“Yes.”
Khalil sat up. “I knew I could make you see sense. Good.”
He bounded to his feet, then reached down and pulled her to hers. Before she had a chance to register her nakedness or be embarrassed, he stepped behind her and gave her a gentle push toward the bathroom.
“Go ahead and shower. There’s much to be done before the wedding. I’ll meet you in the dining room in twenty minutes.”
With that, he was gone. Dora stared after him. Somehow that was not the response she’d expected when she’d agreed to marry Khalil. Married? She shook her head. None of this was really happening. Obviously she was caught up in a weird dream or something. Or maybe she’d hit her head in the night. Either way, she might as well shower, if only to get on with the dream and see what would happen next.
The wedding party consisted of Khalil, Dora, a justice of the peace and the two bodyguards who served as witnesses. Dora glanced around the large parlor in the beautiful hotel suite and told herself that the management had worked a miracle in a very short period of time.
White roses and baby’s breath had been woven through a narrow wooden arch. Large, pale pink urns filled with white roses, lilies and orchids sat on squat tables, which formed a makeshift center aisle in the room. She and Khalil stood on a long, white cloth that had been tacked down from the entrance of the room to the edge of the archway, and soft music played over the suite’s sound system.
Dora clutched her bouquet of exotic flowers more firmly in her hands and told herself that considering there had been less than twelve hours to pull it all together, things had gone surprisingly well. Promptly at two the boutique had delivered a half-dozen dresses for her to look at. She’d chosen a simple ivory lace gown that looked like something from the 1920s. She’d managed to pull her shoulder-length hair up into a French twist so that the delicate pearl earrings Khalil had given her at lunch were visible.
She knew she looked pretty good. Khalil was handsome and confident in his dark suit. Under the circumstances, they were doing well. And that was the problem. She wasn’t comfortable with the circumstances, nor could she stop shaking. Even now, with the judge talking about sickness and health, she felt as if she were still in her dream. Or maybe she’d gotten trapped in a made-for-television movie. Or maybe it was mental illness. Or maybe it was really happening.
Dora didn’t know which would be more frightening. Was she really marrying Khalil Khan, prince of El Bahar? She shook her head slightly, trying to clear her thoughts. Maybe it was the wedding that was messing up her brain, she thought frantically, desperate for an excuse. Nothing was the way she thought it would be. With Gerald, their wedding plans had been a little rushed, but they’d had more than two months in which to come up with a plan. There had been guests and a church and a reception at a hall, and she’d had a real wedding dress.
She glanced at Khalil who listened attentively to the judge. What was he thinking? She wanted to stop the ceremony and talk to him but she didn’t know what words to use. Perhaps he didn’t think this was out of the ordinary. After all, when she’d emerged from her room after her shower, she’d found him already working in his office. He’d given her little more than an absentminded greeting, then he’d thrust a stack of folders at her and had turned his attention back to his computer. She’d spent the morning before her wedding dealing with last-minute business problems. As if nothing between them had changed.
“Dora?”
She looked up and realized both Khalil and the judge were staring at her. “What?”
Khalil smiled. “I believe the response he’s looking for is more along the lines of ‘I do.”’
I do what? she wondered, then it sank in. “Oh. Sure. I mean, I do.” She gave a little cough that did nothing to ease the tightness in her throat.
“The ring please,” the judge said, taking Dora’s flowers from her and setting them on a nearby table.
Khalil reached into his pocket and pulled out a diamond ring. Dora stared, first at the glittering piece of jewelry, then at him. Was that for her?
“Fit for a princess,” he murmured and slid it on the ring finger of her left hand.
She opened her mouth to protest. It was too extraordinary, too lovely, too expensive. Then she remembered she was not only marrying royalty, but into one of the richest families in the world. To Khalil this was probably as significant a purchase as her buying a nice pair of panty hose.
The judge started talking again, but she wasn’t listening. Instead she found herself captivated by the stunning ring that glittered on her hand. The band was wide, nearly reaching to her knuckle, and the entire ring was a circle of diamonds. Square-cut stones nestled together, each diamond as long as the band was wide. She didn’t know how many diamonds it took to make up the ring, but each had to be at least two carats. It wasn’t a piece of jewelry she would have picked for herself, but it was lovely and felt as if it had been made for her hand.
“You may kiss the bride.”
She looked up in time to watch Khalil bend down and press his lips to hers. The kiss was sweet and far too short. Then he squeezed her hand.
“Do you feel any different?” he asked.
“Being married?”
“That, of course, but I was wondering how it felt to be a princess.”
Princess Dora Khan of El Bahar, she thought to herself and had to fight back a burst of hysterical laughter. “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” she told him, wondering if it would ever sink in.
“Congratulations, Your Highness,” one of the bodyguards said, as he shook her hand.
Dora smiled automatically, but otherwise her body had gone numb. A princess? Yeah, right, that was her. Who was she trying to kid? Reality was she was a secretary from Los Angeles who had stumbled into a crazy situation. She had to get out before she said or did something stupid. Like throw up…or worse…believe all this was really happening.
Except she didn’t get to make her escape. Before she’d realized what was going on, the judge was gone and the bodyguards had retreated to their rooms. She was alone with her new husband, watching him pour them each a glass of champagne.
Who was this stranger? she thought warily as she moved to the sofa and settled in the corner. What had she done? Her nervousness increased, as did her shaking, and when he handed her the glass of champagne, it was all she could do to keep from spilling the bubbling liquid all over her lace dress. In an effort to keep that from happening, she swallowed a mouthful of champagne, decided the taste was exceptionally nice, then finished her glass. Khalil refilled it without saying a word.
He put the ice bucket on the table in front of her and settled next to her on the sofa. “Are you all right?” he asked.
He sounded kind and sincere, she thought frantically. So normal, as if he did this kind of thing all the time. Except he couldn’t, right? “Isn’t this making you crazy?” she blurted.
He took a sip of his drink. “What? The wedding? I thought things went smoothly.”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Clockwork in motion, or whatever.” She paused. The saying was “poetry in motion,” so where did the clocks come from? She rubbed her temple. Her stomach tingled and she thought it might have something to do with the champagne. Just to be sure, she drank a little more. She hadn’t eaten that day, and she was also thirsty. The fizziness tickled her throat. Was it her imagination or did her head suddenly feel heavy?
“I think I should probably eat something,” she mumbled.
“Of course,” Khalil told her. “Dinner is waiting whenever you’re ready.”
“Great.” Except the thought of standing up was suddenly too complex. “Maybe in a minute.”
She looked at him, at his handsome face. The lines of his profile were sharp, like a statue of granite. He was dark and dangerous, like the desert at night. Not that she had any personal experience with the desert at night or during the day.
“I know this is unfamiliar,” he said, lightly touching the back of her hand.
“We need to spend a little time getting to know each other. Why don’t we talk about our past? After that, we’ll eat dinner, and then we’ll make love until dawn.”
Making love, she thought hazily. Now that would be very nice. Maybe they could skip the other parts and get right to doing it. She hiccuped softly, then took another drink. She wanted to do it again and again until she learned everything about it. She wanted to touch Khalil and have him touch her back. She wanted to see him naked, in fact she thought this little chat about their past might be more enjoyable if he took his clothes off right now. She would very much like to see the “it” that made doing it so very enjoyable.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
His question cut through her fantasies and left her confused. Then she remembered that they were getting to know each other. A sensible plan. Khalil was right—once they knew more details about each other’s lives this wouldn’t be such a strange situation.
She finished her glass of champagne and started to set it on the coffee table, but Khalil filled it instead. She thought about refusing, after all, her head was already spinning, but wouldn’t that be rude? It was his wedding, too, and…What had been his question?
“No, I’m an only child.” She leaned back against the sofa. “My mom never said anything, but I think I was a mistake. She and my dad got married about two months before I was born. After that, he was never around much. They divorced when I was seven.”
“I see. I’m the youngest,” he said. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be an only child.”
“It’s lonely,” she said bluntly. “Probably not for some kids, but it was for me. My mom worked a lot to support us, and my dad wasn’t one for regular visitation. Plus, I wasn’t really popular at school.” She shrugged, then rolled her head so that she could look at him. “Too smart. I wasn’t pretty enough to get in with the right girls, and I think I scared all the boys away. Plus I was shy, and I never knew what to say to anyone. It was easier to hide out in the library and read.”
She took another sip of champagne. It tasted tartly sweet and slipped down easily. The tingling in her belly had spread to her whole body, and her brain definitely felt thick, but in a nice way. Like she was protected from anything too scary.
“When did you stop being lonely?” he asked.
She angled toward him and pulled her knees up onto the sofa. “Yesterday, I think. I can’t really remember.”
Khalil’s features started to blur together. Had she had too much to drink? Or was it just the soft lighting in the suite? Her eyes fluttered closed, and she felt warm fingers brush against her cheek.
“College wasn’t too bad at first,” she said dreamily, getting lost in the past. “I had a scholarship that paid for most things. I liked being in a place where it was considered a good thing to be smart and to work hard. But living on campus cost more than I thought, and I had to get a job to supplement my expenses.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “My mom didn’t have any extra money to spare. I don’t suppose that’s ever been a problem for you.”
“No, it hasn’t.”
“Must be nice.”
“Sometimes, but we’ve had other problems.”
“I guess everyone does. Anyway, I started tutoring. I worked with athletes a lot. Mostly because they paid the most. But they weren’t interested in anything but getting by. They didn’t want to learn. Isn’t that horrible?” She blinked and found that her eyelids were extraordinarily heavy. She swallowed a little more champagne to help her stay awake.
“One day I found my study notes missing. I confronted a couple of the guys, and they wouldn’t admit they’d taken them.” She sighed remembering the hurtful things those boys had said. “I refused to tutor them anymore. About three weeks after that, a bunch of the guys were caught cheating. They were going to be expelled, but they weren’t content to go quietly. They said that they were using a cheating system I’d come up with and had charged them for.”
Her words caught in her throat. That had been so long ago, she would have thought it didn’t have the power to hurt her anymore, but it did. She remembered her time in the dean’s office, when it had been her word against theirs.
“Six of them told the same story. Six,” she repeated quietly. “No one believed me, not about the notes or that I refused to work with them, or that I hadn’t had any part of the cheating. So I was expelled along with them. I went home, got a job and saved my money. A year later I started at my local community college, then I received my associate’s degree.”
She pressed her lips together. “This probably isn’t what you wanted to know, is it?”
“I want to know whatever you want to tell me.”
She tried to smile, but her face felt numb. “I don’t think so. I doubt any part of my life is very interesting.”
“That’s not true.” He stroked her cheek again, and the contact felt lovely. “Why didn’t you go back to college and get your four-year degree?”
She shrugged. At least it felt like she was shrugging on the inside, even if she didn’t feel any movement on the outside. “I was afraid of what might happen. I didn’t want to go through that again. Except for when Gerald left me in that airport in Kansas, it was the most alone I’ve ever felt.”
Khalil leaned close and took her glass from her, which was a good thing. When had her fingers gotten so stiff? She could barely bend them.
“You, my desert rose, tell a very sad story,” he murmured. “But all that is about to change.”
She desperately wanted to believe him. “Do you promise?”
“Yes.” He moved next to her and took her in his arms. “Nothing is going to hurt you ever again.”
“Not even you?”
“Least of all me.”
Then he kissed her. Those wonderful warm, firm lips settled on hers. Her eyes drifted slowly closed as a lethargy filled her body. She was drifting, drifting, drifting…And then there was only darkness.
Chapter Six
The redheaded model strolled down the center of the showroom, her lithe, insanely slender body barely making any movement under the burnt umber silk of her column dress. Dora stared at the garment and tried to ignore the skinny eighteen-year-old beneath. While she adored the color, the style would never work on her. She shifted uncomfortably on the gilded chair in the exclusive salon Khalil had brought her to this morning. He’d wanted to buy her a new wardrobe before they left for El Bahar later that afternoon.
She told herself to be happy with his generosity. She told herself that he was being kind and attentive, and she very nearly bought into her own story. The only thing holding her back was the fact that she’d awakened alone in her bed that morning, and there hadn’t been any evidence that Khalil had ever joined her. But she wasn’t sure she had the right to be upset, either, because most of the previous evening was a blur.
She remembered bits of the wedding, and she remembered afterward, when she and Khalil had sat together talking. She certainly remembered the champagne. She pressed two fingers to her temple. Even now her head pounded in a not-so-gentle reminder that too much liquor on an empty stomach did not leave her feeling her best.
At some point she must have fallen asleep—she didn’t dare even think the phrase “passed out”—and Khalil had put her to bed. It’s not as if she wanted her husband to make love with her while she wasn’t conscious, so she shouldn’t be upset that she woke up alone. Technically nothing was wrong. Even so she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t exactly right, either. After all, she’d spent her wedding night alone.
Babette, the owner of the fashion salon, fingered the delicate silk of the column dress. “The fabric is quite extraordinary,” she said. “And the color would be fabulous on madam.”
Oh, right, Dora thought glumly. And wouldn’t madam look amazing with her hips pulling at the seams and completely destroying the line of the dress. But she didn’t say that. She didn’t say anyth
ing. The exclusive establishment left her feeling out of place and more than a little inadequate. All the saleswomen looked like former models. Babette was petite and incredibly well-dressed. Despite wearing her new favorite blue dress, Dora felt frumpy and fat by comparison.
Babette regarded her thoughtfully. “However, I’m not sure the style is going to flatter madam.”
What insight, Dora thought sarcastically. Give that lady a prize. Then she sighed and reminded herself that her defensive attitude came more from fear than because she felt slighted. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong back in Los Angeles, either. She was homeless and confused and to make matters even more stressful, she’d just married a prince.
Khalil had stationed himself at the rear of the viewing room, close to the entrance of the salon. As soon as Dora had been settled, he’d started making calls on his cellular phone. Now he dropped his phone into his jacket pocket and crossed to stand beside her. His gaze raked over the model who had paused to turn in front of him. Her pouty mouth curved up in what was an invitation to look…and maybe more. Dora wanted to slap the teenager and tell her to go back to high school. Instead she told herself that the shopping trip wasn’t going to last forever.
Khalil turned to Babette. “The girl looks as if she hasn’t eaten in a month. Don’t you pay your models?”
Babette’s perfectly made-up face blanched. “Your Highness, I assure you—”
He cut her off with a glance. “My wife has a wonderful womanly shape. I not only desire her, I am fortunate to have her as the future mother of my sons. She is a princess, madam. You would do well to remember that.”
Babette managed to look both composed and stunned at the same time, while Dora was sure she only looked shocked. Khalil then bent down and pressed his mouth to her cheek. “I still have calls to make. Are you all right?” he asked quietly, his breath tickling her ear.
“I’m fine,” she managed to answer.
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