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‘But surely someone from the Thallian government will protest?’
‘If they find out.’
‘You’ve kept it from them too?’
‘From everyone, Olivia. I’ve had to. But I will find her.’ He placed the heavy damask napkin in her lap, just an excuse to touch her. Her body quivered under the brush of his fingers. ‘I understand you have questions,’ he continued quietly. ‘But I’d much rather talk about something else. Something pleasant, even.’ He smiled, willing the tension and uncertainty of the last few hours, the last few weeks, away, if just for one evening.
‘Something pleasant,’ Olivia repeated, her long, slender fingers toying with the crystal stem of her wine glass. Her mouth curved and she glanced up at him, eyebrows raised. ‘Nothing comes to mind at the moment, I’m afraid.’
His lips twitched in an answering smile. ‘Oh dear,’ he murmured. ‘What a dilemma. Surely we can come up with something?’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘I’m sure, between the two of us, we could think of something pleasant indeed.’ His voice had dropped to a husky murmur and his insides tightened with desire. He hadn’t intended a sexual innuendo, but it was there all the same. He heard it and, from the way Olivia moistened her lips, he knew she did too. He wondered what she would do with it, how she would respond...and how he wanted her to.
‘I’m sure you think of something pleasant all the time,’ she answered. ‘Although, that’s a euphemism I haven’t come across before.’
‘Rather an innocuous one,’ he answered, and her expression tightened.
‘Don’t flirt with me, Aziz. I know it’s your default setting but you managed to keep yourself from it before.’
He let out a laugh. ‘My default setting?’
She faced him directly, her gaze now resolute. ‘You’re a playboy. You can’t help it.’
He smiled wryly. ‘You make it sound like I have some condition. A disease.’
‘One I’d hope you can control. I’m not going to be one of your conquests.’
She was going on the attack because their little bout of flirting had disconcerted her, Aziz decided. Had affected her. ‘Default settings aside,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, ‘I like seeing you smile, Olivia, and hearing you laugh. I’ve only heard you laugh once before, and I wasn’t even in the room.’
A wary confusion clouded her eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You were in the kitchen and I’d come into the house without you knowing it. I heard you laugh.’ He paused, noting the way her face went pale, her eyes widened. ‘It was a delightful laugh,’ he continued. ‘Rich and full, almost dirty. I wondered what you were laughing about.’
‘I—I don’t remember.’
‘Why don’t you laugh like that with me?’
‘Maybe you’re not funny enough,’ she shot back, on the attack again, and he nodded, smiling.
‘Ah, a direct challenge. I now have a mission.’
‘One you’ll fail at, Aziz. I’m your housekeeper. You don’t need me to laugh. You don’t even know me.’
‘And is there very much to know?’
Her fingers tightened around her wine glass. ‘Not really. I live a very quiet life in Paris.’
‘Why is that?’
‘I prefer it.’
‘Yes, but why?’ He realised he truly did want to know the answer, wanted to understand why a woman like Olivia Ellis—a beautiful, capable, intelligent, lovely woman—would hide herself away as housekeeper to an empty house for six long years.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she challenged. ‘Not everyone wants to live like you do, Aziz.’
He sat back in his chair, amused and still intrigued by her non-answer. ‘And how do I live, Olivia?’
‘You know as well as I do. Parties till dawn and a different woman in your bed every night.’
‘You disapprove.’
‘It’s not for me to judge, but it’s certainly not how I want to live my life.’
‘Surely there’s a balance? We’re opposites, you and I, in our pursuit of pleasure, but don’t you think we could find some middle ground?’
Her eyes flashed. ‘And where would that be?’
In bed. He had a sudden, vivid image of Olivia lying on top of tangled satin sheets, her glorious hair spread out on the pillow, her lips rosy and swollen from his kisses. His libido stirred insistently. He knew he had no business thinking like this, feeling like this.
And yet he did.
‘It’s up for discussion, I suppose,’ he said easily, and Olivia just shook her head.
A waiter came in with their first course and they both remained silent as he laid plates of salad before them. Olivia kept her head bowed, her face averted, although she murmured a thank you as the man departed.
‘I don’t think he suspected,’ Aziz murmured as the door clicked shut.
Olivia glanced up at him. ‘Like you said, people believe what they want to believe.’
She sounded hard, Aziz noted, and cynical. ‘Has that been your experience?’
‘More or less.’
‘Which one?’ he asked lightly, and she stared at him, her whole body going still, her face turning blank.
‘More,’ she said flatly, and then looked away. He wanted to ask her what she meant but she didn’t give him the chance. ‘Will you miss your old life?’ she asked. ‘The parties, the whole playboy routine? I suppose things will be very different for you, getting married, living in Kadar.’
‘Yes, I suppose they will.’ He picked up his fork and toyed with a piece of lettuce. ‘But in answer to your question, no, I won’t miss my old life.’ He glanced up, taken aback by his own honesty, striving for nonchalance. ‘Which I suppose is a confession of how shallow I really am.’
She cocked her head, eyeing him thoughtfully. ‘A shallow person wouldn’t be fighting for his throne.’
‘Maybe I just want power.’
‘Why do you want to be Sheikh?’ she asked. ‘You never even seemed interested in Kadar before. You hardly ever returned here, by your own admission.’
‘It isn’t a question of want,’ Aziz answered after a moment. ‘It’s my duty.’
‘A duty that didn’t concern you before,’ she pointed out and he pretended to wince.
‘You don’t pull your punches, do you, Olivia?’
‘Why should I?’
He chuckled softly. ‘No, I don’t suppose you should. It’s a fair question, anyway.’ One he didn’t particularly want to answer, yet he felt the surprising need to be honest. So much of his life was pretence and prevarication. Olivia, with her direct gaze and no-nonsense attitude, was someone he knew he could trust and confide in, at least a little. ‘My father never really wanted me to be Sheikh,’ he said after a moment. ‘I was always a disappointment to him.’
‘But why?’
Because he’d wanted Khalil. Even when he knew he wasn’t his son, when he’d rejected him, Hashem had longed for the son he’d loved, not Aziz. Not his son by blood. Honesty only went so far, though, and Aziz wasn’t about to admit any of that. He couldn’t stand it if Olivia ended up pitying him and the desperate-for-love boy he’d been. ‘We just didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.’ Which was putting it mildly.
Even now he could remember the way his father had sneered at his every attempt to please him. He could feel the scorching shame he’d known when Hashem had marched him into a meeting of royal aides and staff and asked him to recite Kadar’s constitution. Aziz had stumbled once, once, and Hashem had mocked him ruthlessly before slapping his face and dismissing him from the room.
Just one memory among dozens, hundreds, all of them equally cringe-worthy. Until he’d been fifteen and he’d lost his virginity—to one of his father’s mistresses, no less—and he’d realised there was another way to live. A way not to care.
‘Is that why you’ve stayed away from Kadar? Because of your father?’ Olivia asked, and Aziz blinked back the memories and stretched his lips into an easy smile.
‘Pretty much. Our meetings were—acrimonious.’
‘But you still haven’t told me why you’ve chosen to return to Kadar and be Sheikh.’
‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘It’s a bit of perversity on my part. I want to prove my father wrong. I want to prove I can be Sheikh, and a damned good one at that.’ He heard the passionate intensity throb in his voice and felt a shaft of embarrassment. He sounded so eager.
‘So your decision is still about your father,’ she said after a moment. ‘You’re still letting him control you. Letting him win.’
He jerked back, stung more than he liked by her assessment, yet knowing she was right. His choices were still dictated by his father. He might not wear his heart on his sleeve any more, but he still wanted his father’s approval. His love.
‘I never thought of that before,’ he said as carelessly as he could. ‘But, yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s still about my father.’ And maybe it always would be.
‘It’s hard,’ Olivia said quietly, ‘When someone has so much power and influence in your life, to let go of it. Even choosing to ignore that person still makes them the centre of your life, in a way. You’re spending all your energy, all your time, trying not to think about them.’
‘You’re speaking from experience,’ Aziz observed and she shrugged.
‘Like you, I’m not very close to my father. He’s still alive, of course, but we haven’t spoken in years.’
‘I wasn’t aware of that.’ He thought of her father, an easy-going, affable man who had climbed high in the diplomatic service. ‘He recommended you for the position as housekeeper,’ he recalled and she nodded stiffly.
‘I think he felt he owed me that much, at least.’
‘Owed you?’
She shook her head and he could tell she regretted saying even that much. ‘It doesn’t matter. Ancient history.’
But he saw how her hands tightened in her lap, her features became pinched, her eyes darkened with remembered pain, and he knew it wasn’t that ancient. And it did matter.
She looked down at her plate, her expression clearing, Aziz suspected, by sheer force of will. ‘Anyway, we should be talking of the future, not the past,’ she said briskly. ‘Assuming you find Queen Elena in time, do you think you will come to love her?’
Aziz stiffened in surprise. No, never. Because he wasn’t interested in loving or being loved, didn’t want to open himself up to those messy emotions, needless complications. Look where it had got him; you loved someone and they let you down. They didn’t love you back or, worse, they hated you.
But he wasn’t, thank God, a needy, foolish boy any more. He was a man who knew what he wanted, understood what he had to do, and love didn’t come into it at all.
‘Queen Elena and I have discussed the nature of our marriage,’ he informed her. ‘We are both satisfied with the arrangement.’
‘That isn’t really an answer,’ Olivia replied, and Aziz smiled and spread his hands.
‘We barely know each other, Olivia. I’ve met Elena twice. I have no idea if I could love her or not.’ ‘Not’ being the operative word. ‘In any case, I’d rather talk about you. I’m sure you’re far more interesting than I am.’
She shook her head rather firmly. ‘I most certainly am not.’
‘You’re the daughter of a diplomat. You must have grown up in all sorts of places.’ She conceded the point with a nod and Aziz pressed, ‘Where would you call home?’
‘Paris.’
With a jolt he realised she meant his house. No wonder the job meant so much to her. It was probably the longest she’d lived anywhere.
‘Not just because of now,’ she explained. ‘I spent some time in Paris as a child—primary school years. I’ve always liked it there.’
‘And where did you spend your teenaged years?’
The slightest hesitation. ‘South America.’
‘That must have been interesting.’
A tiny shrug, the flattening of her tone. ‘It was a very small ex-pat community.’
Which was a strange response. She had secrets, Aziz thought. He thought of that rich laugh, the anguished piano music. She hid all her emotion, all her joy and pain—why?
Why did he hide his?
Because it hurt. It hurt to show your real self, to feel those deep emotions. They were both skimming the surface of life, he realised. They just did it in totally different ways.
‘And if I recall your CV, you only spent one year in university?’
‘One term,’ she corrected, her voice giving nothing away. Her face had gone completely blank, like a slate wiped clean. ‘I decided it wasn’t for me.’
Her knuckles were white as she held her fork, her body utterly rigid. And even though he was tempted to press, to know, Aziz decided to give her a break. For now. ‘I’m not sure if it was for me either,’ he told her with a shrug. ‘I barely scraped a two-two. Too busy partying, I suppose.’
He saw her relax, her fingers loosening on her fork. ‘A playboy even then?’
He shrugged. ‘It must be in my genes.’ And there could be some truth to that, considering how many women his father had had. But Aziz knew that, genetics aside, his decision to pursue the playboy life had been deliberate, even if it was empty. Especially because it was empty.
‘You’re clever, though,’ Olivia said after a moment. ‘You started your own consulting business.’
‘I’m fortunate that I have a way with numbers,’ he said dismissively with a shrug. In truth, he was rather fiercely proud of his own business. He hadn’t taken a penny from his father for it, although people assumed he had. In reality he hadn’t accepted any money from his father since he’d left university. Not that he went around telling people that, or about the percentage of his earnings that he donated back to Kadar to support charities and foundations that helped women and children, the vulnerable and the oppressed. He wasn’t going to brag about his accomplishments, or try to make people like him more.
Except, maybe he needed to, if he wanted to keep his throne.
‘What about you, Olivia? Did you ever want to be anything other than a housekeeper?’
