Ruling Sheikh, Unruly Mistress

This wasn’t the civilised man she had met in Val d’Isere, but a warrior king, who was burning up inside with pain and fury. ‘Let go of me. Of course it’s our baby. I’ve never been with anyone else. If you need proof we can have a DNA test once the baby is born.’

Razi held on to her, his gaze unwavering.

‘Do you really think I would fly halfway round the world,’ Lucy demanded, throwing Razi’s taunt back at him, ‘without knowing it was your baby? I don’t lie.’

She stared down at his hands on her arms and he released her. ‘I also have a bank statement, showing that I set up an account exclusively for the money you left at the chalet, and that I never touched a penny of it.’

‘So you put your plans for a restaurant first, your child second and telling me about our baby a very poor third?’ He threw up his hands in disbelief.

‘I’m not saying that.’ This was all going horribly wrong. She had never meant to lie to him.

‘When, Lucy? When did you intend to tell me?’

‘When I returned to England,’ she confessed steadily. ‘I came here thinking you were Mac—a businessman—only to discover you were the ruling Sheikh—’

And a man who clearly mistrusted women, believing them incapable of love. Lucy only had to look into Razi’s eyes to know that his inner scars went a lot deeper than she had previously supposed. Some long-held wound was festering inside him. She couldn’t know the details, but she could feel the effect, and while part of her was filled with compassion for his pain, the part of her that was a mother—and that part was swiftly becoming all of her—was terrified at the thought that the ruling Sheikh of Isla de Sinnebar’s only interest now was to secure custody of their child.

And what power did she have to stop him? Once Razi had done that she’d be his captive for life, for she would never abandon her child to the care of strangers. Razi lived on an island halfway across the world from where she lived. How would that work? When would she see her baby? How could she bear her child to live so far away from her? She couldn’t. And Razi wouldn’t want her here.

It was a problem to which there was no solution, and in this case the only form of attack was defence. ‘Why did you bring me to the desert? To show me a valuable ecological site? I don’t think so, Razi. You brought me here to get me away from the city and prying eyes. You brought me here because you’re ashamed of me.’

‘I’m not ashamed of you,’ he insisted. ‘Why did you come to the Isla de Sinnebar if not to trap me in some way?’

‘What? That’s absurd. How would I do that when you’re an all-powerful king?’

‘That’s what I want to find out.’ He raked his thick black hair with angry fingers. ‘Has it occurred to you that a scandal like this could rock my country? No—I didn’t think so. If I acknowledge this child it will be seen as my first act in power. How will that look to my people? And the mother of that child a foreigner in this, the most traditional of countries.’

He made her feel as if she had done something wrong—and there was no mention of a baby to love, just a country to be ruled with a rod of iron, heartlessly, like a company meeting targets to be approved by the ruling Sheikh. ‘It seems to me you support all the antiquated beliefs you have sworn to eradicate. And as for me—I don’t want anything from you.’

‘Well, that’s clearly untrue,’ Razi informed her coldly, ‘or you wouldn’t be here.’

‘I thought you should know, that’s all. I’m not trying to trap you into anything. I’m quite capable of standing on my own feet without your help.’

‘So you plan to have the child and I have no say in the matter?’

‘That’s not it at all—’

‘It must be one or the other,’ Razi insisted coldly. ‘Which is it, Lucy? Blackmail? Or sob story?’

Chapter Thirteen

LUCY drew on her inner strength. ‘The man I knew in Val d’Isere would never have said that. And let me tell you something else,’ she added without giving Razi chance to speak. ‘You say you care about a country. I don’t believe you. How can you care about anything if you’re incapable of love? And if you’re incapable of love, I don’t want you to have anything to do with my child—’

‘Our child,’ he reminded her fiercely. ‘Or so you say—’

‘Yes, I do say,’ Lucy insisted, bracing for battle. Where her child was concerned she was fearless.

He had never felt such wild emotions. He wanted to hug Lucy and rejoice—yet also turn his back on her and never see her again. He rued the day he’d met her and yet longed for her to stay. She had to stay if she was having his child. The realisation that he was about to become a father had left him drowning in happiness, while the thought that anyone, even Lucy, might imagine she could keep him from that child was an abomination he refused to consider. The memory of a child living in lonely isolation, waiting for his brother’s visits to break the monotony of being cared for by strangers, was still too raw for that. If she was having his child he would not be denied the joy of seeing that child grow up. The thought of anyone but him protecting the baby, loving it as he would, was unthinkable. He wouldn’t stand on the sidelines for Lucy—for anyone.

‘Will I embarrass your wife?’

‘My wife?’ The red mist of anger was still on him as he refocused dazedly.

‘I presume there’s got to be a wife soon,’ she said, turning from shy supplicant to virago in a moment. ‘Tell me,’ she insisted. ‘I have to know. I have to protect my child. I don’t imagine you’d want me here in Isla de Sinnebar muddying the water when the time comes for you to choose a wife—’

‘There is no wife,’ he roared, stopping her, ‘or ever likely to be a wife.’ The face of his cousin Leila flashed into his mind. He had sent her back to university where she so dearly wanted to be and then had dispatched her greedy father with a flea in his ear and a cheque large enough to keep him off Leila’s back.

‘So, you’re married to duty?’ Lucy suggested, taking another tack.