The Husband She Never Knew(9)
Author: Kate Hewitt

But what would happen if she stayed?

She felt her stomach hollow out and adrenalin course through her veins. Her heart began to thud with both anticipation and fear. Terror, really, because to contemplate such a thing would be to open herself up to the kind of devastating pain and heartache she had felt once before, and had since arranged her whole life to never feel again.

How could she even think of it?

How could she not?

Slowly Noelle rose from the table. Her heart was beating so hard and fast now it felt like a drumming through her body, an ocean roaring in her ears. Her legs were weak and wobbly as she walked from the room. She was going to find Ammar.

And then?

Slowly she walked through each empty room. She even found the disguised door and peeked in the study, surprisingly unlocked, but he was not there. She saw papers scattered on his desk, an open laptop, and turned away. In the music room she saw the French windows were ajar and she knew he must be outside, in the garden. With her fingertips she pushed the door open wider and stepped out into the night.

It was completely dark except for a swathe of light given by a sliver of moon, and it took her several moments to see enough to put one foot in front of the other. The little seating area where they’d spoken earlier was empty, but she saw a narrow stone path winding its way between the flowers and shrubs and she took it. She felt as if her heart, with its relentless pounding, was leading her onwards. Her heart, trembling thing that it was, would guide both her steps and words.

The path led to a private courtyard, with one wrought iron little bench. It was a pretty little space, or Noelle imagined it would be in daylight. Her breath caught in her chest and her heart beat harder as she saw Ammar sitting on the bench, his shoulders bowed, his head in his hands.

In the distance she heard the sound of an engine coughing to life, the whirr of propellers. So he really did expect her to leave. And she should leave, if she wanted to stay safe. Strong. It was so obvious, and yet …

She took a step towards him. He looked up and in the darkness she could not make out his expression at all, yet she felt his desperation and hunger like a palpable thing; it was the same thing she was feeling.

‘I don’t want to go,’ she said, her voice little more than a croak. She cleared her throat, forced herself to sound stronger. To feel it. ‘I want to stay.’

CHAPTER FIVE

AMMAR didn’t answer. For one endless charged moment the silence strained between them and Noelle braced herself for yet another awful rejection. What had she been thinking, risking herself again? Opening herself up to all sorts of pain?

Then in one fluid movement he rose from the bench and crossed to her. Noelle didn’t have time to respond or even think as he took her in his arms and kissed her with a passionate force that thrilled her to her core.

His lips captured hers, hungry, demanding, relentless. Her mouth parted and her hands clutched his shoulders, drawing him closer. She’d needed this. Craved it, for it was only with Ammar that she felt her body and heart open up, everything in her reaching for him, pleading …

And then he pulled away, just a little, yet still leaving her bereft. He rested his forehead against hers, just as he had the first time he’d kissed her, his breath coming out in a shudder. Noelle tensed; it felt like an apology, a rejection. Trying not to tremble, she stepped away from him.

‘I don’t mean … I’m not saying … You still kidnapped me,’ she said, the words both a warning and an accusation. A way to protect herself.

Ammar didn’t move, and yet she felt as if something had left him, something inside him had suddenly winked out. ‘I see,’ he said quietly, and she bit her lip, forced herself not to say anything more. To apologise. The silence stretched on.

She could not, Noelle thought, have doused their earlier passion more effectively or completely if she’d poured ice water over the pair of them. Ammar might have stopped the kiss, but she’d ruined the mood. It was just as well. She wasn’t ready to risk that much with Ammar. She wasn’t ready to risk rejection again. Even now she remembered how he’d thrust her away from him when she’d tried to make him want her that horrible evening in the hotel. Clad in her ridiculous teddy and stilettos—the clothes of a seductress, a whore—she’d asked brokenly, Don’t you want me?

She’d never forget his answer.

No. No, I don’t. Just leave me, Noelle. Get out of here.

And so she had, shaking with the pain of it, a pain so great she felt as if her body could not hold it. He didn’t love her. Didn’t want her the way a man wanted a woman, the way a husband should want a wife.

And now with that memory came doubt, treacherous, terrible, seeping into her heart like some noxious gas, a deadly poison. Why had she told him she’d stay, that she wanted to stay? She drew a shuddering breath and backed away.

‘I think I should—’

‘Don’t.’ Ammar cut her off quietly, yet with certain purpose. ‘Don’t leave. Please.’

It was, stupidly, the please that got her. He’d tacked it on as an afterthought, yet sincerity throbbed in his voice. I want to be that man again. He was trying to change.

She took another deep breath. ‘I won’t leave tonight,’ she said, the implication clear. But I might tomorrow. He wouldn’t stop her now, she knew. This was her choice. ‘But if you want us to have any chance of making something between us work, then you … you have to try.’

‘I know,’ Ammar said, his voice so low it seemed to reverberate right through her. ‘I know.’

The silence stretched between them. Noelle didn’t know what to say. She felt too raw and vulnerable to reassure him; she was half-regretting her agreement to stay the night already. Yet when Ammar turned to look at her, she saw the longing and hunger in his eyes and everything inside her twisted in a confusing mixture of hope and regret. Without another word she turned and walked out of the garden.

She was exhausted but she couldn’t sleep. She felt an unsettling clash of hope and despair, her emotions veering from one to the other. She asked herself what on earth she was doing here, staying with a man who had broken both her heart and the law. She should leave, get out while she could.

And while the stronger, harder self she had cultivated over the last ten years insisted that she tell Ammar to release her in the morning, the quiet voice of her heart whispered that she’d never really wanted to be that person in the first place.

That quiet voice became more insistent, telling her that he was the only man who had reached her, touched her soul and her heart. Yet did he love her? He’d never said. Ten years ago she’d assumed he did, naively, trustingly, because she didn’t think he could look at her the way he did, or brush her hair, or cup her cheek, and not love her. Yet now she was different and she no longer believed in the simple boy-meets-girl fantasy. She didn’t trust happy endings, had deliberately let go of the dreams she’d once cherished. The little house, a family, a husband. She didn’t want those things any longer. So why was she here? Why had she stayed and told herself—and him—that she would try?

Because, Noelle knew with an appalling certainty, she wanted to believe. Even now, when absolutely everything seemed stacked against them, when their past history and hurt were proof positive that faith in love and happy-ever-afters was not just naïve but delusional, she wanted to believe.

How stupid, she thought with a weary bitterness, was that?

She must have slept because she awoke suddenly, blinking in the darkness. The clock read a little after two in the morning. In the distance she heard the sound of someone playing the piano; after a moment she recognised the haunting melody as Pathétique, Beethoven’s melancholy Eighth Sonata. Silently she slipped from the bed and, dressed only in a silky nightie that fell to her knees, she headed downstairs.

The whole house was quiet and still, except for the sound of the piano. Noelle paused on the threshold of the music room, the door only a little ajar, the sorrowful sound of the music sweeping through her. She was no expert, but she could recognise when someone played with both talent and passion. Ammar was such a man.

Quietly she stepped into the room. He was so absorbed in his playing that he didn’t notice her and she watched him for a moment. He wore only a pair of loose drawstring trousers; his chest was bare and glorious, all taut, sleek muscle, although she could see some faded bruises from the crash on his back. His long, lean fingers moved elegantly over the keys, evoking a sound filled with such loss and longing that Noelle fought the urge to cross the room and put her arms around him.

Perhaps she made some sound, for Ammar suddenly looked over at her and his hands stilled on the keys, plunging the room into silence.

‘You play so beautifully,’ Noelle said after a moment. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me you played piano?’ Inwardly, she flinched. It sounded like an accusation.

Ammar played a few single discordant notes. ‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s always been a very private thing.’

She took a step into the room. The only light came from a single lamp on top of the piano; it cast its warm yellow glow over Ammar’s lowered head. ‘You must have had lessons, though.’ He shook his head. ‘You mean you taught yourself?’

‘At boarding school. I used to sneak into the music room after hours.’ His mouth twisted in a grimace that Noelle thought he meant to seem wry but wasn’t. ‘Breaking the law.’

‘It was certainly justified,’ she said as lightly as she could, ‘if you play like that.’

He played a minor chord, the mournful notes echoing in the stillness of the room. ‘Is it ever justified?’

She knew he was talking about more than just breaking into a music room. I’ve done too many things already I could be arrested for. She wasn’t ready to think about that, much less hear it from him. Coward, she berated herself. She remained silent, half in the room, her hesitation obvious. Ammar glanced up at her, his narrowed, knowing eyes taking in everything about her. She wasn’t fooling him. She wasn’t fooling him at all.

Swallowing, she took a step closer. ‘Why did you have to sneak into the music room at school?’ she asked. ‘Couldn’t you have had proper lessons?’

‘My father forbade it.’

‘Why?’

A shrug. ‘Music was useless, I suppose, to him.’ He took a breath, let it out slowly. ‘My father had very definite ideas about what a man should be like. What he should do, or even think.’

‘Your father,’ she said, taking a step closer to him, ‘has a lot to answer for.’

‘You have no idea.’

Ammar’s voice was so low and grim that Noelle flinched from it. ‘I know I don’t,’ she said softly, and for several moments neither of them said anything more. ‘So how did you decide you wanted to play the piano anyway?’ she finally asked. ‘If you’d never played before?’

‘My mother played. She was a professional and she might have had a great career, but she gave it all up when she married my father.’

‘I suppose she thought it was worth it,’ Noelle said uncertainly.

Ammar gave a little shake of his head. ‘She had no choice.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My father insisted upon it. No wife of his would ever work, or be seen needing to work.’

‘And your mother accepted it?’

‘She was in love with him, or at least she thought she was.’ He played another minor chord. ‘Perhaps she didn’t really know him.’

Noelle felt a shiver of unease. Was Ammar talking about his parents, or about them? And surely, surely he was different from Balkri Tannous. She had to believe that. Deliberately she moved forward and sat next to him on the piano bench. Surprised, he shifted over to give her more room, but even so their thighs brushed against one another and Noelle felt a bolt of awareness at the contact.

‘Did you ever play the piano?’ he asked.

‘I took lessons for a few months when I was about eight. My parents made me.’ She lifted her shoulders in a shrug, the gesture an apology. ‘I didn’t like it and so I didn’t practise and eventually they let me stop.’ She was uncomfortably and even painfully aware of the differences in their situations, in their very selves: Ammar had had to sneak into a music room to learn an instrument he loved, while she’d been given it freely and scorned it.

‘You could learn now,’ he said and, to her surprise, he took her hands and placed them on the piano keys, his own hands large and warm over hers. She stared at their twined hands, his skin callused and brown, her fingers slender and soft, the colour of cream. They were so different, she thought, in so many ways.

Carefully, Ammar pressed her hands down on certain keys. ‘C, C, A, A, G,’ he recited quietly, pressing each of her fingers down in turn.

Mesmerised by the simple touch of his hands on hers, Noelle could not recognise the tune for a moment. She felt as if a fist had plunged into the centre of her chest and grabbed hold of her heart. Squeezed. She was breathless with both longing and loss, and even a faint, frail joy.

‘F, F, E, E,’ Ammar continued, and she finally turned to him with a small smile.

‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’

‘You know it.’ He smiled back at her faintly, his lips barely curving but, even so, Noelle felt her already squeezed heart give a painful little lurch. He looked so beautiful and so sad, and she felt so much in that moment she couldn’t speak. He reached up and gently touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers. She closed her eyes. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, his voice so low that, even seated next to him, she had to strain to hear it. ‘So very lovely. I’ve always thought that.’

She drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I think I’ve always known you did.’