The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection. Kate Hardy

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      But before she could answer, a silky and authoritative answer came from behind him.

      ‘I’m afraid not.’

      Livvy didn’t need to hear the deeply accented voice to know it was Saladin. She should have realised he’d walked in because the pub had suddenly gone quiet and even the woman doing the karaoke had stopped singing as she stared at him incredulously. But who could blame her? Powerful olive-skinned sheikhs wearing dark cashmere weren’t exactly at a premium around these parts.

      Livvy put her tomato juice down on the table with shaking fingers as the conversation all around them took on a sudden roar of interest.

      ‘How did you get here?’ she demanded, her heart starting to race. ‘You’re in Jazratan.’

      ‘Obviously, I’m not. I flew in today and came here by helicopter,’ he answered.

      Her face remained unwelcoming, but she kept it that way. Why had he followed her and why was he here on her territory, when she was just starting out on a long journey to forget him? ‘What do you want?’

      ‘There are three things I want,’ he said grimly. ‘And the first involves having a conversation, which won’t be possible with all this noise going on. So can we go outside, Livvy? Please?’

      She opened her mouth to say that she didn’t want to go anywhere with him, except that was a blatant lie and she suspected he would see right through it. And he was asking in the kind of voice she’d never heard him use before. But even so...

      ‘It’s raining,’ she objected.

      ‘You can sit in my car.’

      ‘No, Saladin,’ she said fiercely. ‘You can sit in my car, and you can have precisely ten minutes.’

      He didn’t look overjoyed at the suggestion but he didn’t object as he followed her into the blustery and rainy night. Outside an enormous limousine was parked with a burly bodyguard standing beside it, but Livvy marched straight past it towards her own little car, feeling inordinately pleased at the almost helpless shrug that Saladin directed at the guard.

      But the moment he removed a sock from the passenger seat—what was that doing there?—and got in beside her, she regretted her decision. Because the limousine would have been better than this. It was bigger, for a start, and there wouldn’t be this awful sense of the man she most wanted to touch being within touching range...and being completely off limits.

      ‘So what’s the second thing?’ she questioned, in a voice that sounded miraculously calm. ‘How did you know I was here?’

      ‘I had someone watching your house who was instructed to follow you,’ he said unapologetically. ‘When I arrived, they told me you were still here. It was at that point that a ball of fur hurled itself out of nowhere and decided to start attacking my ankles.’ He grimaced. ‘Your cat doesn’t like me.’

      ‘Probably not. I got her from the rescue centre.’ She shot him a defiant look. ‘She was ill-treated by a man as a kitten and she’s never forgotten it.’

      There were plenty of parallels between the woman and the cat, Saladin thought. Livvy had been ill-treated by a man, too, and it had made her wary. And he hadn’t exactly done a lot to try to repair her damaged image of the opposite sex, had he? He had treated her as if she was disposable. As if she could be replaced. And wasn’t it time he addressed that?

      He looked at her in the dim light of the scruffy little car, his gaze taking in an unremarkable raincoat and the fiery hair, which the wind had whipped into untidy strands that were falling around her face. She was wearing too much make-up. He’d never seen her in such bright lipstick before and it didn’t suit her, and yet he couldn’t ever remember feeling such a raw and urgent sense of desire as he did right now. Was that because she had shown the strength of character to reject him—to walk away from the half-hearted relationship he’d given her? Because by doing that she had earned his respect as well as making him realise that they were equals.

      ‘I miss you, Livvy,’ he said softly.

      He saw a flicker of surprise in the depths of her eyes before her face resumed that stony expression.

      ‘The sex, do you mean?’ she questioned sharply. ‘Surely you can get that with someone else?’

      ‘Of course I miss the sex,’ he bit out. ‘And I don’t want to get it with anyone else. There are other things I miss, too. Talking, for one.’

      ‘I’m sure there are many people who would be only too happy to talk to you, Saladin. People who would hang on to your every word.’

      ‘But that’s the whole point. I don’t want someone hanging on my every word. I want someone who will give back as good as she gets.’

      ‘I want doesn’t always get,’ she responded, infuriatingly.

      ‘I miss seeing the magic you worked on my horse,’ he continued resolutely. And on me, he thought. And on me. ‘I want you to come back to Jazratan with me.’

      It was as if that single sentence had changed something. As if she’d removed the stony mask from her freckly face so that he could see the sudden glitter of anger in her amber eyes. ‘And how far are you prepared to go to get what you want?’ she demanded. ‘How many people are you prepared to manipulate just so that Saladin Al Mektala can get his own way?’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘Excuse me?’

      Angrily, she punched her fist on the steering wheel. ‘I’ve just had an email from Alison Clark, who you probably don’t even remember. She was the woman who was due to spend Christmas here with her polo friends, before you decided you needed me in Jazratan. The group who miraculously decided not to come at the last minute and to spend their Christmas in a fancy London hotel instead. A trip financed by you, as I’ve just discovered in an email written by the grateful Alison. So what did you do, Saladin—have your people track down these guests of mine and offer them something they couldn’t resist, just so that you could whisk me away from Derbyshire?’

      He met her accusing stare and gave a heavy sigh. ‘They seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement.’

      ‘I’m sure they were. All-expenses-paid trips to five-star hotels don’t exactly grow on trees! But it was a sneaky thing to do and it was manipulative,’ she accused. ‘It was just you snapping your powerful fingers in order to get your own way, as usual.’

      ‘Or a creative way of getting you to come to Jazratan, because already I was completely intrigued by you?’ he retorted.

      ‘You just wanted me to fix your horse!’

      ‘Yes,’ he admitted, in a voice that suddenly sounded close to breaking. ‘And in the process, you somehow managed to fix me. You found a space in my heart that I didn’t even realise was vacant. And you’ve filled it, Livvy. You’ve filled it completely.’

      ‘Saladin,’ she said shakily. ‘Don’t—’

      ‘I must.’ He reached out then and took one of the hands that was gripping the steering wheel and pressed it between the sensuous warmth of his leather gloves. ‘Every word you spoke was true,’ СКАЧАТЬ