“This whole room is for me?” she said faintly.
Sharif did not enter the room.
“Dinner is at nine.”
She turned back to face him, her cheeks flooded with heat as, against her will, she immediately pictured an intimate dinner for two, with total privacy. “I don’t know if—”
“My sister will be joining us.”
“Oh.” Her blush deepened. “Then of course I will be there.”
“Of course, since I bid it.” His voice reminded her of her place here, and who was king. But his sensual dark eyes said something else.
She had to get a hold of herself!
“Thank you, Your Highness. I look forward to meeting my new charge.”
With an answering bow of his head, he left her.
Irene closed the door behind her, sagging back against it as she exhaled. Then she looked slowly around her incredible bedroom. It was twice as big as the whole house she’d grown up in. She looked at the silk damask, the fanciful decorations, the gold leaf on the walls. And most surprising of all: her meager possessions from her rented studio apartment in Paris had miraculously been transported here. How the heck had he done that? What was he, magic?
Well. Yes.
If not magic, he was a magician who knew well how to pull invisible strings.
But they had a deal. A business arrangement. Her whole family’s future was now riding on it. She couldn’t forget that. One slip-up, one indication that she was still desperately fighting her attraction to him—now more than ever—and she’d be thrown out as ruthlessly as her predecessor.
She just had to forget everything that had happened in Italy, that was all. Forget the heat of his skin on hers when he’d taken her hand. Forget his smile. The intensity of his dark eyes. The strength of his body against hers as he’d swayed her to the music. Forget the passion of the kiss that had set her on fire.
She had to forget the huskiness of his voice as he said, I am seducing you, Irene.
The Emir of Makhtar, powerful billionaire, absolute ruler of a wealthy Persian Gulf kingdom, had once wanted her—a plain, simple nobody. She had to forget that miracle. Forget it ever happened.
Irene put a tremulous hand to her bruised, tingling lips, still aching from his kiss the night before.
But how could she?
* * *
Sharif paced three steps across the dining hall.
Irene was late. It surprised him.
So was his sister, but that left him less surprised. He’d briefly spoken with Aziza earlier, after showing Irene—Miss Taylor, he corrected himself firmly—to her room. His sister had been glad to see him for about three seconds, before he’d informed her, without explanation, that he’d fired Gilly and hired a new companion.
“But she was going to take me to Dubai tomorrow,” Aziza had wailed. “Isn’t it bad enough that you’re forcing me to go through with this wedding? Do you also have to take away my only friend? I’m trapped here! Like a prisoner!”
And she’d fallen with copious sobs to her enormous pink canopy bed.
Irritated by the memory, Sharif paced back across the dining hall. He leaned his hand against the stone fireplace. It had been built nearly nineteen years before, along with the rest of the palace, in perfect replica of the previous building, which had been left in ruins during the brief dark months of civil war after his father’s sudden death.
Aziza could blame him if she wanted for her choice to marry. But he would not go back on his word. He would not risk scandal and instability. Not for his own happiness. Nor even for his sister’s.
He heard a noise and whirled around, only to discover his chief of staff. “Yes?”
The man bowed. “I regret to inform you, sire,” he said sadly, “that I carry a message from the sheikha. She wished me to relay to you that she is unwell and will not be attending you at dinner, nor meeting her new companion.”
Sharif’s eyes narrowed. Irritation rose almost to an unbearable level as he pictured his spoiled, petulant little sister coming up with this plan as a way to register her complaint and get her own way. The fact that it shamed him, as host and brother, that she was refusing to appear for dinner and meet her new companion would only make her happier still.
“Did she. Very well,” he said coldly. “Please inform the kitchen that no meals are to be brought to her room. Perhaps if she grows hungry, she will remember her manners.”
“Yes, sire,” Hassan said unhappily, and bowed again.
Sharif watched him go. He’d told Irene the truth. His chief of staff would be a fine choice for any woman to take as husband—a steady, good-hearted man of some consequence, and at twenty-eight, he was probably even looking for a bride. And yet, when he’d seen the young man starting to walk Irene to her room, seeing them together had caused a strange twist to Sharif’s insides. He hadn’t liked it. At all. It had almost felt like—jealousy. A sensation he wasn’t used to feeling.