He stroked the curve of her cheek with his finger. ‘I wasn’t going to sell Castello Mireille.’
Artie smiled and gave him a fierce hug. ‘I think on some level I knew that.’ She eased back to look at him again. ‘But I don’t need it any more. What I need is you. It doesn’t matter where I live as long as you’re there with me.’
His eyes shimmered with emotion and her heart swelled with love to see how in touch with his feelings he was now. ‘I’ve spent most of my life avoiding feeling like this—loving someone so much it hurts to think of ever losing them. I was in denial of my feelings from the moment I met you. You woke me to the needs I’d shut down inside myself. The need to love and be loved by an intimate partner. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have found you.’
Artie pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. ‘I’m lucky to have been found by you. If it hadn’t been for you, I might still be locked away from all that life has to offer.’
Luca smiled, his eyes twinkling. ‘I know it’s early days, but maybe we can think about having those bambinos Nonno was talking about?’
She beamed with unfettered joy. ‘Really? You want to have children?’
‘Why not?’ He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘Building a family with you will be a wonderful experience. You’ll be the best mother in the world.’
‘I think you’ll be an amazing father,’ Artie said. ‘I can’t wait to hold our baby in my arms. I never thought I wanted to have a family until I met you. I didn’t allow myself to think about it. But now it’s like a dream come true.’
Luca gazed down at her with love shining in his eyes. ‘Thank you for being you. Adorable, sweet, amazing you.’
Artie gave him a teasing smile. ‘So, you don’t think I’m too naïve and innocent for you now?’
‘You’re perfect for me.’ He planted a smacking kiss on her lips. ‘And as to remaining innocent, well, I’ll soon take care of that.’
Artie laughed and flung her arms around his neck. ‘Bring it on.’
* * *
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Cinderella’s Royal Secret
by Lynne Graham
CHAPTER ONE
CROWN PRINCE RAFIQ AL RAHMAN of Zenara strode into his uncle’s private sitting room with an easy smile. Even bending his proud dark head in a respectful bow, he towered over the older man, who stood up in defiance of all protocol to greet his nephew.
‘Rafiq,’ the Regent said warmly.
‘Sit down, sir, before you scandalise your guards,’ Rafiq urged uncomfortably.
‘You were my King at twelve years old and always will be,’ Jalil informed him quietly. ‘And in little more than eighteen months you will take your rightful place when I step down.’
The reminder was unnecessary for Rafiq who, at the age of twenty-eight, was chafing against the restrictions set down by the government’s executive council when Prince Jalil had been invited to become Regent of the kingdom and raise his orphaned nephews to adulthood. Thirty had been set in stone as the date of Rafiq’s maturity and ascension to the throne of his forefathers, but Rafiq had long been ready to embrace that challenge. Yet feeling that way troubled his conscience, because his uncle had been both an excellent ruler and a caring guardian—a man, indeed, infinitely more fit for the throne than Rafiq’s late father Azhar had proved to be. Azhar’s licentious ways and corrupt practices had plunged their hereditary monarchy into disrepute.
Without a doubt their parent’s ugly history explained why Rafiq and his kid brother, Zayn, had had to endure a rigidly traditional, old-fashioned upbringing in which their every move had been hedged with prohibitions. Everybody had been terrified that Rafiq or Zayn might start revealing their father’s traits although Rafiq himself had had little fear of that possibility, having been long convinced that his father had committed his worst excesses while in the grip of drug abuse.
‘You said you had to see me immediately,’ Rafiq reminded the older man gently, keen as he was to return to his own wing of the palace and enjoy a little relaxation before making an official report on Zenara’s financial investments to the executive council. ‘What has happened?’
Jalil breathed in deep and crossed the room to stand by the archway that led out onto a balcony from which a welcome waft of fresh air emanated and chased the heat of midday. ‘I must ask you to speak to your brother about his marriage. He is proving...stubborn in the extreme.’
In receipt of that news, Rafiq stiffened and paled. ‘You already know my opinion. Zayn is seventeen. He is too young.’
The Regent sighed heavily. ‘I suppose that tells me very clearly how you feel about having been married off at sixteen.’
‘No disrespect was intended,’ Rafiq hastened to assert, discomfiture and guilt gripping him.
Yet how could he stand by and let his little brother pay the price of his own refusal to remarry? It was only two years since his wife, Fadith, had died but within weeks Rafiq had been approached by the council and asked to consider a second marriage. His marriage to Fadith, unhappily, had been childless and, although the medics had been unable to find anything wrong with either of them and had made much use of that catch-all phrase ‘unexplained infertility’, Rafiq was still in no hurry to enter a second union and very probably go through the same torturous process again. He was in no mood to apologise either for wanting to continue enjoying the freedom that had long been denied to him.
But, of course, that was not an excuse that his uncle either wanted to hear or would even understand. Jalil had married young and remained very happily married and, like the council, he feared the sexual liberty that all were convinced had been his late father Azhar’s downfall and which had caused so many scandals. Azhar had preyed on the female staff and on the wives of his officials and his friends. No attractive woman had been safe in his vicinity. But Rafiq was neither a sex addict nor a drug addict in constant search of another high.
‘Zayn must marry,’ Jalil responded gravely. ‘He must provide you with an heir.’
‘In that case I will agree to remarry,’ Rafiq breathed in a driven undertone, grimly accepting that he no longer had a choice.
He had withstood the arguments in favour of his remarriage for as long as he could, staving off the prospect of his brother being forced into a union while he was still too young for that responsibility. While he accepted that his remarriage was unlikely to lead to the much-desired heir, at least it would buy his little brother freedom for longer.
‘I will remarry,’ he repeated. ‘But only on the understanding that my brother is given several more years before he is expected to take a wife.’
‘Neither I nor the council would want you to feel forced into marriage against your own inclinations,’ the older man protested in dismay.
‘I will not feel forced,’ Rafiq lied smoothly, determined to do the one thing he could to protect his kid brother from being compelled to grow up too soon. ‘It is a necessity for me, after all, to have a wife. If there is to be a king, there must also be a queen.’
‘If you are sure...’ The Regent hesitated. ‘The council will find this news of your change of heart ver
y welcome indeed and who knows? In a second marriage a child may be conceived.’
‘I think it is wisest to assume that there will not be a child,’ Rafiq parried flatly. ‘Of course, any potential bride will be aware of that likelihood from the outset.’
‘Is there a woman for whom you have formed a preference?’ his uncle prompted hopefully.
‘Sadly not, but when I return from my next trip you may put suggestions to me,’ Rafiq murmured, forcing a smile. ‘I am a poor bargain for any woman.’
‘A billionaire and future king feted on social media as the most handsome prince in the Middle East?’ the older man countered feelingly. ‘Social media is so shamelessly disrespectful!’
‘There’s nothing we can do to silence such nonsense.’ Rafiq shrugged. Both he and his brother had long been barred from such public forms of expression, closed off in every way from their peers. And the movie-star good looks that he had inherited from his very beautiful late mother, an Italian socialite, merely embarrassed him.
It was a tribute only to Rafiq’s force of will that he had completed his degree in business and finance with an executive council who had refused to see the benefits of an educated ruler. In so far as it was possible within the restrictions foisted on him, Rafiq had had a normal education, but nothing else about his life had been remotely normal. He was always surrounded by bodyguards and he was sentenced to travel with a cook and even a food taster because his father had died from poison.
Rafiq was much inclined to believe that that misfortune had had nothing to do with sedition but was much more likely to have been the act of an embittered husband, a vengeful woman or the consequence of an unjust settling of one of the many tribal disputes for which his father had favoured his cronies or demanded bribes. Unsurprisingly, his late father had had many, many enemies. In spite of keen investigation, nobody had ever been found to answer for his father’s murder. Many had suspected various scandalous causes to have prompted his father’s death but there had been insufficient evidence to fuel a prosecution and, sadly, his father’s passing had been more of a relief than a source of grief to the executive council.
In comparison to his father, however, Rafiq was not only honest and honourable but also a skilled diplomatist. Not that that had helped him much in his role as a husband, he conceded with a near shudder, so repulsed was he by the concept of remarriage. He had absolutely no desire for another wife. Naturally he didn’t want to feel trapped again. He had hated being married and knew that his attitude was a visceral reaction to what he had endured. He didn’t want to be worshipped like a golden idol either and he certainly didn’t want to be cursed a second time with a woman who wanted a child much more than she had ever wanted him. Yet he had remained faithful during his marriage.
Only after his wife had died had he been able to discover that there were other kinds of sexual experiences, casual encounters that could be fun and occasionally even exciting, where both partners walked away afterwards without a backward glance. No ties, no regrets, not even an exchange of phone numbers. That was what he liked the most but so aware was he of his father’s addiction to sex that he rigorously controlled his strong sexual drive and rarely allowed himself to indulge his physical needs. But when he remarried, he would never enjoy unvarnished sexual pleasure again, he reminded himself grimly, knowing that he was going to find a woman on his next trip to the UK and spend mindless hours in bed with her. One last sin, he told himself wryly as he took his leave of his clean-living uncle, one last sin before his life and his privacy were stolen from him again...
* * *
Izzy groaned out loud when she checked her watch. She was late, she was so late and if the cleaning agency she worked for learned that she had missed a regular booking, she would be sacked without question. And she couldn’t afford to be sacked, not with thousands of pounds of student loan debt already stacked up behind her and certainly not with parents who were always in need of a financial helping hand.
In truth, her twin sister Maya did most of the helping out, but then Maya didn’t need to get down on her hands and knees to scrub floors to make money. No, Maya was a real brainbox in the mathematics field, so bright she was off the scale and had started university at the age of sixteen. Maya had qualified for scholarships and grants and had won awards throughout her education and if she needed to make some extra cash on the side there was always some special project keen to hire Maya to juggle numbers and work her special magic. Unfortunately, Izzy had none of those advantages and had to do menial jobs so that she could chip in with much smaller amounts to help keep their family afloat.
Izzy didn’t mind though because she adored her family, especially her little brother, Matt, who was disabled and in a wheelchair. Her father, Rory Campbell, was a jovial, optimistic Scotsman with a shock of red hair and a lifelong habit of focusing all his hopes on get-rich-quick schemes and then borrowing money when things went wrong, as they invariably did. Her mother, Lucia, was Italian and had grown up in a very wealthy family, who had disowned her after she fell in love with Rory, got pregnant and ran off with him, turning her back on a far more profitable and socially acceptable marriage to another rich Italian.
In truth, Izzy could not remember a time when money and debt had not been serious issues in her family. Had it not been for her parents’ insistence that she and Maya further their education both girls would have gone straight out to find a job after finishing school. But in the light of that parental insistence, the twins had concentrated hard on getting good educations and focusing on goals that promised decent graduate jobs. After all, the main reason why their parents were so often in a financial bind was that neither one had had the benefit of the kind of education that equipped them for steady employment.
And while there was no doubt whatsoever that the twins’ ambitious plans had been perfect for Maya, Izzy had found reaching her own goals much more of a struggle. Maya had gained entry to Oxford University, but Izzy was completing her studies at a local college in the same town, which enabled the sisters to share accommodation. She wasn’t super clever like her twin and academic study didn’t come naturally to her. Even worse, exams freaked her out and she didn’t do her best work in that state. The need to sit the first of her final exams that very morning had been the reason she’d missed cleaning the penthouse apartment and in the aftermath of that daunting experience, she was wrung out and panicking that she had failed. Losing her job on top of that would be even worse.
When she walked into the elegant apartment block, the security guard looked surprised to see her. ‘What are you doing here at this time of day? It’s almost lunch time,’ he pointed out.
‘I had an exam this morning. I’m running late.’
‘I’ve just come on duty,’ he replied, smiling at her because she was a very pretty girl, but particularly because she was also a very small girl and she was one of the very few women whom he could look down on. ‘I’ll have to check if the guests have arrived yet. I’m not supposed to give out the key for maintenance after eleven.’
‘Please give me the key,’ Izzy begged in desperation. ‘If the guests arrive to an uncleaned apartment, I’m toast!’
‘Just this once,’ he conceded, stepping back to reach for the key and passing it across the desk, catching her hand in his to add, ‘Fancy a drink some night?’
‘Sorry, I’m seeing someone,’ she lied, rather than turn him down cold when he was doing her a favour in turning a blind eye to her late arrival.
‘Let me know when you’re free again,’ he urged with a wink as she stepped into the service lift that ran up to the rear entrance of the apartment.
In the lift, Izzy dug her pink uniform tabard out of her bag and donned it, smoothing a hand through her mane of tumbled red curls to prevent them from standing on end. She sighed, thinking she couldn’t remember when she had last had a date. Keeping up with her studies, working several cleaning shifts a week
and visiting her family at weekends left her with little free time. Indeed, a free night was a big enough treat and usually given over to curling up with a good book or watching a movie with Maya, with whom she shared a small dingy flat. Yet there was her father always telling her that the years of youth were the most fun-filled years of her life! So much for that, she thought wryly, wishing she had at least fancied the security guard because she had yet to meet any man who sparked her interest in that field.
Maya was the beauty in the family with her straight blonde hair, long legs and flawless face. Izzy was red-haired, five feet nothing in height and curvier than she liked. In the street men turned their heads to look at Maya and rarely even noticed Izzy by her side. The sisters might be twins but they were far from identical.
Inserting the pass key in the lock of the rear entrance, Izzy hurried into the apartment and extracted her cleaning box and the fresh linen from a storage cupboard. She spared the kitchen only a quick assessing glance. Although she would clean it before she left, the cooking facilities rarely required much attention because the tourists and business people who normally used the apartment either dined out or ordered in takeout food. As a rule, she spent most of her visit ensuring that the bathrooms were immaculate and, that objective in mind, she headed straight for the en suite bathroom off the main bedroom to start there.
* * *
Rafiq had suffered a very trying morning. An accident leaving the airport in the early hours of the morning had put two thirds of his protection team and his cook into hospital. Fortunately, none of his staff had been badly hurt but Rafiq had spent hours at the hospital and he was tired and hungry. He had been in no mood to deal with his uncle’s panic at the mere idea that his nephew was abroad with only two men left to watch over him. The Regent had insisted that outside security be hired as a precaution even though Rafiq was only in Oxford to open the research facility he had funded at the university and would be flying home the following day.
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