‘Race?’
‘Yeah, he was unbeatable once, and when he left he said his stint was over and he’d never get back in one of those babies again. But then he said he’d never marry a Bakaani girl, either.’ He winked at her. ‘Never say never, eh?’
Never marry a Bakaani girl?
Before she could fully process that piece of information, Zach had pulled the boat up to the pier and men were yelling and readying themselves to hold it steady.
The look on his face was one of exhilaration and joy and she felt a momentary pang that he would never look at her like that.
Brushing off her suddenly morbid thought, she nodded as Luke told her he’d see her at the party before jumping down to join Zach.
‘Luke said you might race again,’ she mentioned to Zach as they wandered back along the harbour a short time later.
‘No.’ Zach held her hand again. ‘When I finished up, I meant it.’ He stopped in front of an enormous navy-and-white yacht with music and lively conversation coming from the upper decks. ‘Ready?’
No, she wasn’t ready. She wanted to ask him about what Luke had told her but something warned her to hold off. What did it matter anyway? She knew he hadn’t wanted to marry her. He’d made that plain.
She glanced up to find Zach looking at her curiously and wondered if he guessed how unsettled she felt. ‘Sure,’ she hedged, pride refusing to let her lean against him, as if she was the kind of woman who could not take care of herself.
Still, she couldn’t seem to stem her unease once they boarded the yacht, and the curious glances she received as more and more people realised she was with the prince didn’t help at all. The women especially gave her a weird vibe and didn’t seem to know what to make of her once they’d asked where she was from and how she had met the prince. Farah kept her answers deliberately vague—‘My father introduced us’—which earned her a smile from Zach. After that most people either ignored her or saw someone in the distance they simply had to speak with and walked away.
Whatever.
Farah didn’t care. For the most part Zach kept her by his side, proudly introducing her as his wife, and she was more pleased than she would have expected to be by that. Especially given that this marriage had been forced on both of them. Somehow in the past three days that hadn’t seemed relevant in the isolated nest of the apartment where she’d come to learn that, far from being an arrogant despot, her new husband was actually a kind and decent human being. But he still hadn’t chosen to marry her out of free will, and probably never would have if his friend’s unintentionally hurtful words were true.
‘Having a good time?’
About to tell Zach she’d prefer to muck out the camel enclosure in her village, she turned her head to find him watching her with an expression on his face that melted her from the inside out. And suddenly she was determined that, yes, she would have a good time in this life he seemed to enjoy so much. ‘Yes!’ she said, turning her face up to his.
‘I’m glad.’ He leaned over and kissed her softly before drawing back with his arm slung around her waist. His possessive touch was comforting but, try as she might, she couldn’t set aside the feeling of vulnerability that gripped her, surrounded as she was by so many glamorous people, especially those whispering behind their hands as they looked at her. Were they wondering what Zach was doing with her? Or did they all know that he had been forced to marry her? That given a choice he would have preferred any one of the beautiful women parading around on the yacht in their sexy triangles of material. Would Zach ever expect her to wear one of those, in public? If so, he was going to be incredibly disappointed, because that just wasn’t her.
‘Zach.’
Someone—a woman—said his name in a low, throaty murmur and Farah turned to find a slender, elegant blonde looking up at him. She was tiny and delicate and so flawlessly beautiful she was hard to look away from.
Used to having women come up to him by now, Farah at first didn’t pay her any special attention, but then she realised that Zach had grown tense.
‘I heard you got married,’ the woman said, casting Farah a brief glance.
‘Yes.’ Something in his tone made the hairs on the nape of Farah’s neck stand on end. ‘Amy, I’d like you to meet my wife, Farah.’ His fingers flexed on her hip. ‘Farah, this is Amy Anderson.’
Farah had wondered more than once who the woman was that Zach had nearly married and suddenly she knew she was standing right in front of her. It was obvious in every casually awkward line of the woman’s body and the answering tension in her husband’s.