by Lynne Graham
‘Sweet?’ Rafiq growled.
‘Most of the men I meet would run away from that level of responsibility,’ she extended, reluctant to offend him. ‘You’re the opposite. Sorry, I interrupted you. You were suggesting that we stay together until after the birth...and then?’
‘You and I go our separate ways,’ Rafiq framed, releasing his breath. ‘That agreement between us would leave all options open for all of us.’
Izzy nodded very slowly. Marry purely for the sake of that legal bond and then split up again? Yes, that did make sense to her. It would settle the essentials. It would give the twins their choices, whatever they might be, when they were adults and it would also leave both her and Rafiq free to continue with their lives. Even so, it certainly didn’t feel like the answer to her every prayer and she didn’t understand why it didn’t.
‘I think that would be almost perfect,’ she told Rafiq, because her brain believed that and she squashed the sense of unease already threatening to rise inside her. ‘After all, you can’t be any keener on the idea of marrying a virtual stranger than I am.’
The strong lines of his fabulous bone structure went taut, showing off the intriguing hollows, and her heart jumped behind her breastbone. ‘No...’ he conceded almost guiltily half under his breath. ‘I will always do my duty but my first marriage was not a happy one.’
Rafiq froze up even more as he felt those words slip from him because he had never once admitted to anyone what he had just admitted to her. Even so, the sky didn’t fall, and no piercing shard of disloyalty pained him because he had long since adjusted to the absence of a woman who had, in truth, been as absent in life to him while alive as she was after she passed. ‘I shouldn’t have said that!’ he breathed in a roughened undertone of discomfiture.
‘Why not, if it’s the truth?’ Izzy murmured quietly, skating a soothing finger down over the clenched fist lying within her reach. ‘All this will be easier if we try to be honest with each other.’
‘Yes,’ Rafiq conceded, censuring himself for that moment of weakness, that moment of unguarded frankness that was very unlike him. Something about Izzy encouraged him to break free of his normal reserve and self-discipline. He would have to watch himself around her and not make a habit of such vulnerability.
Women disliked weak men and only weak men revealed emotion, he reflected grimly. He had learned that as a child when his mother pushed him away and told him that boys didn’t cry and cling to their mothers. He had learned it as an adult when he tried to reason with his childless wife and referred to his own feelings and she went off into hysterics, outraged that he could dare to mention his side of their story and verbally abusing him for that mistake.
‘I will arrange the wedding.’
‘Wedding?’ she exclaimed in dismay.
‘Not a normal one,’ Rafiq qualified. ‘A little ceremony, which will only be witnessed by a couple of people in a quiet room here in this wing of the palace.’
Izzy’s frown evaporated. ‘Because it has to be secret,’ she guessed. ‘Well, that’s lucky. I don’t have anything to wear for a proper occasion.’
‘I will have appropriate attire brought to you. My uncle will be one of the witnesses and a bride in a dress of some kind will feel more normal to him. He is a kind man, a good man but out of touch with the modern world. Our situation has troubled him deeply,’ Rafiq confided again, compressing his wide sensual lips on the suspicion that once again he was saying too much, revealing too much.
Izzy nodded agreement and made herself munch through a piece of toast very slowly because she was feeling a little queasy and hoping that something a little more solid than fruit would settle it. Unhappily, the ruse didn’t work and a few minutes later, she found herself plunging out of her seat like a madwoman and racing up the stairs and back to the bedroom again to find the bathroom.
She was genuinely horrified to glance up when she had finished being sick and discover Rafiq in the doorway. ‘This is par for the course,’ she pointed out defensively as she rinsed her mouth at the sink and reached for her toothbrush.
‘The doctor will still visit. The palace has its own medical clinic. Now,’ Rafiq breathed, suddenly at her elbow and bending down to scoop her up like a doll. ‘You should rest until you feel a little better.’
He lowered her back down on the bed.
‘But we will have to get some food into you that stays down,’ he remarked worriedly. ‘I will consult the doctor.’
And with that, Rafiq was gone, leaving her to dizzily study the space where he had been.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY WERE GOING to marry and, by the sound of it, quickly, Izzy reflected in a daze.
It wouldn’t be a real marriage, of course, but it would enable her to build a proper foundation for her babies’ futures and she wouldn’t be fit to be a mother if she wasn’t willing to make some sort of a sacrifice, would she? After all, her own mother had given up a life of comfort and ease to live on a shoestring for the sake of the twins she’d carried and to be with the man she loved.
Rafiq was clever too because he had stripped the facts down to the basics and left her without a leg to stand on with regards to the suggestion that they marry. She rolled her eyes at recognising how he had won the concession he wanted from her.
When the maid knocked and entered with another, explaining that they had brought an outfit for her to wear to meet the Regent, she was even more impressed by Rafiq’s shrewd cover-up. Staging a secret wedding in a place stuffed with gossiping staff would have to be done with care but there could be no better excuse for her to get all dolled up than for the important occasion of meeting her husband’s uncle, the Regent and current ruler of Zenara.
Evidently, there was a need for them to marry at speed before anyone could suspect that they were actually not married. She could only assume that any kind of scandal was viewed as a major catastrophe in the Zenarian royal family and suppressed a sigh. Her mother would have understood that viewpoint better than Izzy would have, considering that becoming an unwed mother-to-be had led to her mother being thrown out of her family. That same attitude, however, struck Izzy, the child of a different generation, as prehistoric.
Even so, if that was the way it had to be in Zenara she would play along for her babies’ benefit, and in the bathroom she put on the long blue richly embroidered dress she had been brought. It was pretty but it looked like one of those national dress outfits people wore to dance in at country festivals and she smiled, returning to the bedroom to be draped in jewellery and have her hair fussed over. In the end she did her hair herself because her corkscrew curls had a mind of their own and putting them up in a more formal style took a familiar pair of hands. The jewels in the box opened for her perusal were utterly spectacular, she reflected, smoothing a reverential finger over the diamond and sapphire necklace at her collarbone, which was accompanied by matching earrings.
Rafiq strode into the bedroom and she froze because for the first time she was seeing him out of Western dress. He wore a long white tunic and cloak and a red-checked turban, the ends of which draped over his shoulder like a scarf. It was a mode of apparel that made him look very different, very...very fantasy sexy, she decided abstractedly, studying the clean sculpted lines of his devastatingly handsome features in awe. She stood up, her knees suddenly weak.
‘You look amazing,’ he told her.
Her eyes danced with amusement at his reaction to what felt like fancy dress to her but presumably seemed much more ordinary to him.
‘Why are you laughing?’ Rafiq demanded in bewilderment.
‘Back home, only a micro miniskirt and a very revealing top would get me that reaction from a man,’ she whispered.
Rafiq frowned. ‘Do you dress like that when you go out?’
‘No, never been a fan of putting it all out there,’ she told him as he grasped her hand in his and led her
down the corridor. The first thing she noticed was all the guards lining that corridor and then they were walking into a big sunlit room and a little portly man with a huge smile was coming towards her with an extended hand of welcome. The door closed behind them. Rafiq translated his uncle’s warm greetings because the older man didn’t speak much English, but it didn’t matter because his smile and his twinkling dark eyes were wonderfully friendly and relaxed. Prince Jalil did not stand on ceremony.
A robed elderly man approached them and he spoke words to them both before directing them over to a table where Izzy and Rafiq were instructed to sign the marriage contract. Indeed, the wedding ceremony happened so fast and was completed so quickly that she almost asked Rafiq if that was really all there was to it. Happily, however, she was on her very best behaviour in such exalted company and engaged instead in replying to the Regent’s polite questions about her family while Rafiq remained at her side, deftly translating.
‘What now?’ she murmured as Rafiq accompanied her back down the corridor.
‘Now we escape the goldfish bowl of palace life,’ Rafiq told her with resolve, guiding her downstairs and across an unbearably hot open space towards a helicopter.
‘To go where?’ she exclaimed. ‘I haven’t even packed!’
‘You have nothing to pack. You brought hardly any clothes with you!’ Rafiq pointed out. ‘I have taken care of that problem.’
‘Have you indeed? But—’ Her voice broke off as he scooped her up in his arms to stow her in the helicopter and the rotor blades began spinning, making further conversation impossible.
Seated in the back of the helicopter, Izzy surveyed Rafiq in frustration. He hadn’t told her where they were heading. He had implied that he had bought her clothes to wear. He had no right to do that, no right to make decisions without her input. They might be married but she was still struggling to accept the idea that bathroom guy, the father of the twins she carried, could now be her husband. And apparently, she had landed herself a bossy, I-know-best style of husband even if it was only for the next seven months or so...
She supposed he planned to visit their twins when he was in London on business and that they would both be very polite and civilised following the divorce. After all, what else but a divorce could he be planning?
Thirty minutes later, she was peering out of the window beside her when she saw a huge building loom up ahead of them and she blinked in astonishment because initially she thought she was hallucinating. They had flown over endless miles of desert, only occasional rock formations and black tent encampments interrupting the emptiness, and then all of a sudden she saw the giant construction looming ahead. Cream and gold in colour, it had a great domed entrance and a forest of tall turreted walls. It resembled a fantasy cartoon castle yet the lines of it were modern, but it was still an utterly out-of-place property to find in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.
‘Where are we?’ she questioned as the craft dropped down onto a helipad on a flat roof.
‘Alihreza,’ Rafiq informed her, his exotic bone structure taut, his intonation indicating some strong emotion but not one she could label. ‘It has been mine since my father’s death but I don’t use it.’
‘Then why now?’ she prompted as he assisted her from the craft to urge her through the blinding heat of exposure towards the building.
‘Being here frees us from the goldfish bowl of palace life and gives us privacy. You can have your own room. I can go back to work and you can sun yourself by the pool and if we only meet once a day for dinner, nobody will even notice,’ Rafiq completed with audible satisfaction.
Well, with her classic redhead’s skin, quick to burn, she was unlikely to be sunning herself beside any pool, Izzy conceded, dazed by the piercing sense of hurt that assailed her in the wake of that little speech. He had brought them to this out-of-the-way spot so that he could reclaim his freedom and ignore her existence.
Why on earth should that make her feel hurt and rejected?
Hadn’t they been honest with each other about their feelings? Rafiq was no keener on being married than she was, and it was natural that he would want to return to his normal way of life. He didn’t want to be one half of a couple and feel forced to share a bed. He didn’t want the annoyance of having to be seen to entertain a woman people believed was his wife.
It might hurt her pride, but she needed to come swiftly to terms with the reality that she was only a wife on a legal document and not in any other meaningful way.
Rafiq didn’t owe her anything more and he wasn’t pretending that he did either. That was honest, fair, she told herself firmly. They had had a one-night stand, not a relationship. A one-night stand and an accidental conception did not make a relationship.
An assembly of staff greeted them with a near reverential respect, which made her feel more of a fake than ever because she wasn’t truly Crown Princess and future Queen—she was only a stand-in, a temporary aberration, Rafiq’s contraceptive mishap...or miracle, depending on one’s viewpoint, she adjusted ruefully.
A hail of polite introductions and smiles welcomed them to Alihreza before they were ushered into a lift that was as over-the-top opulent in mirrored design as the gilded marble corridors and staircases she had glimpsed.
‘This place is spectacular,’ Izzy murmured, staring in wonder at the tiers and arcaded terraces of carved stone walling that surrounded the huge central courtyard that sported a swimming pool, luxury seating areas and glorious vegetation.
‘It is a monument to excess and corruption,’ Rafiq contradicted between compressed lips as he strode through grand double doors into a bedroom.
Thoroughly taken aback by that lofty judgemental statement, Izzy directed a bewildered glance at him.
Rafiq was poised by the window, his bronzed face in sunlight as he removed the ceremonial turban, running long brown fingers through his black luxuriant hair, that hair that felt like silk between her fingers. He was so beautiful at that moment that he made it hard for her to breathe, and something intimate tightened and clenched at her feminine core to send colour flying up into her cheeks.
Unnerved, Izzy made a show of examining her surroundings. It was a superb bedroom, awash with a jaw-dropping amount of luxury. In the simmering silence she ran a fingertip over the gilded trim on a nightstand and along the smooth crease of a delicate embroidered silk curtain.
‘Your room is next door,’ Rafiq informed her tautly, striding across the room to pull open the connecting door in invitation because the more he was exposed to her, the more he wanted her, which meant that keeping his distance made better sense. And he was always sensible, he reminded himself with resolve.
He couldn’t have her, not now when their marriage was only supposed to be an empty charade, and it was a retrograde step to appreciate what he could not have. He saw that lush pink mouth and he craved it. She was like a fire in his blood, heating him up every time she came too close yet blissfully unaware of the effect she had on him. She had gazed back at him incredulously when he told her she looked amazing in that dress, utterly unable to see how the tight bodice cupped her full breasts and how the drape of the fabric outlined the curve of her generous hips, equally incapable of comprehending how a man who had already seen her naked could picture her shapely legs...spread.
Rafiq gritted his teeth at that crude thought and image, particularly at experiencing it in the place most notorious for his father’s carnal transgressions. Maybe the blood in him did run true, only fortunately for him his clean-living uncle had contrived to have more of a sobering effect on his principles than his dysfunctional parents had. Such troubling concepts and suspicions and insecurities had haunted Rafiq since he had been a teenager. Every time he craved sex for the sake of it, every time he wondered what it would be like to be with a woman who wanted him outside those few short days when she had the greatest chance of conceiving...
As if that declaration about her separate room hadn’t punched what remained of her breath back out of her lungs, Izzy pinned a bright smile to her face since it seemed to be what Rafiq expected and she didn’t like to disappoint him. Or maybe she wanted to hang onto what remained of her pride, a more cynical inner voice suggested as she strolled over to the open doorway, and then what he had said only minutes before roused her curiosity afresh and she turned back to him and probed inquisitively, ‘A monument to excess and corruption?’
Lean, devastatingly attractive features grim, Rafiq turned brooding dark eyes back to her, thinking that she just had to go there, where nobody else dared in his radius. ‘My father built this palace and ploughed millions into it, so that he could have somewhere very private and luxurious to entertain.’
‘Well, maybe he was extravagant but surely in an oil-rich country that’s not a hanging offence,’ Izzy remarked uncomfortably, beginning to wish by his grave demeanour that she had left the subject alone.
Rafiq studied her with shielded eyes and decided it was time to tell her what was already widely known in Zenara, where his father’s name was never ever mentioned in polite company. ‘He held drug-fuelled orgies here with porn stars and hookers.’
‘Oh...’ For a split second, Izzy was frozen to the floor by shock and then she blinked rapidly, and a startled strangled snort of laughter was wrenched from her, her hand flying up to her parted lips in sincere apology and dismay. ‘S-sorry,’ she stammered. ‘I was just thinking that this is one place where you wouldn’t want to say, If only the walls could talk!’
Rafiq surveyed her in utter disbelief.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but you’re standing there like a pillar of doom,’ Izzy told him helplessly. ‘All ashamed and disgusted and miserable at having to tell me that. Why are you still so sensitive about it? Your father’s gone! It is the past you’re talking about, not the present, and you’re not responsible for your father’s choices.’
