by Kim Lawrence
‘Take your pick of the dresses, Hannah.’ She indicated a row of white gowns. ‘They delivered a few.’
Hannah blinked at the understatement, and Raini continued to deliver the information at the same shotgun speed.
‘Your father wasn’t sure of your size so I got them to send them all in three sizes, but...’ Her bright eyes moved in an assessing sweep up and down Hannah. ‘You’re an eight?’
Hannah nodded.
‘Shower that way.’ Her efficient mother hen nodded at a door. ‘You’ll find toiletries and make-up by the mirror—anything you want just yell. I’ll just go and get changed into something much less comfortable.’
The shower was bliss. All the gowns were beautiful but she selected the simplest: a column with the hem and high neck heavily encrusted with beads and crystals. It fitted like a silken glove. Smooth and butter-soft, in dramatic contrast to the emotional rawness of her emotions. She took a deep breath and pulled the shattered threads of her protective composure tight about her shoulders, refusing to acknowledge the fear in her belly.
When Raini returned, looking elegant in a tailored silk trouser suit, Hannah was struggling with her hair. Freshly washed, it was evading her efforts to secure it in an elegant chignon.
‘You look beautiful,’ the older woman said, standing back to view her. ‘I thought you might like this.’
Hannah’s eyes travelled from the mist of emotional tears in the other woman’s eyes to the lace veil she held out and her armour of cool detachment crumbled.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, hating the fact she couldn’t tell this woman who was so genuine the truth—that this marriage was all an awful sham.
‘It was my grandmother’s. I wore it when I was married. I thought you might like it.’
Hannah backed away, feeling even more wretched that she was playing the loving bride for this woman. ‘I couldn’t—it looks so delicate.’
‘I insist. Besides, it will go perfectly with this.’ She presented what Hannah had assumed was a clutch bag, but turned out to be a large rectangular wooden box.
‘What beautiful work.’ Hannah ran a finger along the intricate engraving work that covered the rosewood lid.
‘Not nearly as beautiful as this.’ With a magician’s flourish Raini flicked the lid open. Her eyes were not on the contents, but on Hannah’s face. She gave a smile as Hannah’s jaw dropped.
‘No, you’re really kind, but I really couldn’t wear that. It’s far too precious. This is lovely,’ she said, draping the lace veil over her head, ‘but really, no.’ She stepped back, waving her hands in a fluttering gesture of refusal.
‘It’s not mine...I wish.’ Raini laughed, removing the tiara from its silken bed. The diamonds in the delicately wrought gold circlet glittered as she held it up. ‘Kamel had it couriered over. He wants you to wear it. Let me...’ Her face a mask of serious concentration, she placed the tiara carefully on top of the lace. ‘Dieu,’ she breathed reverently. ‘You look like something out of a book of fairy tales. You really are a princess.’
Hannah lifted her hands to remove it. ‘I haven’t put my hair up yet.’
‘If I were you I’d leave it loose. It’s very beautiful.’
Hannah shrugged. Her hairstyle was the least of her worries.
CHAPTER FIVE
HANNAH’S FIRST GLIMPSE of her future home drew a pained gasp from her lips.
‘I know.’ Raini was all amused sympathy. ‘I’d like to tell you it’s not as awe-inspiring as it looks, but actually,’ she admitted, directing her critical stare at the multitude of minarets, ‘it is. Even Hollywood couldn’t build a set like this. The family, as you’ll learn, has never been into less is more. When I lived here—’
‘You lived here?’ How did anyone ever relax in a setting this ostentatiously grand?
Raini gave a warm chuckle. ‘Oh, my parents occupied a small attic,’ she joked. ‘Until Dad got posted. He’s a diplomat,’ she explained. ‘By the time I was eighteen I’d lived in a dozen cities.’ They drove under a gilded archway into a courtyard the size of a football pitch, filled with fountains. ‘But nothing ever came close to this.’
Hannah believed her.
Rafiq escorted them into the building through a small antechamber that had seemed large until they stepped through the next door and entered a massive hall. The wall sconces in there were all lit, creating swirling patterns on the mosaic floor.
The awful sense of impending doom that lay like a cold stone in Hannah’s chest became heavier as they followed the tall, gowned figure down a maze of marble-floored empty corridors. By the time she saw a familiar figure, she was struggling to breathe past the oppressive weight.
‘Dad!’
‘Hello, Hannah! You look very beautiful, child.’
Hannah struggled to hide her shock at her father’s appearance. She had never seen him look so pale and haggard. Not even when he’d lain in a hospital bed attached to bleeping machines had he looked this frail. He seemed to have aged ten years since she last saw him.
Any lingering mental image of her walking into his arms and asking him to make everything right vanished as the tears began to slide down his cheeks. She had never seen her ebullient parent cry except on the anniversary of her mother’s death—her birthday. On that day he always vanished to be alone with his grief, and the sight of tears now was as painful to her as a knife thrust.
Intentionally or not, it always felt as if she was the cause of his tears. If she hadn’t been born the woman he loved would not have died and now this was her fault. About that much Kamel was right.
She had been doing a job that she was ill qualified to do and she’d messed up. But the consequences had not been just hers. Other people had suffered. She lifted her chin. Well, that was going to stop. She’d made the mistake and she’d take the nasty-tasting medicine, though in this instance it came in the shape of the dark and impossibly handsome and arrogant Prince of Surana.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ her father cried. ‘They have the death penalty in Quagani, Hannah. It was the only way we could get you out. They wanted to make an example of you, and without the King’s personal intervention they would have. Kamel is a good man.’
It seemed to be a universally held opinion. Hannah didn’t believe it. Nonetheless, it was clear that he had not just freed her, he had saved her life.
‘I know, Dad. I’m fine about this,’ she lied.
‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘It’s about time I finally made it down the aisle, don’t you think?’
‘He’ll take care of you.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘You’ll take care of each other. You know your mother was the love of my life...’
Hannah felt a heart-squeezing clutch of sadness. ‘Yes, Dad.’
‘She didn’t love me when we got married. She was pregnant, and I persuaded her... What I’m trying to say is that it’s possible to grow to love someone. She did.’
Incredibly moved by his confidences, she nodded, her throat aching with unshed tears. There was no point telling him the cases were totally dissimilar. Her father had loved the woman he had married, whereas Hannah was marrying a man who despised her.
A man who had saved her life.
Any moment she would wake up.
But it wasn’t a dream. However surreal it felt, she really was standing there with her hand on her father’s arm, about to walk down the aisle to be married to a stranger.
‘Ready?’ her father asked.
She struggled to relearn the forgotten skill of smiling for his benefit and nodded. Ahead of her the elegant Raini spoke to someone outside Hannah’s line of vision and the big doors swung open.
Hannah had anticipated more of the same magnificence she had encountered so far, but she had the impression of a space that was relatively
small, almost intimate...peaceful. The tranquillity was a dramatic contrast to the emotional storm that raged just below her calm surface.
If you discounted the priest and choir there were only four people present: two robed rulers in the pews, and the two men who stood waiting, one tall and fair, the other...the other tall and very dark. She closed her eyes and willed herself to relax, to breathe, to do this... She opened them again and smiled at her father. He felt bad enough about this without her falling apart.
* * *
‘Nervous?’
Kamel glanced at his best man. ‘No.’ Resigned would be a more accurate description of his mindset. There had only ever been one woman he had imagined walking down the aisle towards him and he had watched her make that walk to someone else. He would never forget the expression on her face—she had been incandescent with joy. Yet now when he did think of it he found another face superimposing itself over Amira’s. A face framed by blonde hair.
‘I suppose you could call this a version of a shotgun wedding,’ the other man mused, glancing at the two royal personages who occupied the empty front pews. ‘She’s not...?’
He tried to imagine those blue eyes soft as she held a child. ‘No, she is not.’
‘There’s going to be a hell of a lot of pressure for you to change that. I hope she knows what she’s letting herself in for.’
‘Did you?’ Kamel countered, genuinely curious.
‘No, but then I didn’t marry the heir apparent...which is maybe just as well. Raini and I have decided not to go for another round of IVF. It’s been eight years now and there has to be a cut-off point. There is a limit to how many times she can put herself through this.’
Kamel clasped the other man’s shoulder. ‘Sorry.’
The word had never sounded less adequate. Kamel never lost sight of the fact that life was unfair, but if he had this would have reminded him. The world was filled with children who were unloved and unwanted and here were two people who had all the love in the world to give a child and it wasn’t going to happen for them.
One of life’s cruelties.
‘Thanks.’ Steven looked towards a security guy who nodded and spoke into his earpiece. ‘Looks like she’s arrived on time. You’re a lucky man.’
Kamel glanced at Steven and followed the direction of his gaze. The breath caught in his throat. Bedraggled, she had been a beautiful woman, but this tall, slender creature was a dream vision in white—hair falling like a golden cloud down her back, the diamonds glittering on her lacy veil fading beside the brilliance of her wide blue eyes.
‘That remains to be seen.’
Kamel’s murmured comment drew a quizzical look from his best man but no response that could be heard above the strains of ‘Ave Maria’ sung by the choir as the bride on her father’s arm, preceded by her matron of honour, began her progression.
A weird sense of calm settled on Hannah as she stood facing her bridegroom. It did not cross her mind until afterwards that the whole thing resembled an out-of-body experience: she was floating somewhere above the heads of the people gathered to witness this parody, watching herself give her responses in a voice that didn’t even hold a tremor.
The tremor came at the end when they were pronounced man and wife and Kamel looked directly at her for the first time. His dark eyes held hers as he brushed a fold of gossamer lace from her cheek and stared down at her with a soul-stripping intensity.
In her emotionally heightened state she had no idea who leaned in to whom; Hannah just knew she experienced the weirdest sensation, as though she were being pulled by an invisible thread towards him.
Her eyes were wide open as he covered her lips with his, then as the warm pressure deepened her eyelids lowered and her lips parted without any coercion and she kissed him back.
It was Kamel who broke the contact. Without it, her head was no longer filled with the taste, the texture and the smell of him, and reality came flooding back with a vengeance. She’d just kissed her husband and she’d enjoyed it—more than a little. That was wrong, so very wrong on every level. It was as if he had flicked a switch she didn’t know she had. She shivered, unable to control the fresh wave of heat that washed over her skin.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips, watching the rapt glow of sensual invitation in her velvet eyes be replaced by something close to panic. He was not shocked but he was surprised by the strength of the physical response she had shown.
‘Smile. You’re the radiant bride, ma belle,’ he warned.
Hannah smiled until her jaw ached. She smiled all the way through the formality of signatures, and all she could think about was that kiss. The memory felt like a hot prickle under her skin. For the first time in her life she understood the power of sex and how a person could forget who they were under the influence of that particular drug.
She was kissed on both cheeks by the leaders of two countries, and then rather more robustly by her father, who held her hand tightly.
‘You know that I am always there for you, Hannah.’
‘I know, Dad. I’m fine.’ She blinked away emotional tears but couldn’t dislodge the massive lump in her throat.
‘I will take care of her, Charles.’
His sincerity made her teeth ache. You couldn’t trust a man who could lie so well, not that Hannah had any intention of trusting him. Aware that her father was watching, she let it lie when Kamel took her hand in his, not snatching it away until they were out of sight.
His only reaction was a sardonic smirk.
It took ten minutes after the farewells for them to walk back to his private apartments. His bride didn’t say a word the whole time.
It was hard not to contrast the brittle ice queen beside him with the woman whose soft warm lips he had tasted. That small taste, the heat that had flared between them, shocking with its intensity and urgency, had left him curious, and eager to repeat the experience.
He was lusting after his bride. Well, life was full of surprises and not all of them were bad. The situation suited a man who had a very pragmatic approach to sex.
The room they stood in was on the same grand scale as all the others. This one apparently connected two bedrooms, if she had understood him correctly. Her exhausted brain was filled with a low-level hum of confusion, and two images from the wedding kept flitting through her head—her father’s tired, ill face and the predatory heat in Kamel’s eyes when he claimed his kiss.
‘Has it occurred to you that this marriage might not be something to be endured...but enjoyed?’
Hannah’s fingers slipped off the door handle. She turned around, her back against the wooden panels. He was standing too close...much too close. She struggled to draw in air as her body stirred, responding to the slumberous, sensual provocation shining in his dark eyes.
‘The only thing I want to enjoy tonight is some privacy.’
‘That is not what you would enjoy.’
She threw up her hands in a gesture of exasperated defeat. ‘Fine! So I find you attractive. Is that what you want to hear?’ She angled a scornful glance up at his lean dark face. ‘I find any number of men attractive, but I don’t sleep with them all.’
Make that none.
‘You’re discerning. I like that in you.’
‘You may be good to look at but your ego is a massive turn-off.’
‘I could work on it. You would teach me.’
Big, predatory, and sinfully sexy—she was willing to bet that that were quite a few things he could teach her! Her stomach tightened in self-disgust. Shocked by the thought that had insinuated itself into her head, she tilted her chin, channelling all the ice princess she could muster, and retorted haughtily, ‘I’m not into casual sex or tutoring.’
‘We’re married, ma belle. That is not casual...and I do not need instruction.’
> Hannah’s eyes went to the ring on her finger. It felt heavy. She felt...consumed. She frowned at the word that formed in her head. Consumed by feelings, a need. She gave her head a tiny shake. It was dangerous to imagine something that was not there. She blamed the bottle of champagne that Raini had cracked open in the limo. Had she had one or two glasses? Regardless of her alcohol consumption, the only thing she needed was sleep.
He laid a hand on the door beside her head and leaned into her. ‘Well, if you change your mind you know where I am.’ His eyes not leaving hers, he tipped his head at the door next to her own. ‘And for the record I’m fine with...just sex. I will not feel used or cheap in the morning.’
His throaty, mocking laugh was the last straw.
Her blue eyes narrowed and her chin lifted to a combative angle. She could actually feel something inside her snapping as she reached up and pulled his face down until she could reach his lips. In the instant before she covered his mouth with hers she saw his expression change—saw the mockery vanish and the dark, dangerous glow slide into his heavy-lidded eyes.
In the tiny corner of her mind that was still sane Hannah knew she was doing something incredibly stupid, but it was too late to pull back, and then he was kissing her back with a sensual skill that made her sleep-deprived brain shut down—she just clung on for the ride.
Kamel was a man who was rarely surprised—but Hannah had surprised him twice already. First when she kissed him, and second when lust slammed through his body.
Had he ever wanted a woman this badly?
Then he identified the flavour of her kiss. As he pulled away she clung like a limpet, a very soft, warm, inviting limpet, but he gritted his teeth. He knew that if he let it go on a moment longer he wouldn’t be able to stop. And when he made love to his wife he wanted her not just willing but awake and sober!
