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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.

Noelle sank onto her bed, exhausted by her own emotional wrangling. Anger was so much easier to deal with than doubt, yet she could not even cling to it.

You loved me once.

She had. At least, she thought she had, but had she really even known him? How could the tender, gentle man she’d loved have turned into a cold, unfeeling brute as soon as their vows were said? And what of the man he was now, and surely always had been?

I’ve done too many things already I could be arrested for. One more won’t matter.

Noelle didn’t want to think what he had meant by that. She’d learned, since the annulment, that Tannous Enterprises was said to be corrupt. She had harboured vague ideas of white-collar crime, had wondered if Ammar had been involved. She’d assumed, in an effort to gain some much-needed distance, that it was just more proof she’d never really known him. More evidence that any consideration or tenderness he’d shown her in those first few weeks had been nothing but a charade.

Now she wondered. Today she’d seen in Ammar a glimmer of the man she’d once loved, and it terrified her. What if that man—the tender man she’d once loved—was the real Ammar?

It would be so much simpler if she hated him. If he made her hate him. And surely she had enough reason to … and yet. And yet.

She didn’t.

Eventually she fell into bed and a restless, troubled sleep. When dawn broke she felt no more refreshed, and had no more answers.

She showered and dressed, this time in a pair of jeans and a pale pink sweater she’d found in the wardrobe. They were too big, but not so much that she couldn’t wear them. She cinched the jeans with a wide leather belt and rolled the sleeves up on the sweater. Had Ammar himself bought the clothes for her? It felt strangely intimate to imagine him picking things out for her, knowing her size. Her old size, at least, before she’d surrendered to Arche’s ideal of feminine beauty, which was stick-thin and relentlessly plucked and manicured.

She opened the shutters on her bedroom window and blinked in the glare of the morning sun. The sky was a hard, bright blue, the desert a stark and endless stretch of sand. She could see nothing but sand and rock and sky. She swallowed hard and closed the shutters again.

I want us to be husband and wife.

His voice had invaded her dreams, and all night as she’d tossed and turned she’d endured a procession of memories she’d been trying to banish for years. Those poignant, tender days in London, when Ammar had seemed like a different man. The man she’d fallen in love with.

Well, he wasn’t that man now. And, more importantly, she wasn’t that woman, that naive girl who believed in love and wanted marriage and babies and a house in the country. She was a different person, stronger, harder and definitely more independent. She’d spent the last ten years building her career and making sure she needed no one. She sure as hell didn’t need Ammar, and some time towards dawn she’d realised the best way to convince him to let her go was to show him just how different she was.

Resolutely Noelle headed downstairs in search of Ammar. She wandered through the marble foyer and several sparely elegant reception rooms before she found him in the back, in the kitchen. He stood by a floor-to-ceiling window that framed a sweep of sand, dressed in a worn grey T-shirt and faded jeans. His feet were bare and he held a mug of coffee as he stared out at the desert, a faint frown wrinkling his forehead, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. For a stunned second everything in Noelle contracted with longing and regret. This was what she had wanted so desperately. A normal life, a normal marriage. Mornings with sunshine and the scent of fresh coffee and a hello kiss.

Well, she had two of those things today. Definitely not the third. She cleared her throat. ‘Good morning.’

Ammar turned, his expression lightening a little as he took in her outfit. ‘Not so bad,’ he said, gesturing to her clothes. ‘The fit.’

Noelle nodded tersely. She did not know how to act. Fighting every statement exhausted her, but being civil felt like a surrender.

‘Coffee?’ Ammar asked, and she nodded again. It seemed easier not to speak at all. She watched him move to the kitchen counter and pour coffee from the chrome pot. ‘Do you still take cream and two sugars?’

‘No,’ Noelle said, and her voice sounded harsher than she intended. ‘I drink it black.’

He arched one eyebrow in silent question and handed her her undoctored coffee. Noelle cupped her hands around its warmth, wondering how to begin. Ammar seemed different this morning, not approachable exactly, but less autocratic. She saw his laptop was open on the table, to a world news website. The moment felt, bizarrely and unbearably, normal.

‘When did you stop taking cream and sugar?’

‘About five years ago, when I started working for Arche.’

‘Arche?’

‘The department store I work for, as a buyer.’ She glanced pointedly at the diamond-encrusted watch on her wrist, given to her by her father on her twenty-first birthday. ‘I’m twenty-three minutes late for work right now, with no explanation. You might cost me my job, Ammar.’

He frowned. ‘Working for a store, buying things? You used to work with books.’

‘I changed careers.’ Changed lives. The days spent in a dusty bookshop losing herself in someone else’s happily-ever-after were over.

‘When?’

‘Ten years ago,’ she said shortly, even though that wasn’t quite true. It had been more like eight, but all those old dreams had died a quick death the night Ammar had pushed her away.

She’d turned away from them deliberately: a home, a family. A little house outside Paris and a bookshop of her own. She’d told him all about it, how the shop would have a little café, and toys for children, and original art for sale on the walls. ‘A bit of everything,’ he’d said, smiling, and her heart had felt so full.

Now she clamped down on all those memories and fixed him with a narrowed gaze. ‘You don’t know me any more, Ammar. I’m different and—’

‘So am I.’

The breath rushed out of her lungs as she stared at him. ‘What?’

‘Different,’ he repeated. ‘At least, I am trying to be.’

She saw the corner of his mouth quirk upwards in a wry, self-deprecating smile and she felt that savage twist of longing inside her, making her remember when she didn’t want to. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said flatly, even though her heart was insisting she did.

‘No?’ He took a sip of coffee and half-turned away from her. ‘Maybe it is impossible, anyway.’

In profile, Noelle could not keep from noticing—and staring at—the hard line of his jaw, the faint shadow of stubble on his cheek, the subtle pout of his lips. All of it together made her breath shorten and an overwhelming longing clutched at her chest. Lust and love. She’d once wanted him in every way a woman wanted a man. Protector, lover, friend. And now? She still wanted him. Her body yearned for him, her heart remembered. No. She set her mug down on the table. ‘You really do need to let me go.’

He turned back to her. ‘Do you like working for this Arche?’

‘Like it? Yes. Of course. I mean—it’s my job. My career.’

‘And you enjoy this career?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

His mouth quirked upwards again, ever so slightly. Almost a smile, and she felt another wave of longing sweep desolately over her. I wanted to make you smile. Why wouldn’t you let me? ‘Because,’ he told her, ‘it’s been ten years since we last saw each other and, like you said, we are different. A few casual questions could be a start to getting to know you, Noelle.’

‘A perfectly understandable assumption, if I was here under normal circumstances, wanting to get to know you.’ Despite the coffee and the sunshine and the laptop open on the table, this was not a normal situation. Not remotely, even if for a sorrowful second she wanted it to be. ‘You are conveniently forgetting that you kidnapped me—’

‘You’re not letting me forget it.’ His voice had turned hard, reminding her just who she was dealing with.

‘Why should I?’ Her gaze clashed with his in angry challenge. He looked implacable, standing there, his stony expression giving nothing away. He didn’t answer her and she let out a long, low breath. ‘Ammar, look. I understand that you went through a very traumatic experience recently, what with the helicopter crash and losing your father. I know that it probably made you think about your life, and maybe wonder or even regret what happened before. About us.’ She faltered because, although his expression hadn’t changed, he had gone very still—not that unusual for him, really, and yet there was something predatory about that stillness. Something almost frightening. ‘And so maybe that’s made you think you want … that we should …’

‘Get back together?’ Ammar filled in softly. She nodded, biting her lip, half-regretting that she’d started down this path. She wasn’t sure she believed it, even if it would be convenient to do so. ‘Spare me the psychoanalysis, Noelle. That’s the last thing I need from you.’ He turned away, gazing out of the window at the desert. A lone rock jutted towards the sky, seeming to pierce its hard blueness. ‘You were once prepared to spend the rest of your life with me,’ he observed, his back still to her, his tone quite detached. ‘Can you honestly not spare me a few days now?’

How, Noelle wondered, had he turned the tables on her so neatly? She felt as if she were the one who was being petty and selfish, while he—

She took a deep breath. Focus. Focus on her goal, which was getting out of here. ‘Is that all you want?’

He turned around, his amber eyes seeming to blaze with predatory intent. ‘It’s a start.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Maybe I’ll be the one who is Scheherazade in this tale.’ She shook her head slowly, not understanding. ‘Give me three days,’ Ammar explained softly. ‘It’s Friday. Stay through the weekend at least. You’ll have only missed two days of work.’

Noelle felt her heart do a funny sort of flip, a somersault in her chest. Was it from fear—or anticipation? ‘And then?’ she asked in a low voice.

‘And then you can leave me.’

Leave him. It sounded so deliberate, so cold, and yet she’d done it once before. She’d fled from him in the hotel in Rome, and gone back to her family’s chateau in Lyon. Her only contact with him after that had been through her father’s lawyer, requesting an annulment based on non-consummation of their marriage. He’d signed it and sent it back, and that had been all.

She needed to leave him again. Leave now. She should insist on being taken back to Paris right now, this very instant. If she were as strong as she’d thought she was, she would coldly threaten him with lawsuits and litigation. She’d reel off her rights and not back down for one second. But maybe she wasn’t that strong after all—as strong as she’d wanted to be—because her single day of defiance had sapped her energy, and even her will.

You loved me once.

Yes, she had, and it was the memory of that love, painful as it was, that made her slowly nod. If she stayed, perhaps she’d get the closure she’d been seeking for so long. And not just closure, but answers. This could be, she knew, her opportunity to finally understand why Ammar had changed after their wedding, what had led him to reject her so humiliatingly and utterly.

Yet did she really want to open that Pandora’s box of memories, and the dark tangle of emotions that would surely erupt with it?

Noelle swallowed. She wouldn’t answer that yet. She just needed to accept. And her acceptance would be her ticket out of here. ‘All right, Ammar, I’ll stay until Sunday. But then you’re flying me back to Paris, and I’ll be back at work by nine a.m. on Monday.’

‘I suppose that’s fair.’

‘Fair?’ Noelle heard the bitterness spiking her voice, ten years of bitterness and memories and pain. ‘There’s nothing fair about it.’

Ammar nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps not,’ he agreed. ‘Life is never very fair.’ He turned back to the kitchen counter and stirred something on the stove. ‘Come, sit down and eat. You need fattening up.’

‘I’m fine the way I am,’ Noelle said sharply. She was so prickly. Three days and Ammar probably wouldn’t even want to be with her any more. A thought which should have brought relief, and yet irritatingly didn’t.

‘I agree,’ Ammar said in his calm, measured way. ‘Perhaps I am the one who needs fattening up.’

Noelle gave a small smile in spite of her every intention to remain composed, even cold. ‘You have lost weight,’ she remarked, although to her eyes he still looked lithe and powerful, the worn T-shirt hugging the sculpted lines of his chest and shoulders, the faded jeans riding low on his hips. She sat down at the table. ‘Was it awful?’ she asked quietly. ‘The crash?’

Ammar shrugged as he served her a fried egg and several rashers of bacon. She used to love the full fry-up back when she lived in London, but she hadn’t had more than black coffee and maybe a croissant for breakfast in years. ‘I don’t remember much of the actual crash.’

‘What happened?’

He sat opposite her with his own plate of eggs and bacon. ‘The helicopter engine failed. I don’t know why. Perhaps—’ He paused, gave a slight shake of his head, and then resumed. ‘In any case, we were going down and my father insisted I take the parachute.’

‘There was only one?’

‘Yes, and I think it was for situations like that one. He wanted to make sure he would be the one to survive.’

She stared at him, horrified. ‘But that’s … that’s criminal!’ The word seemed to remain there, suspended, between them.

‘My father,’ Ammar said quietly, ‘was a criminal.’

Noelle didn’t answer. She really didn’t want to know just how criminal Balkri Tannous had been. Or his son. Swallowing, she said slowly, ‘But he did give it to you.’

‘Yes.’

‘A change of heart?’ She heard the faint note of cynicism in her voice, and knew Ammar heard it, too. He gazed at her sombrely.

‘I like to think so. He’d been diagnosed with cancer a few months before. Terminal, and it made him think. Reassess his priorities.’

‘Is that what happened to you?’ She still sounded cynical.

‘I suppose it did. When you’re faced with the very real possibility of your own death, you begin to think seriously about what is important.’

Was he actually implying, Noelle wondered, that she was important? ‘So what happened?’ she asked, wanting to keep the conversation focused on facts. ‘You parachuted into the sea?’

‘Yes, although I don’t remember that at all. I hit the water hard and the next thing I knew I was lying on a beach on a tiny deserted island, somewhere, ironically, near Alhaja.’ He frowned, his gaze sliding into remembrance. ‘My father owns—owned, I should say—all the land in that part of the Mediterranean, and boats steer clear of it. I was lucky to be found at all.’

‘And then?’

‘Then some poor fishermen took me to the coast of Tunisia, where I battled a fever—from this, I think—’ he pointed to the scar on his face ‘—for several weeks before I finally came to and realised what had happened.’

‘And then you came and found me.’

‘Yes.’

Noelle stared down at her plate. Somehow, without even realising it, she’d eaten all the bacon and eggs. And she was still hungry. Ammar pushed the toast rack towards her. ‘Here.’

Feeling a bit self-conscious, she took a piece of toast and began to butter it. ‘And what will you do now? You worked for your father before—’

‘Now I will work for myself.’ He sounded so flat, so final, and yet strangely triumphant, too.

‘As CEO of Tannous Enterprises?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will it be much different, being the boss?’ she asked hesitantly, and Ammar leaned closer to her, his eyes blazing.

‘It will be completely different.’

Noelle felt a flare of curiosity but didn’t ask any more questions. She shouldn’t have asked any questions at all; it suggested an intimacy, a desire for intimacy that she had no intention of feeling.

Or revealing … because she knew then with a rush of regret that she did feel it. She still felt something for Ammar, even if it was only an ember lost in the ashes of their former relationship.

How would she get through the next three days without it fanning into flame? For she knew she was weak and even wanting when it came to him. Already she had started to soften. She rose from the table so quickly she upset her half-drunk cup of coffee. Ammar righted it. Noelle felt her heart beating hard.

‘I’m tired. I think I’ll go back to my room.’

‘Very well.’ He rose also, gazing at her calmly.

Noelle stared at him, swallowed the impulse to say something stupid. Something she was afraid she might mean. She’d enjoyed sitting here in the sun talking to him far too much. She’d liked feeling it was possible, or even normal, to be relaxed and open with him.

Swallowing hard, she nodded a jerky farewell and left the room.

Ammar watched Noelle hurry from the kitchen with a pang of frustrated regret. For a few moments there they’d had a normal conversation, and it had felt so easy. Amazingly, wonderfully easy, for he didn’t like speaking of the crash or his father or any of his past. His life. Yet how could he win Noelle back if he didn’t share any of that? Even he knew enough about love and relationships to understand it couldn’t happen in a vacuum of ignorance. Yet sometimes, he acknowledged darkly, ignorance was, if not bliss, then certainly better.

Sighing impatiently, Ammar pushed away from the table. The day stretched emptily in front of him, for he had no doubt Noelle was going to hide in her room for as long as she could. He never should have suggested she stay only through the weekend; he needed a lot longer than three days to convince her to become his wife again. He needed a miracle.

Pushing aside such dark thoughts, he took his laptop and went to his study to work. He closed his eyes briefly at the sight of the endless emails that had landed in his inbox overnight. Everyone wanted to know which way he would turn. If he would follow his father’s lead—or his brother’s.

In the weeks after the crash, Khalis had taken over Tannous Enterprises, even though their father had disinherited him fifteen years ago, when Khalis had realised the extent of Balkri Tannous’s corruption and immorality and walked away. He’d started his own IT firm, made a life for himself in America while Ammar had stayed. Became his father’s right-hand man and flunky and carried out all his odious orders. Sold his soul.