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Kamel watched, arms folded across his chest, as the comment sank in. The prospect of being the daughter of a poor man seemed to affect her more than anything he had said so far. The idea of slumming it or being forced to make her own way in the world without the cushion of Daddy’s money had driven what little colour she had out of her face.
‘He has made a number of unfortunate ventures, and if the pipeline deal fails your father faces bankruptcy.’
Hannah’s heart started to thud faster and her heart was healthy. Stress...what could be more stressful than bankruptcy? Unless it was the humiliation of telling a cathedral full of people that your daughter’s wedding was off.
She had accepted her share of responsibility for the heart attack that very few people knew about. At the time her father had sworn Hannah to secrecy, saying the markets would react badly to the news. Hannah didn’t give a damn about the markets, but she cared a lot about her father. He was not as young as he liked to think. With his medical history, having to rebuild his company from scratch—what would that do to a man with a cardiac problem?
Struggling desperately to hide her concern behind a composed mask, she turned her clear, critical stare on her prospective husband and discovered as she stared at his lean, bronzed, beautiful face that she hadn’t, as she had thought, relinquished all her childish romantic fantasies, even after her two engagements had ended so disastrously.
‘So you have made a case for me doing this,’ she admitted, trying to sound calm. ‘But why would you? Why would you marry someone you can’t stand the sight of? Are you really willing to marry a total stranger just because your uncle tells you to?’
‘I could talk about duty and service,’ he flung back, ‘but I would be wasting my breath. They are concepts that you have no grasp of. And my motivation is not the issue here. I had a choice and I made it. Now it is your turn.’
She sank onto a day bed, her head bent forward and her hands clenched in her lap. After a few moments she lifted her head. She’d made her decision, but she wasn’t ready to admit it.
‘What will happen? If we get married...after...?’ She lifted a hank of heavy hair from her eyes and caught sight of her reflection in the shiny surface of a metallic lamp on the wall beside her. There had been no mirrors in her cell and her appearance had not occupied her thoughts so it took her a few seconds before she realised the wild hair attached to a haggard face was her own. With a grimace she looked away.
‘You would have a title, so not only could you act like a little princess, you could actually be one, which has some limited value when it comes to getting a dinner table or theatre ticket.’
‘Princess...?’ Could this get any more surreal?
The ingenuous, wide-eyed act irritated Kamel. ‘Oh, don’t get too excited. In our family,’ he drawled, ‘a title is almost obligatory. It means little.’
As his had, but all that had changed the day that his cousin’s plane had gone down and he had become the Crown prince.
That was two years ago now, and there remained those conspiracy theorists who still insisted there had been a cover-up—that the royal heir and his family had been the victims of a terrorist bomb, rather than a mechanical malfunction.
There was a more sinister school of thought that had gone farther, so at a time when Kamel had been struggling with the intense grief and anger he felt for the senseless deaths—his cousin was a man he had admired and loved—Kamel had also had to deal with the fact that some believed he had orchestrated the tragedy that wiped out the heirs standing between him and the crown.
He had inherited a position he’d never wanted, and a future that, when he allowed himself to think about it, filled him with dread. He’d also inherited a reputation for bumping off anyone who got in his way.
And now he had a lovely bride—what more could a man want?
‘My official residence is inside the palace. I have an apartment in Paris, and also a place outside London, and a villa in Antibes.’ Would the lovely Charlotte still be there waiting? No, not likely. Charlotte was not the waiting kind. ‘I imagine, should we wish it, we could go a whole year without bumping into one another.’
‘So I could carry on with my life—nothing would change?’
‘You like the life you have so much?’
His voice held zero inflection but she could feel his contempt. She struggled to read the expression in his eyes, but the dark silver-flecked depths were like the mirrored surface of a lake, deep and inscrutable yet strangely hypnotic.
She pushed away a mental image of sinking into a lake, feeling the cool water embrace her, close over her head. She lowered her gaze, running her tongue across her lips to moisten them.
When she lifted her head she’d fixed a cool smile in place...though it was hard to channel cool when you knew you looked like a victim of a natural disaster. But her disaster was of her own making.
Her delicate jaw clenched at the insight that had only made her imprisonment worse. The knowledge that she was the author of her own disaster movie, that she had ignored the advice to wait until a driver was available, and then she had chosen not to stay with the vehicle as had been drilled into them.
‘I like my freedom.’ It had not escaped his notice that she had sidestepped his question.
‘At last we have something in common.’
‘So you...we...?’ This was the world’s craziest conversation. ‘Is there any chance of a drink?’ With a heavy sigh she let her head fall back, her eyes closed.
Exhausted but not relaxed, he decided. His glance moved from her lashes—fanning out across the marble-pale curve of her smooth cheeks and hiding the dark shadows beneath her eyes—to her slim, shapely hands with the bitten untidy nails. Presumably her manicure had been a victim of her incarceration.
She had some way to go before she could collapse. Would she make it? It appeared to him that she was running on a combination of adrenalin and sheer bloody-minded obstinacy. His expression clinical, he scrutinised the visible, blue-veined pulse hammering away in the hollow at the base of her throat. There was something vulnerable about it... His mouth twisted as he reminded himself that the last two dumb guys she’d left high and dry at the altar had probably thought the same thing.
‘I’m not sure alcohol would be a good idea.’
Her blue eyes flew open. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of tea.’
‘I can do that.’ He spoke to Rafiq, who had a habit of silently materialising, before turning his attention back to Hannah. ‘Well, at least our marriage will put an end to your heartbreaking activities.’
‘I didn’t break anyone’s—’ She stopped, biting back the retort. She’d promised Craig—who had loved her but, it turned out, not in ‘that’ way—that she’d take responsibility.
‘You’re more like a sister to me,’ Craig had told her. ‘Well, actually, not like a sister because you know Sal and she’s a total...no, more like a best friend.’
‘Sal is my best friend,’ Hannah had replied. And Sal had been, before she’d slept with treacherous Rob.
‘That’s why I’m asking you not to tell her I called it off. When we got engaged she got really weird, and told me she’d never ever forgive me if I hurt you. But I haven’t hurt you, have I...? We were both on the rebound—me after Natalie and you after Rob.’ He had patted her shoulder. ‘I think you still love him.’
Somehow Hannah had loved the man who had slept his way through her friends while they were together. She had only known about Sal when she had given him back his ring after he stopped denying it.
She hated Rob now but he had taught her about trust. Mainly that it wasn’t possible. Craig, who she had known all her life, was different. He was totally predictable; he would never hurt her. But she had forgotten one thing—Craig was a man.
‘You know me so well, Craig.’
‘So, are you all right with this?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘So what happens now?’
People who had never met you felt qualified to spend time and a lot of effort ripping you to shreds. ‘I don’t know,’ she lied.
Her lips twitched as she recalled her ex-fiancé’s response. Craig never had been known for his tact.
‘Well, what happened last time?’
Hannah had shrugged guiltily. The last time her dad had done everything. Even though pride had stopped her revealing that her fiancé had slept with all her friends—pride and the fact that her father would have blamed himself, as Charles Latimer had introduced her to Rob and had encouraged the relationship.
The second time he’d run out of understanding. He’d been furious and dumped the whole nightmare mess in her lap. Her glance flickered to the tall, imposing figure of her future husband and she struggled to see a way through the nightmare he represented.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ua2d0babc-7798-5876-989d-d90b07ae410c)
THIS TIME HANNAH was aware of the man mountain before he appeared—just as they hit another air pocket, he entered apologising for the tea he had slopped over the tray he was carrying.
‘I will get a fresh tray.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Kamel responded impatiently. ‘We need not stand on ceremony with Miss Latimer. She is one of the family now. Considering the nature of my trip I kept staffing down to a minimum.’ He murmured something in what she assumed was Arabic to the other man, who left the compartment. ‘Rafiq can turn his hand to most things but his culinary skills are limited.’ He lifted the domed lid on the plate to reveal a pile of thickly cut sandwiches. ‘I hope you like chicken.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she said dully.
‘I don’t recall asking you if you were hungry, Hannah,’ he returned in a bored drawl as he piled an extra sandwich onto a plate and pushed it her way.
She slung him an angry look. ‘How am I meant to think about food when I’m being asked to sacrifice my freedom?’ That had been her comfort after the battering her self-esteem had taken after being basically told she was not physically attractive by two men who had claimed to love her. At the very least she still had her freedom.
He smiled, with contempt glittering in his deep-set eyes.
‘You will eat because you have a long day ahead of you.’
The thought of the long day ahead and what it involved drew a weak whimper from Hannah’s throat. Ashamed of the weakness, she shook her head. ‘This can’t have been Dad’s idea.’
She looked and sounded so distraught, so young and bewildered that Kamel struggled not to react to the wave of protective tenderness that rose up in him, defying logic and good sense.
‘It was something of a committee decision and if there is an innocent victim in this it is me.’
This analysis made her jaw drop. Innocent and victim were two terms she could not imagine anyone using about this man.
‘However, if I am prepared to put a brave face on it I don’t see what your problem is.’
‘My problem is I don’t love you. I don’t even know you.’
I am Kamel Al Safar, and now you have all the time in the world to get to know me.’
Her eyes narrowed. He had a smart answer for everything. ‘I can hardly wait.’
‘I think you’re being unnecessarily dramatic. It’s not as if we’d be the first two people to marry for reasons other than love.’
‘So you’re all right with someone telling you who to marry.’ Sure that his ego would not be able to take such a suggestion, she was disappointed when he gave a negligent shrug.
‘If I weren’t, you’d still be languishing in a jail cell.’
She opened her mouth, heard the tap, tap of the uniformed officer’s stick on the floor and closed it again. ‘Don’t think I’m not grateful.’
He arched a brow. ‘Is that so? Strange, I’m not feeling the love,’ he drawled.
Her face went blank. ‘There isn’t any love.’
‘True, but then basing a marriage on something as transitory as love—’ again he said the word as though it left a bad taste in his mouth ‘—makes about as much sense as building a house on sand.’
Was this a man trying to put a positive spin on it or was he genuinely that cynical?
‘Have you ever been in love?’ It was a weird thing to ask a total stranger, but then this was a very weird situation.
And just as weird was the expression she glimpsed on the tall prince’s face. But even as she registered the bleakness in his eyes his heavy lids half closed. When he turned to look directly at her there was only cynicism shining in the dark depths.
‘I defer to you as an expert on that subject. Two engagements is impressive. Do you get engaged to every man you sleep with?’
‘I’m twenty-three,’ she tossed back.
He tipped his dark head. ‘My apologies,’ he intoned with smiling contempt. ‘That was a stupid question.’
Hannah didn’t give a damn if he thought she had casual sex with every man she met. What made her want to slap the look of smug superiority off his face were the double standards his attitude betrayed.
How dared a man who had probably had more notches in his bedpost than she’d had pedicures look down his nose at her?
‘And this is all about money and power. You have it and you’re prepared to do anything to keep it. You carry on calling it duty if it makes you feel any better about yourself, but I call it greed!’
Kamel struggled to contain the flash of rage he felt at the insult. ‘Only a woman who has always had access to her rich daddy’s wallet and has never had to work for anything in her life could be so scornful about money. Or maybe you’re just stupid.’
Stupid! The word throbbed like an infected wound in her brain. ‘I do work.’ If only to prove to all those people who called her stupid that people with dyslexia could do as well as anyone else if they had the help they needed.
‘I think you might find your role is no longer available.’
‘You couldn’t say or think anything about me that hasn’t been said,’ she told him in a voice that shook with all the emotion she normally cloaked behind a cold mask. ‘Thought or written. But enough about me. What’s your contribution to society? I forget,’ she drawled, adopting a dumb expression. ‘What qualifications do you need to be a future King? Oh, that’s right, an accident of birth.’ She stopped and released a long fractured sigh. ‘That’s not what I wanted to say.’
He stared at her through narrowed eyes, resisting the possibility that a woman with feelings, that a woman who could be hurt, lurked behind the icy disdain.
‘Well, what did you want to say?’
Relief rippled through her. This was not the response she had anticipated to her outburst.
‘Would this marriage be a...paper one?’
‘Will...get the tense right,’ he chided. ‘There will be official duties, occasions when we would be expected to be seen together.’ He studied her face. ‘But that isn’t what you’re talking about, is it?’
She gnawed on her lower lip and shook her head.
‘It will be expected that we produce an heir.’
Shaken by the image that popped into her head, she looked away but not before her mind had stripped him naked. The image refused to budge, as did the uncomfortable feeling low in her belly.
‘You might find it educational.’
The drawled comment made her expression freeze over; it hid her panic. ‘The offer of lessons in sex is not a big selling point!’ My God, he was really in for a disappointment.
His laugh cut over her words. ‘I wasn’t referring to your carnal education, though if you want to teach me a thing or two I have no problem.’
The riposte he had anticipated didn’t come. Instead, astonishingly, she blushed. Kamel was not often disconcerted, but he was by her response.
Hannah, who had conquered many things but not her infuriating habit of blushing, hated feeling gauche and immature. From somewhere she dredged up some cool. ‘So what were you referring to?’
‘I’m assuming that your average lover is besotted. I’m not.’
‘What, besotted or average?’ Stupid question, she thought as her eyes slid down his long, lean, powerful frame—average was not a word anyone would use when referring to this man. ‘I can’t just jump into bed with you. I don’t know you!’
‘We have time.’ He produced a thin-lipped smile. ‘A lot of it. But relax, I don’t expect our union to be consummated any time soon, if you can cope with that?’
