The Sheikh's Prize (A Bride for a Billionaire 2)

‘In…Maraban?’ Saffy parroted as though he had suggested somewhere as remote as the moon.

‘I don’t want you forced to travel thousands of miles round the globe now that you’re pregnant. It would be too stressful for you.’

‘And what would you know about that?’ Saffy demanded hotly. ‘What do you know about what a pregnant woman needs?’

‘I don’t want you exhausted,’ Zahir asserted grimly. ‘I appreciate that the baby is a development that wasn’t planned or, indeed, expected, but adjustments have to be made to your working schedule.’

‘You’re not the boss of me!’ Saffy hissed back at him in helpless outrage. ‘You know, the one phrase I heard you speak most clearly was, “I don’t want…” This is about you, your need to clip my wings and control me. Isn’t it enough that I married you? What about what I want? What about what I need? This isn’t all about you!’

‘I’m not trying to control you.’ Eyes now smouldering with anger, Zahir gazed back at her, his hard jaw line set at an unyielding angle. ‘But the security needs alone that are now required to ensure your safety would be impossible to maintain in some of the exotic locations where you have recently travelled.’

‘I don’t have security needs!’ Saffy flung at him in a bitterly aggrieved tone of fury. ‘It’s taken me five years to build my career and I didn’t get where I am by being difficult!’

Zahir didn’t bat a single absurdly long eyelash. He stared steadily back at her, those twin black fringes round his remarkable eyes merely adding to the intensity of his scrutiny. ‘As my wife, you have security needs. Just as I could be a target, you could be as well. I will not allow your headstrong spirit to tempt you into taking unnecessary risks. This is not about your career. This is about you accepting that your new status will demand lifestyle changes. You are no longer Sapphire Marshall, you are a queen.’

‘I don’t want to be a queen!’ Saffy sobbed in a passionate rage at the logic he was firing at her. Memories were flooding back to her of long-buried quarrels during which she had raged while Zahir shot down her every argument with murderous logic and practicality. ‘You never told me that. I just thought I’d be your wife, your consort, your plus one or whatever you want to call it!’

‘The last queen was my mother, who died when my younger brother was born,’ Zahir commented grimly. ‘It is time you saw sense. You can’t have thought you could marry me and ignore who and what I am.’

Saffy was so worked up she wanted to scream. Over the past week she had thought of many, many things, like dresses and wedding breakfasts and guest lists and babies, but not once had she pondered her future status in Maraban. In fact she hadn’t wanted to think about Maraban at all because once she had been very unhappy there.

‘I didn’t think about it,’ Saffy muttered in indignation, furious with him, wondering in a rage how on earth he had broken the news about the Desert Ice company and then contrived to roll over his indefensible interference in her career to put her on the defensive with the news that she was apparently a queen. ‘I don’t want to be a queen. I’m sure I’m not cut out for it. In fact I bet I’m totally unsuitable to be royal.’

‘With that attitude you probably will be,’ Zahir shot back at her with derision. ‘I think you tried harder at eighteen to fit in than you are willing to try now as an adult.’

Saffy’s lush mouth dropped open as temper exploded in her like a grenade. ‘I was a doormat at eighteen, a total stupid doormat! I wanted to please you. I wanted to please your family. I was so busy trying to be something I’m not—and getting no thanks for it! I had no space to be me!’

‘Times have changed. Maraban has been transformed and brought into the twenty-first century. But I have changed as well,’ Zahir breathed on a taut warning note, his gaze burning gold in its force. ‘I will tell you now how things are and I won’t keep secrets from you again.’

‘Secrets?’ Saffy shot back at him jaggedly, entrapped by that one word of admission, her nervous tension seizing on it. ‘What secrets?’

‘Five years ago, I kept a lot from you in an attempt to protect you. I didn’t want to hurt you but this time I will employ no lies and no half-truths. I will tell it like it is…’

Other women, Saffy was thinking in despair, a sharp wounding pain piercing her somewhere in the chest region. What else could he be talking about? When he had found no satisfaction in the marital bedroom he had gone elsewhere. Maybe out to that remote desert palace where his late father had kept his personal harem, very discreet. Hey, Saffy, you dummy, a little voice piped up at the back of her mind…maybe he wasn’t on army manoeuvres all those times he was gone. Maybe he was off the leash having fun, the kind of fun you couldn’t give him then. And what shook Saffy most at that moment was that instead of confronting him on that score and demanding an explanation, she instead wanted to stay silent and withdraw, conserve some dignity, protect herself from painful revelations that she did not at that moment feel strong enough to bear. Every atom of ESP she possessed urged her to leave the past where it belonged.

Saffy lifted her golden head. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed but thanks for making our wedding night almost as dreadful as the first we had,’ she murmured with stinging scorn.

And she saw right then in his lean darkly handsome face that he had forgotten it was their wedding night. And really that said it all, didn’t it? She had already travelled from being the object of intense desire to being the pregnant wife, apparently shorn of attraction.

Zahir gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to talk back to her in a similar vein. Had she really thought he would stage their wedding night on a plane when she was exhausted and already under strain from all the challenges of the past weeks? He suffered a hollow sensation of horror even recalling that first catastrophic wedding night, her sickness, fear and distress, his own incomprehension and sense of defeat. She had been too young, far too young and naïve at eighteen, he knew that now. Guilt assailed him as Saffy ducked into the cabin, her lovely face taut and pale awakening memories he would have done anything to avoid. So much for honesty, so much for trying to clear the air, he reflected bitterly.

That last comment of hers had been a low blow, Saffy conceded in shame. It wasn’t either of their faults that their first wedding night had been catastrophic and he had been incredibly kind and patient and understanding even though she knew he didn’t understand any more than she did then what was wrong with her. Hitting out at him like that had been unjust, a mean retaliation to the reality that Zahir had made her feel small and stupid with his talk of security concerns and queens. She didn’t look much like a queen, she thought wretchedly, studying herself with wet pink eyes in the mirror, noting the mascara and eyeliner smudged from tears. She had panicked when he mentioned that because she was so terrified of not meeting his expectations again. Hadn’t she already done that to him once? She didn’t want to let him down or embarrass him but what did she know about being royal? Certainly she had learned absolutely nothing during their last marriage when only the servants knew she existed and she was virtually the invisible woman.

He didn’t love her, didn’t want her, probably had no faith in her ability to act like a royal wife either, Saffy thought painfully, tears streaming down her cheeks as she forced her convulsed face into a pillow. Why did she care so much about what he thought of her? Why did it hurt so much that she felt she couldn’t stand it? And why more than anything in the world did she now want him to come in and put his arms round her to comfort her the way he had once done without even thinking about it? She had married him to give their baby a better start in life. That was the only reason and she didn’t know why she was getting so worked up, sobs shuddering through her body like a storm unleashed on her without warning.

I am not in love with him. I am so not in love with him, she told herself urgently. That is not why I’m suddenly looking for more from him than he ever promised to deliver. And in that guarded state of mind she finally fell as

leep.

The stewardess wakened her with breakfast and the announcement that the plane would be landing in an hour. Noting that she had slept alone in the bed, Saffy lifted her chin, knowing he had spent the night in one of the reclining seats. Why was she wondering whether he had been unfaithful to her when they had last been married? What did it matter? How was that relevant? The last thing she needed was to get bound up in the problems of a long-dead past. They weren’t the same people any more. Showered and elegantly attired in a print dress and a fine cashmere cardigan, she emerged from the sleeping compartment, feeling as brittle as bone china.

Zahir, sheathed in the beige and white pristine desert robes that accentuated his height and undeniably exotic attributes, gave her a smile that was a masterpiece of civility while wishing her good morning. She almost laughed but, once again, their shared past rattled like a skeleton locked in a cupboard: Zahir was superb at plastering over the cracks and pretending nothing had happened and that last night’s divisive dispute had not occurred. Time and time again he had done that to her when they were first married when she tried to have serious talks with him and he shrugged them off, changed the subject, refused to be drawn. Stop it, stop it, she urged her disobedient brain, determined not to bring those memories of his evasiveness into the present when so much else had altered.

‘We had a row,’ she reminded him out of pure spite and resentment of his poise.

‘I should never tackle a serious conversation after midnight when we’re both tired.’ His eyes glittered with unexpected raw amusement and the sheer primal attraction of him in that instant sent a flock of butterflies dancing in her tummy and clenched her muscles tight somewhere a great deal more intimate. Pink flushed her cheeks as he sipped at his coffee, the very image of cool control and sophistication. ‘Coffee?’

Saffy served herself from the coffee pot on the table and sat down. ‘What you said—’

Zahir shifted a fluid brown hand in a silencing motion. ‘No, leave it. It was the wrong time and we have all the time in the world now.’

Saffy tried to steel herself to resist the command note in that assurance and then wondered if perhaps he was right. In any case, did she want confessions if what she suspected was true? Did she really want to stir up the past and perhaps damage the future relationship they might have before this marriage even got off the ground? Such patience, such careful concern felt unfamiliar to her in Zahir’s presence, for once she had said whatever she liked to him with absolutely no lock on her tongue. And she wanted that freedom back, she recognised dimly, wanted it back almost more than she wanted anything.

‘It’s not like you to be so quiet.’

‘The Queenie bit pulverised me,’ she muttered tightly.

‘You’re more than up to the challenge,’ Zahir asserted smoothly. ‘You’re accustomed to being in the public eye and right now you look…wonderful.’

‘Do I?’ Saffy hated the sound of that question, her gaze welded to his in search of falsehood, fake flattery, the smallest hint of insincerity.

‘You always did and still do. And sadly, although it shouldn’t matter, such beauty does impress people,’ Zahir murmured ruefully. ‘I’ve never understood why you’re not vain.’

‘Other people work and train to do much more important and necessary things than I do but I got where I am because of my face and figure, not my brain or my skills,’ Saffy pointed out flatly. ‘It’s not something to boast about.’

‘But you’re so much more—you always were,’ Zahir declared, reaching for her fingers where they curled in discomfiture on the table top and enclosing them in his warm hand. ‘And in Maraban, you will be able to show how much more you are capable of.’

‘What does that mean?’ Saffy prompted, touched by that hand round hers, energised by the conviction with which he spoke.

‘That the woman who gives most of her earnings to an orphanage in Africa will have free rein to raise funds for good works in my country. Yes, I found out about that fact, quite accidentally through your crooked solicitor,’ Zahir admitted. ‘It made me feel very proud of you.’

Saffy tensed and reddened, wary of praise on the score of one of her biggest secrets. ‘The children had so little and I wanted to help them. It made my career seem less superficial when I could feel that I had a worthwhile cause to work for.’

A wary sense of peace had settled over her by the time the plane landed at Maraban’s splendid new airport. But when she stepped out of the plane to the music being played by a military band, and a smiling older man stepped up to bow and address Zahir while a little girl in a fancy dress stepped nervously forward to present a bouquet of flowers to Saffy, she realised that he had been right to warn her that her life would radically change. Zahir introduced her and the man bowed very low. He was the prime minister of Maraban. A discovery that startled Saffy and embarrassed her, for she knew she should have spent more time boning up on the changes in the country that was to be her new home. She had assumed Zahir was a feudal king like his late father, but evidently Maraban now had an elected government as well.

The little girl was the prime minister’s daughter and spoke English and Saffy, always at her best with children, bent down to chat to her, suddenly wondering whether the child she carried would be a boy or a girl. A little boy with Zahir’s amazing eyes and love of the outdoors and action. Or a little girl, who liked to experiment with hair and make-up and clothes. Or a mix of both of them, which would be much more likely, Saffy acknowledged abstractedly.

A limousine carried them through the city streets, lined on either side by excited crowds, peering at the car. ‘Do I have to wave or anything?’ she asked uneasily.

‘No, only smile to look as happy as a bride is popularly supposed to be,’ Zahir murmured with a wry note in his dark deep voice, and she suspected that he was recalling the night they had just spent apart.

‘Your people seem to be celebrating the fact that you’ve got married,’ Saffy remarked.

‘People are reassured by the concept of family and continuity, as long as it doesn’t include a man like my late father,’ Zahir imparted drily, and then turned to look at her. ‘Why do you never mention yours? I noticed he was not at the wedding and didn’t like to ask because you never ever mentioned him five years ago. Is he dead?’

‘No. Alive with a second wife and family. His divorce from my mother was very bitter,’ Saffy confided. ‘And he hasn’t had anything to do with me since I was twelve years old when I did something…’ her voice slowed and thickened with distress ‘…something he couldn’t forgive.’

His black brows drew together and he regarded her keenly. ‘What could you have done that would excuse such an outright rejection from a father of his own child? I can’t believe you did anything worthy of such a punishment.’

Saffy was very pale and she compressed her lips. ‘Then you’d be wrong.’

‘Tell me…you can’t give me only half of the story.’.

It was her second most shameful secret, Saffy reflected wretchedly, but one that there was no reason for her to keep from him as he was part of her family now and everyone else knew the facts. ‘As you know, life was pretty rough where I grew up and my sisters and I were often left without supervision, so of course we got in with the wrong crowd,’ she confided tightly, her skin already turning clammy with never-forgotten shame and guilt. ‘I went joyriding in a stolen car with my twin. I didn’t steal it or drive it but the car crashed. Her leg was badly damaged and she was left disabled and scarred for several years afterwards. She went through hell as a teenager. Luckily she was able to have surgery when she was older and she can walk normally again now. But the joyriders were my friends first and it was my fault. I’m the older twin and I should have been looking after her.’

‘Saffy…’ and it was the very first time he had used the family diminutive of her name, which made his intervention all the more effective as she turned her head in surprise, her clouded blue eyes meeting his. ‘You we

re twelve years old. You did something wrong and you paid a heavy price—’

‘No, Emmie did—’ Saffy protested vehemently. ‘Every morning for years she had to wake up and see her identical twin, walking, unscarred, perfect and, even though she’s completely healed now, she’s never been able to forgive me for what she went through during that period of her life. We both know I was to blame and that it should have been me who got hurt.’

‘But you were hurt,’ Zahir murmured gently. ‘She was hurt in the body and you were hurt in the mind. You’ve carried the guilt for what happened ever since, haven’t you?’

Tears were swimming in Saffy’s eyes and she didn’t trust herself to speak, so she nodded vigorously in agreement. All those years she had stood by watching her twin suffer, first in a wheelchair, then on crutches, struggling to fit in with other teenagers when she couldn’t play sport or dance or do almost anything that they could.

‘Accidents happen,’ Zahir continued. ‘You learned from the experience, didn’t you?’

Saffy nodded wordlessly, a soundless sob thickening her throat and making it impossible to swallow.

‘So what did your father do?’

‘He said…he said I was evil and that he didn’t want to know me any more.’

‘And how did he treat Emmie?’

‘He cut her out of his life as well. So, you see, that was my fault too.’

‘No. He was a father and perhaps he used your mistakes as an excuse to absolve himself of responsibility for his twin daughters. No decent man would stay away from an injured child merely to punish her sibling.’

That was a truth that had evaded Saffy all her life to that point and it shook her because when Zahir put the episode in that light, she saw his view of it and it altered her own. Her father had conveniently rejected both his daughters. Although Emmie had been hurt, he hadn’t even visited her in hospital, nor had he intervened when the twins were forced to enter foster care because their mother refused to take further responsibility for them. It had been Saffy’s sister, Kat, who had been the three sisters’ saviour, giving them a proper home and a loving caring environment, the first any of them had ever known.