LITMIR.BIZ

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softly coaxing, but the steely sarcasm beneath was all too clear.

      ‘Okay, fine.’ Taking a deep breath, Nadia straightened her shoulders and tipped her chin. She could tell him part of her story, at least. Hopefully that would be enough to satisfy his irritating curiosity and she could get away from here. ‘I came here to escape an arranged marriage.’

      ‘An arranged marriage?’

      ‘Yes.’ She took another breath. She really didn’t want to go into this. ‘My father has arranged a marriage for me, but I don’t want to marry him so I decided to run away.’ She shrugged her shoulders in a ‘that’s all there is to it’ sort of way.

      At least this part of her story was true. Her father had arranged a marriage for her. After she had stubbornly refused the string of suitors that had been paraded before her over the past few years, he had finally lost all patience and announced the choice had been made for her; she was to be the second wife of the sheikh of a neighbouring kingdom, a man nearly thirty years her senior, and she was indeed fortunate this sheikh was prepared to take her on, considering her advanced age, all twenty-eight years of it, and her reputation for speaking her mind.

      It was at this point that desperation had turned to a wild recklessness and Nadia had known that she had to seize the chance to do something with her life before it was too late. And to do that she had to use the only weapon she had in her armoury: her virgin body. A plan had formed in her head. If she had to marry, then she was going to make it count. She would use her marriage to heal the divide between Harith and Gazbiyaa and try to prevent war.

      ‘Forgive me if I am being stupid here—’ Zayed’s eagle-eyed stare showed him to be anything but ‘—but if this is true, I fail to understand why escaping an arranged marriage necessitates creeping into my bed and offering yourself up to me.’

      Nadia fiddled with the pearl button on her cuff. He was obviously quite determined to pursue this. ‘Because if you had...if we had...then we would have had to marry and then I couldn’t be forced into marrying anyone else.’

      ‘Whoa!’ His derisory laugh cut right through her. ‘Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself here?’ He leaned back, relaxed now, as if beginning to enjoy himself. ‘At the risk of appearing ungallant, why would you assume that one night of passion with you would be enough to convince me that I should marry you on the spot? You obviously rate your attributes very highly.’

      Nadia lowered her eyes. ‘Because I would have given you my honour. And surely that is the most precious gift of all?’

      Zayed frowned at her. Well, that had told him. Suddenly he felt as if he were the one in the wrong here. By not taking her up on her offer he had scuppered her plans and besmirched her character at the same time. How had that happened? He looked down the length of the table to where Nadia sat, her mirror image reflected in the polished wooden surface, like a playing-card queen. Sitting very upright, her head held high, the thick weight of black curls pushed back over her shoulders, she looked both imperious and vulnerable. And still remarkably sexy, despite the conservative outfit that so primly covered the tempting body he knew was underneath. He cleared his throat.

      ‘So let me get this straight. You flee from an arranged marriage to the bed of a total stranger with the idea of getting him to marry you instead. How, exactly, does that work?’

      ‘My future husband would have been a total stranger. At least this way I would have been the one making the decision. I would have been exerting my own free will, had some say in who I would marry.’

      ‘Even if your choice of future husband didn’t.’

      He saw Nadia’s faint flinch as his barb hit its target but she recovered herself almost immediately, that chin tipped high, her full lips tightly closed as if she didn’t intend to dignify his remark with an answer.

      ‘And this man? The one you don’t want to marry. Who is he? What’s so bad about him?’

      ‘Everything.’

      ‘Presumably your family don’t think so?’

      ‘They see it as an advantageous match. That’s all they care about. Plus they just want to see me married off so I don’t cause them any more trouble.’

      ‘You, a troublemaker? Who would have thought it?’

      The serious flash in Nadia’s lilac eyes withered his lighthearted comment. This was obviously no laughing matter. ‘I simply have opinions, a mind of my own. As a woman that is not considered acceptable. Something you wouldn’t understand.’

      But Zayed did understand. His own mother, Latifa Al Afzal, had waited until the very last moment to have her say. But what she had revealed and the way she had chosen to reveal it had rocked the very foundations of the kingdom of Gazbiyaa. And irrevocably altered the path of Zayed’s life.

      Secretly securing an interview on one of the state-controlled Gazbiyaan television channels, Sheikha Latifa Al Afzal had started by telling the stunned audience that she was suffering from terminal cancer. In a weak but steady voice she had explained that she was quite ready to meet her fate, but first she had an important announcement for the people of her kingdom.

      In keeping with the tradition of the laws of the land, her husband’s reign as sheikh was shortly coming to an end. But he was to be succeeded not by his elder son, Azeed Al Afzal, but by the couple’s younger son, Zayed. For Azeed was not, in fact, her biological son, but the child of a woman with whom her husband had had a brief relationship. This woman had died giving birth to him and, even though Latifa had raised Azeed as her own, loved Azeed as her own, there was one vital fact that could not be kept secret any longer. His birth mother had come from Harith. Azeed was half Harithian.

      The fallout from this disclosure had been truly terrible. Zayed’s father had exploded with fury that his wife had exposed the secret of Azeed’s parentage, especially in such a public way, but the news of her illness and his genuine despair that she was dying had diverted his rage to his sons, to his kingdom, to the world in general.

      The kingdom of Gazbiyaa had been thrown into turmoil, shocked to the core that Prince Azeed, whom they had seen as their future ruler, shared his blood with their greatest enemy. Zayed’s father appeared to be dangerously close to losing control, and rioting in the streets was only prevented because his term of office was about to expire.

      Azeed, meanwhile, had simply disappeared, storming out without a word to anyone. The shock of the news had presumably been so utterly devastating that he couldn’t bear to stay in the palace a moment longer. Which meant that all eyes had turned to the second son. Zayed, the playboy prince.

      Three years younger than his brother, Zayed had led an untroubled and privileged life, educated first at Eton College in England, then at Columbia University, New York. In truth he had barely given a thought to his own country, far too absorbed with the buzz of expanding his business empire and distraction of his friends and the many beautiful women who crossed his path. Gazbiyaa had seemed a long way away, his brother’s inheritance his brother’s responsibility.

      But his mother’s extraordinary declaration had changed everything.

      Immediately leaving New York and the life he had made for himself there, Zayed had arrived at his mother’s bedside just in time to take her frail hand and listen to her halting explanation. With heartbreaking humility she had apologised for deceiving him, explaining that she had wanted him to grow up without the burden of the future blighting his early life. That even though she had always known that she would have to reveal that he, Zayed, must be crowned the next sheikh of Gazbiyaa, both because of his birthright but more important for the stability of the kingdom, she hoped he had enjoyed the freedom she had gifted him until now.

      With her voice fading to little more than a whisper, Zayed had leaned in closer as his mother had begged him to talk to Azeed, to explain to him why she had had to do what she had done. For not only was Azeed temperamentally unsuited to the role of sheikh, but if he continued to threaten war against Harith he would inadvertently be inciting a conflict against a country whose blood ran in his veins.

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