CHAPTER THREE

      MARIELLA WOKE UP before Fleur had given her first distressed, hungry cry. She wriggled out from under the cool pure linen bedding to pad barefoot and naked to where she had placed the carry-cot.

      Her khaki-coloured soft shape trousers could be re-worn without laundering, but the white cotton tee shirt she had worn beneath her jacket, and her underwear—no way.

      Fastidiously wrinkling her nose at the very thought, Mariella had rinsed them out, deciding that even if they had not dried by morning wearing them slightly damp was preferable to putting them back on unwashed!

      Picking Fleur up, she carried her back to the bed…Xavier’s bed, a huge, low-lying monster of a bed, large enough to accommodate both a man and half his harem without any problem at all!

      Sliding back beneath the linen sheets, Mariella stroked Fleur’s soft cheek and watched her in the glow of the single lamp she had left on. She could tell from the way the baby sucked eagerly on her finger that she was hungry!

      She had seen water in the fridge, and she had Fleur’s formula. All she had to do was to brave the leopard’s den in order to reach the kitchen!

      And in order to do that she needed to find something to wear.

      Whilst she was deciding between one of the pile of soft towels Xavier had presented her with or the sheet itself, Fleur started to cry.

      ‘Hush,’ she soothed her gently. ‘I know you’re hungry, sweetheart…’

      Xavier sighed as he heard Fleur crying. It was just gone two in the morning. The divan wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing to sleep on. Outside the wind shrieked like a hyena, testing the strength of the pavilion, but its traditional design had withstood many centuries of desert winds and Xavier had no fears of it being plucked away.

      Throwing back the cover from his makeshift bed, he pulled on the soft loose robe and strode towards the kitchen, briskly removing one of the empty bottles Mariella had left in the sterilizer and mixing the formula.

      His grandmother—an eccentric woman so far as many people were concerned—had sent him to work in a refugee camp for six months after his final year at school and before he went on to university.

      ‘You know what it is to be proud,’ she had told him when he had expressed his disdain for her decision. ‘Now you need to learn what it is to be humble.

      ‘Without humility it is impossible to be a great leader of men, Xavier,’ she had informed him. ‘You owe it to your grandfather’s people to have greatness, for without it they will be swamped by this modern world and scattered like seeds in the wind.’

      One of his tasks there had been to work in the crèche. For the rest of his life Xavier knew he would remember the emotions he had experienced at the sight of the children’s emaciated little bodies.

      Snapping the teat on the filled bottle, he headed for the bedroom.

      The baby’s cries were noticeably louder. Her feckless mother was no doubt sleeping selfishly through them, Xavier decided grimly, ignoring the fact that he himself had already noticed just how devoted Fleur’s mother was to her.

      Fleur was crying too much and too long to be merely hungry, Mariella thought anxiously as she caught the increasing note of misery in the baby’s piercing cry.

      To her relief, Fleur seemed to find some comfort as Mariella sat up in the bed and cuddled her against her own body.

      ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’ she whispered to her. ‘Are you missing your…?’

      She froze as the protective curtain closing off the room swung open, snatching at the sheet to cover herself, her face hot with embarrassment as she glared at Xavier.

      ‘What do you want?’ she demanded aggressively.

      ‘So you are awake. I thought—’

      Fleur’s eyes widened as she saw that he was carrying her bottle.

      ‘What have you put in there?’ Mariella demanded suspiciously, holding Fleur even tighter as he held the bottle out to her.

      ‘Formula,’ he told her curtly. ‘What did you think was in it…hemlock? You’ve been reading too many idiotic trashy books!’

      As she took the bottle from him and squirted a few drops onto the back of her hand, tasting it, he watched her.

      ‘Satisfied?’

      Looking fully at him, Mariella compressed her lips.

      ‘My word,’ she heard him breathe in disbelief. ‘You even go to bed in those ridiculous coloured contact lenses! Hasn’t anyone ever told you that no one actually has eyes that colour? So if it’s your lovers you are hoping to impress and deceive…’

      As Fleur seized eagerly on her bottle Mariella froze in outraged fury.

      Coloured contact lenses. How dared he?

      ‘Oh, is that a fact?’ she breathed. ‘Well, for your information, whether you consider it to be ridiculous or not this just happens to be the real colour of my eyes. I am not wearing contact lenses, and as for wanting to impress or deceive a lover—’

      Fleur gave a wail of protest as in her agitation Mariella unwittingly removed the teat from her mouth. Apologising to the baby, and comforting her, Mariella breathed in sharply with resentment.

      Real? The only thing about her that was real was her outrageous lying! Xavier decided lowering his lashes over his eyes as he discreetly studied the smooth swell of her breasts as her agitated movements dislodged the sheet.

      No wonder she had not wanted to feed her child herself. With breasts so perfectly and beautifully formed she would be reluctant to spoil their shape. He could almost see the faint pink shadowing of the areolae of her nipples.

      Uncomfortably he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, all too conscious of the effect she was having on him. She was doing it deliberately, he knew that…She was that kind of woman!

      When he came here it was to withdraw from the fast-paced city life and concentrate on more cerebral matters, Xavier reminded himself sharply.

      The sheet slipped a little farther.

      Her flesh was creamy pale, untouched by the sun. He frowned. Khalid had said specifically that he had taken her to the South of France. Surely there she must have exposed herself, as so many did, to the hot glare of its sun and the ever hotter lustful looks of the men who went there specifically to enjoy the sight of so much young, naked flesh?

      Knowing his cousin as he did, he couldn’t imagine that Khalid would be attracted to a woman too modest to remove her bikini top!

      He, on the other hand, found something profoundly and intensely sensual about the thought of a woman only revealing her bare breasts to her lover, her only lover…

      Worriedly Mariella studied Fleur’s suddenly flushed face, reaching out to touch her cheek. It burned beneath the coolness of her own fingertips. Her heart jumped with anxiety.

      Xavier’s stomach muscles clenched as she removed her arm, revealing the full exposed curve of her breast. As he had known it would be, her nipple was rose-pink and so softly delicate that he ached to reach out and touch it, explore its soft tenderness, feel it hardening in eager demand beneath his caress.

      In her anxiety for Fleur, Mariella had all but forgotten that he was there, only alerted to his sudden departure by the brief swirl of air eddying the door-hanging as he left.

      The minute he had gone Fleur started to