The Darkest of Secrets (9 page)

The next day followed the same pattern. She analysed the pigments used in both the Leonardos, and ate from trays brought down by Shayma. And thought about Khalis. She could feel his presence in every thoughtful touch, from the different flowers on her tray to the newspaper left on the breakfast table, to the subtle changes in the lab: better lighting, a more comfortable chair. How did he even know? She didn’t see him at all, though, and she realised she missed him.

An emotion, she knew, she didn’t want and couldn’t afford to feel. Over the last four years loneliness was a price she’d always been willing to pay for her freedom. Yet in just the space of a few days Khalis had opened up a sweet yearning inside her, a longing for a closeness she’d denied herself and half-forgotten. A longing that terrified her on so many levels.

That night she left the lab craving fresh air, and slipped out of the doors in the back of the entrance hall that led to the interior courtyard of the villa. She stopped by the pool, now still and empty, and realised by the flash of disappointment she felt that she’d been hoping to see him there. Amazing, how deceptive her own heart could be. She’d convinced herself she simply wanted some air but, really, she wanted Khalis.

She pressed her hands to her temples, as if she could will the want away.
Think what you have to lose. Your daughter. The precious moments you have with her. One Saturday a month. Just twelve days a year.

She started walking down one of the twisting garden paths as fast as she could, as if she could outrun her thoughts. But they chased her, relentless in their power.
Let a man close and not only will you lose your daughter, you’ll lose yourself. Khalis can’t be that different. And, even if he is … you aren’t.

Yet right now she wanted to be different. She craved the possibility of a loving, generous, equal relationship.

Impossible. Even if it existed, she couldn’t have it. She couldn’t risk it, and yet, for the sake of one man, one unbearably kind and gentle man, she was tempted to try. To throw it all away—and for what? A kiss? An affair? She could not believe she could be so weak. again.

Suddenly a pair of strong hands clamped around her shoulders and she let out a shocked yelp.

‘It’s just me.’ Khalis loomed in front of her, his smile gleaming in the moonlight. She could feel the heat radiating from his lithe body.

‘You startled me.’

‘So I see.’ He released her and stepped back. ‘I was out here walking as well, and you almost crashed into me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s OK.’

They stood there, a foot or so separating them, yet, considering the nature of her recent thoughts, it felt like an endless chasm. She wanted to walk into his arms and run away both at the same time. She was, Grace thought, an emotional schizophrenic. The sooner she got off this island the better.

‘Do you want to walk with me?’ Khalis asked and, after a charged pause, she nodded.
Compromise.
There was not room on the narrow little paths to walk side by side, so Khalis let her go first, wending her way among the fragrant foliage, the silver swathe the moon cut through the gardens their only guide.

‘Did you play out here?’ Grace asked. ‘When you were a child?’

Khalis shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’

‘With your brother?’

‘Not really. With my.’ A second’s pause. ‘With my sister.’

‘I didn’t realise you had a sister.’

‘She died.’

‘Oh!’ Grace turned around. Even in the darkness she saw how hooded his expression seemed. ‘So your whole family has died,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So has yours.’

‘Yes.’ She felt a shudder run through her. ‘But it must be harder for you, to lose siblings—’

‘I do miss my sister,’ Khalis said, the words seeming to be drawn reluctantly from him, although he spoke with a quiet evenness. ‘I never had a chance to say goodbye to her.’

‘How did she die?’

‘A boating accident, right off the coast here. She was nineteen.’ He sighed, digging his hands into his pockets. ‘She was about to be married. My father had arranged it, but she didn’t like the chosen groom.’

Grace frowned, connecting the pieces, threaded together by the darkness of Khalis’s tone. ‘Do you think it … it wasn’t an accident?’

He didn’t answer for a long moment. ‘I don’t know. I hate to think that, but she was determined in her own way, and it would have been a way to escape the marriage.’

‘A terrible way.’

‘Sometimes life is terrible,’ Khalis said, and his voice was bleak. ‘Sometimes there are only terrible choices.’

‘Yes,’ Grace said quietly. ‘I think that’s true.’

He gave her a wryly sorrowful smile, his teeth gleaming in the darkness. ‘I never speak of my sister. Not to anyone. What is it about you, Grace, that makes me say things I wouldn’t say to another soul? And
want
to say them?’

She shook her head, her heart thudding treacherously. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you feel it?’ he asked in a low voice, and in the soft darkness of the garden she couldn’t deny or pretend.

‘Yes,’ she said, the word no more than a thread of sound.

‘It scares you.’

Of course it does.
She took a deep breath. ‘I told you before, I can’t—’

‘Don’t give me that,’ Khalis said almost roughly. ‘You think this is easy for me and hard for you?’

‘No—’ Yet she realised she had thought that. He seemed so relaxed and assured, so comfortable with what stretched and strengthened between them, and she was the only one quaking with nerves and memories and fear. She let out a wobbly laugh. ‘Maybe it’s just the island.’

‘The island?’

She gestured to the dense fragrant foliage around them. ‘It’s like a place and time apart, separate from reality. We can say what we want here. Feel what we want.’

‘Except,’ Khalis said quietly, ‘I don’t think you know what you want to feel.’

She felt a sudden spark of anger. ‘Don’t patronise me.’

‘Am I wrong?’

She swallowed and looked away. ‘I already explained to you—’

‘You didn’t explain anything,’ Khalis said, cutting her off. He sighed, stepping towards her, his hand resting on her shoulder. ‘Life hasn’t been very fair to you, has it, Grace?’

She tensed under his touch, as well as his assumption. ‘Life isn’t very fair,’ she said in a low voice.

‘No,’ Khalis agreed. His hand was warm and heavy on her shoulder, a comforting weight she longed to lean into. ‘Life isn’t very fair at all. I think we’ve both learned that the hard way.’

Her whole body tensed, fighting the desire to lean into him. It was like trying to resist a magnetic force. ‘Maybe,’ she said, the word half-strangled.

‘And here we are,’ he mused softly, ‘two people completely alone in this world.’

Her throat tightened with emotion. This man made her feel so much. ‘I feel alone,’ she whispered, the words drawn from her painfully. She almost choked on them. ‘I feel alone all the time.’

His hand still rested on one shoulder, and he laid his other hand on her shoulder and drew her gently to him. ‘I know you do,’ he said quietly. ‘So do I.’ She rested in the circle of his arms for a moment, savouring the closeness as she breathed in the woodsy scent of his aftershave, felt the comforting heat of his body. It felt so good, so safe, and it would be so easy to stay here, or even to tilt her head up for him to kiss her. So easy, and so dangerous.

Think what you have to lose.

Resolutely she turned away from him, jerking away from his grasp, not wanting him to see the storm of unwilling need she knew would be apparent on her face. She plunged down the twisting path, only to stop abruptly when it ended against a stone wall. The wall that surrounded the villa, the moon illuminating the evil shards of broken glass on its top, reminding her that she was a prisoner. Always a prisoner.

In a sudden burst of fury, Grace slapped her hands against the stone, her palms stinging, as if she could topple it over. ‘I hate walls,’ she cried in frustration, knowing it was a ridiculous thing to say, to
think
, yet feeling it with every breath and bone.

‘Then let’s leave them behind,’ Khalis said and reached for her hand. Too surprised to resist, she let him lead her away from the wall and down another dark path.

Khalis kept hold of her hand as he guided her down several paths and then finally to a door. The high, forbidding wall had a door, and Khalis possessed the key. Grace watched as he activated the security system, first with his fingerprint and then a number code, before swinging the door open and leading her out to freedom.

The air felt cooler, fresher and more pure without the walls. Khalis led her away from the compound and down a rocky little path towards the shore.

He still held her hand, his fingers wrapped warm and sure around hers as he guided her down the path to the silky sweep of sand. She heard the roar of the waves crashing onto the shore and saw the beach nestled in a rocky cove, now washed in silver.

‘This feels better,’ she said, as if she’d just had a little dizzy spell.

‘Why do you hate walls so much?’

She tugged her hand out of his. ‘Who likes them?’

‘Nobody really, I suppose, but it seems personal to you.’

Grace kept her gaze on the silvered sea. ‘It is. I used to live on an island like this. Private, remote, with high walls. I didn’t like it.’

‘Couldn’t you leave?’

‘Not easily.’

She could feel him staring at her, trying to figure her out, even though her back was to him. ‘Are you saying,’ he asked finally, ‘you were some kind of prisoner?’

She sighed. ‘Not really. Not literally. But other things can imprison you besides walls.’ She turned so she was half-facing him. ‘Hopes. Fears.’ She paused, her gaze sliding to and then locking with his. ‘Mistakes. Memories.’

She felt tension snake through him, even though he kept his voice light. ‘That sounds like psychobabble.’

‘It probably is,’ she admitted with a shrug. ‘But can you really deny this island has an effect on you?’

Khalis didn’t answer for a moment. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘I can’t.’

Neither of them spoke for a moment, the truth of what he’d said seeming to reverberate through them. ‘What will you do with this place?’ Grace asked eventually. ‘Will you live here?’

He gave a harsh laugh. ‘After what you just observed? No, never. Once I’ve finished going through my father’s assets, I’ll sell it.’

‘Will you manage Tannous Enterprises from the States, then?’

‘I don’t intend to manage Tannous Enterprises at all. I’m going to dismantle it and sell it off piece by piece, so no one has that kind of power again.’

‘Sell it?’ Even in the moonlit darkness she could make out the hard set of his jaw, the flintiness in his eyes. ‘I thought you were going to turn it around. Redeem it.’

He looked away from her, out to the sea. ‘Some things can’t be redeemed.’

‘Do you really think so?’ She felt a sudden sorrowful twist of disappointment inside her. ‘I like to think they can. I like to think any … mistake can be forgiven, if not rectified.’

‘My father is not alive for me to forgive him,’ Khalis said flatly. ‘If I even wanted to.’

‘You don’t?’

‘Why should I? Do you know what kind of man my father was?’

‘Sort of, but—’

‘Shh.’ Smiling now, Khalis drew her to him and pressed one finger to her lips. His touch was soft and yet electric, the press of his skin against her lips making the bottom of her stomach seem to drop right out. ‘I didn’t bring you to this moonlit cove to talk about my father.’

‘I could tell you about what I’ve discovered about the panels—’ Grace began. Her heart beat hard in her chest for she could not mistake the look of intent in Khalis’s eyes. Or the answering pulse of longing she felt in herself.

He laughed softly. ‘I didn’t bring you here for that, either.’

Her heart thudded harder. ‘Why, then?’

‘To have you kiss me.’

Shock made her mouth drop right open and he traced the curve of her parted lips with the tip of his finger. A soft sigh escaped her before she could suppress it. ‘Kiss you—’

‘The reaction when I kissed you was not quite what I was hoping for,’ Khalis explained, a hint of humour in his voice although his gaze blazed into hers. ‘So I thought perhaps we’d try it the other way.’

His finger still rested on her mouth, making her dizzy. ‘How do you know I even want to kiss you?’ she challenged.

‘Do you?’

How could she lie? His gaze was hungry and open; he hid nothing. And she hid so much. From him, and even from herself. For even if she didn’t want to want him, she knew she did. And she wouldn’t hide it. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, and Khalis waited.

Grace took a shuddering breath. Just one kiss. One kiss no one would ever know about. And then she’d walk away, go back to being safe and strong and independent. Slowly she reached out and touched his cheek, his own hand falling away from her mouth. She took a step towards him so her breasts brushed his chest. He gazed down at her, still, steady. Trustworthy.

Her palm cradled his cheek, the tips of her fingers brushing the softness of his hair. She leaned closer, so her body pressed fully against his and she could feel the hard thrust of his arousal. And then she kissed him.

CHAPTER SIX

H
ER
lips barely brushed his, but Khalis held himself still, and Grace knew he was purposely letting her control the kiss. She closed her eyes, luxuriating in the feel and taste of him. He tasted like mint and whisky, a sensual combination. His lips were soft and yet his yielding touch was firm, so that even though she was in charge she knew it was only because he allowed it. And somehow that made her feel safe rather than threatened or repressed.

Gently she touched her tongue to his lips, exploring the seam of his mouth, the caress a question. She felt a shudder go through him but he didn’t move. She pulled away, blinking up at him with a new shyness. She saw his eyes were closed, his body rigid. He looked almost as if he were in pain, but surely he couldn’t be … unless it was costing him to remain so still.