. The kind of damage Rafi inflicted lasted forever.

“I don’t understand you,” he said quietly, in that cold way of his that sliced into her and made her bones weak. “You play the part of the victim so beautifully, but we both know you are no such thing. And yet you never drop the act, not even when we’re alone.”

It was too much. This never-ending assault. Why had she thought that summoning him here would be better than surviving somehow the long insult of his absence? What could she have been thinking?

She whirled to face him, a storm inside of her, building by the moment and tearing her apart.

“What do you want from me, Rafi?” she begged him. She forgot about pride, about shame. She searched his face, her hands open in supplication. “How long do you plan to punish me? I hardly became pregnant on my own, did I?”

He rose to his feet then, his eyes stark, his mouth a tight line. She thought he paled.

“You dare to throw that lie at me?” he asked, his voice the barest thread of sound. “Now? After you have been exposed?”

“Exposed?” She shook her head, reeling, her heart pounding. She felt sick. “Is that what you call it?”

“The word I prefer is trapped,” Rafi growled, advancing on her. He towered over her, his eyes black. Condemning. “Your claims of pregnancy, which I, a man of honor, could only address in one way. Followed by your claims of a conveniently timed miscarriage, barely a month after the wedding. And this after I had proclaimed your innocence, your innate goodness, to the whole of my country. How much of a fool do you take me for, Lucy?”

She stared at him in horror.

“Is that who you think I am?” she asked, stunned. Horrifed.

“That is exactly who you are,” he retorted.

Which made him far less of a fool than she was, she realized, her stomach lurching. This, finally, explained the way he’d treated her for these long months. He despised her. Believed her to be the worst kind of woman.

And she was the idiot who was still in love with him.

CHAPTER FOUR

LUCY stared at him, looking stricken. As if he’d wounded her, deeply and unfairly. Rafi bit back a curse. How did she do that? How could she act as if the truth were a weapon wielded against her?

She is good at what she does, his aide, Safir, had said to him months ago when Rafi had uncharacteristically let some of his anguish at her betrayal slip out. She has made it her life’s work, he’d said.

She really was good at it, Rafi thought. She had lied her way into what was, for her, a spectacular marriage. He was the one who had to suffer the consequences.

“So that’s why you disappeared,” she said after a long moment. “You think I lied about the baby and the miscarriage.” Her brown eyes were wide with distress, and one delicate hand hovered near her throat. This close, he could smell her unique, intoxicating scent. The faintest hint of jasmine, the suggestion of her warmth. He longed to haul her into his arms, to lose himself in her as he had before. “That’s why this is the first time I’ve seen you in more than three months.”

“Despite all evidence to the contrary,” he said quietly, deliberately, holding her gaze with his, “I did not want to suspect you of this. I wanted to believe you were exactly who you claimed to be. A woman as swept away by what happened between us as I was.”

It hurt him to admit that, but it was true. It was just as every one had warned him, though he had been so determined not to believe it in the beginning. But what he had never admitted was that there was some part of him that had been relieved—because if she were that scheming, that grasping, it absolved him of responsibility, didn’t it? Every man had a weakness, even him. And he would spend the rest of his life coming to terms with what his own weakness had wrought.

“You wanted to believe it,” she said softly, her eyes moving over his face as if she searched for something. Her lips trembled slightly as if she fought off some great emotion. “But you did not.”

“My investigator found out quickly enough that you weren’t supposed to be working at the club that night,” Rafi said. “The only question is, how did you know I would be there? Did you target me specifically, or were you simply casting a wide net? I must commend you, Lucy. I was completely taken in.”

He let out a hollow laugh, but he could not seem to help the way he drifted closer to her, as if compelled. She did not move away.

“Your investigator,” she said. She swallowed. “You mean your aide. Safir.”

“He is a loyal employee,” Rafi said darkly. “Far better than I deserve. He dared to tell me the truth about you when I refused to see the evidence before me.”

“Let me guess,” she said in a tone he could not quite read—one both bitter and very nearly amused, at odds with the turmoil in her coffee-colored eyes. “A cocktail waitress must be in want of a wealthy husband, and any one will do.”

Ignoring her words, he reached out and traced the line of her collarbone, a hard satisfaction moving through him when she shivered in response. She pulled her wrap tighter around her as if she were cold, but he knew better. Whatever her plans, whatever her schemes, she could not have been prepared for this fire that raged between them—this wild, maddening rush.

He had stayed away because he could not keep his hands off of her when he was near her. She was temptation incarnate. Tonight, with her blond curls piled on her head, she looked beautiful, and all he could think about was tasting the elegant line of her neck. He wanted to peel the layers of her clothing from her magnificent body and bury himself within her, again and again and again. When he touched her, he didn’t care that he was Rafi Qaderi and she was nobody. He didn’t care that she had altered the course of his life.

He only wanted her. Here, now.

And this close to her, he could not think of a single reason why that was a bad idea.

“You have bewitched me,” he muttered harshly in his own language, well aware she would not understand the words. And then, yielding to the very same urge that had brought them here in the first place, he took her mouth with his.

Rafi’s kiss was hot, slick.

Perfect.

She should push him away. She should denounce him and the horrible things he thought about her. She should tell him the truth.

But Lucy could not bring herself to do any of those things. She was awash in sensation. The way he pulled her into his arms, pressing her against the enticing wall of his chest. The way he angled his head for a better fit, tasting her, teasing her, making her whole body hum with approval and need.

She loved him.

It was that simple. That disastrous. She loved him and he hated her, just as she would no doubt hate herself when this was over—when she was left to reflect on the fact that she was so weak, so easy, that she could listen to him say such ugly things about her and then let him kiss her as if he had every right.

But it had been so long. And oh, how she ached for him. For this. All the long, lonely days and nights seemed to disappear like smoke. All the agony, the pain and the terrible truth of what had happened to her seemed less bright, less vicious, when he kissed her like this.

As if he felt the same wild fire, the same mad connection.

As if he were as helpless to control it as she was.

As if he’d missed her, missed this, too.

It was that last thought that finally penetrated the fog and forced Lucy to take a step back. One hand flew to her mouth and she could only stare at him while her body objected to the space she’d put between them. Her breasts felt too heavy, too full. Her heart shuddered against her ribs. And low in her belly, she ached. Burned.

But he hadn’t missed her, had he. He had believed whatever poisonous things Safir had told him. He would have been content to stay away on his endless business trips forever—would have done so, in fact, had she not claimed she needed him here, that it was an emergency. He’d had no intention of ending these months of punishment. He’d had no intention of coming back at all.

“Do you think you can just kiss me and it will be as if none of this ever happened?” she asked. She wanted to sound tough, strong, but her voice was barely a whisper.

“There is no pretending it didn’t happen,” he said darkly. His gaze was trained on her mouth and she could not help the surge of heat within her. “But why not celebrate the one thing we ever did well? Surely we should take our compensations where we can. We have so little else.”

“We have nothing,” she said, surprised at her own voice. How clear it was. How little it shook. “You will leave tomorrow morning and who knows when you’ll be back. In six months? A year?” She tossed her head. “You can’t abandon me with so little regard for me and then expect me to fall into your bed at a moment’s notice!”

“Expect? No.” His fingers brushed her cheek, traced the shape of her mouth. “But why deny this passion when we are both in the same room?”

“Because it is the biggest lie of all!” Lucy cried. She jerked her head from his clever fingers and moved away from him, toward the door. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. This time, I’m the one leaving, and I won’t be back at all. You can count on it.”

“Lucy …” He said her name but she didn’t know if it was to plead with her or to curse her.

Not that it made a difference, she told herself fiercely. She needed only to survive the night. In the morning Rafi would be gone, she would be on a one-way flight back to reality and she would finally be able to breathe again.

She just had to make it through the night.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHEN Lucy woke the next morning, tucked away in one of the lesser bedrooms—behind a locked door to be safe as much from herself as from him—the world outside her window was pure white.

Snow fell inexorably from above, just as it must have been falling throughout the night because the usually breathtaking view was entirely obscured. She could not see six feet from her window, much less into the great valley below.

There was a terrible sinking sensation in her belly and a quick check of her messages confirmed her fears. Her car could not make it through the snow and all the flights had been canceled.

She wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was Rafi.

She dressed quickly and then made her way through the house. Even today, she was unable to walk through the grand halls without marveling at the Qaderis’ power, their grace and consequence. It was evident in the richly appointed rooms, the banquet halls, even the smallest vase upon an incidental table—everything was clearly precious. Ancient. Part of the great sweep of Alakkul’s history.

Except for her. She was nothing but the cocktail waitress whom Rafi believed had trapped him into marriage.

It was no wonder her stomach twisted when she walked into the breakfast room and found him sitting there, lounging back in one of the elegant chairs with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and his brooding gaze directed out the windows.

The fire crackling away in the nearby fireplace was nothing next to the heat of his gray eyes when he turned them on her. Lucy froze.

“You’re still here,” she said stupidly even though she’d known he would be. Was she distraught? Or relieved?

He only gestured toward the window and the snow that continued to fall, silent and impassable. The roads in these mountains were treacherous at the best of times; it would be days before they’d be cleared, and then only once the snow stopped falling.

But her mind reeled away from what that must mean. For both of them.

It was almost funny, she thought from some kind of distance, her gaze trapped in his far darker one. She’d gone to so much trouble to get him here and now that he’d be stuck here for some time—now that they were both stuck here—she wanted no part of it.

“It looks as if your wish has come true,” he said with an edge in his voice, as if he blamed her for the snowfall on top of everything else. “I will be here for Christmas after all. You must be thrilled.”

Thrilled, Lucy thought as her heart fluttered wildly and her throat clenched tightly, was not at all how she would describe her feelings. She swallowed and told herself to pull it together. He lounged there at the end of the table, looking impossibly big and dangerous, but she assured herself it was just nerves and nothing else that swelled and contracted within her, sharp and rhythmic, making it hard to breathe.

“Christmas is in three days,” she said. She forced a bland smile. “Anything can happen.”

It was the longest day of his life.

Rafi found himself in the old library later that afternoon, swirling his drink in a crystal tumbler as he scowled into the fireplace. He felt restless. Hunted. As if she were right there with him, crowding him. An itch he could not reach, that would not leave him be.

She had avoided him for hours, yet he was as wild as if she’d had him naked in their bed, begging for her touch. He, who had never begged. He, who was more and more convinced that she possessed some supernatural power that enslaved him to her whenever he was near her. Even if she was only under the same roof.

With a growl of impatience, he tossed back the remainder of his drink and slapped the tumbler down on the mantelpiece. He raked his fingers through his hair. This enforced seclusion was clearly making him insane. He was supposed to be back in Germany by now, talking contracts and profit margins. Not … trapped here. With her.

He had hardly slept the night before. Being near Lucy made him edgy. As if he were suddenly made entirely of angles. He’d tossed in his magnificent four-poster bed, unable to sleep, images of Lucy haunting him. Taunting him and teasing him.

He remembered that first, delicious night. As he’d watched her work, he had been blindsided by the maelstrom of lust and need she had stirred within him. He had hardly known what he’d been doing, but he’d waited for her at the club until her shift was over and then taken her back to his hotel. She’d gone with him eagerly, seemingly as dazed by their connection as he was. The instant the doors of the hotel’s lift had closed behind them, he’d had his hands on her rich curves and his mouth on hers. He’d urged her legs around his waist and pressed her to the wall within moments of entering his hotel suite. He remembered the fierce, incomparable joy of that first slick entry, right there against the wall. He remembered her soft cries, the look of wonder on her face.

And that had only been the beginning.

Now, as the snow fell outside, he tortured himself with images of that first long night and the holiday he’d coaxed her into taking with him afterward.

I’ll take you to Paris, he’d said, and he’d done so, but it had hardly mattered where they were. They might as well have stayed in Manchester for all they’d seen of the City of Lights. He had no memory of the weather or anything else. It might have been a heat wave or a blizzard. Rafi hadn’t known and hadn’t cared. But he remembered her body in perfect detail. Every freckle, every curve. He knew the texture of her nipples against his tongue and the sweet weight of her astride him, riding them both into oblivion.

He’d thought he’d known her just as well.

“Even the great Rafi turns out to be fallibly mortal,” his cousin Adel had teased him in a family meeting not long after Rafi’s quick wedding—and not long after the phone call that had ripped his heart to shreds. “I would never have believed it possible.”

“We are not all of us destined to wed the future Queen of Alakkul, should she ever be found,” Rafi had replied, forcing a smile. He was known for his cool head, his unshakable resolve—and yet he had fallen for the oldest trick imaginable? A temptress and a liar?

“A beautiful woman should be a prize, Rafi,” Adel had replied, his gaze too calm, too knowing. “Not a curse.”

But Rafi did not believe it. Would not let himself believe it—and he was certain his cousin, who had given over his life to his duty and the glory of their country, was only being kind.

It still filled him with a kind of rage, sharp and deep.

But that, he knew, was not the true reason he despaired of himself.

How could Lucy have betrayed him in every possible way—ruined him and shamed him, tricked him and used him—and he still wanted her this much? Even now, when betrayal and bitterness twisted inside of him and fused into something darker, something hotter, he wanted her.

It was lucky his cousin was meant to be king and not him—because he would no doubt walk away from a throne for this woman, just as he had walked away from all he held dear, all he’d believed to be true about himself.

He remembered with perfect clarity when he’d realized he was nothing like the man he’d always thought he was. It had been during another meeting in another hotel in another interchangeable city somewhere in Europe. His aide had been reading out his messages in his usual bland tone. The standard petitioners for the Qaderi fortune, the regular communications from people such as the family doctor and the senior housekeeper and the usual sheaf of messages from Lucy.

“It is nothing out of the ordinary,” Safir had said in summary of Lucy’s calls, shrugging.

“Of course not,” Rafi had replied curtly, remembering with searing pain the last phone call he had taken from her, the one where she’d revealed her true nature. “My wife is nothing if not consistent.”

And even then, even as he’d pretended otherwise, he’d ached for her. Ached for all the things he’d believed she was, that he knew she could never and would never be.

Rafi pulled in a breath and turned to look out at the falling snow. Still it came, trapping him. Stranding him. Making him a captive in his own home. Making a mockery of the lies he’d told himself about the distance between him and Lucy.

But maybe he had been seeing this from the wrong angle all along, he thought then, as his body hardened, readying itself. Perhaps he should not have distanced himself when he learned the extent of her betrayal. In the end, what did it matter? There would be no divorce. And one day, there would be heirs. So what was he fighting?

CHAPTER SIX

RAFI was prepared for more fireworks. In fact, he craved them. He didn’t care what lies Lucy told tonight, he assured himself as he prowled through the old house, the seat of his family’s power for centuries. He didn’t care that she was the most inappropriate bride he could possibly have chosen and that she had used his honor against him. He didn’t care about any of it.

He only wanted her—badly—and if they had to fight in order to light that spark between them … he was happy to fight.

He was almost smiling in anticipation when he swung into the master suite, expecting to find her once again tucked away in the small sitting room she preferred. But instead he stopped dead, his heart hammering against his chest in a manner he refused to examine too closely.

She was curled up on the far side of the great bed, fully dressed, her hands beneath her cheek. From the doorway, he could see only the shape of her in the low lights that spilled from the dressing room. That perfect hourglass that called to the male in him, that delectable shape that had inspired artists and lovers throughout the ages. The beauty of a woman’s curves—his woman’s curves—nearly took his breath.

He moved to the side of the bed and looked down at her, aware that he was scowling again, though he could not have said why. In sleep, she appeared younger than she ought to, and infinitely more fragile. He saw not a scheming tramp who’d set out to ensnare him, but an exhausted, beautiful woman. His gaze shifted to her mouth, that wicked, deliciously carnal mouth.

His hand reached out of its own accord and he watched it as if it belonged to someone else, watched his fingers trace a pattern over the flushed, warm satin of her cheek. She murmured something in her sleep, incoherent and soft, and then settled against the bed.

He should not have felt that clutching sensation in his chest, as if his heart were involved in this. He should not have felt the quiet of the room and the blanketing silence of the snow outside as some kind of sacrament. The lust that had spurred him into coming here melted into something else, something far more dangerous.

But he could not seem to help himself. He crawled onto the bed beside her, yielding to a compulsion he did not dare study too closely. For a while he lay next to her, soaking in the peace of it. The quiet sense of belonging that he now admitted had always existed, no matter what betrayals were piled on top of it.

And still she slept. Even when he moved closer and pulled her into his chest. Even as he held her, stroking her hair and freeing the wild golden curls from the tight bun she’d kept them in. Even when his lips gently brushed the crown of her head. And even as he drifted off himself, holding her as if the only thing that had ever been between them was this.

Lucy was deliciously, impossibly warm. She woke slowly, savoring the heat, and it took her long time to realize where it was coming from. She was sprawled across Rafi’s chest like a cat in a sunbeam.

Gasping, she reared back—to find Rafi wide-awake and watching her.

“Let go of me.” But her voice was the barest thread of sound. His fascinating mouth quirked.

“I am not holding you,” he pointed out, entirely too rationally. Very nearly amused. “You are lying on me.”

“I only lay down for a moment,” she began, but then he shifted beneath her. The slide of his body against hers made her shiver, as a heat of a different kind washed over her, humming into something molten and incandescent. Nor was he immune. She could feel the evidence of his desire, hard between them. She could see the flare of passion in his dark gray gaze.

It would be so much easier if she didn’t want him, too. If she didn’t love him.

“I cannot divorce you,” he said then, his hands moving to tangle in her hair. “I cannot let you leave. Qaderis keep their vows. They do not bow to the whims of modernity and merrily divorce.”

Lucy couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She couldn’t seem to pull away. She felt caught in his eyes, suspended. Her breasts were too full, pressed against the hard wall of his chest.

“What do you know about vows?” she asked. “You keep yours in name only from as far away as possible, don’t you?”

“I am not far away now,” he said quietly, his gaze intense. Searing into her. “With my body, I thee worship.” His lips crooked. “If you’ll let me.”

She shuddered as one of his hands traveled down her back, spreading fire down the length of her spine, making her yearn to move against him. With him. It had always been like this. He need only touch her, and she was his. She had followed him out of the nightclub, into his hotel room and then all the way across the planet to this tiny little country. She should hate him for it, for this power he wielded over her treasonous body, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.

She loved him.

She stared down at his beautiful face, so male and arrogant and uniquely Rafi, and she could not even manage to berate herself for that weakness as she had over these last months.

He had treated her terribly, there was no denying it. The parts of her he’d hurt still ached with it, and she thought sometimes they always would. But that didn’t change the man she knew was there, beneath all that, beyond what had happened between them. She still believed in that man. The honorable person who had vowed to protect her—and he had done so. Just not from himself.

“Lucy …” The way he said her name, with the faintest touch of his Alakkulian accent and that fire in his eyes, still undid her. Just as it always had.

She had lost so much and been so alone. She loved him. Tonight he was her husband. He would no doubt leave again as if he had never been, and she would return to England and reality—so what harm was there in treating this like all those dreams she’d had in all the lonely months she’d languished here, by herself?

She didn’t want to think anymore. She didn’t want to wonder and worry and rip herself to pieces trying to understand what had happened to this marriage, what had stolen this very connection away from them. Here, now, she just wanted to feel.

No matter how much she might live to regret it.

She bent her head and kissed him.

The fire between them blazed white hot. He pulled her closer, angling his mouth for a deeper fit, and then rolled her over, his hands moving to learn her curves anew.

And Lucy could do nothing but delight in it. In him. At last.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE snow fell all through the night, and into the next day. It cocooned them, Lucy thought sometime the next morning, gazing out at the drifts of white. It softened the reality of their fractured marriage, let them concentrate instead on what they had at that moment.

This connection. This fire. The insatiable wildness of their passion that nothing seemed to dim.

She shut off her mind and pushed away all the darkness of the past months, choosing to bask in Rafi as she had so long ago on that trip to Paris.

Through the day, they fed each other in the great four-poster bed. They tasted each other again and again. And they talked. About the world, about the small, inconsequential things that made up their lives. He was funny, intriguing. And so impossibly sensual.

If she had not already been in love with him, Lucy knew, this little interlude would have sent her head over heels.

But there was so much left unsaid, so much pain and heartbreak, that even a stolen day or two surrounded by the snow could not keep it all at bay. Perhaps it was her knowledge that this bliss could not—would not—last that made the idyll that much sweeter.

It was Christmas Eve, though Lucy had not dared mention it, aware of Rafi’s dislike of all things Christmas.

That evening, they sat before the great fireplace that dominated one wall in the master suite, both of them exhausted in the most delicious way. She leaned back against his bare chest as he toyed with her curls, twining them around his fingers.

I will always remember this instant, this feeling, she thought. No matter what happens.

“I wish we could be like this forever,” she said on a happy sigh, caught up in the joy of the moment—in the sense of rightness that moved through her.

She regretted the words immediately.

He stiffened behind her, then set her away from him. She closed her eyes as all the pain and hurt she’d been ignoring came rushing back, full force.

“I do, too,” he said in a low, bitter voice. “But I am not the one who made this impossible.”

Her hands curled into fists, and she turned to look at him. His gray eyes were so troubled, his mouth so grim. And he still glared at her as if he had every reason to hate her. And did.

It was too much.

Everything she’d been through, everything she’d struggled to survive—all of it rolled through her, incinerating her, scalding her.

“No. You did this, Rafi.” She threw the words at him, letting her anger show, letting him see what he’d done to her. “You destroyed this marriage, not me!”

“I’m not going to play your games,” Rafi said roughly, but he was shaken by what he saw in her eyes. The condemnation. The deep, abiding pain, as if he’d wounded her. But how was that possible? She was the one who’d betrayed him … hadn’t she?

He should never have touched her again. He should have crawled through the snow to stay away from her.

“Listen to me,” she said in a low, serious voice. Her eyes locked on his. “I am only going to say it once. I was pregnant.

I never lied about that—why would I? Did you think it was my life’s ambition to marry a man I hardly knew? To move to the other side of the world to a place where I’d be scrutinized, judged and found wanting every time? But I did it because I loved you and I thought it was the right thing to do for our child.”

“Our child,” he repeated, hearing the fury in his own voice, feeling it surge through him. “How dare you pretend—”

“I lost the baby,” she hissed at him, her brown eyes filling with tears. She jabbed a finger in the direction of the vast bathroom. “In that room. On that floor. It was horrible, and do you know what was worse, Rafi? Being told that you believed I’d made the whole thing up.”

“You said it yourself!” he snapped, his temper blazing as his mind reeled. But he remembered it vividly. “I was in Sydney. I’d had back-to-back meetings for weeks on end in Singapore, New Zealand, Australia. But I called you the second I could get away. I asked after your pregnancy and you said, as clear as day, ‘There is no baby.’ You admitted it.”

“I was grieving!” she protested. “There was no baby because I’d lost it!”

The tears were moving down her cheeks now and she did nothing to check them. She reached for the blanket they’d kicked aside in their last round of passion, and Rafi noticed that her delicate hands were shaking.

“Lucy—” he began, but she made a slashing gesture through the air, cutting him off.

“You made it plain from the start that I was marrying far above my station,” she said, each word like a bullet, each one slamming into him. “You made no secret of the fact that I was beneath you—that sleeping with me was all right for an illicit week in Paris, but should never have gone beyond that. That I should be grateful that you were so honorable, so good, that you would condescend to do the right thing by a trashy little nobody like me.”

“I never said that,” he bit out, as a deep shame moved through him. “Not any of it.”

“You didn’t need to say it.” Lucy gathered the blanket around her and rose to her feet, looking down at him as if she were some kind of goddess. “Everything you did made your position perfectly, painfully obvious.” She waved her hand at the room around them, encompassing the gleaming lights in the ancient sconces on the walls, the historic tapestries. “You hid me away in your family’s country house where I could gaze out at the capital city from afar but never embarrass you by setting foot near your exalted social circles. But I didn’t care, because I was in love with you and I was having your baby.”

There was something in her voice that was making the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. He was all too afraid that it was the ring of truth.

“Lucy,” he said again. “Please …”

But she ignored him.

“You left me here,” she continued in that same way, as if it cost her, as if speaking to him like this required her to be brave. The thought made something in him ache. “And I saw it as a perfect opportunity to get to know your world. To transform myself into the kind of wife you wouldn’t have to hide away or be ashamed of.”

He remembered, suddenly, what she’d been wearing when he’d arrived—how elegant he’d thought her. How much of a change it had been from the louder, trendier clothes she’d worn before.

“But then I lost the baby,” she said, her voice shaking. “And I had to live through that, Rafi. Alone. And still you left me here, as if I was something undeserving of even the barest compassion.”

Her face crumpled for a moment, as if she might break down into sobs, but she controlled herself.

“Lucy,” he began again, but she shook her head, warding him off.

“I don’t care if the Qaderis don’t do divorce,” she said then, with a quiet dignity that shook him almost more than her earlier show of emotion. “I’m leaving you. Not because I don’t love you—because I do, for my sins. But it doesn’t matter. You may be descended from a hundred centuries of greatness, Rafi, but I deserve better than this. I deserve better than you.”

Rafi sat in silence, unmoving, for a long time after Lucy had left the room, more regal than any queen. He stared into the fire but he did not see the flames. He only saw the past, his tangled history with Lucy and all the conclusions he’d jumped to far too easily. That she’d been using him. That he had been enchanted by a beautiful woman, as any man could be. That she had set out to avail herself of his name and fortune. That the passion between them was not—could not be—real. That what he felt could not be real.

All along, the people around him had whispered poison in his ears—and he had listened. Safir. The country elders. He had wanted to believe them, he realized now. When she had told him there was no baby he had jumped on it, had clung to the evidence that she was as false as all in his circle wanted him to believe she was.

Because then he wouldn’t have had to admit that he was weak. That he was afraid of the power she held over him. Of what she made him feel.

What a despicable piece of work he was, he thought then, an acid taste in his mouth.

He remembered all the snide and nasty things he’d let Safir say about her, all the times he’d never stood up for her. What kind of man allowed such things? And then, unbidden, something else occurred to him. The repeated calls from the family doctor, which Safir had waved away, saying it could wait until Rafi returned home, all the while never encouraging him to do so. But what if it had been something else? Would Safir have told Rafi about something that would show Lucy in a better light?

He knew the answer. But he had to confirm the suspicion that bloomed to life inside of him. He had to know the full extent of his own betrayal of Lucy, who had never done anything save love him. Far more than he deserved.

Rafi moved across the room and picked up the sleek phone on the desk. Gruffly, not even apologizing to his housekeeper, he asked to be connected to the doctor, regardless of the late hour.

The kindly old man had attended his own birth and had kept any number of Qaderi family secrets in his time. And he had never lied about anything.

It was a brief, appalling conversation.

“I’m so glad you called,” the old man said, as if he had not noticed the time. “I’ve been trying to speak with you for months about that night. I wanted to assure you that I made every attempt to convince your wife to go to the hospital but she refused. She was too concerned about your reputation.” He sighed. “So I made her as comfortable as I could and made sure there were no complications. Please, I do not want you to think that her care was substandard, or that I did not do my level best to convince her to go to the hospital. She simply would not go. I thought perhaps you could convince her, but then I could not reach you… .”

“I don’t blame you for anything,” Rafi said through a mouth that felt made of broken glass. And it was no more than the truth. He blamed only himself.

“Sometimes these things happen,” the doctor said, the wisdom and calm of years in his voice. “She has been healthy since, and I’m sure you will have another child, in time. This is but a hiccup. I have every faith, both medically and personally.”

He had never hated himself more, Rafi thought as he hung up the phone in a daze. He could only stand there, alone with the shame of what he’d done to her.

Lucy was not lying. She never had been.

Had he known that all along, on some level? Had he wanted to believe that he’d never had a child at all so that he would not have to deal with the crushing sense of loss? Was he that small, that cowardly, that he would sacrifice Lucy to prevent himself from feeling his own pain?

But he knew that he was. That he had.

Rafi sank down on the side of the great bed, buried his head in his hands and gave in, finally, to the grief that he’d staved off for three long months.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THIS time when Lucy woke it was to find herself in Rafi’s arms.

For a moment, she forgot. She simply breathed in the scent of him, winter and pine, and exulted in the heat of his strong arms around her. But then she exhaled and it all came rushing back.

“Don’t do this!” she hissed at him, tilting her head away to look at him. His dark brows were drawn over his gray eyes, and his mouth was in a flat line. “Just let me go, Rafi.”

“If that is what you want,” he said in a low, gravelly voice, “I will. But there’s something I want to show you first.”

She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes—to let him see the effect his words had on her. It was one thing to announce she was leaving, to demand a divorce, to want those things. It was something else again to have him accept it. She felt something yawn open inside of her, black and lonely.

Perhaps that was why it took several long moments for her to recognize the change in her surroundings after he’d settled her on the overstuffed chaise in the book-lined library. She schooled her features as best she could and when she looked up …

It was Christmas.

Lucy could not help herself—she gasped.

A small, plump pine tree bristled in the corner, festooned with objects Lucy recognized—the tiny china figures from the display in the blue salon, the small ornamental picture frames that were usually scattered on the tables in the formal sitting room. It was as if someone had gone through the house and picked up whatever was small enough to be fastened to the branches and decorated the tree that way.

Lucy’s hands crept over her mouth as she took it in. She turned to stare at the man who had moved to kneel before her, his gray eyes serious.

“What did you do?” she breathed, enchanted despite herself.

“It’s Christmas, isn’t it?” His voice was gruff.

“You hate Christmas,” she pointed out, feeling lightheaded. Off balance. “You think it’s—”

“Let me tell you a story,” he interrupted gently, running his hands over her legs, gazing up at her. “Isn’t that how this goes? Is this how your mother used to do it?”

Lucy was overcome by the swell of an emotion she was afraid might tip her right over. She could only nod, mutely. She could not seem to tear her eyes away from his.

“I was up most of the night,” he said in a low voice, his eyes intent on hers, though his were dark, agonized. “It was obvious to me that you were telling the truth last night. Then I spoke with the family doctor, who reiterated everything that you had said, what I should have accepted all along. That you lost our baby, and I abandoned you in your pain. I can never possibly make that up to you. I will spend my life regretting it, Lucy. I promise you.”

She could not help the way her eyes glazed over with hot, unshed tears, nor the way her throat seemed to clutch tight. She was not sure she would ever breathe again.

“But as heinous as that was,” he continued, his own voice uneven, “I had to look at what was behind it. To the grief that I didn’t have the courage to face. And … and to acknowledge what an insufferable snob I’d become. How quick I was to use the circumstances of your birth against you—as if they were any more random than mine. As if either one of us had anything to do with it.”

Lucy sucked in a breath then. “You are a Qaderi, Rafi,” she said.

“Yes,” he said sharply. “I am the head of my family. My cousin will be king one day, and I have every intention of being the power behind his throne. So why should I care what Alakkulian society thinks of my choice of bride? When have I ever allowed outside opinions to dictate my own?”

“Never,” she said, her voice catching.

But she hadn’t thought she was worthy of him, either. Was that why his dismissal had hurt so much? Because she’d believed his low opinion of her was accurate?

“I let others poison me against you,” he continued, “like a man far lesser, far weaker, than I would like to believe I am would do.” His mouth tightened. “Safir will never work for me again. The others who dared speak against you will regret it. This I promise you.”

His warm hands found hers and held them, and he shifted closer, gazing at her in a way she was afraid to believe. Surely she was dreaming. Because she’d dreamed this—or something very like this—a million times before.

But he did not disappear when she blinked.

“I never saw you coming,” he whispered. “I looked up from the middle of my gray, dutiful life and there you were, Lucy. I had no idea how to handle it. I can’t possibly imagine the misery I put you through. I can never make up for it. If you want to leave me, you have every right and reason. I won’t fight you.”

Lucy could read the sincerity on his hard face, hear it in his voice. His strong hands clasped hers, but gently. She knew that if she pulled away, he would let her go immediately.

There was a part of her that wanted to do just that. A part of her that wanted nothing more than to hurt him. To make him pay. But that part was growing smaller by the second.

Because she loved him. Even after all he’d done, she loved him far more than she wanted his pain. Far more, even, than her own deep wounds. She had long believed that made her the worst kind of fool. But maybe, she thought now, just maybe love was bigger than foolishness, too.

“And what,” she asked, her voice the barest whisper, “if I don’t want to leave you, after all?”

Powerful emotion moved across his face then, making his beautiful eyes gleam silver. His hands tightened around hers.

“Then I will tell you that I love you,” he rasped out. “That I always have, from the first moment I met you. And I will never be ashamed of that again.”

She said his name and tasted salt, only then realizing that she was crying.

“I have never had any use for love,” he said urgently, hoarsely. “Marriage is supposed to be for political alliance. For power and greed. Love is for fairy tales.”

“And for us,” she whispered. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his forehead. “For us, Rafi.”

When she moved to his mouth, he met her. Their kisses were hesitant at first, then sweeter, hotter, longer. Lucy felt the fire build within her again, shot through this time with the wild joy that he loved her.

Rafi loves me.

She knew that life with this man would never be easy, but as long as he loved her, they could make it work. Would make it work.

And then there was no more thought, only sensation.

Much later, they lay stretched out in front of the fire in the shade of the makeshift Christmas tree he’d put together just for her. Rafi looked down into her face and shuddered slightly at how close he’d come to losing her.

“I don’t know how you will ever forgive me,” he said fiercely. “I will never forgive myself.”

Lucy smiled, her brown eyes shining with the love he did not deserve, the happiness on her lovely face humbling.

“You will have to work at it, I think,” she said, her voice light. She tangled her fingers in his hair, and drew him down to her. “Every day. It will be hard and difficult work, Rafi, but then, you are a very determined man. I have faith that someday, you will make it up to me in full.”

She was teasing, he knew, but he took her words with all the force of a blood oath. He met her gaze.

“I will,” he vowed. “Believe me, Lucy. I will.”

She searched his eyes for a moment, her own wide and gleaming, and then nodded. She smiled again.

“Then kiss me,” she whispered. “It’s Christmas.”

A Christmas Refuge

About the Author

REBECCA WINTERS, whose family of four children has now swelled to include five beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high alpine meadows full of wild flowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favourite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her Mills & Boon^® romance novels because writing is her passion, along with her family and church.

Rebecca loves to hear from her readers. If you wish to e-mail her, please visit her website at www.cleanromances.com.

Look for new novels from Rebecca in Mills & Boon^®’s Cherish^™ series.

CHAPTER ONE

Puerto d’Ara

A COLD winter sun glinted on the sign posted at the side of the treacherous snow-packed mountain road. Desidiero Pastrana, known to a few close friends as Des, glimpsed it just before the faded pink ball disappeared behind the majestic Pico d’Ara, which was 3,000 meters high. In the twinkling of an eye, light turned to dark. With Christmas only three days away, night fell fast over the Pyrenees.

Just after leaving the northern city of Jaca, where he’d been on business, Des had gotten that queasy sensation again. He hadn’t been feeling like himself for the past few days. It was probably something he’d eaten, or he’d come down with a cold. Either way, he was anxious to reach the year-round mountain resort village of Puerto d’Ara and call it a night.

Of all the hotels owned by the Pastrana family in the province of Aragon, he preferred the Posada d’Ara, a former 17th-century monastery that had since been converted into an inn. Only two kilometers from the border separating the Spanish and French Pyrenees, Des used it as a base to indulge his passion for climbing.

He was planning to do some winter camping and serious ice climbing over the next ten days. Then after New Year’s, he’d get back to work and sit down with Miguel Torrillas, the affable manager of the Posada d’Ara, to do the requisite end-of-year inventory. Des was the CEO of the Pastrana Corporation and known for his hands-on approach to running the company.

He was also known to his family for avoiding spending the holidays with them. He’d purposely arranged this trip so that he could skip Christmas with his family.

And, he thought, hopefully skip the reminders of last Christmas. A grimace crept over his dark Castilian features. At this time the year before, the woman he’d planned to marry had sued his corporation after he’d taken her climbing and she’d been mildly injured.

His fiancée hadn’t been a winter-sports person, but he’d wanted her to understand his passion for it. His skills could have compensated for her inexperience—but they couldn’t compensate for her utter refusal to heed his instructions while they’d been climbing.

After a few minutes on the mountain she’d suddenly told him she’d changed her mind and wanted to go back to the hotel. He’d asked her to wait for him, but in a huff she’d started off without him and slipped. He’d gotten to her as quickly as he could, managed to extricate her ankle from where she’d wedged it and rushed her to the clinic.

The doctor had said that it wasn’t a major injury and she should just stay off her leg for a few days to avoid the pain until it was gone. She’d left the clinic without speaking to Des.

A week later the corporate attorney for the Pastranas showed Des the petition from her attorney wanting restitution and compensation for his client’s injury. Des had been incredulous. His fiancée was suing him? He’d asked her for an explanation, convinced it had to be a mistake.

“It’s nothing personal against you, amado,” she’d said with a winsome smile. “The insurance will cover it.”

The calculating side of her nature shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did, killing any feelings he’d had for her. He’d broken off the engagement, and no amount of winsome smiles, tears or begging could move him to take her back. His best friend, Raoul, a mountaineer from Chamonix, France, with whom he’d shared so much over the last decade, had told him to be thankful for what had happened. It had saved Des from making the biggest mistake of his life.

Des agreed it’d been a miraculous escape, but it had shredded his trust and had changed the way he viewed women. They had been a source of pleasure for him, but no longer. Now that the Christmas season had rolled around once again, he wanted no part of females or festivities.

Raoul was the only person who knew what was going on inside him. His French friend carried his own brand of pain after losing his wife some years ago and more recently his brother. Raoul had also wanted to avoid the holidays so he’d suggested they take a climbing trip to South America.

Relieved to have a plan of escape, Des had been working all hours of the day and night, making his rounds of the family-owned hotels in preparation for the upcoming trip. But a few weeks ago Raoul, whose family owned and ran the legendary Broussard Alpine Guide Club in the French Alps, had called to tell him his father wasn’t doing well. Jules’s asthma was acting up and the family was worried about him.

Raoul couldn’t say how long it would take his father to get over this latest flare-up and in case it turned into something worse, he’d feared making definitive plans with Des only to have to cancel on him later. Though Des had been disappointed, he understood. In truth he wasn’t fit company for anyone, let alone the man who was the closest thing he had to a brother. Before he’d left his headquarters in Zaragoza yesterday, he’d been uncustomarily short with his second-in-command when the man had suggested—in the most tactful way, of course—that Des should take a month off and really enjoy himself. And just today the manager of the hotel in Jaca had asked, very politely, if Des could hold off on their meeting until after he returned from his winter holiday.

One more hairpin turn and Puerto d’Ara came into view, with its ski lifts and hotels. Approximately 1,800 people lived here year-round, making their living off tourists. He took the perimeter road to avoid the resort center’s shops and bars. Just past the clinic with its large red cross on the roof was the small monastery facing the Pico d’Ara. It was a quirky masterpiece of stone and beams with different levels, nooks and crannies, perfect for its conversion to a family-friendly inn.

He kept his own apartment on the ground floor, its only entrance an exterior one around the side. No doubt at one time it had served as a cell for a priest who’d wanted complete isolation. Since Des had been living the life of a monk this past year, the monastic atmosphere suited his foul mood very well.

The parking lot outside the inn was full. Des wasn’t surprised; business was always good here. He pulled to a stop in the staff parking and shut off the motor, relieved to have reached his destination. Still having no appetite and feeling a bit off, he decided to go straight to bed. Though his manager was expecting him, tomorrow would be soon enough to unload all his gear and let Miguel know he’d arrived.

“All-ee,” a young voice cried out before knocking on the door again.

Allison Bonner loved the way the eight-year-old daughter of the Torrillas family pronounced her name.

She finished putting her light brown hair in a ponytail and hurried across the hotel room to open the door. “Good morning, Maricela.”

“Good morning.” They gave each other a big hug. “Mama says to come and eat before it’s all gone.”

Breakfast in the cozy inn was served from seven to ten. Ally checked her watch. It was close to ten now.

“I’m almost ready.”

“You look pretty.”

“Well, thank you.” Ally’s navy-blue cable-knit sweater and jeans were nothing to write home about. Maybe it was the mango-colored lipstick she’d put on after her shower to add some color. “So do you. I especially like that top.”

The girl was wearing a colorful pullover of geometric designs in blues and reds, over red pants.

Maricela beamed. “Thanks.”

Inez, Maricela’s mother, had urged her twins to speak English with Ally. It was good practice for them and easier for Ally, who knew very little Spanish except for a few words and phrases.

“You’re welcome,” Ally said.

The girl’s mother had put Maricela’s dark hair in braids, Ally saw, and she looked adorable in the new cowboy hat and boots Ally had brought her from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Maricela and her twin brother, Nuncio, were smart, wonderful children with shiny deep brown eyes and beautiful features like their mother’s.

More than a year ago Miguel and Inez had brought their family to the Teton Range in Wyoming for a vacation. They’d stayed at her family’s famous dude ranch outside Afton.

The Bonners were a large family. Ally and her siblings helped her parents and grandparents run the ranch and also acted as guides for their guests.

From the first moment Ally had met the charming, attractive Torrillas family, the twins had helped fill part of the empty space in Ally’s aching heart. At the time, she’d still been recovering from her fiancé’s death in a tragic rafting accident on the Snake River and trying not to think about the wedding that had been planned for the next month.

During the two weeks of the family’s stay in September, Ally had spent most of her time showing the children around. They rode horses and fished. Hiked. Because the Torrillas family lived year-round in the Spanish Pyrenees and were no strangers to mountains, Ally, who was a trained mountaineer, took the family partway up the Grand Teton, which knifed almost 14,000 feet in the rarified air.

Those experiences had cemented their relationship. When the family had had to return to Spain, they’d begged Ally to come for a vacation anytime she wanted and be their guest. She’d thanked them for the gracious offer and had actually planned to come this past summer, only certain unexpected detours in life had prevented her from traveling until now.

Her family wasn’t happy about Ally being gone over the holidays, but she’d planned it this way on purpose. Christmas was the last thing on her mind. Though her cancer was in remission, there was always the possibility it would come back. From now on she intended to live life to the fullest and defy the odds.

After tugging on her own well-worn cowboy boots, which added a little more height to her five-foot-six frame, Ally left the room with Maricela at her side. They followed the stone passageway that led around to the timbered dining room with its vaulted ceilings. The children had told her when she arrived that it had once been a refectory for the Benedictine monks. The children knew all of the inn’s fascinating history.

A tall, brightly decorated Christmas tree stood near the enormous fireplace in the dining room. It threw out heat while a few guests dressed for skiing were still lingering at the long tables with their food before hitting the slopes. She spotted Nuncio in his cowboy hat sitting at the far end of one of the tables talking to his father and a male guest. Ally was glad the Western gear had been such a hit with the children.