The Sheikh Who Blackmailed Her: Desert Prince, Blackmailed Bride / The Sheikh and the Bought Bride / At the Sheikh's Bidding

‘Is that an invitation or an order?’

‘It’s whichever works.’

With a snort, Gabby slid into the back seat. She arranged her skirts neatly around her knees and crossed her ankles, but she was only delaying the inevitable. She had to look at him some time.

‘How did you find your brother? He is well?’

As if he actually cared. With anger in her eyes, Gabby turned her head and promptly forgot what she had been about to say.

Today, along with a traditional flowing white robe, his head was covered by a white keffiyah, held in place by a woven gold band. The only blemish on his face was the healing wound on his forehead. The traditional headgear emphasised the remarkable bones, the sybaritic purity and the strongly sensual quality of his face. Especially, she thought, the sensual quality of his mouth. Her eyes were irresistibly drawn to the blatantly sexual curve of his lips. It was obvious that a man with a mouth like that had to be a good kisser—and he was.

It was some time later that her drifting, dreamy gaze finally connected with his. He arched a questioning brow. Embarrassed colour flew to her pale cheeks.

She compressed her lips and tossed him a cold response. ‘Considering what he’s been through, he’s remarkably well.’ She sniffed and thought, No thanks to you!

‘You have explained the situation?’

‘You mean did I tell him I bought his freedom by relinquishing mine? Strangely enough, no, I didn’t. This may seem like some sort of business deal to you, but to most people it would look like blackmail—and, actually, that’s how it feels.’

And you’re telling him this why? Rafiq is not interested in how you feel.

Instead of answering her outburst with some cutting riposte or sinister warning he didn’t say anything at all. But she could feel his eyes, even though she had turned her head and was staring blindly out of the window. Finally she could bear it no longer. She turned her head.

Rafiq was scowling at her.

She lifted her hands like someone protesting their innocence. ‘What? It’s the truth. Can you say you haven’t blackmailed me?’

‘What have you done to yourself?’

The seemingly unconnected criticism made her blink. ‘Done to myself? I haven’t done anything.’

He lifted a hand and inscribed a motion above his own head. ‘Your hair … your face.’

‘That wasn’t me—that was your hit squad. You don’t like it?’ She just managed to stop herself touching her hair.

‘I do not like it.’

‘How very rude of you to mention it.’ And how totally ridiculous that I actually care.

‘Why did you let them do this to you?’

The utter unfairness took her breath away. ‘Like me, they were following orders—yours!’

Her orders had been delivered on a silver tray. Along with details of her brother’s flight and where she could meet him, the handwritten note had also informed her that she would be dining that evening with the two Princes. The postscript had explained that a selection of suitable outfits would be delivered to her room later.

They had been—along with a hairdresser, a stylist and a make-up artist. They had admired her skin until Gabby had let slip that her skincare regime was a bit hit and miss, and depended greatly on what skincare products were on special offer. The women had then discovered a lot more room for improvement.

Rafiq looked outraged. ‘I did not tell them to do this!’

‘This?’ This time she couldn’t stop herself touching her hair. ‘What’s wrong with it? I’ve been styled, made over …’ And apparently I still don’t make the grade—great!

‘You could be any woman in the street.’

Only the ones who could afford couture, she thought. ‘No—any woman in the street could catch a plane and go back home.’

‘Your style is individual.’ His frowning scrutiny returned to her hair, which shone like glass and fell river-straight down her back.

‘That’s what I thought you wanted to get rid of.’

Rafiq did not respond. His expression, as he continued to stare at her hair, was distracted. Then without warning he reached out and swept a strand of shiny hair from her cheek.

‘That’s what I thought too.’ But he had changed his mind.

Gabby stared at the blood-red stone on his finger and shivered as his fingertips brushed her cheek.

‘Yesterday your hair looked as if you hadn’t combed it. When you were sleeping, you …’ He speared his fingers deeper into it, and remembered doing the same when he had kissed her. The memory made it hard to retain his detachment. It made him hard, full-stop.

Gabby hardly recognised the hoarse, husky voice as her own as she retorted, ‘I don’t always look that bad. Yesterday I had been sleeping in the desert.’

‘And worrying about me.’ His hand dropped and his hooded stare darkened as his long fingers curled around her throat.

Gabby felt the light touch like a burning brand on her skin. ‘I was worried about everyone. How are …?’

The relief she felt when his hand fell away was so intense she had to bite back a bubble of hysterical laughter.

‘Two are still on the critical list.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She was utterly bewildered, and had no way of articulating her helpless physical response to this man. She had never experienced anything like the sensations that were thrumming through her body. So much for taking control of her hormones!

She ran her tongue along her upper lip to blot the beads of moisture that had broken out there, fighting the desire to crawl out of her skin.

‘Well, I suppose it’s too late to do anything about your hair now.’

‘You really know how to make a girl feel good about herself. You could always chuck me out of the car to try and get the look you apparently liked so much,’ she said, reaching for the door handle.

With a curse he leaned across her and clamped his hand over hers.

Gabby shrank back in her seat, her senses spinning and her pulses leaping as his arm pressed her into the seat.

‘I was joking,’ she said. But not now. Now jumping seemed a pretty safe alternative to having him this close. She was overwhelmingly conscious at a cellular level of his hard male body, the heat, the scent, the raw, powerful masculinity of him.

His hand still covering hers, he turned his head. His face was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek and see the network of fine lines around his eyes. His dark hooded eyes were fierce and hypnotic.

And then it came. The forbidden thought she had walled away—he’s dying.

A keening cry ached for escape from her tight throat. She shouldn’t feel this terrible sense of loss—for God’s sake, she didn’t even like him, he was her enemy—but the empathic connection she felt with him was so strong she could feel the weight of his emotional isolation, and her foolish heart ached for him.

How do I feel so close to this man?

Their eyes connected and clung, and for a moment time seemed to slow, then freeze. It was Rafiq who leaned back in his seat, and the spell broke.

Gabby expelled a shaky sigh and sat on her hands, to hide the fact they were shaking. ‘Talk about overreaction. You have no sense of humour.’ She gave a light laugh and turned her head to look out of the window. Please let this journey be over!

The highway from the airport was wide, long and straight, cutting directly through miles of flat ochre-coloured desert, dotted with strange and weirdly shaped rock formations that rose up into the sky, casting even weirder shadows against the desert floor. There was a lot of traffic. She commented on the fact, because it seemed like a fairly safe and impersonal subject.

‘It is a holiday here and it is tradition for people—families—to go to the sea. They are now returning to the city.’

‘I know someone who took a diving holiday here a few a years ago.’

‘Yes, there is good diving. The coast is littered with wrecks that are rich in sea life. I learnt to dive there myself.’

‘And those green patches I keep seeing in the desert? What are they?’ she asked, looking at his cut glass profile and not at the scenery rushing by.

‘They are areas of irrigation, and most productive. We actually have a strong agricultural economy, and even without the hand of man the desert is not as arid and lifeless as it appears. Many species have adapted to the conditions and temperature fluctuations—I have even seen fig trees growing miles from water.’

Gabby listened, fascinated as much by the passion, enthusiasm and pride for his country she could hear in his voice as the information.

‘In the south, where there is no shortage of rainfall, we have—’ He stopped abruptly and turned his head. ‘Are you actually interested?’

Gabby said the first thing that came into her head. Unfortunately it was the truth.

‘No, I just like the sound of your voice.’ Actually, like was far too tepid a term. ‘And of course,’ she continued, adopting a flippant attitude, ‘I’m going to be Queen of all I survey …’ Quick recovery, Gabby. Her mocking smile faded. ‘You do know it’s not going to happen, don’t you, Rafiq?’ she said quietly. ‘Have you even told your family that you’re ill?’

‘I will tell them at the appropriate time,’ he replied with deceptive calm. The problem was one that he knew he would have to face. But not yet.

His father was not young, and though he was not a physically demonstrative man Rafiq knew that his sons were his life. Once people knew he would be treated differently, and this was something he wanted to postpone for as long as possible.

‘They have a right to know,’ Gabby began earnestly. ‘And you shouldn’t be alone. You should have—’

Rafiq listened until he could bear no more. ‘Enough!’ He cut her dead with a jerky motion of his hand. ‘I hardly need a support network when I have you, do I?’

His sarcasm made her flush and look away—but not before Rafiq had seen the glitter of tears in her eyes.

He studied her delicate profile and felt glad there was no woman in his life who would weep tears for him and mourn. What man could contemplate the prospect of the woman he had held in his arms and made love to watching him fade away by slow degrees without horror?

‘Let me make it plain that I do not need your pity, your understanding, or your compassion. Is that clear?’

She swallowed and compressed her lips. ‘As crystal.’

His voice soft with menace, he leaned in towards her, his dark eyes burning into hers. ‘And if you have any ideas about telling anyone …’

‘I won’t blab.’

‘Good,’ he said, settling back in his seat as the car glided through the open palace gates.

CHAPTER TEN

‘WE ARE dining in the small family dining room.’

‘Cosy. Very cosy,’ she commented as he stood aside to let her precede him into the room. The ‘small family dining room’ was the size of a football pitch. The table set at one end, with gold candlesticks, heavy crystal and antique silver, was about thirty feet long, and they were walking on a mosaic floor that had to be centuries old.

Rafiq, upon whom her irony was wasted, saw her staring at the glowing mosaic and said casually, ‘Byzantine,’ before approaching the man sitting at the table with a newspaper propped in front of him.

Gabby looked curiously at the man she was meant to marry. It just so was not going to happen. He was around six feet tall and slim, and he wore his dark hair cropped short and spiky at the front. A black tee shirt under a silver-grey suit and scuffed trainers completed his ensemble.

The same individuality and lack of formality was evident in his greeting, as he clapped his elder brother on the back and regarded Gabby with open curiosity.

‘Hello, I’m Hakim. You must be Gabriella. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

Gabby’s eyes widened. ‘You have?’ She threw Rafiq a questioning glare before accepting the hand extended to her. Her fixed smile broadened when the young Prince held her eyes and raised it to his lips.

Gabby laughed, and realised that staying distant and cold was not going to be easy. ‘Sorry—you just remind me of someone I know.’

His smile flashed white in his handsome face. ‘Someone pretty marvelous—am I right?’

Gabby laughed again. ‘My brother—and he would be the first to agree with you.’ Her glance flickered between the two Princes. Rafiq scowled and Hakim winked. ‘Gosh, you’re not even a little bit alike, are you?’ she gasped, thinking that the younger brother might be all style over substance, but he was charming and refreshingly uncomplicated to someone struggling to cope with the exhausting complexity, contradictions and convolutions of Rafiq’s personality.

‘You see, Rafiq, some people appreciate me.’

The duration of the meal followed the same pattern of light-hearted banter—though there was a slight hiccough when, in the middle of dessert, Hakim asked her how the research for her thesis was going.

Gabby played for time. ‘Thesis?’

‘Gabriella has not yet had an opportunity to see first-hand the new initiative for the Bedouin children,’ Rafiq inserted, in response to her raised eyebrow glare.

‘Well, you’re in safe hands with Rafiq, Gabriella.’

Safe was not exactly the word that sprang to mind when she thought of Rafiq’s hands. She swallowed, thinking of them framing her face while he kissed her. Her eyes were drawn unwisely to the sensuous, sexy curve of his lips. Rafiq saw her looking and his eyes went hot when he felt her gaze. Her stomach went into a dipping dive.

‘Gabby,’ she said at last, her voice a little too breathy and her smile several thousand volts too bright. To her relief Hakim seemed oblivious to the charged undercurrents that she could feel like a crackle under her skin.

‘Gabby—I like that. Well, Gabby, the entire idea was Rafiq’s brainchild. As you can imagine, there was a lot of local opposition to combat—especially when he insisted that females have full access to the scheme. So, you’re in education, Gabby?’

‘I’m an infant school teacher.’

‘Really? You look nothing like any teacher I had. Does she, Rashid?’

His appeal to his brother was met with a blank stare. Just when the silence was getting awkward, Rafiq responded, ‘Gabriella is very well qualified.’

‘I’m sure she is. What I’m wondering is how you two met.’

‘By accident.’

‘A mutual friend.’

The two versions emerged simultaneously.

Gabby glared at Rafiq, who carried on eating—or actually not. She had already noted with some concern that all he did was push his food around the plate—a fact which seemed to have escaped the notice of his brother.

Hakim looked amused as he glanced from one to the other. ‘Obviously it was a fate thing.’

Gabby’s embarrassment increased when several more comments Hakim made through the meal revealed—to her at least—that he was obviously under the impression that she and Rafiq were an item.

Rafiq, whose contribution to social intercourse had shrunk to monosyllabic grunts by the end of the meal, seemed oblivious. And the gaps in conversation were ably filled by Hakim, who was happy to talk—especially about himself.

Having toyed with her dessert, and getting increasingly angry because she was concerned about Rafiq, Gabby excused herself and retired to her room. The man might be in terrible agony, and he was too stupid or stubborn to say a word. He’d just sat there looking noble and dignified because he didn’t know how to act any other way.

After pacing the room making unflattering observations about the Crown Prince of Zantara, while fractured images and snatches of conversation played in her head, it hit her like the proverbial bolt from the blue.

She—the woman with the armour-plated heart—had fallen in love. With the wrong brother! How funny was that?

She didn’t feel much like laughing as, hand pressed to her forehead, she fell full-length backwards onto the bed and lay there, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

She had fallen in love with a man who, even if he’d had a future, would have had no place for her in it. Did irony get any darker? Did life get any more darned unfair? Tears began to seep from beneath her eyelids, streaming unchecked down her face.

Rafiq nodded to the maid who had brought coffee and turned to his brother. ‘You appeared to get on well with Miss Barton, Hakim? What did you think of her?’

He had to work hard to keep the note of accusation from his voice, and he was not entirely successful. It seemed an appropriate moment to remind himself that this was what he wanted, what he had actively engineered—more than he had in all honesty expected.

He had expected Gabriella to make herself as obnoxious as she knew how—and he knew from personal experience that was very. Instead she had laughed at his brother’s jokes—even when they weren’t funny. That damned dimple of hers had not taken a rest.

There had been an instant rapport between the two. His thoughts slipped back to a moment midway through the meal when he had seen their heads close together, fair and dark almost touching. Hakim had placed his hand on her shoulder and Rafiq had felt a savage compulsion to drag his brother from his seat.

Rafiq inhaled and closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring, the muscles along his angular jaw flexing and tensing, causing the sinews in his neck to stand out like steel cords.

He had been acting like an old wolf—the pack leader about to be replaced by young blood.

It was pathetic.

Why should he be jealous of his brother?

The answer was shocking in its simplicity: because Hakim would have Gabriella. She was everything that didn’t attract Rafiq in a woman, and yet he wanted her more than any woman he had ever met. He could not look at her without thinking about touching her skin, inhaling her scent …

‘Think of her?’ Hakim looked startled by the question. ‘It’s not like you to ask my opinion.’

‘Well, I’m asking now.’

‘I haven’t really thought …’ Rafiq’s dark accusing frown made Hakim backtrack. ‘She’s nice, very pretty—a bit serious …’

Rafiq’s face went blank with utter astonishment. Were they talking about the same woman? ‘Serious …? You mean not shallow? And this is a bad thing?’

‘I didn’t mean it that way. I meant … studious-serious,’ Hakim corrected, thinking his brother must really like this English teacher to spring to her defence that way.

Not really news. A man would have had to be blind and deaf not to have noticed the obvious charge crackling between them. And in his experience only people who were very aware of one another ignored one another quite so determinedly.

It was not amazing that Rafiq was attracted to Gabby—she was pretty gorgeous—but it was amazing … actually, more than amazing … that Rafiq was discussing her with him. He had always kept his personal life strictly private, and there had been no male bonding sessions when they were younger, where they exchanged stories about the women who had broken their hearts.

Hakim’s heart had frequently been broken, but if Rafiq had ever lost a night’s sleep over a woman it was news to him.

‘Studious?’ Rafiq echoed, thinking of her soft, naked and pliant in his arms … while she was asleep at least. Awake, she had turned into a spitting little wild cat.

‘All right, then, smart, clever. I find that a bit … intimidating.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘Because, unlike you, brother, I’m not what you’d call intellectual, I generally go for girls who are more—’

Rafiq, looking pained, cut across his brother. ‘Details are unnecessary. I have seen the sort of girls you like.’

Hakim grinned broadly. ‘I’m what you’d could call a work in progress. But one of these days, brother, I might just surprise you.’ And sooner than you think, he added silently. ‘And I do like Gabby. What is not to like …? I presume that you’re about to tell me?’

Rafiq lifted a brow. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘You usually warn me off unsuitable women. I’m amazed you introduced her to me—went out of your way to introduce her to me if she’s got a skeleton in the closet. And since when were you interested in what I think?’

A spasm of regret crossed Rafiq’s dark features. ‘I am sorry if I have excluded you, Hakim,’ he said abruptly.

Hakim stared. ‘Well, if that sorrow is worth a new Porsche—great. I’m really not all that scarred because I haven’t sat in on endless meetings on agricultural policy.’ His eyes narrowed, and despite the levity of his manner there was some concern in his face as he asked, ‘What is all this hair-shirt stuff, Rafiq?’

His eyes widened again as a fairly revolutionary possibility hit him. Was it possible Rafiq was asking his advice? Or at least asking for him to tell him to go for it, even if she didn’t tick all the boxes?

He must really like her!

‘What do you need my opinion for anyway? Are you trying to tell me that you haven’t already got a file an inch thick on Gabby?’ Hakim knew that his brother entered into relationships the same way he would a financial negotiation. He did his research and was not flexible. He did not make concessions.

But this time it looked as if whatever dirt he had on the girl in question had not put him off. But perhaps he thought it should? Who knew? Hakim thought. They were in new territory.

The file Hakim had spoken of had indeed arrived in its more complete form, on his desk that morning. Rafiq had put it straight in a locked drawer, telling himself that he would study it later.

But no matter what was in that file, no matter what or who lay in Gabriella’s past, it would not alter the fact that she’d make a better wife than his brother deserved, and would be a queen that any country would be proud to boast of.

‘What a woman did before she met you is hardly important.’

Hakim, in the act of stirring more sugar into his coffee, stopped and turned to stare at his brother in utter amazement. Rafiq was serious … How serious …? Wife serious?

‘So if you decided to get married tomorrow you wouldn’t want to know ahead of time if your prospective bride had any scandals that might be embarrassing?’

‘The same premise applies.’

Hakim’s jaw dropped. ‘Is this the same man speaking who once told me that a royal bride needs to be squeaky clean, no unsavoury secrets, no skeletons in the closet. The next thing you’ll be telling me is she doesn’t have to be a virgin.’

Rafiq did not join in his brother’s amused laughter. ‘It is better to be the last man in a woman’s life than the first.’ Better, of course, to be both. But Rafiq appreciated that in the modern world that limited a man’s choices. His choices were non-existent, but Hakim had a life of choices ahead of him. Of course he didn’t know how lucky he was, because it was the human way not to appreciate what you had until it was being taken from you.

Hakim stopped laughing and stared. ‘Will whatever alien that has taken over your body let me speak to my brother, Rafiq?’

‘Do not be foolish,’ Rafiq snapped, his brows knitting into an irritated frown.

‘You know what you’re talking like?’ Hakim fixed his brother with a narrowed, speculative stare. ‘You’re talking like a man who’s fallen in love. Have you ever been in love, Rafiq?’

‘Not as often as you, little brother.’

‘Clever,’ Hakim admired. ‘But you didn’t answer the question.’

‘And I am not going to.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘GABBY—Gabby wherefore art thou …?’

Gabby, who had been sitting in a chair staring out over the palace illuminated against a deep velvet starry sky, got to her feet and, standing well back from the edge, looked down cautiously. Prince Hakim was standing beneath the balcony, his hand pressed to his heart and a grin on his handsome face.