The Sheikh's Princess Bride Read online

  ‘Tariq?’

  Samira’s hand went to her throat as a familiar form filled the doorway. Her chest squeezed around a heart that thumped an arrhythmic beat.

  She blinked, unable to believe her eyes. But there was no mistaking that broad-shouldered frame, or that proud visage. Elation filled her. Until she remembered this couldn’t be the reunion she craved.

  Yet, despite the stern voice telling her to be calm, she couldn’t repress the sheer joy of seeing Tariq again.

  His face was taut and unrevealing but his eyes glittered like gemstones and his thick hair stood up as if he’d run his fingers through it.

  She frowned. ‘What’s wrong? Is it the boys?’ She was halfway across the room in an instant.

  ‘The boys are with Sofia, settling down for a story. I promised you’d see them before they slept.’

  Samira lurched to a halt, relief slamming into her, stopping her headlong progress.

  ‘They’re here?’ Automatically she looked past him. ‘You’ve brought the boys?’

  He nodded, his expression terse.

  ‘What about the treaty? You shouldn’t be here.’ Tariq was a vital part of the negotiations that everyone hoped would bring stability to their region.

  ‘Tariq? What’s happened?’ The talks had been going well. Surely they hadn’t fallen in a heap after all the hard work he’d put into them?

  ‘Nothing’s happened.’ He stepped away from the door, snicking it shut behind him. His presence filled the room, making her ridiculously light-headed.

  ‘But you had back-to-back meetings all week.’ Confusion filled her, made worse by the unfamiliar look on Tariq’s face. He looked sombre, grim even, but with an edge of something else, something stark that made her skin prickle. Now he was closer, she saw the bleak look in his eyes.

  ‘Nothing’s happened to Asim or Jacqui, has it?’

  Instantly he shook his head, closing the gap between them with his long stride. ‘They’re fine. They send their love.’ His hands engulfed hers and to her amazement Samira felt the tiniest hint of a tremor in them.

  ‘Tariq, you’re frightening me.’

  ‘Frightening you?’ He shook his head, the action so minute she wondered if she’d really seen it. ‘I didn’t mean to.’ He drew a slow breath and his massive chest rose. ‘There’s been no accident, no tragedy. Everything’s fine.’

  Except it wasn’t. Everything in Samira warned that things were far from right when Tariq, the strongest, most self-assured man she knew, looked as if he’d been knocked off-centre. It wasn’t just the rumpled hair and raw emotion in his eyes. It was his quickened breathing, the grooves of pain around his mouth, the tension in his broad neck and over-tight grip.

  ‘I think I’d like to sit.’ She didn’t really want to. She wanted him to pull her into his arms and never let her go. But she couldn’t admit to that.

  ‘Come.’ He drew her over to a wide sofa with a magnificent view over Parisian rooftops to the glittering Eiffel Tower.

  Samira didn’t spare the view a glance, too intent on the feel of her husband’s hard, powerful hands holding hers as if they were fragile flowers. How long since he’d touched her?

  She knew the answer instantly. In the hospital, when he’d kissed her. It seemed a lifetime ago. A lifetime since she’d known hope.

  Now she read unease in the lowering angle of his brows and the way his gaze didn’t settle but kept moving, flicking across her features and back again. It scared her.

  ‘You’ve met with your client?’ he asked before she could question him.

  ‘This morning. It went well.’ For the first time in her life Samira felt no upsurge of creative energy at the prospect of designing something beautiful. Not even a thrill at extending her talents with the challenge of designing a wedding dress. For years her work had been a refuge and a solace. Today, though, it had been hard to summon the enthusiasm she needed to satisfy her client.

  ‘Good.’ His nod was abrupt. ‘That’s good.’

  He fell into silence and Samira watched him swallow, the movement jerky, as if something blocked his throat. Suddenly realisation hit.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it? Something’s happened to you.’ Her fingers curled hard around his, trying to draw strength from his familiar heat. ‘What is it, Tariq?’ Her mind flew from one awful prognosis to another. Was he suffering some dire illness? Her heart plunged. She tasted the rust tang of blood as she bit down hard on her lip.

  ‘You can’t leave.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Samira gaped up into blazing eyes that captured hers with their searing intensity.

  ‘You have to stay.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What are you talking about?’

  ‘This.’ With a lift of the chin he indicated the presidential suite and the city of Paris beyond. ‘I can’t let you go. I need you with me.’

  Samira watched his eyes darken to a shadowed moss green, felt the sizzle of response deep inside as he claimed her for himself and couldn’t repress a spark of triumph.

  How masochistic could she get? It wasn’t her he wanted, just what she represented—a hostess, a consort, a mother for his children. A chattel.

  ‘Tariq?’ Her voice was a thin stretch of sound as she struggled to contain her emotions. Suddenly she was shaking all over, her hands palsied in his hold, her chin wobbling.

  * * *

  Appalled, Tariq saw the change in Samira. He’d wanted for so long to smash through her barriers, to see again some life and emotion in her. Now he did, but she looked like she was breaking under the strain.

  Yet he hung on tight. He wasn’t releasing her again.

  It was selfish of him.

  It was needy.

  And he wasn’t budging.

  ‘You’re mine, Samira. You belong with me.’ Her hands lay limp in his. ‘Samira! Say something.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ She sounded impossibly weary. ‘You don’t deserve the scandal that would come if I walked out on you.’ His heart all but stopped at her admission she’d thought of deserting him permanently. ‘But I can’t live under the same roof with you again.’

  There. She’d said it. His worst nightmare had come to pass.

  Terror grabbed greedily at him, digging its talons right down to the bone. Pain eviscerated him.

  He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came. After what seemed a lifetime he found his voice. It was brittle with self-mockery. ‘And I once believed you loved me.’

  Samira’s indrawn breath hissed in the silence. ‘Neither of us wanted love, remember?’

  Tariq nodded, the irony of his situation hitting full-force. ‘We don’t always get what we want, though, do we?’

  ‘Tariq?’ She leaned forward. ‘What are you saying?’

  He could have drowned in those serious, honey-brown eyes. He owed her the truth, the whole truth.

  ‘I married you believing I could have everything and give little in return. I could have the sexiest, most beautiful woman as my wife, in my bed. I could have your smiles and gentle charm and your passion. All I had to do was sit back and take advantage of my good fortune, no emotional strings attached.’

  He drew a shaky breath. ‘Until I realised I had it all completely wrong.’ He grimaced at his blind stupidity. ‘Thinking you’d fallen in love scared the life out of me.’ His blood had run cold at the idea of another one-sided love affair. ‘I told myself I did the right thing, withdrawing from you.’

  Her eyes were huge. ‘That’s why you gave me the cold shoulder? Because you thought I was in love with you? That’s why you didn’t come to my bed?’ Samira’s voice sounded unfamiliar, sharp with pain. Shame filled him.

  Tariq looked down at their linked hands, hers so small in his, yet he was under no illusion that he was the stronger of the
pair. He was a hollow sham of the man he’d thought himself.

  He forced himself to meet her frowning stare. ‘At first it was to protect you and the baby. I couldn’t let anything happen to you. I needed to keep you safe and sex...’ He shrugged. ‘You’d already had one miscarriage and I knew how suddenly things could go wrong.’

  To Tariq’s surprise, Samira’s hands tightened on his. ‘You were thinking of Jasmin?’

  ‘How could I not? She was fine through her pregnancy, but at the end...’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t take any chances. And then, when you told me you wanted more, you wanted us together, I panicked.’

  ‘Because you didn’t want me falling in love.’ Her voice was flat and barren. He hated the way it sounded and that he was the reason for that.

  ‘Because I didn’t know any better.’ He lifted her hands and pressed his lips to first one, then the other, drawing in the sweet taste of her, sucking her delicious cinnamon scent deep into his lungs.

  He had to find a way to keep her. Even if it meant baring his imperfect soul.

  ‘I didn’t know any better then. I thought love was a curse. Until it hit me.’

  Samira stared up into a face hollowed by pain. For a heady second, she’d hoped he meant he felt love too. But that couldn’t be. The desolation in his eyes was too profound.

  ‘Tariq? I think you’d better explain.’

  ‘You married a man who didn’t believe he could love.’

  Familiar pain smote her. ‘I know. Jasmin.’

  ‘Yes.’ His lips firmed. ‘But not the way you think.’ His sigh seemed dredged from the depths of his being.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Samira didn’t think she could bear hearing Tariq rhapsodise about his one true love. Not now when her heart lay cracked and bleeding.

  But he wouldn’t let her hands go. And the tortured look in his eyes... How could she walk away from him?

  ‘That’s one thing I must do, habibti—tell you. If nothing else.’ Even that casual endearment tugged at her emotions.

  He shifted on the sofa, his knees hard against her legs, and Samira forced herself to stay where she was because, whatever ailed Tariq, he needed her for this moment at least.

  ‘I did Jasmin a terrible disservice.’ His voice was rough gravel.

  ‘Because you couldn’t save her?’ Samira had heard enough, now and in Al Sarath, to realise Tariq blamed himself for his first wife’s death. ‘You did all you could. Everyone says so, even at the hospital. But some things are beyond our power. The medical team did all they could and they’re trained for such things.’

  Yet there was no lightening of the shadows in his eyes.

  ‘She died because of me. Because I wanted heirs.’

  Samira squeezed his hands, unable to bear his anguish.

  ‘She wouldn’t have blamed you, Tariq. She loved you.’ Samira spoke from the heart, knowing a kindred connection with Jasmin. If the other woman had felt even half of what she, Samira, did, she’d have absolved him.

  ‘She did love me.’ His voice was hollow. ‘But I didn’t love her.’

  Samira started. He hadn’t loved Jasmin? She felt as if the world revolved too fast, tilting crazily around her.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Tariq turned away, but whether he saw the view of Paris out of the window or something else she didn’t know.

  ‘I didn’t love her. I didn’t know how.’ He paused. ‘I wasn’t brought up to love anyone except, of course, my country. My uncle put all his energies into raising me and my cousins to be capable, strong and honest, men who would never shirk from duty or hardship in the right cause.’

  ‘So I gathered.’ Samira remembered the stern older man she’d met during one of Tariq’s visits to Jazeer. His smile hadn’t reached his eyes and, though he’d been polite to the little princess, it was clear he’d been far more interested in the display matches of fencing, wrestling and riding in which his nephew competed.

  Tariq’s eyes met hers. ‘It was an all-male household. Love wasn’t a factor in our lives. We were trained in toughness and above all self-sufficiency. So when it came time to marry—’

  ‘You decided on an arranged marriage.’ She’d imagined Tariq swept off his feet by love for Jasmin when instead he’d done as generations of sheikhs before him had done and made a dynastic marriage.

  ‘Not quite immediately.’ Something flickered in his eyes, something bright and hot. Then he blinked and it was gone. ‘But you’re right. Jasmin was suitable in every way: charming, well-born, beautiful and...’ He paused. ‘A genuinely nice woman.’

  Samira blinked. A genuinely nice woman. That, finally, convinced her Tariq hadn’t been in love with his first wife.

  Did he think of Samira as a genuinely nice woman too? She didn’t think she could bear it.

  ‘And she loved you.’ Samira’s stomach plummeted in a sickening rush as she realised how much she had in common with Jasmin. Both of them had been in love with a man who didn’t return their feelings. How had Jasmin borne it?

  ‘Not initially, at least I believed not. I was absolutely honest about my reasons for marriage. I didn’t pretend to romance. But as time went by...’ He shook his head. ‘Jasmin loved me. She didn’t hide it, and she never reproached me for not returning her feelings, but I saw the hurt in her eyes.’

  His hands tightened on Samira’s and she felt the tension in him.

  ‘She was a caring wife, a good queen. I tried to give her what she most wanted. I tried so hard but I just didn’t have it in me. I failed her.’

  Samira wanted to tell him that falling in love wasn’t something you tried to do. It just happened. But that would bring no comfort. Not to him or to her.

  They were in the same place now, weren’t they? One loved and one didn’t. She compressed her lips, holding back the flood of useless words that hovered on her tongue, choking back distress.

  Finally she spoke. ‘No one can switch love on just because they want to. You did your best. Everyone says you were devoted to her.’

  ‘I tried. But it wasn’t anything like what she felt for me.’ His eyes snared hers and Samira’s heart gave a mighty thump. ‘I realised that when I met you again in Paris.’

  ‘When you met me?’ Confusion filled her. She knew she shouldn’t prolong the agony of this conversation but she couldn’t wrench herself away.

  He loosened his grip on her hands and looked down, watching his long fingers stroke hers, tracing the exquisite solitaire ruby ring that had been his betrothal gift. What was he thinking?

  ‘When I saw you again I felt things I hadn’t felt in years. Emotions I’d pushed aside. New feelings too, things that were unfamiliar.’

  Samira stared.

  He sat up, his gaze mesmerising. ‘I’d wanted you years ago, when you were on the verge of womanhood. I wanted you even more when I saw you in Paris. So desperately I couldn’t bear the thought of you walking out and proposing to some other man who’d agree to marry you in an instant.’

  ‘You didn’t show it.’ If anything he’d been cold— disapproving and haughty.

  ‘Didn’t I? I hardly knew what I was doing.’

  Samira tugged her hands free and surged to her feet, stepping away from him. ‘So, you wanted me.’ She swallowed hard. Nothing had changed. Tariq was a virile man and he wasn’t used to being denied. ‘But why did you have to marry me?’

  She choked back a sob of despair. If they hadn’t married she wouldn’t have fallen in love with him. She wouldn’t feel this awful desolation.

  Large hands settled on her upper arms. His warmth branded her and she shut her eyes, telling herself she’d pull away in a moment.

  ‘Because I felt more for you, Samira, than I ever have in my life. Because I felt things I couldn’t put a name to. Things that made me feel..
.different.’

  His breath feathered her hair, his chest pressing against her shoulders. ‘I needed you in my world as I’ve never needed anyone. I couldn’t imagine life without you in it. I didn’t just want you in my bed or at my side at banquets and receptions. You were a part of me and I couldn’t bear to release you again.’

  ‘Tariq?’

  She made to turn but he stopped her, his body close as a shadow, warming her back. His words, his presence, were almost too much to cope with, but nothing in this world would tear her away.

  ‘I wanted you in every way a man can conceivably want a woman, Samira. I’ll always want you like that.’ His words were pure magic, hypnotising her and evoking tentative joy. ‘I love you. I just didn’t recognise what it was.’

  ‘You love me?’ Her heart seized, then catapulted into life again.

  He pressed his lips to her hair in the gentlest caress and her eyelids fluttered as emotion filled her. She had to be dreaming. Yet with his words in her ears, his touch on her body, it felt so real.

  ‘I think I came close to loving you all those years ago, though I couldn’t put a name to it then. Certainly I planned to marry you, until I heard you were going to study overseas.’

  ‘And that stopped you?’ Still she couldn’t believe it.

  ‘I felt guilty lusting after a teenager. What right had I to come between you and your dreams? Besides, I needed a wife in Al Sarath, not in Paris or New York.’

  ‘I don’t... I can’t believe it.’ It was too far-fetched. ‘You said you couldn’t love.’

  ‘All my life I thought so.’ His mouth moved against her scalp. ‘I didn’t realise, you see. I spent so long telling myself that because I couldn’t give Jasmin what she wanted. Yet the moment you walked back into my life there was no escaping. It was a coup de foudre—a flash of lightning hitting me out of the blue.’

  ‘You never said anything.’ Samira struggled to be sensible, not let herself be swept away by the wave of elation rising inside.

  Tariq loved her?

  ‘I didn’t know what it was.’ His lips caressed the side of her neck and she shivered, her resistance cracking. ‘I just knew I needed you. When I thought you might love me I was terrified, fearing I’d let you down too. Until you withdrew and it hit me what I’d lost.’