Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 2 of 2

In ten seconds, she was out of the bed and gathering up her clothes at the speed of a fleeing squirrel.
‘I was hoping you would stay,’ Rafiq rephrased, accepting that he had been clumsy. ‘But I have to leave very early in the morning and would likely be gone by the time you awake.’
‘Leaving the UK?’ Izzy queried tightly, without warning feeling as though he had buried an axe between her shoulder blades.
‘Yes…’
Izzy slid past him into the bathroom and shut the door. He knocked on it and with reluctance she opened the door a crack.
‘I don’t want us to be so brief…but I don’t have a choice.’
‘Why? Why don’t you have a choice?’ Izzy pressed in desperation.
His ridiculously long black lashes shielded his stunning gaze. ‘I can’t explain that.’
‘You know what? That’s fine. I’m going to have a shower and go home,’ Izzy told him with quiet dignity even though her stomach was already in the mood to heave.
It was over. In fact, it had been virtually over even before it had got to begin, she reckoned, stricken. She had dimly assumed that she was on a date when in reality she had been succumbing to a one-night stand and that made her feel very, very stupid and naïve. She hadn’t realised that he was only in Oxford for one night and that tomorrow she would be receiving a text from the cleaning agency to do the changeover clean again. Best not to be in the apartment alone when that text came, she reasoned dully, as no doubt sleeping with the client was yet another fireable offence.
Dear heaven, how had she contrived to be so dumb? How had she managed to decide to sleep with him and somehow idealise the decision into something it wasn’t and could never be? And she had believed that, of the two of them, Maya was the romantic dreamer?
Showered and dressed, Izzy emerged from the bathroom in record time.
Back in his jeans but barefoot, Rafiq extended the handbag she had left behind in the lounge, proving that he was surprisingly at home with a woman’s needs. The gesture only increased her suspicions. ‘Are you sure you’re not still married?’ she demanded thinly.
‘I am not married but—’ Rafiq breathed in deep, like a male mustering his strength ‘—I will be married again some time soon.’
‘You bastard…you’re engaged and you slept with me?’ Izzy exclaimed and she hit his shoulder with her handbag as she swung it like a weapon.
Rafiq said nothing because there was nothing he could say without revealing his true identity. Being struck by someone for the first time ever shocked him, but not enough for him to rebuke her because the evening had turned into an irrefutable disaster and he didn’t blame her for the way she felt. He was rigid as he extended an envelope to her.
‘What’s this?’ she questioned.
‘The money I promised you,’ Rafiq advanced warily. ‘I pay my debts.’
‘I don’t want the money now!’ Izzy framed shakily, her face very white. ‘Not after what we’ve just done!’
In a sudden movement, Rafiq snatched the bag out of her nerveless hand, opened it and dug the envelope into it before handing it back to her.
‘You do realise that this is the last straw…the biggest insult?’ Izzy shouted at him, stricken. ‘You’re paying me off like I’m a hooker or something!’
‘We both know that it was not like that between us,’ Rafiq framed in a raw undertone.
‘But that’s what it feels like now!’ Izzy slung back at him as she stalked out of the bedroom, out of the apartment and back to her own life with the knowledge that she should never have strayed from what she understood and what was familiar because, without those guidelines and boundaries, it was easy to get badly hurt.
And she was hurt. On the way home she took her daily contraceptive pill from her handbag where she kept them, not wishing to trust in the convictions of the guy who had already let her down. But it had been her hopes he’d disappointed. He hadn’t promised anything, hadn’t broken her heart with lies either. He was engaged though, had been unfaithful to some other woman with her, which made her feel soiled, tainted by association. That wounded like another knife twisting inside her…how could it not? That took her right back to basics and she wasn’t the slightest bit surprised that, when she got back to the apartment, she was horribly sick on her empty stomach and never had she been more grateful that her sister was not around to see her at her lowest ebb.

CHAPTER FOUR
MAYA RETURNED FROM her visit home and stayed in the bedroom most of the evening, clearly in no mood to chat, and Izzy was grateful, if not discomfited, by her twin’s preoccupation.
‘How’s stuff at home?’ she asked over breakfast the following morning.
Maya grimaced. ‘The usual mess and Dad saying that everything’s going to be all right even though there’s no way it will be.’
‘Dad doesn’t change.’ Izzy sighed. ‘How’s Mum?’
‘Keeping faith in Dad as usual,’ her sister said wearily.
‘So, what do we do?’
‘Anything we can do,’ Maya breathed tautly. ‘And that’s not a lot at the moment.’
Izzy hugged her own misery to herself in silence because Maya had quite enough to be contending with at present and Izzy had no plans to add to her burden. Undoubtedly her sister would share once life had lightened up a little, she thought tiredly, while still wondering how someone like Rafiq, whom she had only known for less than twenty-four stupid hours, could dent her usually cheerful nature to the extent that she felt as though an armoured tank had run over her. Even so, there was no point beating herself up continually over events she had no power to change, most especially when she was in the midst of her final exams, she reminded herself squarely.
* * *
Over the subsequent month, Izzy swotted hard and sat exam after exam, worrying every step