Proposal At The Winter Ball (Harlequin Romance) Page 16

  Tears burned the backs of her eyes, her throat. How could he have lived all these years believing it was his fault? How could his father have allowed him to? All awkwardness, all restraint disappeared as Flora reached over to grab his hand, her fingers enfolding his. ‘Of course it was—and of course she loved you. How could she not have?’

  ‘She hung on for two years after I was born, terrified and so unhappy, but she tried. She really tried. If she’d got help it would all have been so different but she was in denial and my father thought that she was weak. He didn’t want her talking to anyone but him.’

  ‘If anyone’s to blame he is. For all of it. For your mother, for taking your stepmother’s side, for allowing you to leave home.’

  ‘I think I know that now. The stupid thing is I have spent my whole life wishing I had a family and a home and yet I had one all along.’

  Flora looked down at the counter. ‘With your grandmother.’

  ‘No.’ His voice softened. ‘With you.’

  She looked up, startled at his words. Her eyes locked onto his and her pulse began to thump at the look in his eyes. It was more than the desire she had enjoyed over the last week, more than the candid friendship of the last twenty years. It was new, unknown and so intense she could barely breathe. ‘I’m glad you know that. No matter what happened with you and me your home is here...’

  ‘I know that but that’s not what I mean. I mean that wherever you are, Flora, that’s where I belong. London, Kent, Bali, Austria. My house, your room or a tent in the pouring rain. I could lose everything tomorrow and as long as you were with me I wouldn’t mind. You...’ His voice cracked. ‘You make every day an adventure, Flora, and I was too blind or too scared to see it before.’

  The blood was rushing in her ears and she had to grip the counter tightly, afraid that she might fall without its solid support. ‘Me?’

  ‘I think I’ve always known it—from the very first day when you helped me make a den. Remember? I was running away but I wasn’t scared because I’d found someone to be with. But I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to taint you. My father said I ruined everything and everyone I touched and, oh, Flora, I didn’t want to ruin you.’

  ‘You won’t, you couldn’t.’

  ‘When I asked you to marry me I was a fool. I thought I meant those things, those sensible reasons, the list of positives, but really I was a coward. I was too afraid to tell you what I really meant. I wanted to tell you that you were the most beautiful woman in the ballroom, that I couldn’t take my eyes off you all night, that you were my best friend and that I loved you and didn’t want to spend a single second of my life away from you. That’s what I should have said.’

  Flora blinked hard, willing the tears not to fall. ‘It’s a little more convincing than storage.’

  ‘If I’d told you all this then, would you have said yes?’

  She nodded, unable to get the words out.

  ‘And...’ he stepped around the counter so that he was right next to her, turning her unresisting body so that she faced him, cupping her face in his hands and looking down at her, tenderness in his eyes ‘...if I ask you now?’

  Flora smiled up at him, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. ‘Why don’t you ask me and see?’

  Laughter flashed in his eyes as he took her hand in his. ‘No flash mobs, no rings in ice cream, no sonnets. Just you and me, Flora. Just like it’s always been.’

  She nodded, her chest so swollen with happiness she thought she might drift away.

  ‘Flora Prosperine Buckingham, would you do me the incredible honour of being my best friend, my companion, my lover, my confidante and my partner in adventure every day for the rest of my life?’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend my life with.’ Flora looked at him, at the ruddy, disordered curls, the freckles, the long-lashed eyes, and her heart turned over with love. ‘Of course I’ll marry you. I think I fell in love with you too, that day in the lane. You were so determined and so brave. I just wanted to make it all better.’

  ‘You did, you do. It just took me far too long to notice.’

  ‘Look.’ She pointed upwards to the beam overhead. ‘Mistletoe.’

  ‘I don’t need mistletoe to tell me to kiss you, not any more.’ Alex leaned forward and brushed her mouth with his. ‘Merry Christmas, Flora.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Alex.’ She could finally say the words she had been holding in for so long. ‘I love you.’

  He looked over at the grandfather clock in the corner. ‘We still have ninety minutes before the household’s allowed to get up. Can you think of any way to spend it?’

  Flora rose onto her tiptoes and allowed herself to kiss him properly, deeply, lovingly. Her fiancé, her man, her best friend. ‘I’m sure we can think of something...’

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from BODYGUARD...TO BRIDEGROOM? by Nikki Logan.

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  Bodyguard...to Bridegroom?

  by Nikki Logan

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT TOOK BRAD KRUGER all of three seconds to sift through the faces in the crowd of passengers disembarking from the pointy end of the flight from London and identify the one he needed. First, he filtered out anyone with a Y chromosome, then the women over forty or under eighteen, then the impeccably dressed locals returning to the pricey desert emirate of Umm Khoreem. That left only three priority passengers that could be his client and only one of them had her long hair out and flowing gloriously over bare shoulders.

  There she was...codename ‘Aspirin’—for the headache he was going to have for the next month.

  Of all the gin joints in all the towns...

  Brad glanced along the long row of immigration staff in their pristine robes and watched as Seraphina Blaise was subtly corralled to the entrance of a long, winding and empty queue that casually eased her away from the one filled with locals and towards a counter with double the staff. As she negotiated the maze of retractable belts, she seemed oblivious to the fact she’d just been selected for special immigration attention.

  She might have left a British Christmas all rugged up, but somewhere over the Baltic she’d pared back into something more suited to a desert one—except that apparently she’d dressed for the heat rather than for the culture.

  ‘Here we go...’ Brad muttered under his breath, pushing off the ornately carved pillar he’d been leaning against and triangulating a course to bring him as close as possible to the official who’d flagged her.

  Her inadequate dress had probably caught Immigration’s attention, but it was her arrest record that would likely keep it. Umm Khoreem issued visas on arrival for those who were just visiting. No visa, no entry; and people had been refused entry into the security-conscious state on much less than bad fashion choices and a fresh conviction.

  A carefully blank official took her passport as Brad drew closer on the Umm Khoreem side of the immigration barrier, asked a few questions, frowned at her answers, and spent the next few minutes reading various pages on his touch screen while the leggy brunette shuffled awkwardly before him. She glanced around to pass the time, and Brad saw the moment she finally registered th
at she’d ended up in a queue for one while everyone else was being whisked through further along.

  Her rounded eyes swung back to the official.

  Yep. Just you, love...

  Her whole body changed then. She lost the casual lightness with which she’d practically bounced along the switchback lanes, her bare shoulders sagged and her spine ratcheted straight. Remembering her last run-in with authorities perhaps...

  Brad caught the eye of one of the other immigration staff, who took his time sauntering over but bowed his cloaked head and listened as Brad briskly murmured his name, credentials and purpose. The man nodded and returned to his post, then picked up the telephone. At the next aisle, the first immigration officer answered, flicking his eyes up to his colleague and then over to where Brad now stood before returning his gaze to the woman in front of him. The official barely acknowledged him, but barely was all he needed.

  Whatever happened from now he’d just insinuated himself within the process.

  And he could do a much better job from within than from without.

  The official requested her bags and a customs officer set about a professional but laborious inspection more designed to buy them time to run a series of immigration checks than to fulfil any particular fascination with the contents of her designer luggage. When the computer had spat back everything they needed, the men stepped out from behind their barrier and gestured for her to follow them. Her feet remained fixed to the spot and she glanced around for someone—anyone—to come to her aid. No one did. After a moment, the larger of the two men returned the few paces to her side and gestured, not unkindly, towards the interview room.

  Perhaps it was the ‘please’ that Brad saw on his lips in English that got her feet moving. Or perhaps it was the intractable hand at her back that stopped short of actually touching her. Either way the official achieved his aim, and Seraphina Blaise took the first careful steps behind one official while the second flanked her from behind. Just before they left the arrivals area, the man to the rear glanced his way and jerked his head just once in permission.

  Brad moved immediately.

  * * *

  Two was bad enough, now there were three. As dark and neutral as the other officials but this one wasn’t in the traditional robe and headdress of his people. He looked more like a dark-suited chauffeur. Or a CIA agent. Or a chauffeur for the CIA.

  All three men stood on the other side of the soundproof glass of her containment room talking about her but not to her. The immaculately dressed officials listened attentively—one of them even smiled, which had to be a good sign except that he followed it up with a firm and distinctly suspicious glare in her direction. The chauffeur talked some more, his hands gesticulating wildly.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ she asked aloud, with more confidence than she felt, counting on the soundproofing being one-way. Only the chauffeur bothered to look up for the briefest glance before his attention returned to the airport officials and their intense conversation.

  This wasn’t her first run-in with authorities, but it was her first in such a conservative country where everything was done so differently from Britain. Still, the basic rule applied here as it did everywhere in life...

  Show no fear.

  But do it politely.

  ‘Perhaps we could please begin?’ she called out carefully, as though the only part of this bothering her were the delay. ‘I have a service waiting to collect me.’

  She threw in a winning smile for good measure. Hopefully, it would temper the thump-thump of her heart clearly audible in her voice. But the smile was wasted as the rapid, under-their-breath discussion continued without her. Then the largest of the officials shook the chauffeur’s hand and crossed to the table where her documents lay spread out. He flipped her passport open and stamped it with the visa, then initialled it and passed it to him.

  She jumped as the glass between the spaces suddenly snapped to opaque, then again a moment later, when the door to her half of the room was flung open and the chauffeur stood there, her bag in one fist and her documentation clenched in the other.

  ‘Welcome to Umm Khoreem,’ he said, with no other explanation or apology, wedging the door open.

  He might have shared the same tan skin and dark hair as the other officials, but his accent wasn’t Arabic. She stared at him, her feet still nailed to the floor as he spelled it out in clearer terms.

  ‘You are free to leave.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Her passion for natural justice started to bubble. ‘Why was I detained in the first place?’

  She had a fairly good idea—those few hours in a disguised medical research lab north of London were going to shadow her forever—but she just wanted to hear him say it. Plus, she wanted to narrow down his accent. But he wasn’t in the chatty mood, it seemed; he slid his sunglasses on, turned and walked away from her with her suitcase. And her passport.

  She hurried after him. ‘Can I please have my—?’

  ‘Keep walking, Ms Blaise,’ he gritted, nodding towards the distant glass exit. ‘You’re not legally in the country until we get past that door up ahead.’

  His tortured vowels gave her an answer—Australian—and the way he practically barked at her made her reassess him as airport security or some kind of translator. The other officials might have been obstructing her entrance but they were nothing but painfully and professionally courteous. He might have facilitated her release but he was curt and grumpy.

  So, if he wasn’t airport staff then who was he? Why should she follow a random stranger down some long dark corridor?

  Though she had little choice as he marched off with all her worldly goods.

  ‘Sorry, what just happened?’ she puffed, hurrying up beside him as he strode along the passageway. Other than, clearly, she was almost refused an entry visa. ‘Why did they let me go, just like that?’

  He didn’t deign to do more than angle his head slightly back as he answered. He certainly didn’t stop or even slow. ‘They had little option when the ruling Sheikh vouched for you.’

  Her feet stumbled to a halt. ‘You’re a sheikh?’

  His laugh ricocheted off the polished walls of the corridor. ‘Do I look like a sheikh?’

  How would she know? Maybe they were all neat-bearded, square-jawed types. ‘Then how—?’

  ‘Sheikh Bakhsh Shakoor is my employer. I therefore spoke on his behalf.’

  Oh, everything was starting to make more sense now. ‘And why exactly does Sheikh Whatsit care what happens to me?’

  Or even know about it, come to think of it? It all happened so quickly. One minute she was happily arriving, the next she was unhappily interned.

  ‘You are a long-stay guest in his most prestigious resort. He would not be pleased to hear you had been detained on a technicality.’

  A criminal charge wasn’t exactly nothing. That was why she’d declared it on her immigration form. Transparency and accountability and all that. But she was spending a fortune on her month at the Sheikh’s desert resort and being booted out of his country bound in red tape would obviously be an expensive outcome for the resort. And since he probably also owned the airport...

  ‘He has no idea what you just did, does he?’ she guessed.

  ‘The Sheikh does not have time for trivialities.’

  Way to make a girl feel special... ‘So, you just got creative?’

  His lips pressed closer together as he lifted her suitcase as though it were empty of designer contents and pushed it ahead of them through the official exit into the Umm Khoreem side of the airport.

  To freedom.

  Kind of.

  ‘I gave them a few assurances,’ he went on. ‘Nothing that should put a crimp in your sunbaking plans.’

  Yep, he probably did think she’d come to bask under Umm Khoreem’s toasty win
ter sun. Rather than for the sanctuary—from life and from her least favourite time of year.

  ‘What kind of assurances?’

  The pace he set across the polished stone of the airport terminal was almost hard to match, though it was fantastic to be moving her limbs again after nine hours on a crowded plane. She hurried after him as he wove in and out of the thick stream of passengers like a rally pro.

  ‘While you are within the fenced bounds of Al Saqr resort, you are a guest of the Sheikh,’ he said, back to her, ‘and his protection extends to you. Under those conditions they were happy to overlook your recent...crime...and grant you entry into Umm Khoreem.’

  ‘You make it sound like I was caught robbing a bank,’ she huffed.

  ‘You’d be surprised how much I know about you, Ms Blaise.’

  She glanced up at him and tried to guess how serious he was about that. There wasn’t much to know. Her criminal record was empty of anything but a shiny new conviction for trespass. For defending those who could not defend themselves.

  On balance, that was a pretty good trade-off.

  ‘Wow. Someone is a little judgey...’

  It was all there in the frost in his tone and the grind of his jaw, but getting into a fight was not how she’d imagined starting her month-long exile. Then again, neither was being detained, and—once again—she reminded herself how foreign this culture was from her own.

  ‘The resort’s boundaries are massive,’ he said. ‘As long as you remain within them, you’ll be fine.’

  Being managed irked her as much as it always did. ‘And what is to stop me from just taking my bag and disappearing into the glass and chrome of Kafr Falaj?’

  She could see the tallest of the capital’s buildings from here.

  His locomotive surge across the terminal came to an abrupt halt, and she almost crashed into him. Impenetrable black glass swung her way.

  ‘I am.’

  Even without being able to see his eyes, she believed him. Her long legs might get her some distance in the short term but his hard build said he would easily best her on endurance. Plus she’d never been any good at running in sand.