The Sheikh's Arranged Marriage: The only thing worse than falling in love with the man she'd married was knowing he would never feel the same... (21 page)

Looking back, he’d suspected who she was even then. Something about those wide set almond eyes had haunted him for years, since her disappearance, but he had ignored his gut. He hadn’t wanted to spoil the warmth that had flooded through him at first meeting her. Their connection was electric. She was enchanting. He had been selfish and let his need to possess her override what his behaviour ought to have been. Even now, three months later, he hadn’t made the phone call to alert his cousin that Cassandra had been located.

It went without saying that they could have no future. Knowing what he did about her, he shouldn’t even want one. Though it was wrong on so many levels, he couldn’t give her up yet. She was like a drug to him. A delightful, sexy, intoxicating drug. He leaned back in the leather dining chair and groaned as he remembered the passionate night they’d just shared. He’d made his first million before he was twenty
one, and before thirty, he was a billionaire. Even without his wealth, bedding women had always been an easy sport for him. He took care to choose partners who were as little interested in commitment as he was, and he enjoyed the purely physical connection.

Yes, he’d known many beautiful women, but Cassandra was different. He frowned a little. She was a liar, and unfathomably selfish, though she’d never been anything other than perfection itself with him. How many people had been suckered in by her act in the past? Benedict Savarin was not going to be another one of them. He didn’t quite know why’d he’d let their affair go so far, but it would have to stop, and soon. What he knew her to be capable of was everything he despised – dishonesty, disloyalty and unkindness. Again, he thought of her beautiful face, bewitchingly poised above his as they’d made love only hours before, and his stomach tightened. He would miss her. Hell, he’d ache for the rest of his life, knowing she was out there somewhere and he couldn’t possess her. But the woman he had been falling in lust with was not the real her at all, was it? It was all an act, and he knew that beyond a doubt.

His mobile phone vibrated noisily against the table, jarring his thoughts, and he answered it abruptly. It was a journalist calling for comment on the article in that morning’s paper.

“Which paper?” He frowned, more interested in how the reporter had got a hold of his private mobile number. He gazed across at the pile of unread broadsheets spread over the table.

She named the most reputable national paper. “Front page of the business section.” The journalist’s tone was clipped, no-nonsense.

Suspicion unfurled unpleasantly in his mind as he stepped over to the newspaper Cass had discarded in such a state. He flicked through the pages intently and froze as he reached the business section. The picture in the centre was impossible to miss. He had forgotten all about those photographers who’d toured the site. He’d been late for a date with Cass and all he’d been able to think about was getting the press commitments out of the way so that he could see her again.

A grainy version of his own face stared back at him from the fold line of the paper and he felt a wave of realisation wash over him.

She had seen this. His name, his full name, was clearly printed beneath the photograph. The logo of his company was emblazoned across his yellow hard hat. “Hell,” he muttered.

“Do you have a comment, Benedict, on what tearing down a hundred year old building will mean for the area?” The journalist seized the perceived opening created by his shocked silence.

“Call my press office,” he bit out, scanning the article with distaste. His mind worked quickly, jumping from the photograph, to Cassandra’s abrupt departure. She knew he knew. The situation was in danger of spinning out of his control, and he would not let that happen. As the journalist was about to disconnect the call, “Hang on a minute. Do you write society pieces?”

“Society pieces?” The woman asked, her interest piqued.

“You know. Gossip. About celebrities.” He clarified, sinking back into his seat and staring out at the water, unseeing. He wasn’t proud of what he was about to do, but his choices had been limited by this unpredictable chain of events.

When Benedict arrived at Cassandra’s apartment only twenty minutes after disconnecting the call, a handful of paparazzi had already set up outside the security gate.

“Hey, do you live here?” One of the assembled photographers in a backwards turned baseball cap accosted him as Benedict went to swipe the security card Cass had given him over a month ago.

“Why do you ask?” Benedict’s tone was non-commital.

“Is it true?” The kid shifted from foot to foot and cast the building a look laced with doubt.

“Is what true?”

“Does Lady Cassandra Hervey live here? You know, that British heiress that disappeared into thin air a few years back.” His tone was incredulous. “I don’t reckon she does. My editor likes to give herself a laugh by sending me out on time wasting assignments every now and again.”

Benedict smiled wolfishly, revealing a row of even, white teeth. “This isn’t a waste of your time.”

Just like that, he’d done it. He’d cast the dye, and Cassandra would never forgive him.

He shouldn’t have cared. He’d known all along that their relationship couldn’t last. However, it gave him surprisingly little pleasure to expose her now. His mouth set in a grim line, he didn’t bother knocking on the front door of their small, cheery apartment. He inserted the keycard and pushed it open.

Cassandra spun around, and when she looked at him, her violet eyes were wide with the pain of betrayal.

“You did this.” She whispered, nodding in the direction of the kitchen window, from which she had a birdseye view of the assembled photographers. She was shaking like a leaf.

He nodded, his expression unrepentant.

“Why?” She crossed her arms and the action dragged his attention to her heaving swell of cleavage. He fought the surge of attraction that was, even now, besieging his limbs. This was not the time. Damn it, with them, it was
always
the time.

His black eyes glittered with what she perceived as cruelty. “The certainty of my belief that you would run away again left me little choice.”

She glanced guiltily to the floor beside her and his eyes followed the telltale action. There, in the middle of the kitchen, was a Louis Vuitton suitcase, stuffed full, no doubt packed in haste.

Cherie, tiny, with mousy brown hair and a permanently worried expression, came to stand beside her best friend. “What’s this all about, Ben?” She asked, wrapping an arm around Cassandra’s slender waist.

Cassandra shot him a panicked expression. “Let’s talk in my bedroom,” she said, her tone pleading with him.

Resolutely, he narrowed his gaze. “Why, Cass? Don’t you think it’s time for your friends to know who you really are?”

Cassandra’s eyes were huge in the middle of her face. She shook her head firmly, her lips were pressed together with desperation.

Cherie’s expression assumed an even greater look of worry, if that was possible. “Of course we know who she is. So do you. What is going on between the two of you?” She demanded, looking from one to the other.

“Don’t do this to me, please.” Cassandra intoned flatly. “I don’t want to go back.”

Her request fell on deaf ears. “Peter and Alyssia are boarding a flight as we speak. Your father is, as you may imagine, anxious to be reunited with you.”

She could feel a sob welling inside of her and she dug her fingernails into her palms to hold her emotions in check. “You had no right!” She reached down and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. “I won’t be here when they arrive. I won’t.”

“Like hell you won’t be.” He crossed the room, every step he took radiating tension and determination. He lifted her slight frame over his shoulder with ease.

“Put me down!” She cried in shock, pummelling his back with her small fists. Cherie watched on in complete shock. She’d known Ben since almost as soon as Kate had started dating him, and he’d always seemed wonderful. Sexy as all hell, and besotted with her mate. This barbaric he-man act was bizarre, and totally out of the blue.

“Put her down or I’ll, er, call the police,” Cherie said tentatively, waving her mobile in the air to add gravitas to the weak statement.

“Good. Tell them Lady Cassandra Hervey has been hiding out at your house. She’s wanted for questioning over a million pound theft.” He paused, letting the words sink in to Cherie and the two men Cassandra lived with, who had emerged from the lounge to investigate the noise. “What is the penalty for harbouring a fugitive?” He pondered aloud, almost enjoying the panic in the room. Even Cass, over his shoulder, had gone limp at his words.

“Lady who?” Timothy asked uncertainly, rubbing a hand through his cropped, bleached hair.

“Lady Cassandra Hervey.” His laugh was without humour, and it left Cassandra with a coldness in her spine. “Allow me to introduce you to the esteemed Lady Cassandra herself. Oh, she’s just like you really. Only her mother was a Duchess. Her father’s a duke, and she has a trust fund of three hundred million pounds in her name. In her spare time, she likes to moonlight as a high class jewellery thief. Other than that, she’s just the same girl you thought you’ve always known.”

Cherie’s face drained of colour as she absorbed this information. “It can’t be...” She shook her head uncertainly. She and Kate had first bonded over their crummy university budgets. They’d shared secrets over tins of baked beans and leftover sandwiches. They had gone halves in clothes so they could dress fashionably for half the cost. Her eyes had a sheen of hurt as she looked at her best friend. A woman she apparently didn’t really know anything about.

“Cassandra will be staying with me from here on.” Benedict’s tone was dictatorial and no one dared object. They were all too stunned to intervene. “It is no longer safe for Lady Cassandra to live here, now that her identity is known.”

Cassandra kicked him in the shin. “Whose bloody fault is that?” Unlike the others, her temper was soaring and her ability to give voice to it was rampant.

She didn’t see the rakish grin that spread across his face. “You and I could have fun living under the same roof.”

“Like hell,” She retaliated crossly. Then, trying a different tact, “Let me go and I’ll disappear. Problem solved.”

“Not quite, my dear Lady Cassandra. There’s still the question of my cousin’s missing jewellery, and your father is, understandably, eager to see you after four years apart.”

“Put, me, down,” She demanded, her voice filled with all the haughty assurance of one born to her position. Benedict merely laughed.

“Timothy, perhaps you’d be so kind as to carry the Lady’s suitcase to the garage?” He didn’t wait to see that the flat mate was doing as instructed. He didn’t need to. Benedict Savarin was used to being obeyed, and he fully expected to be in this instance as well.

She was medium height but with a slender build, and he carried her easily down the stairwell, ignoring her shrill cries of protest, until they reached her small, beat up Ford. He put her down but kept within easy reach of her. “Keys?” He demanded with an air of calm authority.

Cass, her cheeks flaming, feeling impotent and furious, handed them to him with a snarl. Her old car didn’t have a button to unlock it, so when he paused to insert the key into the driver door, she seized her opportunity. She brought her knee up to deliver a swift kick to his groin, but he was too fast. He’d grown up on the back alleys of outer Paris and he had the street fighting skills to show for it. He sidestepped her in a nanosecond, and she lost her balance, falling to the ground awkwardly. “Bloody hell,” she exclaimed, feeling pain shoot up from her ankle.

Benedict crouched down on his haunches, his face impatient and unsympathetic. “You’re fine.” He said after a cursory examination of her ankle. “It’s just a sprain. Some would call it justice.” He tacked on with a sarcastic drawl.

She looked pleadingly up at Timothy, but he obviously wanted to get as far away as he could from the situation unfolding. “Call us, to let us know you’re okay,” her flatmate said as he dropped the suitcase and loped back towards the bank of stairs.

“You’ve ruined everything,” she accused bitterly, angrily shaking off Benedict’s attempts to help her up. Her ankle was miserably painful but she refused to let him see just how excruciating it was to hobble over to her side of the car. Given the circumstances, she felt she had little option but to fall in with his plan. For now, at least.

“It seems to me you did a pretty good job of that yourself, the day you chose to steal from your stepmother and flee to the other side of the world.” He condemned harshly, opening the front passenger door for her. She shrugged off his hand as he went to guide her into the seat. She felt churlish, humiliated and betrayed.

He really thought she was a thief.

His accusation exploded in her brain. This whole time they’d been dating and making love and discovering each other, he had believed the worst of her. They had been almost inseparable for three months, but he’d just been using their relationship to keep tabs on her. She bit down on her lower lip. He had suavely convinced her that he felt just as she did, all the while he believed her capable of criminal behaviour. A burning need to throw the truth in his face festered, but she couldn’t do it. The lie she’d kept for four years held her silent. 

If it had been anyone else she was protecting, she might instead have chosen self-preservation. But wild horses wouldn’t let Cass betray Nanny Kline. No one else would understand why a trustworthy family employee, a woman in her late forties, had suddenly developed a penchant for kleptomania. No, Nanny Kline’s secret was safe with Cass, and would be until the day she died.