In the quiet of his villa, Abe tried to work out what she was thinking. He had predicted that she would like the villa, the peace, the proximity to the sea and, by daylight, the stunning views of ocean and sand.
He had used the opportunity to discuss all those things that somehow hadn’t been raised in any depth thus far and she had listened and accepted what he said with surprisingly little objection.
He hadn’t liked that, but he had no idea what to do about it and, from every angle, he was assailed by guilt at what she was giving up for him, even though he knew that he had nothing to feel guilty about.
He wasn’t going to promise anything he couldn’t deliver and all he could andwoulddeliver would be a lifestyle she might enjoy in time.
‘No need to tidy up,’ he said, more harshly than intended, as she made to clear the dishes once they’d finished. ‘It will be done when we leave.’
She blushed and shrugged and he stared at her, frowning and not quite knowing how to ease the tension that had sprung up out of nowhere.
There was one obvious way to regain their equilibrium.Hiscomfort zone.
He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, and as she was teetering and beginning to laugh he swept her off her feet and began walking to the door while she clung to him, and he felt the tension ease right out of her, as he’d hoped it would.
‘Time to get back to the palace.’ He nuzzled her neck and she squealed and then rubbed her cheek against his six o’clock shadow. ‘I have needs and talking isn’t one of them...’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘TOMORROW,THENEWSPAPERSwill be running the happy news of our impending marriage.’ This the following morning as they were having breakfast on the patio with Tilly between them, squirming on her chair and reeling off a non-stop battery of questions, mostly pertaining to the swimming pool and when she could get to it.
‘I thought everyone already knew about us... Tilly...’ No sooner had she come to terms with one staging post, Georgie thought, than she found herself confronted by another.
She had travelled to Qaram to acquaint both herself and Tilly with the country she’d thought their daughter would be visiting a couple of times a year.
Had she expected to end up sleeping with Abe? No. Had she spent years living with the bitterness of knowing that he had used her and dumped her without a backward glance? Yes!
But it felt as if the ground had shifted under her feet without her even really realising.
Abe had re-entered her life and had managed to disentangle her fingers from every single thing she had been clinging to ever since she had met him.
He had blown a hole in the little life she had built for herself and now she was due to be his wife, meeting people she would never have met before, living a life she had never dreamt conceivable.
Bitterness had been no protection for her heart. Bit by bit, she had fallen for him all over again and this time there was no sense that it might be infatuation. They shared a child and what she felt now was deep and strong. But how many more deep breaths would she have to take to face up to yet another challenge she hadn’t banked on?
The thought of the town crier publicising their impending marriage made her feel like a character from a Disney movie, but this was rarefied life as few knew it.
‘Protocol,’ he returned succinctly. ‘Tilly, are you going to eat that bread or are you going to play with it?’
‘Play with it?’ Tilly responded hopefully. ‘I want to have a swim. I’m hot!’
Georgie looked at her daughter, so different from when they had been living in London. Now, Tilly was livelier, more energetic, more curious. Under the blazing sun, her skin had turned a burnished bronze, just like her dad’s, and she looked the picture of health.
Nursery every day and snatched playtimes before bed and on the weekends...those things were gone. More than that, though, was the joy of Tilly having a father who, true to his word, geared his day towards making sure he spent some quality time with his daughter.
And wasn’t that good forheras well? Georgie thought. Having someone there to share the responsibilities? Not just that, but having someone who found as much pleasure in the small, funny things Tilly said and did?
She loved everything about this man and yet there was still a pool of uncertainty somewhere deep inside that she had signed her life over to a guy who had not once said anything to her that might have given her any idea that she was loved.
‘Lessons first, Tilly, and then pool after.’ Lessons involved a lovely young girl who came in to teach and already Tilly, who was bright as a sparrow, was beginning to learn the basics of reading and the foundations of the language that would become her own in due course.
When the new term began, she would attend school, a battle easily won by Georgie because, although Abe had been home-tutored, he was far more in favour of the routine of school and the benefits of friendship with peers that it brought.
She absently watched as Tilly skipped off with Fatima, having given her a hug, but she was frowning when she looked at Abe. He tossed his linen serviette on the table, shoved his chair at an angle so that he could extend his legs to one side and looked right back at her with raised eyebrows.
‘Something on your mind, Georgie?’
‘No.’ She looked away, out to the pleasing panorama of tended green with its distant horizon of tan sands.
