Woman in a Sheikh's World Read online

  ‘Neither did you.’

  Was it that simple? Was that all it would have taken? ‘I was ready to say them. I was ready to ask you to marry me. I had plans. And then you told me it was over and walked away.’

  ‘The first I knew of your “plans” was when a creepy guy who could never keep his hands to himself rang me to make me an offer for my business because he’d heard I was giving it all up to walk five steps behind you for the rest of my life.’

  Mal reined in the anger, refusing to be sidetracked. ‘I didn’t know he’d made an offer on your business.’

  ‘He was taunting me because he knew how much my company meant to me. And I fell for it, of course.’ Eyes closed, she let her head fall back against the wall. ‘He understood my weaknesses better than you did.’

  ‘And he understood mine.’ His muscles protesting at his cramped position, Mal stood up and lifted her to her feet, relieved when the shirt she was wearing slid back into place and covered slightly more of her.

  ‘I thought you were Prince Perfect. You don’t have any weaknesses.’ Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, softly tangled after a night in his bed. Without her make-up she looked impossibly young and Mal felt something soften inside him. He’d so rarely seen her like this. This was the real Avery, not the businesswoman.

  ‘You think I don’t have a weakness?’ He slid his hands into her hair and tilted her head. ‘My weakness is you, habibti. It’s always been you. And Richard knew it. He knew exactly what to say to cause maximum havoc. And his plan was a spectacular success. I lost my cool.’

  Her beautiful eyes were bruised and wary. ‘Sorry, but I just can’t imagine that.’

  ‘Try. It was bad.’ Mal’s mouth twisted into a smile of self-mockery. ‘Very bad. You want details? Because it wasn’t pretty. I lost control, just as Kalila told you.’

  ‘I didn’t believe her. You never lose control.’

  ‘Everyone has a breaking point. He found mine with embarrassing ease. I’d planned to ask you to marry me. To do it “properly”. I knew we were happy together. I knew you were the woman I wanted to spend my life with. It was an unfortunate coincidence that Richard confronted me before I’d had a chance to have time alone with you.’

  She stared at a point at the centre of his chest. ‘It might have helped if you’d actually included me in your plans.’

  ‘I’m very traditional. I wanted to ask you in a traditional manner.’

  She pulled away, her narrow shoulders suddenly tense. ‘Yes, you’re traditional. And that brings us full circle. Even if you’d managed to ask me to marry you in the conventional way, face to face, you still would have expected me to give up my business.’

  It was the elephant in the room. The thing they’d never talked about because it had seemed insurmountable. Even back then, when he’d been determined to make it work, he’d seen the difficulties because it was absolutely true that to run a business like hers would require a time commitment that the woman who married him would not be able to afford.

  Mal hesitated for a beat but even that was a beat too long because he saw her shoulders sag as she took that fatal hesitation on his part as confirmation of her fears. ‘I would not have expected you to give up your business.’ But he saw from her cynical expression that she didn’t believe him and he sighed. ‘You wouldn’t have been able to work eighteen hour days, that’s true, but we would have found a way.’

  ‘A way that involved me giving up everything and you giving up nothing.’

  ‘No. We would have talked about it. Come to some mutual agreement, but we didn’t communicate as well as we might have done.’

  ‘If that’s the case then it’s your fault.’

  And that made him smile because she sounded so much like herself and it was a relief. ‘I agree. My fault. Except for the part that was your fault.’ Noticing that the shirt was slipping again, he took her hand and led her out of the bathroom, ignoring her attempts to resist him. ‘Sorry, but we need to have this conversation somewhere that doesn’t make me think of you naked in the shower if we’re to stand any chance of actually resolving this. It would help if you could button the shirt to the neck.’

  ‘You’re thinking about sex at a time like this?’

  He gave a wry smile. ‘Aren’t you?’

  She dragged her eyes from his shoulders. ‘No. You don’t turn me on, Your Highness.’ His smile drew a shrug from her. ‘All right, maybe I am thinking about sex, but if anything that makes it worse because good sex cannot sustain a relationship. Good sex does not change the fact that our relationship is impossible.’

  ‘Not impossible.’

  ‘We want different things.’

  ‘Then we will compromise. It is just a question of negotiation.’

  ‘In other words you’ll bully me until you get your own way.’

  They were in the living area now, with its sumptuous furniture and breathtaking views of the desert but neither of them was conscious of their surroundings. Just each other. Avery snatched her hand from his and took refuge in the furthest corner of the sofa, as far away from him as possible.

  ‘What time is the helicopter arriving to pick me up?’

  ‘It’s not.’ He paused, unwilling to give her the option to leave but knowing that he would never keep this woman by binding her to his side. ‘But if you still want the helicopter when we have finished this conversation to the satisfaction of both parties then I will fly you home myself. Fair?’

  Her eyes skidded to his and then away. ‘Go on then, Your Highness. Slay me with your superior negotiation techniques.’

  This time he didn’t hesitate. ‘You accuse me of being insensitive, and I admit the charge but you share some of the blame because I had no clue as to the depth of your feelings. You never told me. You were so busy protecting yourself—’

  ‘—something I was obviously right to do.’

  ‘No. If you’d trusted me—if we’d understood each other better—’ He felt a rush of exasperation as he remembered how much she’d held back. ‘Every time I tried to talk to you I came up against this tough, competent, ball-breaking businesswoman. Nothing could shatter that shield you put between yourself and the world.’

  ‘It’s not a shield. It’s who I am.’

  ‘It’s a shield. Why do you think I asked you to organise my wedding party?’

  ‘I thought we were already in agreement on that one. Because you’re insensitive.’ Her tone was flippant but he saw the pain in her eyes and that pain was matched by his.

  ‘You cut me off.’ His tone was raw, his grip on control as slippery as it always was around this woman. ‘You didn’t even give me the right to reply. You just told me that you weren’t prepared to make the “sacrifice” necessary to be my wife—a point which, by the way, hurt almost as much as the realisation that you were not prepared to fight for the survival of our relationship.’

  ‘Relationships end, Mal. It’s a fact of life. Fighting just prolongs the inevitable.’

  ‘Some relationships end.’ He realised just how deeply he’d underestimated the level of her insecurities. ‘Others endure.’

  ‘If I want endurance, I’ll run a marathon.’

  Sensing that the way was blocked, he shifted his approach. ‘I once considered you the most open-minded, educated, impressive woman in my acquaintance but on the subject of marriage you are blinkered and deeply prejudiced. How did I not realise that sooner?’

  ‘If this is an elaborate way of shifting blame for the fact that you were cruel enough to force me to plan the celebrations for your wedding to another woman, then you’ll need to work harder. I am not to blame for your shortcomings.’

  ‘You didn’t even afford me the courtesy of a face to face conversation. You just told me it was over. You refused to speak to me until that final phone call, the details of which are welded in my brain.’ He had the satisfaction of seeing her shift slightly. ‘That’s right. The one when you told me that the only way I was going to be able to speak
to you again was if I booked you in a professional capacity. So that’s what I did. I booked you.’ He watched as the truth settled home. Watched as she acknowledged her part in what had happened.

  ‘I didn’t mean it literally.’

  ‘Well, I took it literally.’

  ‘You chose to marry another woman,’ she snapped, ‘and you expect me to believe that you were broken-hearted? Sorry, but look at the evidence from my point of view. I hear from someone else that we are getting married and that I’m giving up my job, and your response when I say “no” to that less than appealing prospect is to immediately propose to someone else. That merely confirmed everything I already knew about the transitory nature of relationships.’

  It all came back to that, he thought and realised that this was the moment he should tell her the truth about his engagement to Kalila. But if he told her, it would be over and he wasn’t ready to let her go without a fight. ‘I believed our relationship was at an end.’ He dragged his hand over the back of his neck, forcing himself to relive those horrible months. ‘I thought that was it.’

  ‘And it didn’t take you long to recover, did it? If you cared about me that much, why did you ask Kalila to marry you?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her. Our marriage was arranged by the Council. That was the deal I made with my father.’ That much, at least, was true. All that was missing was the detail.

  ‘The deal?’

  ‘I told him I wanted to marry you—’ he sat down on the sofa next to her and took it as a positive sign that she didn’t immediately leap out of her seat ‘—and he predicted that you would refuse.’

  She studied her fingernails. ‘Your father is a wise man, I always said so, but I fail to see how even he would know that without consulting me.’

  ‘He met you. You’d charmed him as you charm everyone you meet, but he also saw the problems. Perhaps he saw things I was not prepared to confront. He warned me that the sacrifice required would be too great for a woman like you. And it turned out he was right. Because I couldn’t marry you, it didn’t matter to me who I married. So I let them make the arrangements they wanted to make.’

  Silence spread across the room. She lifted her gaze to his.

  ‘You could have said no.’

  No, he couldn’t have said no.

  Mal felt tension spread across his shoulders. ‘Why would I? I have to marry. That point is not in question. My father is not in good health and yet under his rule Zubran has achieved an unprecedented level of stability and progress. Our economy is strong, I am taking over more and more of his role and ultimately I will be responsible for the country’s future. That is a huge responsibility, but one that I’m prepared for.’ He breathed deeply. ‘But the prospect would have been more appealing had I been able to do it with you by my side. That was what I wanted.’

  Something that might have been shock flickered in those blue eyes.

  She tucked her legs under her and made herself smaller. ‘So now you’re telling me that? Your timing sucks, Your Highness.’

  ‘I would have to agree with that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say it before?’

  ‘Because you would have run faster than a stallion in the Zubran Derby.’

  The corners of her mouth flickered. Her lips curved. Those lovely lips that he couldn’t look at without wanting to kiss them.

  ‘So you suffered when we broke up?’

  ‘Greatly.’

  ‘Good.’ There was a gleam in her eyes. ‘Because if I went through hell I’d hate to think that you got away free.’

  ‘Believe me, I didn’t. I asked you to arrange the wedding party in a last-ditch attempt to get some response from you. A small part of me still hoped that you had feelings for me and I assumed that if you had feelings for me then you would refuse to take the business because it would be too difficult for you to plan an event that celebrated my wedding to another woman.’

  ‘I can’t believe you asked me to do that. It was a terrible thing to do. A sign of a sick mind.’

  ‘Or the sign of a desperate man.’ He stretched his arm along the back of the sofa. ‘I hoped that by being forced to communicate with me, eventually you would crack and admit how you felt.’

  ‘You thought I’d ruin someone else’s relationship? You really don’t know me very well. I wouldn’t touch a man who was engaged to someone else.’

  ‘Kalila didn’t want this marriage any more than I did. She probably would have been grateful if I’d been the one to back out because it would have saved her from doing it and risking the wrath of her father. And that’s enough of that topic. I’ve had enough of talking about Kalila and the past and the total and utter mess we made of something special. I want to talk about last night.’

  ‘Last night was last night. It doesn’t change anything.’

  ‘Last night I saw the real you. And the real you confessed that you dream about me.’ Mal drew her to her feet and this time she didn’t resist. ‘Have I told you that you look cute in my shirt?’

  ‘Stop trying to soften me up.’ But her breathing wasn’t quite steady. ‘We can’t do this, Mal. I can’t do this.’ Her voice shook and he realised the fragility of what he was holding in his hands.

  ‘Yes, you can. This is one of those occasions when you’re supposed to face your fears.’

  Face your fears.

  He made it sound so easy and yet it was the scariest thing she’d ever faced.

  ‘You think I’d risk letting you hurt me twice? Do I look stupid?’

  ‘I didn’t hurt you the first time. At least not intentionally, and you are at least partially to blame for that fiasco.’

  ‘It’s not a fiasco, it’s a relationship. That’s what happens in relationships. They break. It’s a question of how, not whether.’ Avery pulled away from him and wrapped her arms around herself. She was still wearing the shirt she’d grabbed and suddenly she regretted not getting dressed and putting on make-up because somehow it was easier to project a different side to herself when she was wearing her warpaint. ‘People start off optimistically, thinking that nothing can go wrong, and then eventually it starts to fall apart. The only unknown factor is how and when.’

  ‘That’s your mother talking. Your mother the divorce lawyer.’

  ‘You paid someone to dig into my background?’

  ‘No, I looked you up, but I shouldn’t have had to. We were together for a year and our relationship was serious enough for you to trust me with at least some basic information about your family, although there was nothing there about your father.’

  Of course there wasn’t.

  ‘Why does my family matter?’ Her heart was thumping at her ribcage. ‘You were with me, not my mother.’

  ‘It might have helped me understand you. Is it her profession that makes you so wary of relationships? Is that the reason you didn’t introduce us?’

  ‘I don’t take people home to meet my mother. We don’t have one of those cosy mother-daughter relationships where we shop together and get our nails done.’ Nerves made her snappy. ‘She wouldn’t have embraced you; she would have warned me off. My mother’s idea of irresponsible behaviour is a relationship lasting more than a few months and being a Prince wouldn’t have earned you points. If there is one thing she hates more than a man, it’s an alpha, macho man. You should be grateful I didn’t introduce you. It was for your own protection.’

  ‘Do I look as if I need protecting?’ He’d pulled on a pair of trousers but his torso was bare, bronzed flesh gleaming over solid muscle.

  Distracted by that muscle, Avery almost lost the thread of the conversation. ‘All right, maybe it was for my protection.’

  ‘She sounds like a formidable woman.’

  ‘Formidable and utterly messed up. Like me, only very possibly worse if you can imagine that. I can see her faults, but that doesn’t mean I can dismiss everything she believes because I believe some of it too. When we broke up I was a mess.’ Remembering it was terrifying. Thinking about
how much she’d changed. How much of herself she’d almost given up. Just thinking about losing her business made her break into a sweat. ‘I can’t do this, Mal. I just can’t. My business gives me independence. It’s my life and I won’t give that up. Seriously, we’d be crazy to even think of doing this again because the ending will be the same.’

  ‘No it won’t, because this time we’re being honest with each other. This time we’re going to understand each other. We’ll find a way.’ His gaze didn’t flicker from hers. ‘I love you.’

  She felt a lightness inside her. A lightness that spread and grew. She felt as if she could float, spin, dance in the air. ‘You love me?’

  ‘Yes. All of you. Even the aggravating parts.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Especially the aggravating parts.’

  Avery lifted her hand to her throat. This was the moment she was supposed to say it back. Those three words she’d never said to another human being. Those three words that her mother had warned her always made a woman stupid.

  ‘I—’ The words jammed in her mouth, as if her body was putting up a final fight. ‘I—’

  ‘You—?’ Those dark eyes were fixed on her expectantly and she felt as if she were being strangled.

  ‘I really need some fresh air,’ she muttered. ‘Can we go for a ride?’

  Galloping across the desert on an Arabian horse was the most exhilarating feeling in the world. More like floating, Avery thought, as she urged the mare faster. Soon, the sun would be too high, the day too hot for riding or any other strenuous activity, but for now they were able to enjoy this spectacular wilderness in a traditional way. And with Mal by her side it couldn’t be anything other than exciting. Being with him was when she was at her happiest, but didn’t all relationships start with people feeling that way?

  She adjusted the scarf that protected her face from the drifting sand and cast him a look. ‘Do I look mysterious?’

  ‘You don’t need a scarf for that.’ His response was as dry as the landscape around them. ‘With or without the scarf, you are the most mysterious woman I’ve ever met.’