Romancing the Crown Series

by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)

  Just as he was about to take it off her hands he heard the phone ringing on the other end, and immediately after that a voice saying, "Royal palace, family residence, may I help you?"

  A few minutes later Leila was laughing and sobbing joyfully into the phone and didn't even notice when Cade walked out of the room. He had a knot the size of a fist in his belly, and just about the last thing on his mind was that damned cigar.

  He went straight down to his study and poured himself a double shot of bourbon. He couldn't have felt worse if he'd been torturing kittens. What kind of man am I? he wondered as he gazed morosely into the amber depths of his whiskey glass. What kind of selfish idiot was I, to have convinced myself I could marry a girl from a completely alien culture, haul her thousands of miles away from her home and family and expect her to be happy? The look of sheer joy on her face when he'd handed her the phone, her radiant, tear-wet eyes, haunted him.

  I have to make it right, he thought. Somehow.

  Half a bottle of bourbon later, she was still haunting him, but in a vastly different way. As the level of liquid in the bottle dropped, so, it seemed, did the focus of his thoughts. The image he couldn't get out of his mind now wasn't her eyes, or even her dimpled smile. It was those taunting glimpses of creamy skin vanishing into the shadowed slashes of her robe, one at her breasts, the other her thighs. And he kept coming back to the fact that she was his wife, and he'd never seen either of those parts of her, not to mention others even less accessible.

  She's my wife, dammit And I want her.

  Oh yeah, he kept coming back to that, too, like a little kid nagging in a toy store.

  A few more sips of bourbon and he was starting to rationalize pretty effectively, with much the same sort of creative thinking he recalled employing as a teenager. Then he'd been under the influence of hormones, not whiskey, but the effect was the same. He began to convince himself that she wanted him to make love to her. After all, back there in Tamir she'd asked him to kiss her, hadn't she? And she'd come to his room, hadn't she? Hell yes, she had. She wanted him, he wanted her, they were married—so why shouldn 't they have each other?

  It began to seem ridiculous to him that he'd been married nearly a week and hadn't yet made love to his wife. He couldn't even recall his reason for not doing so—something about her being a virgin?—but whatever it was he was sure it couldn't have been very important. Not nearly as important as how full and hot and hard he was right now, and how much he wanted her.

  But then, high on hormones, the teenage boy he'd been hadn't given much thought to tomorrow, either.

  That's it, he thought, enough of this bull. She ought to be about talked out by now, homesick or not. He knocked back the last of the whiskey, plunked down the glass and marched out of his study and up the stairs. He almost barged right into his bedroom without knocking, but at the last minute thought better of it and tapped softly with one knuckle. When he got no answer, he opened the door part way and poked his head through the crack, calling her name. Then he stopped. He let out his breath in a long slow hiss, like something deflating.

  His princess bride was lying on his bed, curled on her side with one hand under her cheek, the other cradling the telephone against her breasts. She was sound asleep. And those elusive legs of hers, slightly bent at both hip and knee, had escaped the confines of the robe through the front overlap and were finally displayed for him in all their glory. It was a sight to make a man's mouth water and his belly howl.

  He tiptoed over to the bed and stood looking down at her...this lovely, exotic creature he'd married. The hormone-and-whiskey high was ebbing, and he felt a strange, indefinable sadness, an ache of longing he neither liked nor understood. It scared the hell out of him, as a matter of fact. What did it mean? Was he falling for this girl? God help him if he was, because things were complicated enough the way they were.

  He was easing the phone out of her grasp when he made another unsettling discovery. Pillowing her cheek, her hand was still curled around his forgotten cheroot. What did that mean? His heart skittered and bounded like a startled rabbit. He flicked the comforter over those delectable legs, turned off the lamp and went out and closed the door behind him, feeling shaky and weak in the knees.

  He woke the next morning with a severe headache and a sense of having escaped unthinkable disaster. No question about it, he was going to have to get this marriage thing solved right quick. Before he got himself in so deep he couldn't get out, at least not without permanent damage to his heart.

  Meanwhile, he was swearing off bourbon.

  * * *

  When Leila woke up Monday morning, Cade had already gone—to his offices in Houston, Betsy told her. And after that, she said, he was going to fly up to Dallas to meet with some people about a refinery he was going to rebuild and modernize for them out in a place called Odessa. There was a lot of planning to do— probably take several days, she said, so Cade would be staying in Dallas most of the week. Betsy's face looked stern as she told Leila this, as if she were angry.

  Later, she heard Betsy talking to Rueben in the kitchen.

  "...makes me so mad. Why is he acting like this? What did he marry her for, if he's just going to leave her alone all the time? Why doesn't he sleep—" And she broke off quickly as Leila came into the room.

  I don't know why either, Leila wanted to say. Although, unlike Betsy, she did know why Cade had married her. He had married her because she had disgraced herself, and he felt sorry for her. And because he did not want to displease her father, the sheik.

  And now she was trapped, every bit as trapped as she had been in Tamir, only worse. There, at least, she had been surrounded by people who loved her, even if they did treat her like a child most of the time. Here, she had only a husband who did not love her at all, and Rueben and Betsy, who were kind.

  "Just give him some time," Betsy told her with a sigh, as if she were talking about one of her own children who was misbehaving. "He's real busy right now, but he'll come around. You just have to give him time."

  Yes, Leila thought, but I do not know how long I will be able to stand this loneliness.

  She kept busy during the day, working with the foal, Sari, reading books beside the pool and swimming. Once, two of Betsy's grandchildren knocked at the back door and said, "Can Leila come out and play with us?" And so she enjoyed a wonderful afternoon swimming with them in the creek.

  But the thing she liked the most, besides working with Sari, was following Betsy around the house, asking questions about Cade. She especially liked the photograph albums Betsy gave her, and spent hours poring over them staring at the grainy black-and-white or faded color photographs of Cade when he was a boy, and the people who had made him who he was.

  One album was older than the others, made of black paper pages between stiff leather covers. It had been Cade's mother's, Betsy told her, and the pictures were of her father, who had been the "wildcatter." There were many pictures in the album like the one Leila had seen framed in Cade's study, of grimy men with blackened faces standing beside wooden derricks or oil well pumps that reminded Leila of giant insects. Betsy explained that a wildcatter was someone who searched for oil, and that Cade's grandfather had found a lot of it, back in the nineteen-twenties, and had become very rich.

  "Ah," said Leila, nodding. But she was puzzled, too. For some reason it had not seemed that Cade had always been rich.

  But then Betsy explained that Cade's father had been a gambler and an alcoholic, and had lost almost all of his wife's money before she divorced him, when Cade was twelve. And then had died a short time later.

  Leila's eyes had filled with tears when Betsy told her of Cade's mother's death only a few years after that, in a tragic accident. There was something about the pretty blond woman with the kind eyes and gentle smile that reminded her of her own mother. Even now, Leila could not imagine her world without her mother in it, and to think that Cade had been no more than fifteen.. .The photographs of Cade at that time showed
a solemn-faced boy with broad shoulders that looked as if they carried a great weight, and now she understood why. Earlier, though, there were pictures of a younger, much more carefree Cade with his mother and a handsome dark-haired, hawk-nosed man, and a little girl who looked familiar. Leila looked closer, then gave a i cry. "But this is Elena!"

  Yes, Betsy told her, and the man was Elena's father, Yusuf Rahman. Betsy's mouth tightened when she said that name.

  "Then.. .Cade's mother and Elena's father were lovers?" In the photographs they seemed close, like a family, Leila thought.

  But Betsy shook her head and said, "You'd have to ask Cade about that."

  She had gone on about her dusting, and her whole body quivered with indignation and disapproval— though it was not, Leila understood, of her. She already knew, from things Elena had told her, that Yusuf Rahman had been an evil man, that he had even killed his own wife, Elena's mother, and would have killed Elena, too, if Hassan had not shot him first. She had not known how close that evil had come to touching Cade's life as well.

  She had gone on to study the photograph albums alone after that, and if she felt disappointed it was because she wished she could ask Cade, as Betsy had suggested—about many things. She liked listening to Betsy talk about Cade's background and family, but she wished she could have talked of those things with her husband instead.

  Someday he will talk to me. I must believe that. And maybe then I will understand why he does not want to love we.

  Cade returned on Friday, just as Rueben and Betsy were about to leave for the weekend. They were all in the kitchen when he came in. Betsy was showing Leila the food she had prepared for their weekend meals, and Rueben was sitting at the small kitchen table drinking a glass of sweetened iced tea. Cade nodded at Rueben, who nodded back.

  "Huh," said Betsy as she closed the refrigerator door with a loud smack, "what're you doing home so early?"

  Even Leila recognized the sarcasm, and not for the first time she thought how different Rueben and Betsy's position in this house was from that of the servants back home in Tamir.

  Cade pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. He looks very tired, Leila thought, watching him draw a hand over his eyes and rub them briefly. Her heartbeat stumbled as those deeply shadowed eyes slid past her.. .but when he spoke his words and half smile were for Betsy. "Got any more of that tea?"

  Betsy gave him a look, but did not say anything as she took a glass from the cupboard and poured tea fro the pitcher in the refrigerator. Then she handed the glass to Leila. Leila took it, not comprehending; she had not asked for tea. Betsy jerked her head toward Cade and made a motion with her hand that he could not see.

  Then she understood. Of course—she was to serve her husband. What a lot I have to learn about being a wife, she thought. When it came to food and drink, Leila was accustomed to being served, not the other way around.

  Her heart hammered and her hands shook as she placed the glass of iced tea on the table in front of her husband. His eyes flashed briefly at her from their shadows as he mumbled, "Thanks." Leila nodded and retreated until she felt the cold edge of the tile counter at her back. She slumped against it because her knees felt weak and she was grateful for the support, but she remembered her pride and straightened just in time. A daughter of Sheik Ahmed Kamal does not slump.

  Betsy asked again why Cade had come home so early, and what his plans were for the coming weekend. He took a long drink of iced tea before he answered. "I thought I'd fly out to the ranch.. .do some repairs. That was more than a little bit embarrassing last week, having the power go out, with a client."

  Leila felt strange, as if she were standing all alone on a great empty stage, and thousands of people were looking at her. She heard herself say in a loud, clear voice, "I would like to go with you." The strangeness dissolved and she saw that there were only two people looking at her—Cade with silent shock, and Betsy with a little smile of approval. Rueben, with his back to her, drank tea with a noisy clanking of ice cubes.

  Leila stepped forward, and her stomach quivered with butterflies. "I would like to see this ranch that I have heard about," she said, and there was no quiver at all in her voice. "I would like to see more of Texas."

  Cade was opening his mouth to speak, and she knew that he was going to say that she could not go. She did not know what she would do if he told her that. I will not be left alone again, she thought, trembling now with anger. Anger and a new determination. I will not be abandoned again.

  "That's a good idea," said Betsy. Cade shut his mouth on whatever it was he had planned to say and glared at the short, brown woman. She glared back at him. Her arms were folded on her great soft bosom, and her round face looked as though it had been carved from wood. "You should take your wife—show her the ranch. Have a nice weekend together—just the two of you."

  The silence in the kitchen was profound. It seemed to Leila that they must all hear each other's hearts beating. Then Rueben gave his shoulder a hitch and said, "Yeah, you should take her."

  Cade flashed him a look of pure shock. Leila held her breath while seconds ticked by. She knew that this was important—maybe the most important moment of her life, a crossroads. If he refuses me, she thought with cold resolve.. .If he leaves me again...

  His eyes came back to her. She felt them as a strange kind of heat, a melting fire that spread through her chest. "It's pretty primitive out there," he said. "Not very comfortable. Are you sure you want to go?" And she knew that she had won.

  She gave a happy sigh. " Very sure."

  * * *

  The twin-engine Cessna 310 arrowed upward through the East Texas haze and leveled off above the outer limits of Houston's suburbs. This early in the morning there were no thunderheads to reckon with, so Cade set a course straight across the checkerboard of farmland and small towns toward the hill country west of San Antonio. Flying time to the ranch was anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours, depending on wind conditions.

  He looked over at his passenger. She hadn't said much since he'd buckled her into her seat, just kept looking out the window with her face pressed right up against the glass. Reminded him of a little kid staring through the walls of an aquarium, oblivious to everything except what was going on in the alien world on the other side.

  Not completely oblivious. As if she sensed his look, she glanced over at him. "America is so...big," she said, her voice breathless and wondering. She sat back in her seat with a happy-sounding sigh. "It is just as I imagined. And all of this—" she turned once again to the window, as if she couldn't help herself "—is still Texas? It must go on forever!"

  "Not quite," said Cade dryly, "but just about."

  She was silent, gazing down on the crazy-quilt landscape. Then she said, "I understand why you felt 'cooped up' in Tamir."

  Cooped up. He felt a strange little shiver go through him—not déjà vu, exactly, just an instant of total sensory recall. Hearing those words, for a moment he was back there in Tamir with Leila, the night of the state reception. She was flirting with him on the terrace overlooking the sea, and he was feeling again that unnerving and mystifying sense of accord with a woman as exotic and alien to him as anyone he'd ever met. Thinking about it, and about everything that had happened to him since, he wondered now if it had all begun with that moment. He sure as hell hadn't felt like himself since.

  "Yeah," he said in a gravelly voice, "Pretty hard to feel cooped up out here."

  "You would think so..." Her voice was wistful and soft, and he wondered how words so gentle could cause such a fierce and painful wound, right in the vicinity of his heart.

  There was no more talking after that. Leila gazed out the window and Cade was left alone with his remorseful thoughts. And some that were wistful, too. He kept thinking about those days and nights in Tamir, remembering the gardens, the scent of flowers and the music of fountains, a princess's enchanting smile. And it seemed to him that there had been a magical innocence about that time, remembered, l
ike a fairy tale from his childhood, with a sense of regret, an awareness of having had something precious that was now lost. Something he wished he could find again, and had no idea how.

  Time went quickly, and in no time at all the Cessna was circling over dun-colored hills dotted with gray-green live oaks and darker splotches of juniper. There was the pale ribbon of road—smoother-looking from up here than the corduroy it was—and the landing strip with its wind sock hanging limp at this time of morning. Cade pointed them out to Leila—the maintenance shed next to the runway, then the slate-gray roof of the farmhouse, and on the other side of the house, shielded from the landing strip by a grove of live oaks, the barn and corrals. She didn't reply, just gazed down at everything in silent awe.

  And suddenly, in his mind he could hear Betsy saying, ".. .show her the ranch. Have a nice weekend.. Just the two of you."

  Just the two of us. The whole weekend.

  The knot in his stomach felt a lot like fear.

  Chapter 10

  Well—this is it." Cade dropped the key into his pocket and pushed open the door, then reached around it to a light switch. "Okay—at least we have power." He looked sideways at Leila and made a motion with his head. "Sorry about the mess. I wasn't expecting to bring company this trip, or I'd have had Mrs. MacGruder —that's my next-door neighbor—she takes care of things here for me—feeds the horses, things like that. I'd have had her come in and clean."

  "I can clean," Leila said, stepping over the threshold. She heard Cade make a disbelieving sound as he picked up the thermal cooler containing food that Betsy had sent with them and followed her into the living room. She tore her gaze from the room to give him a look. "Do you think I cannot? Because I am not required to clean does not mean I do not know how."