Cool, composed Lucy Banks had melted like warm butter in Khaled’s hands under the heat of his carelessly given smile.
And he’d known. She’d always been able to tell that, had seen the amused flicker of awareness in his eyes, and still she hadn’t cared. She couldn’t change.
When Khaled had beckoned her, smiling with languorous confidence, she’d gone to him. Had been glad to.
And now it was happening again. Khaled’s gaze had turned speculative and heavy-lidded over the rim of his glass, and Lucy felt herself begin to melt, her body betraying her as always. Desire took the place of reason, of pride. Of safety. Lucy forced her gaze away from Khaled.
The sun, she saw, was nearing the tops of the trees, sending out long, orange rays and flooding the sky with supernatural colour.
‘You’re right,’ she said in an awkward attempt to fill the expectant silence, to keep the treacherous reactions of her own body at bay. ‘The sunset is spectacular.’
‘There are many beautiful things about Biryal.’
She glanced at him sharply. ‘Is that a sales pitch?’
Khaled chuckled and stretched out on the blanket, his body long and lithe next to hers…close to hers. Lucy inched away; the temptation to sidle closer, to feel the long, hot length of his thigh against hers, was too great.
As much as she’d told herself she would enjoy this evening, she wasn’t. She couldn’t. Her nerves and fears were on high alert. She was so weak when it came to Khaled; he could have her so easily, and he knew it. Even now he knew it. And, if he did, what would be left of her happiness? Her self-respect? Her safety?
‘Not really,’ Khaled said after a moment. He reached one hand out to lazily brush a tendril of hair behind her ear. Lucy forced herself not to react. ‘Your hair is always so silky,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve dreamed of touching it, of feeling it between my fingers like cool water.’ There was a surprising ache of yearning in his voice that had Lucy shaking her head, sending more tendrils escaping to brush her cheeks. Khaled threaded his fingers through them, smiling.
‘You haven’t…?’ she began, mesmerised by the feel of his hands in her hair, of his knuckles barely brushing her cheekbone. She wanted more.
‘Haven’t I?’ His fingers, tangled in her hair, drew her slowly, inexorably to him, as she’d been afraid they would. As she’d wanted him to.
He drew her towards him, and she went. She didn’t resist, didn’t even consider it. She couldn’t, for she wanted the promise she saw in his eyes, and when his lips barely brushed hers she felt that promise fire her soul.
‘Lucy…’ he murmured against her mouth, like a supplication, a prayer.
‘Oh, Khaled.’ Her hands slid up of their own accord to caress the smooth skin on the back of his neck, his stubbly jaw, to rake through his hair. She wanted to feel him, every bit, had been aching for his touch. It had been so long. Too long.
Yet even as desire swamped her body her mind rebelled. Not this. Not now, not again…
Body and heart warred against each other and helplessly she shook her head. A tear she hadn’t meant to shed escaped from beneath her closed lids and plopped on Khaled’s thumb. He drew back in appalled surprise.
‘You’re crying.’
‘No.’ She shook her head again, laughing a little bit, embarrassed, for two more tears had streaked down her cheeks. Even now her body betrayed her.
‘Why?’ He looked so genuinely bewildered that she laughed again, a hiccup sound halfway to a sob.
‘Because…I don’t know…’ She drew a breath, willing the tears to recede, and the desire too; she needed to find her composure once more and don it like armour.
‘I didn’t mean to make you sad.’
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye and saw him frown ruefully and run a hand through his hair, mussing it. The last wedge of sun glimmered on the horizon before it sank beneath the mountains and the night settled softly around them.
‘I’m not sad,’ Lucy said, and her voice came out firmly. She swallowed the last threat of tears and forced herself to look at Khaled directly. ‘Just emotional, perhaps. There’s been so much change recently, and the future is so uncertain.’
‘It doesn’t have to be.’
She shook her head, not wanting to start down that road. ‘And I’ve admitted before,’ she continued firmly, ‘that I am helpless when it comes to you, like a moth to the candle flame.’ Her mouth set in a grim line. ‘It’s not something I’m proud of.’
‘You make it sound like weakness.’
‘It is.’
Khaled was silent for a moment. ‘Would it be,’ he finally asked, ‘if I hadn’t left?’
Lucy drew back, startled. ‘What do you mean?’
He shrugged. ‘You’ve defined everything—me, yourself, our relationship—by the fact that I left without telling you.’
‘Of course I have,’ she snapped. ‘How could I not?’
‘Sometimes,’ Khaled said quietly, his eyes intent on hers, ‘I wish I hadn’t left.’
The breath left Lucy’s body, left her feeling dizzy and airless. She drew another breath and let it out shakily. ‘Do you really?’ she asked, hearing both the doubt and the desire in her voice. He offered her a twisted smile.
‘I told you I would correct some of these assumptions you have,’ Khaled said. His voice was soft, yet even so it held a certain grim resolution. ‘And one of them is about why I left—left England, left rugby—left you.’
Lucy’s hands curled into claws, her fingernails biting into her palms. Her heart began a relentless drumming. ‘All right,’ she said evenly. ‘So, tell me.’
Khaled’s gaze slid from hers; it was the first time he’d been the one to look away. Lucy felt his emotional withdrawal like a physical thing, as if a coolness had stolen over her.
‘You, of all people, know how I’ve had muscle strain in my knee,’ Khaled began. He kept his voice even, unemotional, his gaze on the now-darkened horizon. Lucy didn’t speak. Of course she knew; she’d iced and massaged his knee many times in the two years he’d played for England. The team physician had diagnosed stressed ligaments, and Lucy had agreed. An X-ray early on had shown nothing more serious. ‘I always assumed it was simply repetitive-strain injury,’ Khaled continued. ‘It was the easiest thing to believe—’
‘It was the diagnosis we gave,’ Lucy interjected quietly. She felt a sudden stab of guilt. If she had misdiagnosed Khaled, if the team physician had…
Briefly he touched her hand with his own, then removed it. ‘This is not your fault.’
Lucy said nothing, but the question ‘What isn’t my fault?’ seemed stuck in her throat and hovered silently in the air between them.
‘I didn’t tell you all my symptoms,’ Khaled explained, his voice heavy and quiet in the stillness of the evening air. ‘I ignored them myself. The severity, at least.’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s all past.’ He gave a sigh, raking his hand through his hair once more. ‘In the end, that final injury offered an unarguable diagnosis.’ He looked at her directly, bleakly honest. ‘I didn’t have a torn ligament, Lucy. I had loose fragments of my knee bone, of the patella.’
‘Osteochronditis dissecans,’ Lucy murmured. It must have begun after the X-ray, otherwise they would have picked it up. It was a rare condition, one she never would have thought of without more information, where the patella’s