Page 31 of Seduced by the Sultan (Desert Men of Qurhah 3)

He shook his head. ‘Not really. You spoke in terms of a problem, but not in terms of a solution. Has she ever tried rehab?’

‘Rehab’s expensive.’

‘So that’s a no?’

‘Of course it’s a no!’ she bit back. ‘We’re ordinary people, Murat. Where do you suppose we could find that kind of money?’

His eyes didn’t leave her face. ‘You could have asked me.’

‘But that would have involved telling you—and I didn’t want to tell you, for reasons you can probably understand.’

‘I’d like to meet her,’ he said suddenly.

‘Well, you can’t.’

‘What are you so scared of, Cat?’

Surely even he knew the answer to that. She didn’t want to see the disgust on his face when he saw just how sordid her home life had been. And it wasn’t fair of him to want to intrude on her life like this. Because this wasn’t what happened in their particular relationship. They had separate lives. Separate futures.

Yet as she saw a familiar look of determination glinting from his eyes, she wondered what she was trying to protect herself from. She didn’t have to try to impress him any more. It was over. It didn’t matter how many of her dark secrets he discovered, did it?

‘If you want to meet my mother then we’ll go and meet her,’ she said. ‘When did you have in mind?’

‘How about now?’ His gaze searched her face. ‘That is, if you’re feeling well enough.’

Her throat constricted. ‘She won’t be expecting us. She won’t have had time to tidy the place up.’ She said the words as if she came from a normal house. As if she had the kind of mother who had ever bothered tidying up.

‘I don’t care,’ said Murat. ‘And before you say anything, I’d actually enjoy making an impromptu visit for once. Do you have any idea what usually happens when I plan a trip somewhere? How entire rooms are repainted and new furniture bought?’

‘You’re unlikely to get anything like that at my mother’s house,’ she said flippantly. ‘You’ll be lucky to get fresh milk, let alone fresh paint.’

His expression didn’t change. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Well, you’ve asked for it,’ she said as she looked round the room for her shoes.

She locked the door behind them and followed him down to the hotel car park, where his two black limousines were inciting a lot of interest.

In no time at all they had left the little seaside town and were driving past fields blurred with rain and dotted with the dripping forms of motionless sheep. She saw the grey buildings of villages and sometimes the fluttering of the distinctive Welsh flag, with its proud scarlet dragon set on a green and white background. The car picked up speed as they headed south, until tall columns of factory chimneys began to appear in the distance.

At last their small convoy entered a street which was barely wide enough to accommodate the width of the two cars. Rows of tiny identical houses lay before them and Catrin tried to imagine what they must look like to Murat’s eyes. Did he see the stray piece of garbage which drifted over the pavement, or notice the peeling paintwork on her mother’s front door?

She dreaded what the inside of the house would look like. If her sister was still here, then at least she could have relied on the place looking halfway respectable. But Rachel was now back at Uni and, while grateful that she was out of the inevitable firing line, Catrin was a mass of nerves as she rang the doorbell.

At first there was a pause so long that she wondered if her mother was down at the local pub. And didn’t part of her pray that was the case? So that they could just go away and this awful meeting would never happen? But she could hear the distant sound of the TV, and the slow shuffle of footsteps which greeted Murat’s second ring told her that her hopes were in vain.

The door opened and Ursula Thomas stood there, swaying a little as she peered at them—her stained and scruffy clothes failing to hide a faint paunch. Her once beautiful features were coarsened and ruddy, and the emerald eyes so like her daughter’s were heavily bloodshot. And just as she did pretty much every time she saw her, Catrin felt the inevitable wave of sadness which washed over her as she looked at her mother. What a waste, she thought. What a waste of a life.

‘Catrin?’ Ursula said, her gaze focusing and then refocusing.

‘Yes, Mum. It’s me. And I’ve brou

ght a...friend to see you. Murat, this is Ursula—my mother. Mum, this is Murat.’

Ursula looked up at Murat and gave him a vacant smile. ‘You haven’t got a smoke on you by any chance?’ she said.

Catrin half expected Murat to turn around and walk straight back to his car, but he did no such thing. Instead, he shrugged his broad shoulders as if people asked him such things every day of the week.

‘Not on me, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘May we come in?’

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