“Portland, Oregon.” She cursed herself even as the words came out of her mouth. She was just digging a deeper hole for herself. She had to open up real channels of communication before he dug further into her background and discovered she was a fake.
“And you decided to come live in France while you researched this idea for a novel?”
“You manage to make that sound condescending.”
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t sound it.
“It was more than just the research,” she said, cutting closer to the truth now. “I had some personal issues, a recent breakup with a man I thought I loved, and I needed to get away for a while.”
Damn, why was she even going there? She spoke too much when she was nervous.
Something crossed his features, then was gone—she’d gotten through to him, briefly.
“I don’t appreciate being followed, Amelie,” he said finally, more gently.
“I really did try a more conventional approach—I rang the bell at the gate twice, but there was no answer. I asked around the village if anyone had a phone number for the abbey. Then Madame Dubois said you liked to walk along the cliffs in the afternoon, so I followed you on the heath.” She paused. “I confess, after seeing you standing at the edge of the cliffs, I became curious beyond the book research. I wanted to meet you.”
“To see firsthand the beast who lives in a haunted stone monastery on the cliffs—to see his scars? Is that why you took photographs of me, inspiration for your gothic novel?”
The bitterness—the rawness in his voice—was a shock, a punch to her gut. “That’s not—”
“Not what the villagers think of me—the scarred monster in the haunted abbey?”
Bella inhaled deeply. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.” She pointed her arm in the direction of the village. “Those locals have nothing but respect for you and your privacy. They treat you like a revered guest on this island—”
“Because I have money.”
She dropped her hand, stared.
“Think about it, Amelie. The trappings of wealth are all I have left. They buy me a measure of dignity. They allow me privacy.”
She heard the subtext—he could no longer work as a surgeon, no longer play his cello, win his polo matches...he’d lost the love of his life, the desire to help run his country. He needed to be alone.
“And so you hide,” she said quietly, “behind your wealth, in a remote abbey because you don’t want people to see your face, because you think you’re somehow damaged?”
He studied her, his presence seeming to glower with a dark, angry, yet magnetic power.
“How did it happen, Tahar?”
Something tore sharp and fast across the one side of his face, a ghost of an emotion, there, then gone, as if she might have imagined it. The other side of his face remained immobile, stiff. It was as if his psyche was split in two—a modern-day Jekyll and Hyde.
Her heart hammered. Perhaps she’d stepped over the line. But Bella told herself it was a normal question from someone who had nothing to hide. And he was the one who’d broached the subject by referring to himself as a “scarred beast of a man.”
But his gaze, his energy, was so intense, crackling, dark, she felt her cheeks go hot and she looked away. “I’m sorry. That was forward. I don’t need to know. I only wanted to—”
“It was a car accident,” he said abruptly. “I was in a coma for a while afterward.”
Surprise rippled through her. She opened her mouth but words eluded her. In her mind she could see Derek’s photo, Tariq fleeing the burning jet, such fierceness, such pain in his eyes as he tried to save his fiancée. Guilt sliced through her and she cursed the hungry newshound inside her own body.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I...there are no easy words for something like this. And I suspect you don’t want platitudes, anyway.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” He strode over to the hamper on the table, opened the lid of the wicker hamper as he spoke. “What did you bring?”
“Actually it’s from Madame Dubois. I have no idea what’s in there.”
He pulled out a bottle of Chateau Luneau cabernet franc and his gaze ticked to hers. “She knows what I like,” he said very quietly. “And so do you—this is what you were drinking in the restaurant.”
Tension shimmered. A piece of wet wood hissed in the fire, and Bella could hear wind moaning up in the turrets somewhere. She thought she could also hear the distant crash of waves at the foot of the cliffs upon which they were perched, the rhythmic thrust of the Atlantic—a pulse as old as time. She shook herself.
“Madame Dubois told me about the wine,” she said quietly. “She also told me you dined at Le Grotte every Tuesday night. I went there to meet you. I had hoped to strike up conversation through the wine, and then ask for a tour of the abbey.” She forced a laugh, but it felt hollow. “The wine just about broke my budget.”
A twitch of amusement ran along the right side of his mouth. Or had she imagined it? Whatever it was, something seemed to shift in the color of the evening.
From the hamper he removed a round of cheese and a box of crackers. He set them on the table. Reaching in again, he pulled out two wineglasses and a corkscrew. He held the glasses up, crooked his brow.
Ridiculously, Bella felt her cheeks flush again. She told herself it was the warmth of the fire finally getting through after her cold ride. Yet there was something so damn sensual about this dark, damaged man, something so barely restrained it overwhelmed her, and more. It set her nerves tingling for the feel of his touch against her skin.
“Madame insisted I bring the hamper,” she said, her voice thickening. “Estelle Dubois maintains the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. She seems to think every single woman must be in search of a male.” Even as the words came out her mouth she wished she could take them back. Bella was suddenly floundering, in part, she realized, because she’d been attracted to Tariq—both physically and mentally—long before this moment.
To find him alive, to actually be in his powerful presence, was rattling her. Because Tariq Al Arif in the flesh more than exceeded Bella’s expectations. Everything about him exuded the aura of a Saharan prince from an exotic country steeped in ancient, desert tradition, and standing so near him, she didn’t feel quite real. Again she felt like an Alice that had slipped through some kind of fairy-tale looking glass. Bella in the castle with the scarred “beast” of a prince.
“And you’re not?”
She coughed, eyes watering. “Not what?”
“Looking for a man.”
The heat in her cheeks deepened and she felt irritated by her body’s betrayal. “Like I said, I had a bad breakup with my ex. I came to get away from all that, quite frankly.”
“So it was serious, this relationship of yours?”
“I thought it was.”
Tariq angled his head slightly, reading her. Then he set the wineglasses on the table, picked up the bottle of wine and the corkscrew.
Turning his back to her he struggled to uncork the bottle.
Bella went quickly up to him. “Here, let me.” She reached out, taking the bottle and opener from him. Her hand brushed against his skin as she did, and heat shocked through her. Bella froze, met his eye.
Anger crackled from him in waves. She understood. He’d been a top neurosurgeon and now he couldn’t even open a bottle of wine without fumbling.