‘Oh, good heavens, I’d completely forgotten about that.’
‘No need to panic. It is not for another couple of hours. Join us. We were debating which outfit might be most appropriate for meeting other toddlers. Right now, the pink ballet dancer one appears to be in the lead.’ He pointed to a confection of pink lace and silk that had mysteriously appeared in Tilly’s wardrobe a few days ago.
As she looked at them both there on the ground the scene could not have been more natural, more heart-warming, and only his reminder that a bunch of reporters would be congregating in a couple of hours to take photos of them signalled just how unusual her new reality really was.
Photos of them both smiling for the camera would be published in one form or another across the world. Not only would everyone at the hotel where she had worked see them, but eventually, when they appeared in the weekly glossy magazines her friends back home read, they too would be agog to see her on the arm of a drop-dead gorgeous prince.
Oblivious to her mother’s panic, Tilly was reaching to hold up the ballet tutu and Georgie marvelled that this was a world her daughter would become so accustomed to that in time the flashbulbs of cameras pointing at her would be accepted as part and parcel of the life she led.
For the first time, Georgie really appreciated what Abe had meant when he had urged her to marry him because it was important that Tilly claim a legacy that was her right by birth and was protected while she did so.
It seemed crazy that she had ever imagined that things could have been normal had Tilly moved from one country to another, from a flat in London to a palace in Qaram. She would have been utterly confused.
‘Tilly.’ Georgie stepped forward and smiled at her daughter, who looked at her quizzically. ‘Why not go for the flowered dress and the sandals?’
‘Boring,’ was the immediate response.
‘Argumentative like her mother,’ Georgie said as Abe grinned and looked at her with lazy amusement.
For a while, Georgie forgot the stress ahead of her and got into the spirit of choosing something for Tilly to wear, and Tilly, in the thick of all the attention, was in her element.
They were laughing when, twenty minutes later, Fatima arrived to gather up a delighted Tilly, who had compromised with half the ballet outfit, sporting a tutu and ballet pumps with a flowered cotton tee shirt.
‘Will you be working until...the photo shoot?’ There was still the ghost of a smile on Georgie’s face as she closed the door behind Fatima and Tilly and turned to look at Abe, who was rising to his feet and stepping over the scattered discarded outfits to move towards her.
In faded jeans and a tee shirt, he was utterly casual and utterly gorgeous.
She stared and sucked in her breath when he was standing right in front of her.
Would she ever, she wondered, be able to be close to this man without her entire nervous system going into freefall? Was this all part of the package deal when you fell in love with someone? She’d thought all the disillusionment she had suffered at his hands four years previously might have stood her in good stead when it came to securing her defences against him. She’d been wrong.
‘I will,’ Abe said gravely. ‘But just for the moment...’ he lightly held the edge of her silky dressing gown between two fingers and smiled ‘...the glimpse of an errant breast has managed to catch my attention.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Georgie stared down to see that, between her lifting Tilly up and closing the door when Fatima had come to sweep her away, the dressing-gown belt had loosened so that she was a little less decent than she’d thought she was.
He slipped his fingers underneath the thin silk and stroked the soft swell of her breasts and then gently, absently brushed a finger over her nipple, which stiffened in immediate response.
He kissed her. A long, slow and tender kiss that made her melt and, with a soft little moan, she reached up on tiptoe to return the kiss, loving the wet melding of their tongues.
His kiss deepened and she didn’t have to feel the rigid bulge to know that he was turned on—she could hear it in his roughened groan. He pulled apart the dressing gown, underneath which she was just in a pair of knickers, and it slithered to the ground in a pool of pale green and blue.
Georgie arched up into his embrace and he cupped her buttocks, driving her against him, urging her to swing up to wrap her legs around his waist.
It was an invisible communication, a barely felt touch, and Georgie automatically did just that and hugged him close as he carried her into the bedroom and laid her down on the bed, but when she would have squirmed up against the pillows, he stayed her and positioned her so that she was lying on the bed with both legs hanging off.
Heady with anticipation, Georgie looked down as he knelt in front of her. He eased the knickers off and discarded them, attention remaining firmly focused on the delicate triangle of hair between her thighs.
The gentle slide of his tongue, finding the groove that sheathed her womanhood, evinced a low moan of pure pleasure from her.
He kept her thighs spread with the flattened palms of his hands and tasted her the way someone might taste the most delicate and fragrant of morsels. He licked and delved and licked again until Georgie was going crazy with wanting more, but he wouldn’t let her squirm away from his questing tongue.
Instead, he continued to lick, to tease the tight bud with the tip of his darting tongue, and when he inserted his finger deep into her, she couldn’t stop herself. The slow build to an orgasm accelerated with the speed of a supersonic rocket and she came against his mouth in long, shuddering spasms of intense, exquisite pleasure.
She looked down at his dark head between her legs and reached to curl her fingers in his lush hair.
‘Abe...’
