Page 50 of Royally Promoted

She looked at him, appalled by what she could hear herself saying, but driven to speak her mind before she disappeared out of his life for ever. To hell with stupid consequences. What more could happen? It wasn’t as though she’d have to face him across a desk any longer.

‘Don’t marry her. Marry me.’

She watched as he turned his head away. He clenched his jaw, and when he looked at her his dark eyes were blank of expression.

‘Lucy...’

‘No. Don’t say anything.’

‘I’m sorry.’

CHAPTER TEN

MALIK COULDN’T MOVE a muscle as he watched her swiftly disappear, eaten up by all the people still there, including Irena, who had dutifully hunted him out for the first dance she had insisted he save for her. When he’d glanced across the space that had been set up for the young people to dance, Lucy was nowhere to be seen.

He’d known what she was going to say before she’d uttered those three killer words. He’d seen it in her eyes and had been pole-axed. Should he have seen that coming? They’d made a pact but pacts were often broken. He should know all about that because it had happened before—women given boundaries, only for him to find that the boundaries had become too onerous for them somewhere along the way.

But for Lucy to tell him that she loved him...

He had pulled away at speed.

No! That had never been on the cards. He wasn’t after that. He was after the sanity and practicality of a marriage based on cool reason, with a woman who would understand the life they were signing up to.

A woman like Irena.

He forced himself to remain at his own ball for another couple of hours, making sure to disentangle himself from making any arrangements to do anything with any woman. Time enough for those sorts of life-changing decisions! Meanwhile, he would have to let his blood cool in the wake of Lucy’s confession.

He knew when she was leaving because he’d handled booking the ticket himself: first-class direct flight in two days, mid-morning.

In the meantime, he would do them both a favour and lay low, which was easy, given he had a suite of rooms in the city centre. By the time he returned to London, she would be gone. He knew when she intended to go to the office to clear her things. He would give her the chance and the privacy to do that without having to look him in the face.

She was proud and he imagined she would be embarrassed by what she’d confessed. He could tell her that it would have been the champagne talking, but why not spare them both the awkwardness of circling around one another, both sharing the same place until she left where memories of what they’d had would be everywhere?

He found himself drinking way too much for his liking for what remained of the evening, and had a thick head when he awoke the following morning in his apartment in the city. It was a different bed, different décor with no warm, yielding, sexy body to wrap his arms around, to breathe in, to caress.

He was still in bed at close to ten when his phone beeped, and when he looked it was to see a text from Lucy.

Changed my flight. Leaving in a couple of hours. I’ll clear my stuff out of the office tomorrow evening. It’s Sunday and no one will be around. Take care and good luck with the rest of your life.

His eyes felt damp when he pressed his thumbs over them.

Of course they weren’t tears—it was fatigue. And too much champagne, followed by whisky—an unfortunate combination. Why would he cry when this was exactly what he had planned from the outset?

Yet the pain was unbearable. All those years of telling himself that he was invincible when it came to his emotion washed away in a tide of suffocating sorrow.

What the hell had he done?

He knew exactly what he’d done. He’d bought into his own misconception that he was immune to love; that what he felt for Lucy was something he could control; that his head was always going to have the final say, because that was what he had stupidly decided would always be the best outcome for him.

Now, in the loneliness of his luxurious apartment, all he could feel was the misery of his own wrong turns and bad decisions. He’d been blind when he’d assumed that all he felt for her was lust. He’d conveniently forgotten the way she’d made him smile, the way she’d made him feel warm and satisfied inside. Love had spouted tentacles long before they’d slept together, but he just hadn’t seen it, and now...

He pressed his thumbs to his eyes again and felt the dampness of heartache tearing through him, leaking from his eyes.

Time to fix this. Or was everything lost for ever?

Once back in London, Lucy felt as though Sarastan and everything that had happened there had been a dream. A dream dreamt a thousand years ago when she’d been a different person from the one who now stood here, in her box in North London, unpacking her suitcase and gazing around her at surroundings that couldn’t have been further removed from the one she had left behind.

She was really tired. She’d managed to change the flight without any trouble at all. Actually, they knew who had booked it, and she felt if she’d shown up at one in the morning the staff there would have found a private jet, such was the power of the Al-Rashid name.

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