CHAPTER TWO
Charlotte nodded but her brain was sluggish.
Was he what? Oh! Avoiding the question. Absolutely he was. He was a skilled conversationalist and she could see why he’d earned the nickname Adin’s Lion. This man would make mincemeat of anyone – not just because he was six and a half feet of muscle and sinew, but because he was smart. His conversation was nimble, shifting effortlessly from one statement to the next, seeing what she’d meant even when she’d been careful to say the exact opposite.
Suddenly her spur-of-the-moment, motivated-by-pride decision to come down and meet Ashad Al’Eba face to face seemed unbelievably foolish. Perhaps the stupidest thing Charlotte had ever done, which was saying something.
“Yes. You’re not willing to discuss your marriage and yet I know you must have one lined up. Isn’t that the way things are done in your family?”
Ash smiled. It was a beautiful smile. His face was all harsh lines and angles, from the cheekbones that looked like they’d been carved by a renaissance master to the cleft in his square chin, the jaw the was covered in stubble and the eyes that shone with the light of all the stars in the universe. And when he smiled, it was as though he was touching her. A shiver danced down her spine.
“And in yours,” he pointed out with infuriating logic.
She nodded. “So? Who is she?”
Ash leaned forward, his eyes scanning her face. “Why are you so interested?”
She turned away from him, studying the view beyond the window. “I don’t know,” she said finally, her voice quiet. “I suppose I’m just making conversation.”
Ash was quiet. “Does it bother you that Syed has had many partners before you?”
She shook her head and then turned around to face him. She regretted it almost instantly. The powerful desire that was fanning through her made logical thought impossible. This man was her husband-to-be’s cousin! And he was acting in a professional capacity. She had no reason to think the same inconvenient thud of awareness was paralysing him.
“Would it bother him if I had?”
Ashad’s eyes seemed to be boring into her soul. She wanted to look away from him but knew it would give away how easily he could disturb her.
“I can’t say,” he said finally. He leaned back in the chair and the room was quiet, save for the pounding of Charlotte’s heart.
“Would it bother you?” It was a dangerous question. She reprimanded herself mentally, yet she was incapable of stepping away from the ledge. Who was this man? She had expected him to be strong and fearsome, but not sexy as hell. She hadn’t expected a single look to set her pulse pounding, to make her core clench with needs she hadn’t known she possessed. Would she feel the same for Syed; her intended groom?
“No,” he said, his eyes clashing with hers. “And yes.”
“Which is it?” She asked, when her mind was screaming at her to change the subject.
“Like you, I realise that we are in the twenty first century. I don’t think a woman’s virginity is a prize she should feel it necessary to save for her wedding night.”
This was a very dangerous subject. Charlotte’s temperature was spiking. They were discussing sex and innocence as though it were no less incendiary or personal than the weather.
“But you?” He didn’t move. She almost leaned forward, so eager was she to hear the rest of his statement. “You I do not like to think of being cavalier with your body.”
She drew in a gasp. If only he knew how offensive and wrong that observation was. She was careful not to show her grief and sensitivity. “Why not?”
His smile was mysterious. “You are beautiful. No, beyond that, you are a person of the rarest kind of beauty. Only great love should have tempted you to give up your innocence.”
Warning lights were flashing in her mind. She dug her fingers into her hips in an effort to distract from the pain of her heart. She covered the hurt with a sassy retort. “So only ugly women are allowed to be promiscuous?”
He burst out laughing. The sound was melted butter on her flesh. She could have groaned. “Are you always so quick to see the worst in people?”
“Only those that arrive to negotiate the terms of my marriage and ask about my virginity as though they have every damned right.”
Heat stole into her cheeks. She felt the blush spread across her face at the outburst she hadn’t been prepared for.
“Would you have preferred my uncle the King?” Ashad asked with a small lift of his lips. “I assure you, he would have been considerably less gentle about the matter.”
“I’m sorry,” she said haltingly. “I didn’t come here with the intention of being combative.”
“What did you intend, when you arrived this morning?”
“I don’t know,” she said warily.
“Please, sit,” he gestured towards the seat and she crossed to it slowly. “I have known about this wedding for a long time. I’ve made my peace with it.”
“Meaning it upsets you?”
“No,” she spat the word out with a growl. “Stop putting words into my mouth.”
“You are putting words into my ears,” he corrected with that spiced accent of his. “And they are intriguing me.”
Charlotte drew in a deep breath. He was looking at her as though she was an enormous present he wanted to unwrap. The air crackled with awareness and Charlotte knew it wasn’t one-sided. “Perhaps we should stick to the terms of the marriage contract,” she said after a moment, in an attempt to be sensible.
“We are,” he insisted. “And your feelings on the matter.”
She sat straight, her back could have been made of steel. “Are my feelings relevant?”
“Isn’t that why you came here?” He leaned forward, and the air seemed to spark louder, willing him to touch her. Or was that Charlotte’s wayward wishes? “To show that your feelings count?”
“Perhaps we should have a table of discussion,” she murmured, her pulse a thready beat in her body. And a chaperone, she added silently, thinking that she wouldn’t be feeling so absolutely windswept if Mika had been with her. At the thought of Mika, the woman who had been Charlotte’s nanny and then nurse maid and finally now friend, Charlotte relaxed.
Mika expected more of Charlotte than this silly, ill-thought-out interest in the diplomat from Kalastan. She stood, sliding her feet back into her shoes without breaking eye contact with Ash.
“A table of discussion?” He stood, and skirted the dark wooden bench between them, his eyes throwing questions at her she knew she couldn’t answer.
“Why don’t you email me with your agenda,” she suggested, doing her best to find her poise.
“I think it is you who has the agenda,” he pointed out, stopping just a foot or so away from her, his hands by his side, his body carefully still.
“Fine, I’ll email you,” she said with a curt nod. “I presume one of my staff will have your details?”
His nod was perfunctory but then he turned and strode towards his desk. He reached for a card. It was shaped like a square and printed with a golden damask pattern. On one side, in discreet black print it had his name, an email address and a cell phone number.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
His nod was watchful. Was he always like this? So intent and invested, as though her every mood was speaking to him?
Charlotte forced herself to smile. “For the card,” she lifted it between her fingers, “and your time, and the fruit.”
“Of course.” He dipped his head forward slightly. “It was a true pleasure, your highness.”
“Charlotte, please.” She took a hasty step backwards. “We’re going to be family, remember?”
His look gave nothing away. Good. If the awareness only flowed in one direction, then it should be easier for her to pretend it didn’t exist.
Charlotte disappeared from the room, her heart pounding, her blood burning, her stomach in knots. She kept her head dipped forward and walked efficiently, all but holding her breath until she reached the bottom step of his embassy. She paused then and turned, her eyes drawn to the door to his office. It was closed.
* * *
His card was stunning.
Just as the man had been.
Oh, there was no other word for him, really. Physically, mentally, in every way, he had bowled her over.
Charlotte stared across the room mutinously, a frown etched on her face as she threw the tennis ball from one hand to the other, her eyes not shifting from the fourteenth century tapestry that hung opposite her.
It wasn’t that she’d never seen a gorgeous guy, or been alone in the room with one. Her upbringing had been relatively liberal. Her circle of friends was comprised of Falinese children like her. True, she was the only royal, but the rest were similarly unique, whether children of oil barons, mining magnates, film stars, financiers – they lived in a rarefied way, and they were all of them confident, young and yes, glamorous.
Perhaps that’s why Ashad had knocked her sideways.
He wasn’t glamorous. Not like his business card or his office. He was rugged. Real. Raw. Primal, almost. There had been an energy emanating from him that would have been at home in the desert sands of Kalastan. He was a desert prince, she thought with awe, like one of the badawi she’d heard so much about.
He was all man. There was nothing manicured or pretentious about him, and yet he’d listened to her and honed in on her concerns as though he really cared.
She grunted, tossing the ball harder so that it made a pocking sound when it collapsed into her palm. She threw it again, back and forth, back and forth, hoping to deaden the direction of her thoughts.
“So? How did it go?” Mika asked, striding into the room with a tentative smile on her face.
Charlotte flicked her eyes at her friend and then grabbed the ball in both hands and held it in her lap. “Fine.”
“It does not look like it went ‘fine’,” Mika murmured with a shake of her head. “You are angry.”
“I’m not!” Charlotte denied. “I’m … confused.”
“Why should you be confused? You know this wedding is what you want. It is what your parents want. And now it is so close. Why should you be confused?”
Charlotte bit down on her lip, her mind spinning on the point. “I want the marriage because my parents want it,” she said carefully.
“So?” Mika took the seat beside her charge, her eyes not wavering from the young woman’s profile.
“I don’t know. I have a strange feeling. A presentiment of disaster if I go through with this.”
“Wait a second.” Mika gripped Charlotte’s arm, a look of grave concern crossing her features. Her almond-shaped eyes, an ice blue courtesy of her Danish mother, were drawn together. “You mean a bride has got cold feet before her big day? I’m shocked! This is unprecedented! This has literally never happened before in the history of weddings.”
“Oh, ha, ha, ha,” Charlotte said, though her lips twitched with a smile. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is just jitters.”
“Of course I’m right. I’m Mika.”
It was something Mika had said when Charlotte was young – the princess had been five and Mika only twenty when she’d come to work for the royal household. The two had formed an instant bond and Charlotte had insisted, stridently, that only Mika was to help her. Whether it had been convincing Charlotte to wash before bed, or brush her teeth, or later, to do her homework and put her cell phone away for the night, Mika would always refrain, “I’m right. I’m Mika.”
Now, in her early forties, Mika was just as valued by Charlotte – she was also, undoubtedly, just as right.
“So you think it’s what I should do?”
Mika wrinkled her nose. “I think Syed Al’Eba is one seriously handsome prince and I wouldn’t kick him out of my bed.”
Charlotte’s jaw dropped and she nudged her friend lightly. “Mika!” She laughed, dropping her head forward and catching it in her palm. Unshackled by the chains of royalty that bound Charlotte, and with European parents, Mika was by far Charlotte’s least conservative friend. Charlotte so admired those aspects of Mika, even though Mika took great care to keep her private life private, so as not to draw the King and Queen’s disapproval.
Charlotte might have been laughing at Mika’s comment, but a retort had been born from the statement.
She didn’t say what she was thinking, though. It was her little secret to hold onto. The thing was, the problem Charlotte faced, was that if Syed Al’Eba was handsome, Ash had surely broken the mould when he was born.
* * *
He didn’t hear the phone ringing at first. His mind was elsewhere. Two feet elsewhere, to be precise, on the seat she’d occupied during their brief and troublesome meeting earlier that day.
His attraction to her had very little to do with how she looked. He knew that now, because several hours after she’d left, the things he kept obsessing over were the tiny details of who she was. The way she’d eaten her fruit. The way she’d considered her words carefully at times and fired them at him like bullets from a gun at others. The way emotions seemed to run just beneath her skin, flicking and firing almost beyond her control.
The way she’d seemed to bring a tornado of life with her into this very room, creating a different universe than the one he existed in.
He frowned as the ringing became louder, and stood, walking towards his desk and scooping up his phone. In the back of his mind he wondered if it would be her, calling to organise their next meeting. She wouldn’t wait long, surely, to make contact. The wedding was supposed to go ahead as soon as possible.
The wedding.
Just how the hell was he going to manage with Charlotte married to Syed?
“Ashad Al’Eba?” He barked into the phone, his eyes moving back to the chair.
“Bad time?”
Guilt was a spiral in his gut at the sound of his cousin’s voice. “Not at all,” he responded with the appearance of calm.
“How are things?” Syed asked.
“Things? You mean getting your wedding cancelled?”
Syed’s laugh was deep. “Something like that.”
“I’ve just met with your bride,” Ash muttered, forcing himself to look away from the seat. Her ghost was haunting him. Those bright red toenails were in his mind. He dragged a palm across his eyes, but the spell remained.
“What for?”
“Well, she is the woman you’re supposed to marry,” Ash pointed out.
“Yes, but since when is she interested in meeting anyone from Kalastan? Her father has a team of legal experts appointed to smooth out the final details …”
“Do you want the final details smoothed out?” Ash asked pointedly.
“No.” Syed shook his head. “Perhaps it’s better you’re dealing with her. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to work out how to put an end to this.”
Ashad was torn. Loyalty to his cousin was heavy in his heart. His dick was hard with need for Charlotte. The two sentiments were at odds. It was a death match, but in the end, his heart won. “You’re making a mistake,” he said, the words pulled from him slowly. “She is an excellent match. She would make any man proud.”
“I don’t want to marry her,” Syed responded. “My father will not tolerate my reasoning.”
“What is your reasoning?” Ash interrupted urgently.
“That I don’t want to marry her. That I don’t see the need.”
“I’m hard pressed to think of a woman who would make a better wife.”
“You like her?” Syed asked, with the insight of a man who knew his cousin almost as well as himself.
“No, I hardly know her,” Ash’s response was short. “But I can see, even after a brief meeting, that she has all the qualities you would want.”
“Such as?” Syed prompted.
“She is beautiful and intelligent, fierce and strong. She is truly a fascinating woman, Syed.” His gut turned. “Why don’t you fly over and meet her?”
Syed’s sigh was heavy. “I have my reasons. Reasons I can’t give you, or anyone. I’m not asking you to break this betrothal lightly, my friend. I am aware of the shame I risk bringing to our family. But everything in my soul prevents me from taking these vows. I cannot do it. It is better for Charlotte to be released from our engagement now rather than have it go any further.”
“Then release her,” Ashad said simply. “I will tell her you wish to break the betrothal.”
“No. It has to come from Falina. If there was any other way, I would take it, believe me.”
“I don’t think you understand quite how sublime she is,” Ash heard himself say, and cringed as the words hit the phone line and travelled across the ocean.
“Sublime?” Syed laughed. “Hell, cousin, it sounds as though you are quite captivated by her.”
Ash laughed to cover his remorse. He’d said too much. “As your bride, yes.”
“I don’t know,” Syed teased. “If you want her, perhaps you should find a way to make her want you too. Sleep with her, Ash; seduce her. That would solve all our problems, for you know I could never marry a woman you’d lain with.”
Ash ground his teeth together, incensed at the way they were discussing Charlotte as though she were a pawn on the chess board Adin adored so much. “I think it would be the beginning of our problems,” Ash contradicted.
“Perhaps. You’ll keep me posted?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. I’m in your debt.”
Ash expelled a breath and disconnected the call. He wasn’t sure quite how he’d get through the next few weeks but he was pretty sure they’d involve a lot of ice cold showers.