by Lynne Graham
‘And I’d vanish too if that were the only solution,’ Izzy declared dizzily, stunned at that response, that apparent assumption that marriage was the only possible answer to their dilemma. ‘I’m only twenty-one. I don’t want to get married to anyone. I haven’t even started living my life yet. For goodness’ sake, I only had sex for the first time a couple of months ago!’
Rafiq registered that he had a problem and one he had not foreseen. For too long he had been encouraged to view himself as a matrimonial prize in terms of rank and wealth, his apparent infertility his only flaw. But the immediacy of Izzy’s rejection showed him that rank and wealth meant nothing to some women. It was a supreme irony, he conceded grimly, that even though he didn’t want to marry any woman her lack of greed and ambition might also have raised a tiny spark of enthusiasm in him for the venture.
‘We will discuss it tomorrow,’ he breathed in a driven undertone, emotions he didn’t want pulling at him, refusing to allow him to embrace his usual cool-headed thought processes. He had learned to be unemotional during his first marriage, had learned that it was the only safe way to cope with doing his duty. He could not change that mindset, not when once again he had no other choice but to surrender his freedom. Lightning could strike twice in the same life, he acknowledged, but at least this time he had the joy of becoming a father to lighten the load...
CHAPTER FIVE
A COUPLE OF hours after Rafiq left Izzy alone, she slid into the big bed with a sigh of appreciation for its comfort.
She couldn’t believe that she was tired again after napping throughout most of the afternoon but that had been one of the warnings given by the doctors. A multiple pregnancy would take more out of her than a singleton one and she would need more rest and a very healthy diet. She smiled, fingers creeping across her stomach as she thought about her babies.
It was an escape to think of them rather than the bombshell that Rafiq had dropped on her! Marriage? That didn’t fit in with her plans or expectations at all. Rafiq was out of touch. Women didn’t have to get married simply because they were pregnant these days, she soothed herself. Although being forced to take Rafiq to bed for the rest of her life could be an encouragement, she conceded guiltily, shocked and then amused by her drowsy reverie.
But then the bedroom door opened again and Rafiq strolled in, dark golden eyes widening a little when he saw her still awake, sapphire eyes rounding above the sheet with surprise, her hair tumbled across the pillow like a copper question mark.
‘It’s after midnight,’ Izzy pointed out a little unsteadily. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘This is my bedroom.’ Rafiq dropped the news without apology because he had a campaign to mount. Like it or not, freely choose it or not, he had to make Izzy marry him and he would do whatever he had to do to achieve that end result.
Izzy was so taken aback, she sat up against the pillows in a sudden movement. ‘Your bedroom? Why was I put in your room?’ she gasped.
‘Because everyone thinks we’re married.’
‘But we’re not!’ she protested vehemently.
‘We know that,’ Rafiq conceded. ‘But to make a major announcement of the truth that you are pregnant and we are not married would kick off a huge scandal and I’m not prepared to do that.’
‘Oh...’ Izzy kind of saw his point, which only infuriated her. Unfortunately, it was her fault that everyone knew that she was pregnant.
‘I owe Prince Jalil, my uncle and the Regent, more than that scandal after the hard work he has done to ensure that the Zenarian royal family is viewed with affection and respect again.’
‘Again?’ Izzy queried and then she shifted a hand, dismissing that mystery to concentrate on the here and now, which seemed rather more important. ‘Couldn’t you use another bedroom with the excuse that I’m pregnant and you don’t want to disturb me?’
‘No. Although it has been assumed that we were married in the UK, everyone also knows that we must have been apart for many weeks and to sleep anywhere but with you would look strange.’
Izzy breathed in very deep and compressed her lush pink lips. ‘Then it looks like we’re stuck with this sharing but it’s not as though I’m planning to stay long, so I’m sure we can cope until I leave again. Then you can say we’re divorced, can’t you?’
Rafiq said nothing at all because there was nothing to say to that unwelcome suggestion. If it hadn’t been for the twins she was expecting, they could have taken that road, but then they wouldn’t have been in the situation in the first place had it not been for her pregnancy. His brain, which until that moment had been very much preoccupied with the prospect of becoming a father, took a sudden jolting hike in another direction as Izzy stopped hugging the sheet as though he were a potential rapist and let it fall to her lap. She was sporting something made of thin white cotton, the material so fine it outlined the ripe curves of her unbound breasts and displayed the darker circles of her pouting nipples. Rafiq went instantly hard as a rock and turned away lest she notice the desire his neatly tailored trousers could not conceal.
Izzy shifted over to what she had chosen as her side of the bed and told herself that she was not going to watch Rafiq undress. But she did, while for the entire space of each nail-biting second assuring herself that she would naturally close her eyes and stop peeking, perving on him like some sort of sex-starved woman.
After all, she was no longer that naïve any more, she told herself briskly. Unhappily, for some inexplicable reason, having seen Rafiq naked before didn’t seem to be enough to satisfy her renewed curiosity or her fresh interest. The shirt dropped to the floor and her gaze hungrily roamed over his muscular brown torso as if she had never seen a man’s chest in her life. A sort of invasive heat source entered her pelvis at the same moment as she appreciated the corrugated musculature lining his eight-pack, not to mention that Adonis belt of a vee that magically appeared as he began removing the suit trousers. Her nipples peaked and her body shifted restively below the sheet as she noted the dark arrow of hair disappearing below the waistband of his boxers and the sizeable bulge still covered there. And that was the point where shame made her shut her eyes tight, castigating herself for her inability to do so earlier.
Was it her fault that he was so absolutely magnificent naked that she wanted to put her hands all over him? Explore, touch, trace, tease? She buried her burning face in a pillow, praying for her composure to return before he registered how ill at ease she was simply sharing a bed with him again. After all, been there, done that, got more than a T-shirt out of it, why should sleeping with him in the same bed seem so much more dangerously intimate?
Rafiq went for a shower, a freezing-cold one, keen to dispel the treacherous pulse of arousal in case his condition gave her the impression that he wanted more. Of course, he wanted more of the best sex he had ever had, he scoffed at himself, but he wouldn’t do anything about it or make any kind of approach. He might have taken advantage of her once, but he wasn’t about to repeat that mistake. The mother of his unborn children deserved better than that; she deserved his respect, his consideration. And the streak of dark, highly sexed wildness in him that he always kept chained up and suppressed would not get a single chance to escape, he swore inwardly.
Taut with discomfiture from her most recent reflections, Izzy waited until she felt his weight depress the mattress before stretching out a hand to switch off the light. She couldn’t expect him to sleep with the light on all night as she had planned to do because she didn’t like waking up anywhere strange when she was half-asleep. She wasn’t a kid any more. She could sleep fine in the dark in an unfamiliar place, she told herself irritably.
Even so, it seemed to be taking her a very long time to fall asleep because she was so very aware of his presence in the bed. The bed was wide, long, the perfect fit for a wide-shouldered, long-legged male, but he put out heat like a furnace and she swore she could feel that unwel
come heat warming her back and it made her all twitchy and uneasy, a tightening deep inside her nagging at her nerves.
‘Go to sleep, Izzy,’ a voice murmured in the merciful darkness. ‘I’m not about to jump you.’
In silence, her teeth gritted and she wouldn’t let herself screech something back. He thought she was afraid of him now, did he? How dared he? She wasn’t a scared little kid! She compressed her lips and, cursing him thoroughly, lay as still as a corpse and eventually that did the trick and she drifted off to sleep.
Feeling too warm woke her up again. Moonlight was casting a little clarity into the room and she could see that it was still dark but that was the least of her problems, she registered, because she was welded up against a very masculine body like a second skin and, yes, he was too hot but, on another level, he felt incredible. Yet again her teeth clenched together even as a tiny little quiver thrummed through her. It was a case of mind over matter. It was perfectly normal to be attracted to him but, in the circumstances, it would be totally wrong to do anything about it. So, even though she wanted to flip over and investigate that warm hair-roughened, sun-darkened skin with all the wanton attention of a complete pervert, she wasn’t about to do it, was she?
Even if she wasn’t the only one of them with that kind of idea and physical urges at play? After all, she wasn’t stupid. His arousal was aggressively firm against her hip. In fact, she felt rather smug about the truth that he wasn’t impervious to her either. Why should she be the only one suffering?
‘If you don’t stop twitching and shifting, I’ll...’ Rafiq ground out in frustration.
‘You’ll what?’ Izzy positively snarled as she flipped up into sitting position. ‘Go on! Threaten me with some ghastly medieval punishment for breathing!’
‘I was not about to threaten you but you’re certainly not making this easy!’ Rafiq snapped back thickly.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ Izzy said snarkily, flipping back the sheet to slide off the bed, the nightie flipping up to reveal the stretch of shapely legs for his bemused appraisal. ‘You’re the one who had an arm round me!’
‘I thought that if I held you, you might stop moving around so much and keeping me awake!’ Rafiq grated. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not used to sharing a bed with anyone.’
‘You were married for ten years,’ Izzy threw back at him. ‘How is that possible?’
‘We didn’t share a room,’ Rafiq ground out.
Disconcerted by that admission, Izzy swivelled back to the sofa by the wall that she had been considering for what remained of the night hours. With a sigh, she curled up on it and closed her eyes. ‘What sort of a marriage was it in which you didn’t even share a room?’ she prompted with helpless curiosity.
‘I will not discuss that.’
Rafiq swore in his own language and sprang out of bed. Izzy opened her eyes again on over six feet of angry naked masculinity stooping over her and snatching her up off the sofa to settle her firmly back down on the bed. ‘You are not sleeping any place else but this bed!’ he thundered down at her.
‘Rafiq...the domestic tyrant,’ Izzy murmured softly. ‘It’s kind of sexy.’
Seriously perturbed by that unexpected comeback, Rafiq froze, for that was one word he would never have applied to himself. He shook off the label again. It was a superficial, silly comment, not intended to mean anything, certainly not any kind of invitation when she was so angry with him. ‘We’ll talk over breakfast,’ he breathed in a driven undertone.
He would lay the facts out for her then. After all, the woman he remembered had been reasonable and rational. Presumably she retained those traits, even if she wasn’t displaying them at the moment. Of course, he reminded himself ruefully, just like him she was struggling to deal with a situation she had not foreseen and the sudden destruction of her immediate plans for the future. If he made it clear that she could still walk away and have that future, he would be offering her a practical solution.
* * *
Izzy wakened and, finding herself alone in the bed, wasted no time in taking advantage of the privacy. Showering and washing her hair, she chose capri pants and a tee to wear, her small case and even smaller wardrobe for a hot climate not offering much of a choice. Her brain felt clear again and her anxiety level soothed, leaving her feeling equipped to deal with whatever Rafiq had to throw at her over breakfast.
The quiet little maid was waiting in the bedroom to escort her out into a long stone corridor and through a doorway into very bright light. The heat engulfed her like a blanket, disconcerting her after the air-conditioned cool of the interior of the building. She was ushered down a flight of steps and into the merciful shade of palm trees to find herself standing in a very pretty courtyard, crammed with lush tropical plants.
‘I didn’t realise how hot it would be,’ she muttered, suddenly plunged back into awkwardness as Rafiq, immaculate in yet another designer-cut suit, sprang up from the table set beneath the trees. ‘I haven’t been abroad very often. Well, we only ever had one foreign holiday,’ she told him reluctantly, not wanting to sound like a deprived child because she loved her parents very much and did not want to sound in any way critical of them.
No way was she about to tell Rafiq, with the kind of wealth she assumed he had, that money had always been a problem in her family and that the single holiday to more exotic climes she had enjoyed only a couple of years earlier had occurred when one of her father’s business ventures unexpectedly did well. Of course, the doing well hadn’t lasted—it never did—and the business had eventually gone down in a torrent of debt, plunging them back into the normality of being a family for whom a holiday was a dream luxury.
‘Where did the holiday take you?’ Rafiq murmured easily, accustomed to setting people at ease in his presence, watching her settle nervously into the chair tugged out by one of the servants hovering.
‘Spain. Matt was able to get down in the sand and act like a little boy for a change,’ she recalled fondly of her little brother, whose need for a wheelchair prevented him from enjoying many of the pursuits available to an able-bodied child.
‘You are close to your family,’ Rafiq gathered, having watched her expressive face light up. ‘I am very fond of my brother. I will introduce you to him soon. He is at school right now.’
‘School’s not something I miss,’ Izzy muttered in what she knew had to sound like a gabbling rush but, really, continuing to look across the table at a guy who took your every single breath away at one glance was challenging. ‘Maya was horribly bullied because she was so beautiful and clever. I was average.’
‘I don’t see you as average,’ Rafiq cut in.
Izzy shrugged a tiny thin shoulder and ignored that pointed remark. ‘You said we were going to talk. You don’t need to work through this getting-to-know-you stuff to be polite with me.’
Rafiq breathed in deep and slow. ‘Our children can only be recognised here if their parents are married. Obviously I want the children to have that option, to be able to take their place in Zenara as royals if they wish.’
Izzy had tensed and she sipped at her tea. ‘But when you were talking yesterday, you didn’t make it sound like being royal in Zenara was really that enjoyable,’ she reminded him drily.
‘I was raised in a totally different way from the way I will raise my own children. It was a different time in my country’s history and a different set of circumstances. But neither of us can know what our children will want when they are grown up,’ Rafiq reasoned. ‘Don’t you want them to have a free choice?’
Grudgingly, Izzy nodded because she hadn’t thought through the royal connection. ‘You’re referring to titles, like you being a prince.’
‘No, Izzy. I’m talking about much more. The firstborn of those twins will be my heir to the throne. I will be King when I reach my thirtieth birthday in eighteen months and my child will be the next in line, which is a very impor
tant role. If you don’t marry me, both our children will be automatically excluded by law from an official role in Zenara. Yet they need to be living here to learn our language, our culture and to get to know their people.’
Izzy released her breath in a long sigh because she hadn’t grasped just how deep that royal connection could go. Rafiq was going to be a king? Yes, she had already known that. So, how on earth had she contrived, even briefly, to forget such a fact? There she had been squabbling with him last night in bed as though he were just any ordinary Joe, when really he was anything but!
‘In the light of that reality, I have a suggestion to make,’ Rafiq murmured levelly.
Izzy looked up from the piece of fruit she was slicing and let herself greedily focus on him, only for a few seconds, she bargained with her conscience. He had the same effect on her, she reckoned, as a major crush would have on a teenager. Only she had never experienced one of those crushes. During the teen years, she and her sibling had been far too busy handling family problems like bailiffs and debt collectors and keeping food on the table with part-time work as shop assistants. It was just there was something so ravishingly perfect about those lean dark, chiselled features and those eyes, stunning, gleaming with gold highlights, and then there were the lashes: inky, lush and curling. Her body heated to such an extent that she thought she might expire.
‘A suggestion?’ she said jerkily, dredging her attention off him again to concentrate on eating the fruit, which was much safer and more sensible, she told herself fiercely, exasperated by the manner in which her brain kept on wandering around him.
‘That we marry now to legitimise our children and stay together until they are born,’ Rafiq outlined with clarity. ‘I need to be with you until the birth to support you, to be a responsible father.’
‘You’re a literal throwback to the Dark Ages,’ Izzy muttered helplessly. ‘But in an odd way, it’s kind of sweet.’
