by Tessa Radley
Tiffany’s sense of ire grew. “Don’t know what?”
“Er—” Rafiq started to move past her. “Come through to the salon.”
“Rafiq?” She grabbed at his sleeve. “Tell me.”
“My family—every one—is here to celebrate our engagement this evening.”
Tiffany’s mouth fell open. “Our engagement?”
“You should’ve tried seduction, Rafiq.” The male voice was followed by hoots of laughter.
Oh, dear God! “Do they know I’m pregnant?” she whispered, humiliation creeping over her in a sickly wave at the thought of their night together being the subject of ridicule.
A flare of color seared his cheekbones, but he didn’t drop his gaze. “Ignore Shafir, he knows nothing. It’s a joke—I once told him he should seduce Megan—he’s simply trying to score points.”
“Did he?” she asked in a low tone.
“By your expression, it looks like he did.”
She shook her head impatiently. “Not now. Did he seduce Megan?”
“No, he decided to kidnap her instead.”
“Kidnap her?” Tiffany’s eyes stretched wide as they followed the rest of the party into a large room that overlooked lush gardens with tall palms and pools of water. “Really?”
He nodded. “He brought her here—and kept her under lock and key.”
“You’ve got to be joking! Right?”
Rafiq shook his head. “No, I’m not. Ask Megan.”
Megan’s voice piped up, “What must Tiffany ask me?”
“Hush, wife,” said Shafir, and everyone laughed.
“Did your husband kidnap you?” Tiffany stared at the other woman, sure that she was being mercilessly teased.
“Oh, yes. Except he wasn’t my husband back then.”
“And he kept you here until you agreed to marry him?”
Megan shook her head, and reached for Shafir’s hand before casting him a loving glance. “He didn’t force me to marry him—he was trying to stop me from marrying Zara’s fiancé.”
“Zara’s fiancé?” Tiffany did a double take. “But Zara’s Lily’s daughter. Isn’t she in L.A.?”
Shafir only laughed. “It’s a long story.”
“Sounds like one I should hear,” Tiffany said darkly.
“Not before you marry me,” objected Rafiq. “Although maybe I’ll have to take a leaf out of Shafir’s book and lock you up here.”
She spun around. “What?”
Rafiq glanced at her annoyed face and then around at their attentive audience. “Excuse us, please.”
He wrapped one arm around her shoulders, hooked the other behind her knees and swept her off her feet. He hoisted her high against his chest. Tiffany buried her face against his throat to drown out the whoops of laughter as he exited the room.
When they reached a sitting room where scimitars adorned a wall, he lowered her to her feet.
Tiffany couldn’t restrain herself. “How could you do that? In front of your family? And how could you announce our engagement to them? I haven’t even said I’ll marry you.”
His eyes were guarded. “Of course you will.”
Tiffany threw her hands up. “But I haven’t said ‘yes.’”
He arched a brow in a gesture that had become endearingly familiar. “So say it.”
After seeing how Shafir doted on Megan, Tiffany was wildly tempted to give in and let herself be dragged down the aisle. When she’d come to Dhahara to tell Rafiq about his baby, marriage was not what she’d expected. Yet she was unbearably tempted.
A pang pierced her.
“Don’t look so desperate.”
She lifted her head. “I’m not desperate.”
“Only love makes you desperate.” His mouth twisted. “And this match isn’t about love.”
He paused, and Tiffany wondered how he expected her to respond. When he remained silent, she said, “You will regret our marriage.”
“What do you mean?”
This time there was no hesitation. It wasn’t right to let him walk into a marriage without at least warning him. “The tabloids adore my father. He can always be relied on to deliver a story.”
“Do you mean that he feeds them Hollywood leaks?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. He has affairs with actresses—much to my mother’s grief.” She clenched her hands at her sides. “Your family will not be happy.”
“Tiffany.” His hands closed over her shoulders. He pulled her up against his chest. He felt so unabashedly solid and male. “You need to understand that I am marrying you—not your father.”
“He will cause you a lot of embarrassment.”
Rafiq shrugged against her. “That is not your doing.”
The last bastion of her line of defense crumbled. A warmth spread through her, and tears pricked at her eyes. Her hands crept up his shirt front and a fierce emotion shook her.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
What did she have to lose? Pulling back a little, Tiffany met his melting gaze, and said, “Okay, I’ll marry you.”
Nine
The wedding contracts had been signed.
Once Tiffany had accepted his proposal, Rafiq had wasted no time in the week that followed to arrange their wedding.
He thought about their unborn child. His daughter perhaps…
How would he have felt if some stranger had gotten his daughter pregnant after a one-night stand? Rafiq realized he would’ve been furious!
With a little trepidation he’d approached inviting her parents, but Tiffany had decided against it. Her mother had a lot of adjusting to do, she’d explained, and right now she didn’t feel like seeing her father.
Rafiq hadn’t agreed, but he’d gone along with it. For Tiffany’s peace of mind.
Now, oblivious of the knot of people clustered around, Rafiq waited beside the ancient well in the heart of Ain Farrin, the village not far from Qasr Al-Ward where the spring, or ain, originated, and watched Tiffany come toward him through the grove of tamarisk trees.
His bride.
She wore a long, cream-colored silk dress embroidered with rich gold thread and topped with a gauzy silk wrap. A filmy veil covered her hair. Her hips swayed as she walked, a legacy of the high heels she wore.
Rafiq wasn’t aware of his family, or the villagers who crowded around. He only had eyes for Tiffany.
Her eyes glittered beneath the draped veil. She stopped beside him in the dappled shade of an ancient olive tree, and he reached for her hands. Her fingers trembled as his fingers closed around hers.
His bride was nervous.
Tenderness flowed through Rafiq. An urge to protect her from anything that might harm her. He drew her toward him and turned to face the celebrant.
He closed his eyes as the holy words flowed over them. After placing a ring on her finger, he received one in return. They knelt, then circled the well in a train, while the village children tossed rose petals from the gardens of Qasr Al-Ward over them.
As he brushed the petals from her veil, he saw her eyes were dazed.
“Almost over,” he mouthed, and his heart soared as he caught a glimpse of her smile through the spun-silk veil.
He would not let her down, he vowed. Nor would he ever abandon their daughter when she needed him most.
After the wedding festivities were over, they returned to Qasr Al-Ward. Rafiq had told Tiffany that Shafir and Megan had loaned them the ancient palace for a few days. The knowledge that, with the exception, of a skeleton staff, they were totally alone, made her unaccountably edgy.
Rafiq was her husband.
They were married.
She was already expecting his daughter; this was not going to be the romantic honeymoon of newlyweds.
Yet as the sun sank over the distant horizon, leaving a glow of burnished gold over the desert sands, Tiffany followed Rafiq through corridors lit by torches set in wall sconces, and couldn’t help being affected by the expectant air of exotic romance. It felt l
ike a honeymoon. Blood pounded through her veins.
When he led her into a vast chamber lit by dozens of candles that illuminated a bed in the center, she balked.
“What about our marriage of convenience?”
That got his attention. He swiveled to face her. “It’s not going to happen. I made that clear when I asked if you expected one. I know you, Tiffany, better than you think. I suspected you might have convinced yourself that was what you want.”
“But you knew better.”
The candlelight gave his skin a bronze cast. It threw warmth over the harsh features, and lit up the white pants and tunic he’d worn for their marriage. “I know what you want. You want me.”
The bed behind him loomed large in the room. Tiffany could already feel that her breathing had quickened, that her body had softened. “You flatter yourself.”
His mouth slanted. “Because I can never be the white knight of your dreams?”
The edge to his voice caused her to frown.
“Exactly.”
“You’re fooling yourself if you think you can exist without passion. You were made to make love. I knew that the first night we were together.”
Determined not to fall into his arms, she said, “I only slept with you out of gratitude.”
His eyes began to glitter. “Did you?”
Her pulse accelerated and she crossed her fingers. “Yes.”
“Thirty dollars worth of gratitude?”
She didn’t like the way he made that sound. “Uh…”
“And this time you’re sleeping with me because you’re so grateful—” he stressed the word as he stalked toward her “—that I married you?”
“Of course not!”
She didn’t back away as he came to a halt in front of her. “Then it must be because you know exactly how much pleasure is in store for you, hmm?”
Her stomach started to flutter. “No, Rafiq, no sex.”
Not now. Not while he was in this mood, even though she knew she’d deliberately provoked him.
“It will be much more than sex.” His voice deepened to a husky growl that turned knots in her stomach. “I will pleasure you, just you wait and see.”
He planted his mouth on hers and her lips parted.
It didn’t take long for him to elicit a response, even though Tiffany fought with herself to resist. To her utter frustration he raised his head just enough to put a space between them. “Are you suitably grateful for that?”
The high heels she wore meant her eyes were level with the sinful passion of his mouth.
“Just shut up,” she said, flustered by the desire that bolted through her like a jab of electricity.
This time, when he took her in his arms, she went up on the tips of her toes, and met him halfway. All her objections had evaporated.
“You know I’ll never forgive you for this, don’t you?” she muttered when he lowered her to the soft satin covers.
He laughed as he slipped off her shoes. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day.” Next he peeled off the veil and carefully eased the ivory and gold dress away from her shoulders.
He followed her down onto the bed. “You’ll love every moment. That I will promise you.”
When she woke the next morning it was to meet a pair of slumberous dark eyes. Embarrassment seared Tiffany. Her cheeks grew hot, her breasts, the heat spread.
Rafiq propped himself onto an elbow and started to smile as he gazed down at her. His eyes glowed. “You don’t need to blush—we have done nothing to be ashamed of. We are married.”
She gave an incoherent murmur.
He pushed the sheet away from her body. Tiffany snatched at the edge as it slipped away.
“Don’t be shy.” His hand stroked the soft flesh of her stomach. “I find it hard to believe there is a baby in here. You were so tight… You could’ve been a virgin.”
Tiffany’s flush deepened. “You’re embarrassing me,” she said.
“Why?” At her sharp inhalation, he said, “Let’s have no pretense or secrets between us, Tiffany. I knew you were no virgin last night.”
Her breath whooshed out in a frustrated sigh. “If there are to be no secrets, then you should know that the only other time we made…love—” she stumbled over the word “—I was a virgin.”
Tiffany glanced up at him from beneath her eyelashes to see how he’d taken her revelation.
His face had gone curiously blank. After a moment’s pause, he said, “Ah, Tiffany, you need not worry. I did not expect to find an innocent that night we first met.”
She fell silent, her lashes sweeping down against her cheeks.
“Do not sulk,” he whispered, running a finger along the ridge of her nose. “I never wanted a virgin.”
Her lashes lifted. She met his eyes, so close now, that a stab of desire spiked through her. “I’m not sulking! But I had hoped you’d gotten to know me better by now. That first night in Hong Kong, you thought I was scamming you—”
“I know—”
“I was in a desperate situation—”
“I know that—”
“I’ve repaid every cent you gave me. I’ve told you the truth about the baby—”
“Tiffany, Tiffany.” He pulled her into his arms and rolled onto his back, tugging her over on top of his chest. “It doesn’t matter whether you were a virgin or not.” He lifted his head off the pillow and kissed her brow.
She opened her mouth to tell him that it did matter. That she needed him to trust her—as she’d trusted him by telling him about her parents, by confessing that her father would never be the ideal father-in-law. She needed a show of faith from him, too. And more than anything, she needed for him to believe that the baby was his. Just because she said so.
Not because of the incontrovertible results of a DNA test.
It hurt, this refusal to trust her. But he would learn that she hadn’t lied to him—then he would be forced to apologize.
“Stop glowering at me.” He ruffled her hair. “We will make love. Then I will show you the desert that has always been so loved by my family.”
Just as she had no doubt he intended, desire started to sing through her veins.
What did Rafiq love? Was it only sex? Would he ever love more than the attraction that burned so brightly, so wildly between them?
At that thought her heart thudded to a stop. Was this the reason she so desperately needed for him to trust her? Had she fallen in love with the husband she’d trapped into a marriage that he’d entered only from a sense of duty?
“Mom?” Tiffany pressed the telephone against her ear to overcome the hiss on the line. “How are you?”
“Holding together. I signed the final settlement papers yesterday—your father wasn’t there.”
Was that a wistful note she heard in her mother’s voice? Tiffany fervently hoped not.
“Everything went smoothly,” Linda Smith continued, “just as you said it would once we got a good lawyer.”
“I’m glad.” Tiffany gave a silent sigh of relief. Two months ago she’d found her mother a lawyer, and she’d gone with her to every appointment and provided moral support right up to the day before she’d left for Dhahara. With the settlement signed, at last her mother could start to put together the pieces of her life. “Have you thought any more about selling the house in Auckland and finding something cozier?”
Before Tiffany had left, her mother had still been adamant that she didn’t want to move out of the house she’d shared with Taylor Smith—even though it was the best asset she owned. Tiffany had suspected her mother was clutching at straws, hoping her father would come to his senses and return.
How Linda could consider taking him back this time, when he’d physically moved out, Tiffany found hard to figure.
“No, I don’t want to sell—and you’ll need somewhere to stay when you come back from your holiday. Where was it you were going again?”
“Dhahara. Mom, there’s something I need to tell you.” T
iffany plunged on. “I’m not coming home for a while. I got married.”
She held the handset away as her mother gasped, then squealed and reeled off a string of questions.
“I know it was sudden. But it was the right thing to do. His name is Rafiq…and the marriage was performed in a village near one of the family’s homes. Three days ago.”
This time her mother sounded more cautious than celebratory. “Three days ago? In that desert country?”
“Yes, Dhahara is a desert kingdom.” Then, hoping it would reassure her mother, she added, “Rafiq is part of the royal family.”
“Oh, honey, you will come visit?”
Tiffany’s heart ached at the loneliness in her mom’s voice. “Of course, we’ll come see you. Rafiq travels a great deal—he’s a banker. We’ll visit soon. I’ll talk to him, and let you know when.”
“Tiffany…are you sure you’re all right? It’s such a long way away. I wish I could be there to help you.”
“I’m fine. Honestly. You’re better off selling the house than rushing across the world to see me.”
Her mother sighed. “I don’t want to move. And I feel I should be with you. I wish your father were here. He’d know what to do.”
“I haven’t told Dad about my marriage.”
Tiffany heard her mother’s intake of breath.
“But he’s your father—he has a right to know.”
“I will tell him, Mom.” Eventually. “Right now I’m still too angry with him for walking out on you.” And her father was equally stubborn—he hadn’t contacted her since their stormy disagreement when he’d cut off her allowance, and told her that she’d be back soon enough with her tail between her legs.
“Tiffany, it’s not your fight. With the counseling I started, I’m working on forgiving your father, and I’m starting to realize I may not have been the best wife.”
“Oh, no, Mom—don’t even think that! He had no reason to run around with other women. To walk out on you.”
Silence hummed between them. At last her mother said, “But you need to let him know about your marriage. You’re still his baby girl.”
