Summer Sheikhs. Marguerite Kaye

shock as the fact sank in. She stared, shook her head to try to clear it. ‘Is that why—?’ she whispered. ‘How could you believe it?’

      ‘Desi—’

      ‘You, of all people! Did you really imagine that within a few weeks I could—? With you on a battlefield, for Christ’s sake! You thought I had—’ Suddenly feeling came rushing in to fill the blankness and her voice found its feet.

      ‘You read something about me in a damned cheap-thrills sell-your-soul-for-a-dollar celebrity magazine, and you believed it?’ She drew in a shuddering breath. ‘My God, it was bad enough when I thought…’

      She didn’t know where to look. She turned away from him, lifted her chin, breathing with her mouth open like a wounded animal, trying to get air. Chills rushed over her skin.

      ‘Oh, God!’ she moaned. ‘This can’t be true! This is a nightmare…’

      She closed her eyes. Opened them again. Fury flooded her.

      ‘That was why you wrote that letter. Wasn’t it? You—you faithless…my love not strong enough? How dare you talk to me as if—You! What was your love worth, if you could believe that? Without asking, without even accusing—you just read some innuendo in a photo caption, and believed it? Leaving me to the mercy of those vultures who were surrounding me! Nothing! I had nothing to defend myself with, if you didn’t love me! Did you think of that?’

      Salah looked like the survivor of an explosion. He stared at her, his eyes black with shock.

      ‘No,’ he said.

      ‘A caption under a picture! Not even a story! I wanted to deny it, but Leo told me if we made a fuss it would only confirm it in people’s minds. It was better to let it pass. Anyway, he said, this would make it easier for him to protect me from predatory men, the way he’d promised my father!

      ‘And it did give me protection—of sorts! I was sixteen and pretty and not engaged to you. If Leo hadn’t been in the background I’d never have had a moment’s peace!’

      With an upsurge of the sick bitterness that Leo’s betrayal of trust had created, she added, ‘It didn’t protect me from Leo himself, of course. He was the most predatory of all, but he could play the long game.’

      ‘Ya Allah,’ Salah whispered. She had never seen his face the way it looked now.

      ‘I hated it all. I’d never wanted the life, never! I always felt I was living some other girl’s dream. But because it was so fantastic I somehow had to live it. I missed you so much! I wished and wished I’d never done that stupid ad. Then you’d never have said what you said, and we’d have been married and I wouldn’t ever have met Leo. But I was so nervous. Over and over I started a letter to you, but each time I thought…

      ‘And then you were wounded, and I knew none of that mattered, because I loved you and I would never love anyone else, and if you died, I died, too. I waited for you to answer my card, wondering if you would live, praying—God, how I begged for you to recover! And when I saw your letter lying there—!’ Her eyes squeezed shut. ‘I nearly died from joy. I thought my heart was going to burst out of me and fly.

      ‘Then I read it—and you know what? He may have waited three years before he physically climbed into my bed, but Leo got me in spirit the day I read your letter. I gave up that day. I gave up thinking what we had was special, that anything was special! I gave up what I’d believed about myself. I wasn’t good enough for you, Salah. I’d loved you and wanted you too much, and because of that you thought I—’

      She began to sob helplessly, feeling as if all the tears of a lifetime were waiting to be shed.

      ‘I felt so cheap! I thought, well, if Salah can say such horrible, disgusting things…then it was all nothing. What I thought we had was nothing. It was never real. You betrayed your honour. It burned me like an iron. I’ll remember that feeling till the day I die. I’d have given up that life in a minute, if you’d asked, but that letter told me it was more than being a model. I’d demeaned myself in your eyes by making love with you, too, that’s what I believed. What we had wasn’t beautiful at all, it was cheap and dirty. That was the end of everything.’

      He was silent, his eyes black, watching her, knowing without doubt that what she spoke was the truth.

      ‘And now you tell me you wrote that filth because you believed—how could you believe it? And not even to ask me if it was true!’ she cried, as the barriers gave way and all the hurt rushed into her throat, demanding release. ‘How could you think for a moment that I could go from you to him? I couldn’t stand any other man touching me! Even three years after—the first time Leo…I was sick afterwards! I ran into the bathroom and threw up!’

      She stopped and groped in her bag for tissues, then lifted her head and looked at him.

      ‘It was bad enough when I thought you despised me for loving you or for being a model, but this! It’s too much, Salah. This is unforgivable. You destroyed the most beautiful…What a cold, judgmental, untrusting bastard you were. Are. Well, I’m glad I know at last. And to think I’ve spent these few days with you regretting what we missed!’ she added, in a self-disgust so total she could hardly breathe. ‘Imagining that we still had something that could…but we never had anything, did we? It was all a lie from the get-go. I’ll never regret it again. I was lucky. I had a bloody lucky escape.’

      Then there was silence, broken only by the sound of her weeping.