‘Bitch!’ Rob snarled. ‘You think you’ve landed on your feet now, but we all know what happens to people when they get in your husband’s way...’
Hannah was shaken by the malice and ugly jealousy in his face. Jealousy...! She shook her head in disbelief. Perhaps he’d been acting the injured party so long he actually believed it.
The full realisation of just how lucky she had been hit home. She could have been married to him.
Her stomach gave a fresh shudder of disgust as she pulled in a breath, trying to surreptitiously ease away from him. As nice as it would have been to drop the icy dignity that had got her through that awful day, this wasn’t the time and definitely not the place, she thought, to have the last word.
This could get ugly.
‘They have a habit of disappearing.’ He mimed a slashing action across his throat. ‘So watch yourself.’
The sinister comment drew a startled laugh from her. It was clearly not the reaction Rob had wanted, as his face darkened and he grabbed for her. Things happened with dizzying speed so that later when she thought about it Hannah couldn’t recall the exact sequence of events.
Kamel surged forward but Hannah was quicker. Unable to escape, she ducked and her attacker’s head hit the tree trunk with a dull thud.
Her attempt to slip under his arm was less successful, and by the time Kamel reached her the man, with blood streaming from a superficial head wound, had caught her arm and swung her back.
‘Bitch!’
Hannah hit out blindly with her free hand and then quite suddenly she was free. Off balance, she fell and landed on her bottom on the wet grass. When she looked up Rob was standing with one hand twisted behind his back with Kamel whispering what she doubted were sweet nothings into the older man’s ear, if the white-lipped fury stamped on his face was any indication.
Rob, who had blood seeping from a gash on his head, seemed to shrink before her eyes and started muttering excuses in full self-preservation mode.
‘If I ever see you in the same postcode as my wife...if you so much as look in her direction...’ Kamel leaned in closer, his nostrils flaring in distaste at the smell of booze and fear that enveloped the man like a cloud, and told him what would happen to him, sparing little detail.
Hannah struggled to her feet imagining the headlines. ‘Don’t hurt him!’
The plea caused Kamel’s attention to swivel from the man he held to Hannah.
‘Please?’
A muscle along his jaw clenched as he stared at her. Then, with a nod that caused two invisible figures to emerge from the trees, he stood aside and the trio walked away.
‘Sure you don’t want to go and hold his hand?’
‘I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting you.’ Why are you explaining yourself to him? she wondered. It’s not as if he’s going to believe you and it’s not like you care what he thinks.
A look of scowling incredulity spread across his face. ‘Me? You are protecting me?’ He had no idea why her caring about someone who was clearly an abusive loser bothered him so much, but it did.
Her eyes moved slowly up the long, lean length of his muscle-packed body. It was hard to imagine anyone who looked less like he needed looking after.
‘The press could dub you something worse than The Heartbreaker Prince.’ She paused and saw him absorb her comment. His anger still permeated the air around them but it simmered now where it had boiled before. ‘Rob likes to play the victim. I can just see the headlines now...’
‘I wasn’t going to hit him, but if I had he wouldn’t have been running to any scandal sheet,’ he retorted, managing to sound every bit as sinister as Rob had implied he was. While Hannah believed Rob’s comments were motivated by malice, there was no escaping the fact that she knew very little about the man she had married and what he was capable of.
Unwilling to release his image of her as a cold-hearted, unapproachable ice bitch, he asked, ‘What the hell were you thinking of meeting him out here?’
What the hell had she been thinking about getting involved with him to begin with? The man had been mentally filed in his head as a victim. Stupid, but a victim, and now he turned out to be a... His fists clenched as he found himself wishing he had not shown restraint.
Temper fizzed through her body, sparking wrathful blue flames in her eyes. ‘Are you implying that I arranged this? Rob followed me!’
‘And I followed him.’ It was an impulse that he had not checked even though it was a situation that had not required his personal intervention. In fact his abrupt departure had probably caused more speculation than Hannah’s.
‘Why? I thought you delegated all that sort of thing.’
‘There are some things that a husband cannot delegate.’ She might not be wife material but she was definitely mistress material. She might be the sort of woman he would normally cross the road to avoid, but there was no denying that physically she was perfect.
‘So you thought it was your duty to rescue me.’ She had about as much luck injecting amusement into her voice as she had escaping his dark, relentless stare. It was becoming harder to rationalise her response to his strong personal magnetism, or control the pulse-racing mixture of dread and excitement whenever he was close by.
‘Little did I know you had it all under control.’
Her clenched teeth ached at the sarcasm. ‘My hero riding to the rescue yet again.’
‘I thought I was rescuing your...’
‘Victim?’
He dragged his smouldering glance free of her cushiony soft lips and found himself staring at her heaving bosom. ‘The man is...’ He said a word that she didn’t understand but it was not hard to get the drift. ‘What is your ex doing at our wedding party?’
The accusation made her blink. ‘The word party suggests celebration. Tonight has felt more like a punishment. And yes, we all know this is my fault, though I have to tell you that line is getting a bit boring. I’m willing to take my medicine and make nice and pretend you’re almost as marvellous as you think you are, but if this marriage is going to last, and I’m talking beyond the next few seconds, it won’t be on a speak-when-you’re-spoken-to, walk-two-steps-behind-me way. I am not willing to be a doormat!’
She released a shuddering sigh and warmed to her theme. ‘So from now on I expect to be treated with some damned respect, and not just in public!’ Oh, God! Overwhelmed with a mixture of horror and exhilaration, she could not recall losing control of herself quite so completely in her life. Hannah brought her lashes down in a protective veil as she gulped in several shallow breaths while her heart rate continued to race.
The ice queen is dead! Long live the princess of passion! His mental headline tugged the corners of his mouth upwards, but the curve flattened out as he felt his body stir lustfully. It wasn’t the physical response that bothered him; it was the strength of it and the fact it kept intruding.
Mentally and physically, discipline and order were important to Kamel. He had never made a conscious decision to compartmentalise the disparate aspects of his life, but he took the ability for granted and it enabled him to combine the role he had unexpectedly inherited and any sort of personal life.
It had not crossed his mind that being married would lead to any overlap. Tonight came under the heading of duty, with a capital D. Such occasions were more than useful, they were essential, and he definitely shouldn’t be thinking about how she’d look naked, and how soft and inviting her mouth was. Had she just said what he thought she had? He clenched his teeth and struggled to regroup his thoughts. Focus, Kamel—but not on her mouth.
‘Would I be right in thinking that was an...’ he spoke slowly, winged brows drawn into a straight