‘You lost this.’
It took a few seconds to bring into focus the stud he held between his thumb and forefinger. When she realised what he was holding her hand went jerkily to her ear...the wrong one.
‘No, this one.’ He touched her ear lobe, catching it for a moment between his thumb and forefinger before letting it drop away. ‘Pretty.’ Her head jerked to one side, causing a fresh stab of pain to slide like a knife through her skull. How long before the headache tablets she had swallowed kicked in?
The strength of her physical response to the light contact sent a stab of alarm through Hannah. She swayed slightly and shifted her position, taking a step back. It no longer seemed so important to stand her ground. Live to fight another day—wasn’t that what they said about those who ran away?
‘Thank you,’ she breathed, holding out her hand as she focused on his left shoulder.
He ignored the hand and leaned in closer. Help, she thought, her smile little more now than a scared fixed grimace painted on. Her nostrils quivered in reaction to the warm scent of his body, his nearness. She could feel the heat of his body through his clothes and hers...imagine how hot his skin would feel without...
And she did imagine; her core temperature immediately jumped by several painful degrees as she stood there in an agony of shame and arousal while he placed a thumb under her chin to angle her face up to him.
She’d decided that the only plus point in being married to a man she loathed was that she would never again suffer the pain and humiliation of rejection. She wouldn’t care. A lovely theory, but hard to cling to when every cell in her body craved his touch. She had never felt this way before.
She bit her lip, fearing that if she set free the ironic laugh locked in her throat there would be a chain reaction—she would lose it and she couldn’t do that. Pretty much all she had left was her pride.
Listen to yourself, Hannah, mocked the voice in her head. Your pride is all you have left? Go down that road of self-pity and you’d pretty much end up being the spoilt shallow bitch your husband thinks you are.
Husband.
I’m married.
Third time lucky. Or as it happened, unlucky. She knew there were many women who would have envied her unlucky fate just as there had been girls at school who had envied her.
The influential clique who had decided to make the new girl’s life a misery even before they’d discovered she was stupid. She’d thought so too until she’d been diagnosed as dyslexic at fourteen.
For a long time Hannah had wondered why—what had she done or said?—and then she’d had the opportunity to ask when she’d found herself sitting in a train compartment with one of her former tormentors, all grown up now.
Hannah had immediately got up to leave but had paused by the door when the other woman had spoken.
‘I’m sorry.’
And Hannah had asked the question that she had always wanted to ask.
‘Why?’
The answer had been the same one her father had given her when she had sobbed, ‘What have I done? What’s wrong with me?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with you, Hannah. They do it because they can. I could move you to another school, sweetheart, but what happens if the same thing happens there? You can’t carry on running away. The way to cope with bullies is not to react. Don’t let them see they get to you.’
The strategy had worked perhaps too well because, not only had her cool mask put off the bullies, but potential friends too, except for Sal.
What would Sal say? She closed off that line of thought, but not before she experienced a wave of deep sadness. She didn’t share secrets with Sal any more; she had lost her best friend the day she had found her in bed with her fiancé. It was to have been her wedding day.
And now here she was, a married woman. Kamel’s touch was deft, almost clinical, but there was nothing clinical about the shimmies of sensation that zigzagged through her body as his fingers brushed her ear lobe.
Hannah breathed again when he straightened up, keeping her expression as neutral as his.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured distantly. ‘Could you tell me where the kitchen is?’
He looked surprised by the question. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘You don’t know where your own kitchen is?’
Kamel, who still looked bemused, ignored her question. ‘Why were you going to the kitchen?’ he persisted. ‘If you want a tour of the place the housekeeper will...’
‘I didn’t want a tour. I wanted breakfast.’ She had eaten nothing the previous evening. Unfortunately she had not shown similar restraint when it came to the champagne.
‘Why didn’t you ring for something?’
‘Do you really not know where your kitchen is?’
He arched a sardonic brow. ‘And am I meant to believe you do? That you are a regular visitor to the kitchens at Brent Hall?’ It was not an area he had seen on the occasion he had been a guest at Charles Latimer’s country estate, a vast Elizabethan manor with a full complement of staff. The daughter of the house had not been home at the time but her presence had been very much felt.
There was barely a polished surface in the place that did not have a framed photo of her and her accomplishments through the years—playing the violin, riding a horse, looking athletic with a tennis racket, looking academic in a gown and mortar board.
And looking beautiful in the portrait in the drawing room over the fireplace.
‘He really caught her,’ the proud father had said when he’d found Kamel looking at it.
* * *
His sarcastic drawl set her teeth on edge. ‘I left home at eighteen.’
And by then Hannah had been a very good cook, thanks to her father’s chef at Brent Hall. Sarah Curtis had an impressive professional pedigree, she had worked in top kitchens around Europe and she had a daughter who had no interest in food or cooking. When she’d realised that Hannah did, she’d encouraged that interest.
For Hannah the kitchen was a happy place, the place her father came and sat in the evenings, where he shed his jacket and his formality. She had not realised then why...now she did.
‘Yes, I can imagine the hardship of picking out an outfit and booking a table every night must have been difficult. What taxing subject did you study?’
‘Classics,’ she snapped.
‘So you spent a happy three years learning something incredibly useful.’
‘Four actually. I needed extra time because I’m dyslexic.’
‘You have dyslexia?’
‘Which doesn’t mean I’m stupid.’
It was a taunt she had obviously heard before, and taunts left scars. Kamel experienced a swift surge of anger as he thought of the people responsible for creating this defensive reflex. In his opinion it was them, not Hannah, who could be accused of stupidity...ignorance...cruelty.
Kamel was looking at her oddly. The silence stretched. Was he worried their child might inherit her condition? He might be right, but at least she’d know what signs to look for—he or she wouldn’t have to wait until they were a teenager before they had a diagnosis.
‘You have dyslexia and you got a degree in Classics?’ Now that was something that required serious determination.
‘Not