Читать книгу The Sultan's Choice - Эбби Грин, ABBY GREEN - Страница 7

SAMIA’S hand was on the doorknob when she heard movement behind her and a voice.

‘You’re leaving so soon?’

It was low and deep, with the merest hint of a seductive accent, and she cursed herself for not leaving a split second earlier. But she’d dithered, her innately good manners telling her that she couldn’t just walk out on the Sultan. And now it was too late.

Her back was stiff with tension as she slowly turned around, steeling herself against the inevitable impact of seeing one of the most celebrated bachelors in the world up close. She worked among dusty books and artefacts! She couldn’t be more removed from the kind of life he led. There was no way he would want to marry her once he’d met her.

Every coherent thought fled her mind, though, when her eyes came to rest on the man standing just feet away. He filled the doorway to his office with his tall, broad-shouldered physique. His complexion was as dark as any man from the desert, but he had the most unusual blue eyes, piercing and seemingly boring right through Samia. Dressed in a dark suit which hugged his frame, he was six feet four of lean muscle—beautiful enough to take anyone’s breath away. This was a man in his virile prime, ruler of a country of unimaginable wealth. Samia felt slightly light-headed for a moment.

He stood back and gestured with a hand into his office. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Please, won’t you come in?’

Samia had no choice but to make her feet move in that direction. Her heart beat crazily as she passed him in the wide doorway and an evocative and intensely masculine scent teased her nostrils. She made straight for a chair positioned by the huge desk and turned around to see the Sultan pull the door shut behind him, eyes unnervingly intent on her.

He strolled into the room and barely leashed energy vibrated from every molecule of the man. Sensual elegance became something much more earthy and sexual as he came closer to Samia, and a disturbing heat coiled low in her belly.

His visage was stern at first, but then a wickedly sexy smile tugged at his mouth, sending her pulse haywire. Her thoughts scrambled.

‘Was it something I said?’

Samia looked at him blankly.

‘You were about to leave?’ he elaborated.

Samia coloured hotly. ‘No … of course not.’ Liar. She went even hotter. ‘I’m sorry … I just …’

She hated to admit it but he intimidated her. She might live a quiet existence and dislike drawing attention to herself—it was a safe persona she’d adopted—but she wasn’t a complete shadow. Yet here she seemed to be turning into one.

Sadiq dismissed her stumbling words with one hand. He took pity on her obvious discomfort, but he was still reacting to the jolt running through him at hearing her voice. It was low and husky, and completely at odds with her rather mousy appearance. As mousy as the photos had predicted, he decided with a quick look up and down. In that trouser suit and a buttoned up shirt which did nothing for her figure, it was imposible to make out if she had a figure.

And yet … Sadiq’s keen male intuition warned him not to make too hasty a judgement—just as a disconcerting tingle of awareness skittered across his spine. He stuck his hands into his pockets.

Samia could feel her cheeks heat up, and had a compelling desire to look down and see where his trousers would be pulled tight across his crotch. But she resolutely kept looking upwards. She tried to do the exercise she’d been taught to deal with her blushing—which was to consciously try to blush, and in doing so negate the reflexive action. But it was futile. The dreaded heat rose anyway, and worse than usual.

He just looked at her. Samia valiantly ignored the heat suffusing her face, knowing well that she’d be bright pink by now, and hitched up her chin. She nearly died a small death when he broke the tension and put out a hand.

‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’

This was it—just what she’d been dreading. And it got worse when he continued.

‘I knew I remembered meeting you, but couldn’t place where it was. And then it came to me …’

Her heart stopped beating. She begged silently that it wouldn’t be that awful moment which was engraved on her memory.

‘You had an unfortunate tussle with a table full of drinks at one of my parties.’

Samia was so ridiculously relieved that he didn’t seem to remember the library that she reached out to clasp his hand, her own much smaller one becoming engulfed by long fingers. His touch was strong and warm and unsettling, and she had to consciously stop herself from ripping her hand out of his as if he’d stung her.

‘Yes, I’m afraid that was me. I was a clumsy teenager.’ Why did she sound breathless?

While still holding her hand, he was looking into her eyes and saying musingly, ‘I didn’t realise you had blue eyes too. Didn’t you wear glasses before?’

‘I had laser surgery a year ago.’

‘Your colouring must come from your English mother?’

His voice was as darkly gorgeous as him. Samia nodded her head to try and shake some articulacy into her brain. ‘She was half English, half Arabic. She died in childbirth with me. My stepmother brought me up.’

The Sultan nodded briefly and finally let Samia’s hand go. ‘She died five years ago?’

Samia nodded and tucked her hand behind her back. She found a chair behind her to cling on to. Her eyes darted away from that intense blue gaze as if he might see the bitterness that crept up whenever she was reminded of her stepmother. The woman had been a tyrant, because she’d always known she came a far distant second to the Emir’s beloved first wife.

Samia looked back to the Sultan and her heart lurched. He was too good-looking. She felt drab and colourless next to him. How on earth could he possibly think for a second that she could be his queen? And then she remembered what he’d said about wanting a conservative wife and felt panicked again.

He indicated the chair she was all but clutching like a life raft. ‘Please, won’t you sit down? What would you like? Tea or coffee?’

Samia quelled an uncharacteristic impulse to ask for something much stronger. Like whisky. ‘Coffee. Please.’

Sadiq moved towards his own chair on the other side of the desk and thankfully just then his secretary appeared with a tray of refreshments. Once she’d left, he tried not to notice the way the Princess’s hand shook as she poured milk into her coffee. The girl was a blushing, quivering wreck, but she looked at him with a hint of defiance that he found curiously stirring. It was an intriguing mix when he was used to the brash confidence of the women he usually met.

He almost felt sorry for her as she handled the dainty cup. Miraculously it survived the journey from saucer to her mouth. She was avoiding his pointed look, so his gaze roamed freely over her and he had to concede with another little jolt of sensation that she wasn’t really that mousy at all. Her hair was strawberry-blond, with russet highlights glinting in the late-afternoon sun slanting in through the huge windows. It was tied back in a French plait which had come to rest over one shoulder. Unruly curls had escaped to frame her face, which was heart-shaped.

She looked about eighteen, even though he knew she was twenty-five. And she was pale enough to have precipitated his question about her colouring. He’d forgotten that interesting nugget about her heritage.

It surprised him how clearly that memory of her knocking over the table had come back to him. He’d felt sorry for her at the time; she’d been mortified, standing there with her face beetroot red, throat working convulsively. Another memory hovered tantalisingly on the edges of his mind but he couldn’t pin it down.

Absurdly long lashes hid her eyes. He had to admit with a flicker of something that she wasn’t what he’d expected at all. Obeying some rogue urge to force her to look at him, so that he could inspect those aquamarine depths more closely, he drawled, ‘So, Princess Samia, are you going to tell me why you were about to leave?’

Samia’s eyes snapped up to clash with the Sultan’s steady gaze. She couldn’t get any hotter, and had to restrain herself from opening the top button of her shirt to feel some cool air on her skin. He was looking at her as if she were a specimen on a laboratory table. It couldn’t be more obvious that she left him entirely cold, and that thought sent a dart of emotion through her.

‘Sultan—’ she began, and stopped when he put up a hand.

‘It’s Sadiq. I insist.’

The steely set of his face sent a quiver through her. ‘Very well. Sadiq.’ She took a deep breath. ‘The truth is that I don’t want to marry you.’

She saw the way his jaw tensed and his eyes flashed. ‘I think it’s usually customary to be asked for your hand in marriage before you refuse it.’

Samia’s hands clenched tight on her lap. ‘And I think it’s customary to ask for the person’s hand in marriage before assuming it’s given.’

His eyes flashed dangerously and he settled back in the chair. Conversely it made Samia feel more threatened.

‘I take it that you overheard some of my phone conversation?’

Samia blushed again, and gave up any hope of controlling it. ‘I couldn’t help it,’ she muttered. ‘The door was partially open.’

Sadiq sat forward and said brusquely, ‘Well, I apologise. It wasn’t meant for your ears.’

Giving in to inner panic, Samia stood up abruptly and moved behind the chair. ‘Why not? After all, you were discussing the merits of this match, so why not discuss them here and now with me? Let’s establish if I am conservative enough for you, or plain enough.’

A dull flush of colour across the Sultan’s cheeks was the only sign that she’d got to him when she said that. Otherwise he looked unmoved by her display of agitation, and Samia cursed herself. Her hands balled on the back of the chair. He just sat back and regarded her from under heavy lids.

‘You can be under no illusion, whether you heard that conversation or not, that any marriage between us will be based purely on practicality along with a whole host of other considerations.’

When she spoke, the bitterness in Samia’s voice surprised her. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ve no illusions at all.’

‘This union will benefit both our countries.’

Suddenly a speculative gleam lit his eyes and he sat forward, elbows on the desk. Samia wanted to back away.

‘I’d find it hard to believe that someone from our part of the world and culture of arranged marriages could possibly be holding out for a love match?’

He said this sneeringly, as if such a thing was pure folly. Feeling sick, Samia just shook her head. ‘No. Of course not.’ A love match was the last thing she would ever have expected or wanted. She had seen how love had devastated her father after losing her mother. She’d had to endure the silent grief in his gaze every time he’d looked at her, because she’d been the cause of her mother’s death.

She’d seen how the ripples of that had affected everything—making his next wife bitter. Love had even wreaked its havoc on her beloved brother too, turning him hard as a rock and deeply cynical. She’d vowed long ago never to allow such a potentially destructive force anywhere near her.

The Sultan sat back again, seemingly pleased with her answer. He spread his hands wide. ‘Well, then, what can you possibly have against this marriage?’

Everything! Exposure! Ridicule! Samia’s hands were tightly clasped in front of her. ‘I just … never saw it in my future.’ She’d thought she’d faded enough into the background to avoid this kind of attention.

And then, as if he’d taken the words out of her brother’s own mouth, Sultan Sadiq said with a frown, ‘But as the eldest sister of the Emir of Burquat, how on earth did you think you would avoid a strategic match? You’ve done well to survive this far without being married off.’

Purely feminist chagrin at his unashamedly masculine statement was diminished when guilt lanced Samia. Her brother could have suggested any number of suitors before now, but hadn’t. She’d always been aware that Kaden might one day ask her to make a strategic match, though, and this one had obviously been irresistible. This one came with economic ties that would help catapult Burquat into the twenty-first century and bring with it badly needed economic stability and development.

As much as she hated to admit it, they did come from a part of the world that had a much more pragmatic approach to marriage than the west. It was rare and unusual for a ruler to marry for something as frivolous as love. Marriages had to be made on the bedrock of familial ties, strategic alliances and political logic. Especially royal marriages.

If anything, this practical approach which eschewed love should appeal to her. She wasn’t in any danger of falling for someone like Sadiq, and he certainly wouldn’t be falling for her. She was almost certainly guaranteed a different kind of marriage from the one she’d witnessed growing up. Their children wouldn’t be bullied and belittled out of jealous spite.

Sultan Sadiq stood up, and panic gripped Samia again. She moved back skittishly and cursed this mouse of a person she’d become in his presence. She ruled over thirty employees at the library, and was used to standing up to her brother, who was a man cut from the same dominant cloth as the Sultan, but mere minutes in this man’s presence and she was jelly.

He prowled around the room, as if he couldn’t sit still for longer than a second, and Samia recalled that he had a well known and insatiable love of extreme sports. He’d been the youngest ever sailor to take part in the prestigious Vendée Globe race. As a keen sailor herself, she was in awe of that achievement.

In the tradition of men of his lineage he’d studied in both the UK and the US, and had trained at the exclusive royal military academy at Sandhurst. He had a fleet of helicopters and planes that he regularly flew himself. All in all he was a formidable man. Along with that came the notorious reputation of being one of the world’s most ruthless playboys, picking up and discarding the most beautiful women in the world like accessories.

And every year—not that she needed to be reminded—he hosted the biggest, most lavish birthday party and raised an obscene amount of money for charity. For years after that humiliating incident at his party, she’d been scornful of the excess he presided over. But she’d seen the evidence of how much bona fide charity work he did when time after time he was lauded for his fundraising. And how did she know all this? Hours spent researching him on the internet last night, much to her shame.

He stopped pacing and quirked an ebony brow. ‘Are you going to insist on refusing my offer of marriage and force me to look elsewhere for a wife?’

Samia heard the unimstakable incredulity in his voice. Patently he hadn’t expected this to be hard. It gave her some much needed confidence back to see this chink in his arrogant armour.

‘What would happen if I said no?’

He put his hands on narrow hips, and Samia’s gaze couldn’t help but drop for a moment to where his shirt was stretched across taut abdominal muscles. She could see the dark shadowing of a line of hair through the silk and her mouth dried. The physiciality of her reaction to him stunned her. No man had had this kind of effect on her before. It was as if she’d been asleep all her life and was gradually coming to her senses here and now, in this room. It was most disconcerting.

‘What would happen,’ he bit out, ‘is that the agreement between your brother and I would be in serious jeopardy. I would have to look to your next sister and assess her suitability.’

Samia blanched and her gaze snapped back up to Sadiq’s. ‘But Sara is only twenty-two.’ And she jumped at her own shadow, but Samia didn’t say that. Immediately all her protective older sister hackles rose. ‘She’s entirely unsuitable for you.’

Sadiq’s gaze was glacial now. ‘Which would seem to be a running trend in your family, according to you. Nevertheless, she would be considered. I would also be under no obligation to go through with my offer to help the Emir mine your vast oil fields. He would be forced to look for expertise from abroad, and that would bring with it a whole host of political challenges that I don’t think Burquat can afford at this moment in time.’

Samia tried to ignore the vision he was painting and smile cynically. But her mouth tingled betrayingly when his gaze dropped there for an incendiary moment. She fought to retain her focus. ‘And you’re saying that your part in this is entirely altruistic? Please don’t insult my intelligence, no one does anything for nothing in return.’

He inclined his head again, a different kind of gleam in his eyes now. ‘Of course not. In return I get a very suitable wife—you, or your sister, which is entirely up to you. A valuable alliance with a neighbouring kingdom and a slice of the oil profits which I will funnel into a trust fund for our children.’

Our children. Samia ignored the curious swooping sensation in the pit of her belly when he said those words. ‘Burquat needs an alliance with one of its Arabian neighbours, Samia. You know that as well as I do. On the brink of revealing to the world the veritable gold mine it harbours, it’s in an acutely vulnerable position. Marriage to me will ensure my support. We will be family. You and your brother will be assured of my protection. We’re also poised to sign a historic peace treaty. Needless to say our marriage would provide an even stronger assurance of peace between us.’

Every word he spoke was a death knell to Samia, and every word had already been spoken by her brother. She couldn’t tell if the Sultan was bluffing about her sister or not, and didn’t really want to test him. She also didn’t want to investigate the dart of hurt that she should be so easily interchangeable with her sister. She didn’t want him to choose her and she didn’t want him to choose anyone else. Pathetic.

She could feel her life as she knew it slipping out of her grasp, but an inner voice mocked her. What kind of a life did she have anyway? Burying herself away in the library and quashing her naturally gregarious spirit after years of bullying by her stepmother wasn’t something she could justify any more. Her stepmother was gone.

Even so, the prospect of moving out of that safe environment was still terrifying. Desperation tinged her voice. ‘What makes you believe that I’ll be a good wife? The right wife for you?’

The Sultan rocked back on his heels and put his hands in the pockets of his trousers. He was so tall and dark and forbidding in that moment.

‘You are intelligent and have not lived your life in the public eye, like most of your peers. I think you are serious, and that you care about things. I read the article you wrote in the Archivist last month and it was brilliant.’

Samia felt humiliated more than pleased at his obvious research. An article in the Archivist only cemented how deeply

boring she was. She did not need to be reminded of the disparity between her and the man in front of her. He was a playboy! The thought of the exposure she would face within a marriage to him made her feel nauseous. Because with exposure came humiliation.

Sadiq went on as remorselessly as the tide washing in. ‘But apart from all of that you are a princess from one of the oldest established royal families in Arabia and you were born to be a queen. God forbid, but if something happened to your brother tomorrow you would be next in line for your throne. If we were married then you would not have to shoulder that burden alone, and I would make sure that Burquat retained its emirate status.’

Samia felt herself pale. She knew she was next in line to the throne of Burquat, but had never really contemplated the reality of what that meant. Kaden seemed so invincible that she’d never had to. But Sultan Sadiq was right; she was in a very delicate position. She might know the theory of ruling a country, but the reality was a different prospect altogether. And she knew that not many other potential husbands would guarantee that Burquat retained its autonomy. Al-Omar was huge and thriving, and the fact that the Sultan saw no need to bolster his own power through annexing a smaller country made Samia feel vulnerable—she hadn’t expected this.

Afraid that he would see something of the turmoil she felt, she turned to face a window which looked out over manicured lawns—a serene and typically English tableau which would normally be soothing.

She felt short of breath and seriously overwhelmed. There was a point that came in everyone’s life when a person was called to make the starkest of choices, and she was facing hers right now. Not that she really had a choice. That was becoming clearer and clearer.

But, desperate to cling on to some tiny measure of illusion, Samia turned around again and bit her lip before saying to the Sultan, ‘This is a lot to take in. Yesterday I was facing only the prospect of returning to Burquat to help oversee the refurbishment of our national library, and now … I’m being asked to become Queen of Al-Omar.’ She met his blue gaze. ‘I don’t even know you.’

A flash of irritation crossed the Sultan’s face, shadowing those amazing eyes, and inwardly Samia flinched at this evidence of his dispassionate and clinical approach to something so momentous.

‘We have our lifetimes to get to know one another. What won’t wait, however, is the fact that I need to marry and have heirs. I have no doubt in my mind, Princess Samia, that you are the one who was born to take that position.’

Samia tried not to look as affected by his words as she felt. He was only saying it like that because he’d decided she’d make him a good wife and wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer. At another time she might almost have smiled. He reminded her so much of her autocratic brother.

She knew for a fact that there were many women who would gladly trample over her to hear him speak those words to them. And she wished right now that one of them was standing there instead of her—even though her belly did a curious little flip when she thought of it.

‘I just …’ She stopped ineffectually. ‘I need some time to think about this.’

Sadiq’s face tightened ominously, and Samia had the feeling that she’d pushed him too far. With that came a sense of panic that … what? He’d choose her sister instead? That he’d send her away and tell her to have a nice life? And why was that making her feel panicky when it was exactly what she wanted?

But an urbane mask closed off any expression on that hard-jawed face, and after an interminable moment he said softly, ‘Very well. I will give you twenty-four hours. This time tomorrow evening I expect you to be back here in this room to tell me what you have decided.’

Sadiq stood at the window of his private sitting room, three floors above the office where he’d just met Princess Samia. He looked out over the city of London bathed in dusky light. The scent of late-summer blossoms was heavy in the air. He suddenly missed the intense heat of his home—the sense of peace that he got only when he knew that the vast expanse of Al-Omari desert was within walking distance.

Irritation snaked through him at the realisation that due to Samia’s patent reluctance he’d be forced to spend longer in Europe than he wanted to. He could see his discreet security men in front of his house—necessary trappings for a head of state—but he was oblivious to all that. For once he wasn’t consumed with thoughts of politics, or the economy, or women.

He frowned. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. One woman was consuming his thoughts, and for the first time in his life it wasn’t accompanied with the enticing sense of expectation at the prospect of bedding her. And then he had to concede that it had been a long time since pure expectation had precipitated any liaison with a lover—it was more likely to be expectation mixed with a lot of cynicism.

Sadiq’s frown became deeper, grooving lines into his smooth forehead. Since when had he acknowledged the fact that for him bedding women was accompanied by a feeling of ennui and ever deepening cynicism? He suspected uncomfortably that it was long before he’d witnessed his close friends’ weddings in Merkazad.

Seeing his friends wearing their hearts on their sleeves had induced a feeling of panic and had pushed a button—a button that had been deeply buried and packed under years of cynical block building and ice. Perhaps that was what had precipitated his decision to marry? This impulse to protect himself at all costs—a desire to negate what he’d seen at Nadim and Salman’s weddings. The need to prove that he wasn’t ever going to succumb to that awful uncontrollable emotion again.

Even now he could remember that day, and the excoriating humiliation of baring his heart and soul to a woman who had all but laughed in his face.

In choosing to marry someone like Princess Samia he would be safe for ever from such mortifying episodes, because he was in no danger of falling in love with her. He was also safe from falling in lust. She was too pale, too shapeless. His stomach clenched … Funnily enough, though, he couldn’t get those enigmatic aquamarine eyes out of his head. And he had to concede she wasn’t unpretty. But she certainly wasn’t beautiful. He’d always accepted that the wife he picked would fulfil a role—an important one. As such, to find her attractive would be a bonus and a luxury. His responsibility to his country was greater than such frivolous concerns.

Altogether, she wasn’t as unappealing as he might have feared initially. He grimaced. He’d had his fair share of the world’s beauties. It was time to convert his lust into building up a country unrivalled in its wealth and economic stability. He needed focus for that, and a wife like Samia would provide that focus. He wouldn’t be distracted by her charms, and clearly she was not the coquettish type, so she wouldn’t waste time trying to charm him.

Sadiq’s frown finally cleared from his face and he turned his attention to the rolling business news channel on the muted television screen in the background. Despite the Princess’s reluctance he had no doubt that she would return the next day and give him the answer he expected. The alternative was simply inconceivable.