The Royals Collection

CHAPTER FIVE

HANNAH’S FIRST GLIMPSE of her future home drew a pained gasp from her lips.

‘I know.’ Raini was all amused sympathy. ‘I’d like to tell you it’s not as awe-inspiring as it looks, but actually,’ she admitted, directing her critical stare at the multitude of minarets, ‘it is. Even Hollywood couldn’t build a set like this. The family, as you’ll learn, has never been into less is more. When I lived here—’

‘You lived here?’ How did anyone ever relax in a setting this ostentatiously grand?

Raini gave a warm chuckle. ‘Oh, my parents occupied a small attic,’ she joked. ‘Until Dad got posted. He’s a diplomat,’ she explained. ‘By the time I was eighteen I’d lived in a dozen cities.’ They drove under a gilded archway into a courtyard the size of a football pitch, filled with fountains. ‘But nothing ever came close to this.’

Hannah believed her.

Rafiq escorted them into the building through a small antechamber that had seemed large until they stepped through the next door and entered a massive hall. The wall sconces in there were all lit, creating swirling patterns on the mosaic floor.

The awful sense of impending doom that lay like a cold stone in Hannah’s chest became heavier as they followed the tall, gowned figure down a maze of marble-floored empty corridors. By the time she saw a familiar figure, she was struggling to breathe past the oppressive weight.

‘Dad!’

‘Hello, Hannah! You look very beautiful, child.’

Hannah struggled to hide her shock at her father’s appearance. She had never seen him look so pale and haggard. Not even when he’d lain in a hospital bed attached to bleeping machines had he looked this frail. He seemed to have aged ten years since she last saw him.

Any lingering mental image of her walking into his arms and asking him to make everything right vanished as the tears began to slide down his cheeks. She had never seen her ebullient parent cry except on the anniversary of her mother’s death—her birthday. On that day he always vanished to be alone with his grief, and the sight of tears now was as painful to her as a knife thrust.

Intentionally or not, it always felt as if she was the cause of his tears. If she hadn’t been born the woman he loved would not have died and now this was her fault. About that much Kamel was right.

She had been doing a job that she was ill qualified to do and she’d messed up. But the consequences had not been just hers. Other people had suffered. She lifted her chin. Well, that was going to stop. She’d made the mistake and she’d take the nasty-tasting medicine, though in this instance it came in the shape of the dark and impossibly handsome and arrogant Prince of Surana.

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ her father cried. ‘They have the death penalty in Quagani, Hannah. It was the only way we could get you out. They wanted to make an example of you, and without the King’s personal intervention they would have. Kamel is a good man.’

It seemed to be a universally held opinion. Hannah didn’t believe it. Nonetheless, it was clear that he had not just freed her, he had saved her life.

‘I know, Dad. I’m fine about this,’ she lied.

‘Really?’

She nodded. ‘It’s about time I finally made it down the aisle, don’t you think?’

‘He’ll take care of you.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘You’ll take care of each other. You know your mother was the love of my life...’

Hannah felt a heart-squeezing clutch of sadness. ‘Yes, Dad.’

‘She didn’t love me when we got married. She was pregnant, and I persuaded her... What I’m trying to say is that it’s possible to grow to love someone. She did.’

Incredibly moved by his confidences, she nodded, her throat aching with unshed tears. There was no point telling him the cases were totally dissimilar. Her father had loved the woman he had married, whereas Hannah was marrying a man who despised her.

A man who had saved her life.

Any moment she would wake up.

But it wasn’t a dream. However surreal it felt, she really was standing there with her hand on her father’s arm, about to walk down the aisle to be married to a stranger.

‘Ready?’ her father asked.

She struggled to relearn the forgotten skill of smiling for his benefit and nodded. Ahead of her the elegant Raini spoke to someone outside Hannah’s line of vision and the big doors swung open.

Hannah had anticipated more of the same magnificence she had encountered so far, but she had the impression of a space that was relatively small, almost intimate...peaceful. The tranquillity was a dramatic contrast to the emotional storm that raged just below her calm surface.

If you discounted the priest and choir there were only four people present: two robed rulers in the pews, and the two men who stood waiting, one tall and fair, the other...the other tall and very dark. She closed her eyes and willed herself to relax, to breathe, to do this... She opened them again and smiled at her father. He felt bad enough about this without her falling apart.

* * *

‘Nervous?’

Kamel glanced at his best man. ‘No.’ Resigned would be a more accurate description of his mindset. There had only ever been one woman he had imagined walking down the aisle towards him and he had watched her make that walk to someone else. He would never forget the expression on her face—she had been incandescent with joy. Yet now when he did think of it he found another face superimposing itself over Amira’s. A face framed by blonde hair.

‘I suppose you could call this a version of a shotgun wedding,’ the other man mused, glancing at the two royal personages who occupied the empty front pews. ‘She’s not...?’

He tried to imagine those blue eyes soft as she held a child. ‘No, she is not.’

‘There’s going to be a hell of a lot of pressure for you to change that. I hope she knows what she’s letting herself in for.’

‘Did you?’ Kamel countered, genuinely curious.

‘No, but then I didn’t marry the heir apparent...which is maybe just as well. Raini and I have decided not to go for another round of IVF. It’s been eight years now and there has to be a cut-off point. There is a limit to how many times she can put herself through this.’

Kamel clasped the other man’s shoulder. ‘Sorry.’

The word had never sounded less adequate. Kamel never lost sight of the fact that life was unfair, but if he had this would have reminded him. The world was filled with children who were unloved and unwanted and here were two people who had all the love in the world to give a child and it wasn’t going to happen for them.

One of life’s cruelties.

‘Thanks.’ Steven looked towards a security guy who nodded and spoke into his earpiece. ‘Looks like she’s arrived on time. You’re a lucky man.’

Kamel glanced at Steven and followed the direction of his gaze. The breath caught in his throat. Bedraggled, she had been a beautiful woman, but this tall, slender creature was a dream vision in white—hair falling like a golden cloud down her back, the diamonds glittering on her lacy veil fading beside the brilliance of her wide blue eyes.

‘That remains to be seen.’

Kamel’s murmured comment drew a quizzical look from his best man but no response that could be heard above the strains of ‘Ave Maria’ sung by the choir as the bride on her father’s arm, preceded by her matron of honour, began her progression.

A weird sense of calm settled on Hannah as she stood facing her bridegroom. It did not cross her mind until afterwards that the whole thing resembled an out-of-body experience: she was floating somewhere above the heads of the people gathered to witness this parody, watching herself give her responses in a voice that didn’t even hold a tremor.

The tremor came at the end when they were pronounced man and wife and Kamel looked directly at her for the first time. His dark eyes held hers as he brushed a fold of gossamer lace from her cheek and stared down at her with a soul-stripping intensity.

In her emotionally heightened state she had no idea who leaned in to whom; Hannah just knew she experienced the weirdest sensation, as though she were being pulled by an invisible thread towards him.

Her eyes were wide open as he covered her lips with his, then as the warm pressure deepened her eyelids lowered and her lips parted without any coercion and she kissed him back.

It was Kamel who broke the contact. Without it, her head was no longer filled with the taste, the texture and the smell of him, and reality came flooding back with a vengeance. She’d just kissed her husband and she’d enjoyed it—more than a little. That was wrong, so very wrong on every level. It was as if he had flicked a switch she didn’t know she had. She shivered, unable to control the fresh wave of heat that washed over her skin.

He took her hand and raised it to his lips, watching the rapt glow of sensual invitation in her velvet eyes be replaced by something close to panic. He was not shocked but he was surprised by the strength of the physical response she had shown.

‘Smile. You’re the radiant bride, ma belle,’ he warned.

Hannah smiled until her jaw ached. She smiled all the way through the formality of signatures, and all she could think about was that kiss. The memory felt like a hot prickle under her skin. For the first time in her life she understood the power of sex and how a person could forget who they were under the influence of that particular drug.

She was kissed on both cheeks by the leaders of two countries, and then rather more robustly by her father, who held her hand tightly.

‘You know that I am always there for you, Hannah.’

‘I know, Dad. I’m fine.’ She blinked away emotional tears but couldn’t dislodge the massive lump in her throat.

‘I will take care of her, Charles.’

His sincerity made her teeth ache. You couldn’t trust a man who could lie so well, not that Hannah had any intention of trusting him. Aware that her father was watching, she let it lie when Kamel took her hand in his, not snatching it away until they were out of sight.

His only reaction was a sardonic smirk.

It took ten minutes after the farewells for them to walk back to his private apartments. His bride didn’t say a word the whole time.

It was hard not to contrast the brittle ice queen beside him with the woman whose soft warm lips he had tasted. That small taste, the heat that had flared between them, shocking with its intensity and urgency, had left him curious, and eager to repeat the experience.

He was lusting after his bride. Well, life was full of surprises and not all of them were bad. The situation suited a man who had a very pragmatic approach to sex.

The room they stood in was on the same grand scale as all the others. This one apparently connected two bedrooms, if she had understood him correctly. Her exhausted brain was filled with a low-level hum of confusion, and two images from the wedding kept flitting through her head—her father’s tired, ill face and the predatory heat in Kamel’s eyes when he claimed his kiss.

‘Has it occurred to you that this marriage might not be something to be endured...but enjoyed?’

Hannah’s fingers slipped off the door handle. She turned around, her back against the wooden panels. He was standing too close...much too close. She struggled to draw in air as her body stirred, responding to the slumberous, sensual provocation shining in his dark eyes.

‘The only thing I want to enjoy tonight is some privacy.’

‘That is not what you would enjoy.’

She threw up her hands in a gesture of exasperated defeat. ‘Fine! So I find you attractive. Is that what you want to hear?’ She angled a scornful glance up at his lean dark face. ‘I find any number of men attractive, but I don’t sleep with them all.’

Make that none.

‘You’re discerning. I like that in you.’

‘You may be good to look at but your ego is a massive turn-off.’

‘I could work on it. You would teach me.’

Big, predatory, and sinfully sexy—she was willing to bet that that were quite a few things he could teach her! Her stomach tightened in self-disgust. Shocked by the thought that had insinuated itself into her head, she tilted her chin, channelling all the ice princess she could muster, and retorted haughtily, ‘I’m not into casual sex or tutoring.’

‘We’re married, ma belle. That is not casual...and I do not need instruction.’

Hannah’s eyes went to the ring on her finger. It felt heavy. She felt...consumed. She frowned at the word that formed in her head. Consumed by feelings, a need. She gave her head a tiny shake. It was dangerous to imagine something that was not there. She blamed the bottle of champagne that Raini had cracked open in the limo. Had she had one or two glasses? Regardless of her alcohol consumption, the only thing she needed was sleep.

He laid a hand on the door beside her head and leaned into her. ‘Well, if you change your mind you know where I am.’ His eyes not leaving hers, he tipped his head at the door next to her own. ‘And for the record I’m fine with...just sex. I will not feel used or cheap in the morning.’

His throaty, mocking laugh was the last straw.

Her blue eyes narrowed and her chin lifted to a combative angle. She could actually feel something inside her snapping as she reached up and pulled his face down until she could reach his lips. In the instant before she covered his mouth with hers she saw his expression change—saw the mockery vanish and the dark, dangerous glow slide into his heavy-lidded eyes.

In the tiny corner of her mind that was still sane Hannah knew she was doing something incredibly stupid, but it was too late to pull back, and then he was kissing her back with a sensual skill that made her sleep-deprived brain shut down—she just clung on for the ride.

Kamel was a man who was rarely surprised—but Hannah had surprised him twice already. First when she kissed him, and second when lust slammed through his body.

Had he ever wanted a woman this badly?

Then he identified the flavour of her kiss. As he pulled away she clung like a limpet, a very soft, warm, inviting limpet, but he gritted his teeth. He knew that if he let it go on a moment longer he wouldn’t be able to stop. And when he made love to his wife he wanted her not just willing but awake and sober!

He studied her flushed face, the bright, almost febrile glitter in her eyes. He had seen the same look in the eyes of a friend who, after pulling three consecutive all-nighters before an exam, had fallen asleep halfway through the actual exam. Hannah was seriously sleep deprived, and more than a bit tipsy.

As a rule he thought it was nice if the person you were making love to stayed conscious. He gave a self-mocking smile. Being noble was really overrated—no wonder it had fallen out of fashion.

‘You’ve been drinking.’

She blinked at the accusation, then insisted loudly, ‘I’m not drunk!’

The pout she gave him almost broke his resolve. ‘We won’t argue the point,’ he said wearily. ‘I think we should sleep on this. Goodnight, Hannah.’

And he walked away and left her standing there feeling like...like...like a woman who’d just made a pass at her own husband and got knocked back. So not only did she now feel cheap, she felt unattractive. Rejected by two fiancés, and now a husband, but she couldn’t summon the energy to care as, with a sigh, she fell backwards fully clothed onto the bed, closed her eyes and was immediately asleep.

CHAPTER SIX

TOO PROUD TO ask for help, Hannah was lost. She finally located Kamel in the fourth room she tried—one that opened off a square, windowless hallway that might have been dark but for the daylight that filtered through the blue glass of the dome high above.

Like the ones before it, this room was massive and imposing, and also came complete with a built-in echo, and her heels were particularly noisy on the inlaid floor. But Kamel didn’t look up. The hawk on its perch followed her with its dark eyes while her master continued to stare at the screen of his mobile phone with a frown of concentration that drew his dark brows into a straight line above his aquiline nose.

Choosing not to acknowledge the strange achy feeling in the pit of her stomach, she walked up to the desk and cleared her throat.

When his dark head didn’t lift she felt her temper fizz and embraced the feeling. If he wanted to be awkward, fine. She could do awkward. She felt damned awkward after last night.

‘Is this your doing?’ Realising that her posture, with her arms folded tightly across her stomach, might be construed as protective, she dropped them to her sides.

Kamel stopped scrolling through his emails, looked up from his phone and smiled. ‘Good morning, dear wife.’

Kamel did not feel it was a particularly good morning and it had been a very bad night. He felt tired, and more frustrated than any man should be after his wedding night. A cold shower, a long run and he had regained a little perspective this morning. But then she walked in the room and just the scent of her perfume... He wanted her here and now. The difference between want and need was important to Kamel. He had not allowed himself to need a woman since Amira.

He needed sex, not Hannah. And the sex would be good—his icy bride turned out to have more fire in her than any woman he had ever met. But afterwards he would feel as he always did—the escape from the tight knot of brutal loneliness in his chest was only ever temporary.

Hannah’s lips tightened at the mockery but she did not react to it; instead she simply arched a feathery brow. ‘Well?’

‘I feel as though I am walking into this conversation midway through. Coffee?’ He lifted the pot on the desk beside him and topped up his half-filled cup and allowed his gaze to drift over her face. ‘Hangover?’

‘No,’ she lied. The delicious aroma drifted her way, making her mouth water. She felt shivery as she struggled to tear her eyes off his long brown fingers. ‘I don’t want coffee.’

‘So can I help you with something?’

She emitted a soft hissing sound of annoyance. Without looking back, she pointed to the open doorway where a suited figure stood, complete with enigmatic expression and concealed weapon. ‘Did you arrange for him to follow me?’

Kamel stood up from the desk and walked past her towards the open door. Nodding to the man standing outside, he closed it with a soft thud and turned back to Hannah, though his attention appeared to be on the lie of his narrow silk tie that lay in a flash of subdued colour against his white shirt. The jacket that matched the dove-grey trousers was draped across the back of the chair.

‘For heaven’s sake, you look ridiculously perfect.’

Her delivery lacked the scornful punch she had intended, possibly because the comment was no exaggeration. The pale grey trousers that matched the jacket were clearly bespoke and could have been cut to disguise a multitude of sins if he’d had any, but there was no escaping the fact that physically at least he was flawless.

He raised his brows and she felt her cheeks colour. ‘I despise men who spend more time looking in the mirror than I do.’

‘Rather a sexist thing to say,’ he remarked, his tone mildly amused and his eyes uncomfortably observant. ‘But each to his own. I’m sorry I don’t measure up to your unwashed grunge ideal.’

Having dug herself a hole, she let the subject drop. He could never fail to live up to any woman’s ideal, on a purely eye-candy level, of course. ‘I do not require a bodyguard.’

‘No, obviously not.’

Her pleased smile at a battle so easily won had barely formed when his next words made it vanish.

‘You will require a team of them.’

‘That’s ludicrous!’ she contended furiously.

The amusement in his manner vanished as he countered, ‘It’s necessary, so I suggest you stop acting like a diva and accept it.’

‘I refuse.’

His glance slid from her flashing eyes to her heaving bosom, lingering there long enough to bring her hand to her throat. ‘Refuse all you like, it won’t alter anything. I appreciate this is an adjustment and I’ll make allowances.’

That was big of him. ‘Allowances! This is a palace! How do I adjust to that?’

‘I have been to Brent Hall and it is hardly a council flat,’ he retorted, thinking of the portrait that hung above the fireplace in the drawing room. Had Hannah Latimer ever possessed the dreamy innocence that shone in the eyes of her portrait, or had the artist been keen to flatter the man who was paying him?

She opened her mouth to retort and then his comment sank in. ‘You’ve been to my home?’

He tipped his head. ‘I stood in for my uncle on one social occasion, actually two. I predict you will adjust to your change in status. After all, you have played the pampered princess all your life. The only difference now is you have an actual title, and, of course, me.’

‘I’m trying to forget.’

‘Not the best idea.’

Despite the monotone delivery, she heard the warning and she didn’t like it, or him.

Kamel gave a tolerant nod and picked up a pen from the desk. ‘It is a fact of life. You will not leave this building without a security presence.’

‘I wasn’t outside the building. He was waiting outside my bedroom. What harm was I likely to come to there?’

‘Oh, so your concern is for your privacy.’

‘Well, yes. Obviously.’ The idea of living like a bird in a golden cage did not hold any appeal. She’d given up her freedom but there had to be boundaries. Where were your boundaries last night, Hannah?

‘We will be private enough, I promise you.’

The seductive promise in his voice sent a beat of white-hot excitement whipping through her body. As it ebbed she was consumed by hot-cheeked embarrassment.

‘You blush very easily.’

She slung him a belligerent glare. ‘I’m not used to the heat.’ The desert heat she might grow accustomed to, but being around a man who could make her feel...feel...she gave a tiny gusty sigh as she sought for a word to describe how he made her feel, and it came—hungry! That was something she would never get used to. She just hoped it would pass quickly like a twenty-four-hour bug.

‘So this is an example of how my life will not change?’ she charged shrilly. ‘I left one cell with a guard outside for another.’

‘But the facilities and décor are much better,’ he came back smoothly.

The languid smile that tugged the corner of his mouth upwards did not improve her mood. Neither did looking at his mouth. It was a struggle not to lift a hand to her own tingling lips. So far he hadn’t mentioned the kiss. Had he forgotten?

She wished she had, but her memory loss only lasted until she had stood under a shower and then the whole mortifying scene came rushing back.

‘This isn’t a joke.’

The shriller she got, the calmer he became. ‘Neither is it a subject for screaming and shouting and stamping your little foot.’

He glanced down at the part of her under discussion. She had very nice ankles but she had even nicer calves. He found his eyes drawn to the silky smooth contours and higher... The skirt of the dress she wore, a silky blue thing, sleeveless and cinched in at the waist with a narrow plaited tan belt, ended just above the knee. The entire image was cool, perfectly groomed...regal.

He refused to allow the image of his hands sliding under the fabric up and over the smooth curves—but the suggestion had been enough to send a streak of heat through his body where it coalesced into a heavy ache in his groin. He could have woken up this morning in her arms. Even while he had called himself a fool during the long wakeful night, he had known it was the right decision.

‘I did not stamp my foot,’ Hannah retorted and immediately wanted to do just that.

‘But you have a tendency to turn everything into a drama, angel.’

Her brows hit her smooth hairline exposed by the severe hairstyle she had adopted that morning. The woman who had looked back at her from the mirror after she had speared the last hair grip into the smooth coil did not even look like a distant relative of the woman with the flushed face, feverishly bright eyes and swollen lips she had glimpsed in the mirror last night before she had fallen onto the bed fully dressed.

‘If this isn’t a drama, what is?’

‘I appreciate this is not easy, but we are both living with the consequences of your actions.’

She threw up her hands and didn’t even register the discomfort as one of the pearl studs she wore went flying across the room. She sighed heavily and asked, ‘How many times a day are you going to remind me it’s all my fault?’

‘It depends on how many times you irritate me.’ Kamel left his desk and walked to the spot where the pearl had landed beside the window.

‘My breathing irritates you,’ she said.

He elevated a dark brow. ‘Not if you do it quietly.’ He half closed his eyes, imagining hearing her breath quicken as he moved in and out of her body.

Hannah was not breathing quietly now. The closer he got, the louder her breathing became, then she stopped altogether. ‘You are...’ The trapped air left her lungs in one soft, sibilant sigh as he stopped just in front of her, close enough for her to feel the heat from his body.

‘Have you ever heard of personal space?’ she asked, tilting back her head to meet his challenging dark stare as she fought an increasingly strong impulse to step back. Her cool vanished into shrill panic as he leaned in towards her. ‘What are you doing?’

More to the point, what was she doing?

She had tried so hard not to look at his mouth, not to think of that kiss, it became inevitable that she was now staring and not in a casual way at his mouth and the only thing she could think about was that kiss—the firm texture of his lips, the heat of his mouth, the moist...

‘You lost this.’

It took a few seconds to bring into focus the stud he held between his thumb and forefinger. When she realised what he was holding her hand went jerkily to her ear...the wrong one.

‘No, this one.’ He touched her ear lobe, catching it for a moment between his thumb and forefinger before letting it drop away. ‘Pretty.’ Her head jerked to one side, causing a fresh stab of pain to slide like a knife through her skull. How long before the headache tablets she had swallowed kicked in?

The strength of her physical response to the light contact sent a stab of alarm through Hannah. She swayed slightly and shifted her position, taking a step back. It no longer seemed so important to stand her ground. Live to fight another day—wasn’t that what they said about those who ran away?

‘Thank you,’ she breathed, holding out her hand as she focused on his left shoulder.

He ignored the hand and leaned in closer. Help, she thought, her smile little more now than a scared fixed grimace painted on. Her nostrils quivered in reaction to the warm scent of his body, his nearness. She could feel the heat of his body through his clothes and hers...imagine how hot his skin would feel without...

And she did imagine; her core temperature immediately jumped by several painful degrees as she stood there in an agony of shame and arousal while he placed a thumb under her chin to angle her face up to him.

She’d decided that the only plus point in being married to a man she loathed was that she would never again suffer the pain and humiliation of rejection. She wouldn’t care. A lovely theory, but hard to cling to when every cell in her body craved his touch. She had never felt this way before.

She bit her lip, fearing that if she set free the ironic laugh locked in her throat there would be a chain reaction—she would lose it and she couldn’t do that. Pretty much all she had left was her pride.

Listen to yourself, Hannah, mocked the voice in her head. Your pride is all you have left? Go down that road of self-pity and you’d pretty much end up being the spoilt shallow bitch your husband thinks you are.

Husband.

I’m married.

Third time lucky. Or as it happened, unlucky. She knew there were many women who would have envied her unlucky fate just as there had been girls at school who had envied her.

The influential clique who had decided to make the new girl’s life a misery even before they’d discovered she was stupid. She’d thought so too until she’d been diagnosed as dyslexic at fourteen.

For a long time Hannah had wondered why—what had she done or said?—and then she’d had the opportunity to ask when she’d found herself sitting in a train compartment with one of her former tormentors, all grown up now.

Hannah had immediately got up to leave but had paused by the door when the other woman had spoken.

‘I’m sorry.’

And Hannah had asked the question that she had always wanted to ask.

‘Why?’

The answer had been the same one her father had given her when she had sobbed, ‘What have I done? What’s wrong with me?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with you, Hannah. They do it because they can. I could move you to another school, sweetheart, but what happens if the same thing happens there? You can’t carry on running away. The way to cope with bullies is not to react. Don’t let them see they get to you.’

The strategy had worked perhaps too well because, not only had her cool mask put off the bullies, but potential friends too, except for Sal.

What would Sal say? She closed off that line of thought, but not before she experienced a wave of deep sadness. She didn’t share secrets with Sal any more; she had lost her best friend the day she had found her in bed with her fiancé. It was to have been her wedding day.

And now here she was, a married woman. Kamel’s touch was deft, almost clinical, but there was nothing clinical about the shimmies of sensation that zigzagged through her body as his fingers brushed her ear lobe.