Page 38 of Shamed in the Sands (Desert Men of Qurhah 2)

‘Gabe,’ she said indistinctly, but he didn’t answer as he began to move.

It was fast and deep and elemental. It seemed to be about need as much as desire, and Leila found herself responding to him on every level. Whatever he demanded of her, she matched—but she had never kissed him quite as fervently as she did right then.

Afterwards, she collapsed against the heap of the battered cushions, her heart beating erratically as she made shallow little gasps for breath. She turned to look at him, but he had fallen into a deep sleep.

For a while she lay there, just watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. She thought about what he had told her and she flinched with pain as she took her mind back to his terrible story. He had known such darkness and bleakness, but that period of his life was over. He had taken all the secrets from his heart and revealed them to her—and she must not fail him now.

Because Gabe needed to be loved; properly loved. And she could do that. She could definitely do that. She would care for him deeply, but carefully—for fear that this bruised and damaged man might turn away from the full force of her emotions.

She must love him because he needed to be loved and not because she demanded something in return. She might wish for that, but it was not hers to demand.

She snuggled closer, feeling the jut of his hip against her belly. She ran her lips over the roughness of his jaw and then kissed the lobe of his ear as she wrapped her arms tightly around his waist.

‘I will love you, Gabe Steel,’ she whispered.

But Gabe only stirred restlessly in his sleep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE DISTANT RUMBLE of thunder echoed Leila’s troubled thoughts.

Had she thought it would be easy? That Gabe’s icy heart would melt simply because he’d revealed all the bitter secrets he’d carried around with him for so long? That he’d instantly morph into the caring, sharing man she longed for him to be?

Maybe she had.

She glanced out of the window. Outside, the tame English skies were brewing what looked like the fiercest storm she had witnessed since she’d been here. Angry grey clouds billowed up behind St Paul’s Cathedral and the river was the colour of dark slate.

She had tried to reassure herself with the knowledge that, on the surface, things in their marriage were good. Better than before. She kept telling herself that, as if to accentuate the positive. Gabe was teaching her card games and how to cook eggs, and she was learning to be tidier. He massaged her shoulders at the end of a working day and they’d started going for country walks on the weekend. Her pregnancy was progressing well and she had passed the crucial twelve weeks without incident. Her doctor had told her that she was blooming—and physically she had never felt better.

Her job, too, was more fulfilling than she could ever have anticipated. At first, Leila had suspected that most of the staff at Zeitgeist had been wary of the boss’s wife being given a plum role as a photographer, but none of that wariness had lasted. According to Alastair, her outlook was fresh; her approach original—and she got along well with people.

Her photos for the spa campaign had

confounded expectation—the expectation being that it was impossible to get an interesting shot of a woman wrapped in a towel.

But somehow Leila had pulled it off. Maybe it was the angle she had used, or the fact that her background had equipped her to understand that a woman didn’t have to show lots of flesh in order to look alluring.

‘And anyway,’ she had said to Gabe as they were driving home from work one evening, ‘these spas are trying to appeal to a female audience, not a male one. Which means that we don’t always have to portray women with the not-so-subtle subtext that they’re constantly thinking about sex.’

‘Unlike you, you mean?’ he had offered drily.

She had smiled.

Yes, on the surface things were very good.

So why did she feel as if something was missing—as if there was still a great gaping hole in her life which she couldn’t fill? Was it because after that awful disclosure about his mother, Gabe had never really let down his guard again? Or because her expectations of a relationship were far more demanding than she’d realised? That she had been lying to herself about not wanting his love in return, when it was pretty obvious that deep down she craved it.

There were moments which gave her hope—when she felt as if they were poised on the brink of a new understanding. When she felt as close to him as it was possible to feel and her heart was filled with joy. Like the other day, when they had been lying in bed, she’d been wrapped in his arms and he’d been kissing the top of her head and the air had felt full of lazy contentment.

But then she’d realised that for the first time she could feel the distinct swell of her belly, even though she was horizontal at the time.

With an excited little squeal, she’d caught hold of his hand and moved it to her stomach. ‘Gabe. Feel,’ she’d whispered. ‘Go on. Feel.’

She knew her husband well enough to realise that he would never give away his true feelings by doing something as obvious as snatching his hand away from her skin, as if he’d just been burned. But she felt his whole body tense as he made the most cursory of explorations, before disentangling himself from her embrace and telling her that he had to make an international call.

So what was going on beneath the surface of that cold and enigmatic face? Leila gave a sigh. She didn’t know. You could show a man love, but love only went so far. Love couldn’t penetrate brick walls if people were determined to erect them around their hearts. Love could only help heal a person if that person would allow themselves to be healed.

Gabe made her feel as if she’d wrested every secret from him and that he found any more attempts at soul-searching a bore. Maybe she just had to accept that this was as good as it got. That the real intimacy she longed for simply wasn’t going to happen.

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