Cinderella's Desert Baby Bombshell by Lynne Graham, Louise Fuller

CHAPTER THREE

THEBRIDEANDthe groom dined at opposite ends of the cabin.

A private jet, Tati acknowledged, covertly admiring the pale sleek leather and gleaming wood fitments in the cabin while telling herself firmly that she was not impressed. There were a lot of stewards on board as well. The level of contemporary luxury on the jet was not even remotely akin to the Victorian grandeur of the palace. A bundle of glossy fashion magazines was brought to her. She was waited on hand and foot and the meal that duly arrived was amazing. Only then did she appreciate that she was starving because she had barely eaten all day.

That terrible looming apprehension that had killed her appetite had drifted away, but the anger still lingered. Her face burned afresh at the recollection of being labelled a shameless gold digger. But wasn’t that kind of woman what Prince Saif of Alharia deserved in a wife? After all, he had agreed to marry without demonstrating the smallest personal interest in his bride. He had not bothered to engineer a meeting or even a phone call with her cousin before the wedding! So, if he was displeased with the calibre of wife he had acquired, it was all his own fault! Still fizzing with resentment, Tati shot a glance down to the far end of the cabin where her husband was working on a laptop, once again showing off his indifference to the woman he had married. She wasn’t one bit sorry that she had told him she hated him!

But my goodness, he was, as her mother would have said, ‘easy on the eye.’ Black hair tumbled across his brow, framing his hard, masculine profile. Those ridiculously long ebony lashes were a visible slash of darkness even at a distance and the curve of his shapely mouth was as obvious as the dark stubble beginning to shadow his jawline. Annoyingly, he kept on snatching at her attention. And she didn’t know why he interfered with her concentration. Well, that was a lie, she acknowledged ruefully. A guy that gorgeous was kind of hard to ignore, especially if you had just married him, even though there was absolutely no way it would ever be a real marriage.

By the time the jet landed, Tati was smothering yawns. She was too incredibly weary to do more than disembark from the plane and climb into the limousine awaiting them without comment. The Prince was silent as well, probably busy brooding over the sheer indignity of being married off to a money-grubbing foreigner, she thought nastily. She had assumed they would be staying in a hotel, so it was a surprise when the limousine purred to a halt outside what appeared to be a rather large three-storey house in an affluent tree-lined street.

A little man in a smart jacket ushered them into a big opulent hall with a chandelier hanging overhead that was so spectacular she suspected it was antique Venetian glass. And she only knew that because her aunt Elizabeth had once had one made to look as though it were an antique and had regularly passed it off as such to impress her guests. Saif addressed the man in fluent French.

‘Would you like a meal? A snack?’ he then enquired politely of her.

‘No, thanks. I just want to sleep for about a week.’ Her face flamed as she belatedly realised that it was their wedding night and she stiffened, averting her attention from him in haste, although she didn’t think he had any expectations whatsoever in that field. The look the Prince had given her when she had earlier told him she wasn’t going to have sex with him should have frozen her to death where she stood. He had been outraged, but at least he hadn’t argued. There was a bright side to everything, wasn’t there?

‘We will have to share a bed tonight,’ Saif informed her in an undertone. ‘We were expected to remain in Alharia until tomorrow. This place will not be fully staffed until then and only one bedroom has been prepared. Marcel is already apologising in advance for any deficiencies we may notice.’

The concept of having to share a bed with the Prince almost made Tati groan out loud. But she was too tired to fight with him. She didn’t think he would make any kind of move on her. She was quite sure that she could have located linen and made up a bed for herself, but she was in a strange house, wary of treading on domestic toes and too drained to make a fuss. ‘I’m too exhausted to care.’

It went without saying that she was not accustomed to such luxurious accommodation. Her aunt and uncle’s home, Fosters Manor, was a pretty Edwardian country house but, as such houses went, it was not that large and it was definitely shabby. When her grandmother had still been alive, it had been beautifully kept, but maintenance standards had slipped once her uncle took over and dismissed most of the staff.

‘It has been a long day,’ Saif gritted, relieved she hadn’t thrown a tantrum over the bed situation. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with that.

Yet after the way he had confronted her with his opinion of her, it was little wonder that she had lost her temper with him, he conceded grudgingly. He had been insanely tactless when he had told her the truth of what he thought of her. It would have been more logical to swallow his ire because he was trapped in their marriage until such time as he was able to divorce her. On the other hand, he could take the annulment route, he reasoned thoughtfully. But that would upset his father, who would feel responsible for the whole mess because he had insisted that the wedding go ahead with the substitute bride.

He wondered if the little blonde beside him and the cousin who had taken flight had planned exactly this denouement. Clearly, her uncle had suspected her of that duplicity. Who would know her nature better than her own flesh and blood? Furthermore, anyone with the smallest knowledge of his father’s character would have guessed that he would do virtually anything sooner than accept his son and heir being jilted. The Emir loathed scandal and he was very proud and touchy about any issue that might inflict a public loss of face on the throne. It seemed rather too neat that the original bride had vanished at the eleventh hour and her stand-in had appeared in her place, dressed as a traditional Alharian bride. He needed answers, Saif acknowledged, because now that she was his wife, he wanted to know precisely who and what he was dealing with. How calculating was she? How greedy? Could he make her less of a problem simply by throwing money at her? It was a distasteful idea but one he was willing to follow through on if it granted him peace.

Marcel cast open a door at the top of the stairs into a superb bedroom suite. Saif was reluctantly amused by the opulent appointments, thinking fondly that his half-brother, Angelino Diamandis, certainly knew how to live in luxury. Having worked hard to put any personal issues with his deserting mother behind him, he had gained sufficient distance from that betrayal to seek out his younger half-brother. A smile illuminated his lean dark features, softening his set jawline. If he was honest he occasionally envied his brother, Angel, for his freedom and independence, but he was not prepared to lose his father and step up to the throne to attain that same lack of constraint.

Barely able to credit how a single smile could light the Prince up to reveal ten times the charisma he had so far shown her, Tati got all flustered and heard herself ask, almost as if it were normal to speak to him civilly, ‘Does this house belong to you?’

‘No, it belongs to my—’ Saif hesitated and swallowed what he had almost revealed, because he couldn’t trust her with that information lest it reach the wrong ears. ‘It belongs to a relative of mine. He offered it to me because he was unable to attend the wedding.’ Well, at least not in his official capacity, Saif adjusted with a winning smile of satisfaction, for he had contrived to spend almost an hour with his brother that same afternoon. ‘I prefer this to the anonymity of a hotel.’

‘It’s a fabulous place...from what little I’ve seen,’ Tati adjusted awkwardly, moving past him to scoop up her toiletries bag and nightwear from the case that a maid had already begun to unpack, just as another had embarked on Saif’s luggage. Two maids and yet supposedly the household was understaffed this evening?

As she bent down Saif stared, focused hungrily on her curvy bottom and the bounce of her full breasts as she straightened again, blond hair flaring like polished silk round her heart-shaped face, big blue eyes skittering off him at speed. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He didn’t like that. It made him wonder what she was thinking, what she could be planning. The more he considered the manner in which she had immediately stepped into her cousin’s shoes, the more suspicious he became of her every move. He winced at the current of lust still trying to pull him in a dangerous direction. Possibly an annulment would be the path to take if he could sell the idea to his father without shocking him too much. In the interim, he definitely needed to keep his hands off his bride.

Through an open door Tati could see a bathroom and she hastened into the sanctuary it offered. She didn’t really need a bath but she ran one just the same, determined to make the most of her time alone. She took off the make-up, cleaned her teeth before finally lying back in hot, scented water and striving to relax. But how the heck could she relax with him out there? Ana would have charmed him out of the trees by now, she reflected ruefully. Men adored her cousin for her looks, her smiles and her flirtatious ways. Tati had never had that light, fluffy, girly vibe. She was sensible, practical, blunt. Life had made her that way, forcing her to be responsible. She loved her mother, but she had also learned very young that she had to look after her only parent, rather than the other way round.

Having a man in her life had been the least of her ambitions. Mariana had had a whole raft of unsuitable boyfriends, among them drunks, abusers and cheats. After Tati’s first serious boyfriend, Dave, had ditched her to chase Ana instead, Tati had decided that men drummed up way too much drama in a woman’s life. Once or twice, she had wished that she had got a little more experience out of the relationship and had tried out sex with Dave, because sometimes still being a virgin at her age made her feel out of step with the world she lived in. But the attraction had just never been strong enough for her to experiment with Dave and once he had succumbed to her cousin’s allure, she had been relieved that she had held back.

An hour later, Tati emerged, flushed and soaked clean from the bathroom. Saif, casually clad in jeans and a black shirt, twisted round from his laptop to glance at her. His bride wore nothing suggestive, nothing even slightly sexy, so evidently seduction did not feature in her current plan. Saif strove to feel suitably relieved by that reassuring reality while wondering how the hell pink and white shorts with little bunnies on them and a plain white vest top could offer such dynamite appeal. It was all about shape, he reasoned abstractedly, a mathematical arrangement of feminine proportions in the exact combination that most appealed to the average male.

Evidently he was very much an average male, he decided, attention lingering on the smooth upper slopes of the soft firm breasts showing above the top, the shadow of the valley between, her tiny waist and the pleasing swell of the pert derriere that the clingy shorts enhanced. A pulse kicked up in his groin and he swung back to his work with a curse brimming on his lips.

‘What are you working at?’ she asked to break the taut silence, her face still flaming from his lengthy appraisal.

‘I’m checking figures. I manage Alharia’s investments,’ Saif murmured tautly.

What had that long look of his been about, for goodness’ sake? Tati supposed that she should have worn a dressing gown, but she hadn’t packed one. Her inclusion in the trip to Alharia had been very much a last-minute thing, an added expense loudly objected to by Ana’s parents. Ana, however, had said she could not go through with the wedding without Tati’s support and that had got Tati on the flight, her case packed in a rush and not even full. She had left behind several items which she should have brought.

‘Is the bathroom free now?’ Saif enquired without turning round again.

Momentarily, Tati froze, mortified by her thoughtlessness: she was a bathroom hog. ‘I’m sorry, I should’ve thought that you might want—’

‘There must be a dozen such facilities in this property. Had I needed to do so, I could easily have found another.’

In silence, Tati nodded. ‘Goodnight,’ she said in a muffled tone and dived below the duvet.

Strange little creature, Saif decided, glancing at the bed, seeing her curled up in one small corner, only a tousled mop of blond hair showing above the duvet. If he hadn’t known what he did know about her he might’ve thought that she was shy. He smothered a laugh at that ridiculous idea, shut down the accounts he had been working on and started to undress.

Tati peered out from under her hair and watched the jeans hit the polished floor in a heap. So, he was untidy as well as obnoxious, she thought without surprise, as he left them lying there and the shirt drifted down to join the jeans. He stretched in a fluid movement and for an instant she saw him standing there, naked but for a pair of boxers, every muscle flexing and pulling taut...and he had an awful lot of muscles enhanced by coffee-coloured skin that resembled oiled silk. Tati stared, remembering the ghastly charity calendar of half-naked men her mother had once put up on the wall. Mariana had accused her daughter of being a prude when Tati had said it embarrassed her.

But it had been an embarrassment to have that hanging in the kitchen, particularly after Ana had seen it and had told everybody at school. Tati had had to live through a barrage of sniggering ‘dirty girl’ abuse for weeks afterwards. Compared with Ana and her mother, she was a prude because, from what she had seen of their experiences, a more adventurous approach to men and sex more often led to hurt and disappointment than happiness.

Now watching Saif stretch and muscles ripple across his hard, corrugated abdomen and down the length of his smooth brown back, Tati reminded herself that it was just a body, truly a more blessed body than most men rejoiced in but simply a body, an arrangement of bones, flesh and muscle that every single living person had. Only that very grounded outlook did not explain why she was still staring and why she had a hot, tight, clenched sensation tugging at the junction of her thighs. She had stared because he was beautiful, and she hadn’t realised that a man could be beautiful that way. Really, Tati, she mocked her excuse. All that Adam and Eve stuff in the Bible hadn’t tipped her off about that essential attraction? Cheeks hot enough to fry eggs on, she rolled over and buried her face in the cool pillows, trying not to listen to the distant sound of water running in the shower.

Saif was unaccustomed to sharing a bed and his bride’s every movement disturbed him, reminded him of her existence and pushed rudely past his wall of reserve. He couldn’t ignore her, he couldn’t forget the allure of those eyes with the velvety appeal of a flower, her pale slender thighs or her surprisingly full breasts. That failure to maintain his usual mental discipline only made him even angrier with her. As he lay awake, he came up with a plan as to how to keep her occupied and marvelled at its simplicity. He could send her out day after day...

Tati wakened in the early hours because she felt cold. As she flipped over, she discovered the reason: the duvet had been stolen. That fast, she remembered that she was sharing a bed and she dug two hands into the bedding and yanked her side of it back with violent determination. Saif sat up with a jerk and flashed on the light.

‘I was cold,’ Tati announced in a snappish tone of defence and she hunched under the section of duvet she had reclaimed, turning her back on him.

Saif thought with satisfaction of the bride-free day ahead of him and lay back down. Even hunched in the bedding, she contrived to look unbearably alluring. How could she make him want her so much? Were a few sexless weeks sufficient to make him desperate? He lay there thinking of the many sensual ways he could have raised his bride’s temperature without recourse to warmer bedding. Just considering those pursuits, indeed leafing through them with the intensity of an innate sensualist, left Saif as hard as a rock and it was dawn when he finally gave up trying to rest and rose to start work again.

The maid bringing her breakfast wakened Tati. She sat up while the curtains were being opened and registered that she was alone in the bed and expected to eat there. Pushing her hair off her brow, she accepted the tray, setting it down again once the maid had gone and scrambling into the bathroom to freshen up before she ate.

While she was enjoying her cup of tea and a buttery, flaky, delicious croissant, the Prince strode in. Saif emanated pure sophistication and sleek good looks in his perfectly tailored dark business suit. Involuntarily, her mouth ran dry, her tummy fluttering, responses she struggled to suppress. Expensive fabric outlined and enhanced his wide shoulders, his narrow hips and long, strong legs. He was very well built...as she had cause to know after ogling him while he undressed the night before, she reminded herself irritably. He was also infuriatingly calm and in control while she still felt as though her life had lurched off track without warning and fallen into a very large, very deep pothole.

As she sat there, Tati was extremely tense, her fingers locked tight to her china cup. It had occurred to her for the first time that she had overlooked one very obvious point of dissension between them. Saif had expected to marry her glamorous, sexy cousin and had instead ended up with her dull, plain and unsexy substitute. Of course, he was disappointed; of course, he was angry. No man would choose Tati in place of Ana, she reflected painfully. ‘I’ll sort out another bedroom for me to use tonight,’ she proffered stiffly, meaning it as an olive branch of sorts in the aftermath of the duvet tussle.

In the sunlight slanting through the windows, the brilliant green eyes locked to her were as jewelled and intense as polished emeralds. All of a sudden, a bizarre level of annoyance was gripping Saif. Evidently it was one thing for him to want to be rid of her, but another thing entirely when she appeared to return the compliment. ‘That will not be necessary,’ he began before he could question the far from sensible reaction steering him off course.

Tati tilted her chin. ‘It’s necessary,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t think either of us could have got much sleep last night.’

Saif discovered that he did not like being told what was necessary by her. It set his even white teeth on edge and brought out a self-destructive edge of pique he had not known until that instant that he possessed. ‘We will continue to share the same room.’

‘But why on earth would we?’ Tati exclaimed with incredulity.

‘You wanted this marriage... Live with it!’ Saif spelt out without apology or, indeed, further explanation. Even had he tried to do so, he could not have explained the gut instinct that was driving him because he did not know what had roused it or even what it meant.

‘You know...’ Tati began, her chest heaving with a sudden dragged-in breath, furious that he appeared to be taking out his disappointment that Ana wasn’t his bride on her...as though it were her fault. Did he think that? And shouldn’t she know by now what he was thinking? The lack of communication between them was only adding to their problems. ‘Sometimes, you make me want to hit you!’

‘I noticed the streak of violence in your family when your aunt attempted to slap you. Make no attempt to assault me. There is no reason in the world why we should descend to such a degrading level,’ the Prince asserted.

His mind was wandering again, questioning how she could utter such a threat while still looking so fresh and tempting. It was first thing in the morning as well and her hair was tousled and she had utilised not a scrap of cosmetic enhancement that he could see. Indeed, in harsh daylight her porcelain skin had an amazingly luminous quality that confounded his every expectation. She might be a substitute; she might be everything he despised in the wife he had not wanted in the first place, but one truth was inescapable: she was much more of a beauty than he had initially been prepared to acknowledge.

‘You don’t even have a sense of humour, do you?’ Tati gasped, staring accusingly at him.

‘I have made arrangements for your entertainment today,’ Saif informed her smoothly, refusing to react in any way to the charge of a lack of humour. Certainly, he found nothing about their current situation worthy of amusement.

‘How very kind of you,’ Tati muttered tautly, wondering what was coming next.

‘I have hired a team of personal shoppers to give you a tour of the best retail outlets in Paris,’ the Prince completed.

Send the little woman out shopping, Tati thought furiously. He simply wanted her out of his hair. And what did you do with a gold digger when you wanted peace? Throw money at her! And when you had more money than a gold mine, throwing money was the easy option. Tati clamped her teeth together hard on a sarcastic response. She recalled her Granny Milly telling her that you caught more flies with honey than vinegar. But sheer rage rippled through her in a heady wave that left her almost light-headed because she wasn’t some greedy tramp the Prince could tempt, control and ultimately debase with cold, hard cash!

‘How wonderful,’ Tati told him with a serene smile. ‘I shall feel as though all my Christmases have come at once. Do I have a budget?’

Saif interpreted the glitter in her big blue eyes as pure avarice. ‘No budget,’ he retorted with a flashing smile of reassurance.

He was giving her a free ticket to spend, spend, spend and she would be sure not to disappoint him. After all, if ever a guy deserved to have his worst expectations met, it was Saif, and she would enjoy playing the gold-digging bride, she told herself fiercely. If anything, he would learn to know better than to send her out shopping in one of the most expensive cities in the world without a budget.

She put on her jeans. Her brain could still not quite encompass the reality that the Prince was now her husband instead of her cousin’s. He didn’t even act as a husband would, did he? Well, like a very reluctant one, she decided ruefully. Possibly he hadn’t wanted to get married either.

My goodness, maybe that could even explain why he had been married off in the first place...was it possible that the Prince was gay? And that he had been married off to conceal the fact? But if that were true, why, given the opportunity, wouldn’t he have wanted to claim a bedroom of his own?

Tati frowned and conceded that Saif was a mass of confusing contradictions. He insisted they had to share a bedroom. For the sake of appearances? Did he want their marriage to look normal even if it wasn’t? Out of pride or out of necessity? If he was gay and if it was impossible for his father to accept him as such, their crazy marriage made sense. Of course, understanding didn’t make her like Saif any better for the way he had accused her of being a gold digger.

In fact, she hated him for that. Tati had spent her entire life being pushed around and put down by those who had more power than she had. Her own relatives had done that to her and, even before her mother had succumbed to dementia, Mariana had urged her daughter not to ‘rock the boat’ by defending her. Sadly, swallowing her pride and turning the other cheek had never improved matters in the slightest for Tati. In fact, that attitude, both at school and at home, had only made the bullying worse. And she wasn’t prepared to settle for that again, for being abused when she hadn’t done anything wrong, for being insulted simply because she was poor and had fewer options than other people. Her head came up, her chin lifting. No. No way was His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Alharia about to get away with doing her down as well!

Thirty minutes later, Tati stepped into a long cream limousine containing three very ornamental and chatty women. At first glance, she could see that she was a surprise, a disappointment, in that she wasn’t as decorative as they had expected and, as it was normal for her to want to please people and she fully intended to spend, spend, spend as directed by her bridegroom, she said, ‘I need a whole new wardrobe!’

And the smiles broke out, betraying the visible relief that she was likely to be a keen buyer. Presumably, her companions worked on commission and why shouldn’t they profit from her pressing need for clothes? Starting with nightwear and lingerie, she required everything. It was one thing to be proud and independent, another thing entirely to be the most poorly or inappropriately dressed person in the room. And she had no plans to start washing and drying her knickers in the nearest bathroom any time soon. In fact, she had to suppress a giggle as she attempted to picture the Prince’s reaction. She doubted that he had ever been exposed to that kind of common touch.

The first stop on their trip was the Avenue Montaigne, a tree-lined thoroughfare packed with high-end fashion outlets. Aside from the uneasy acknowledgement that her cousin, Ana, would have truly revelled in such an opportunity, Tati concentrated on the practicalities of buying as much as she possibly could without ever consulting a price tag lest it send her into shock. She strayed from one designer boutique to the next with her companions, having by then established her preferences, working hard to locate the casual and formal items she specified. They moved on to the Boulevard Saint Germain, where she found chic dresses aplenty and the shoes and bags to team with them. She eventually succumbed to the temptation of putting on a new outfit. They visited a trendy rooftop café, where she enjoyed the spectacular views of the city and drank champagne. Of lunch there was no sign and only a handful of nuts came her way.

Mid-afternoon, she was professionally made up and equipped with enough cosmetics to provide a makeover for half a city block. Perfume specially mixed for her came next and she loved the perfume as much as the professional jargon of the scent world, which talked of hints of jasmine and spice, redolent of hotter climes. She allowed herself to be talked into buying a new phone and a new watch as well.

The guilt of enjoying herself while being wildly extravagant soon engulfed her in a tide. She had spent, spent, spent to hit back at Saif for his condemnation of her when in truth he knew nothing about her and evidently didn’t care to find out anything about her either. But only on the drive back to the house, while her companions were cheerfully breaking out the champagne again to celebrate a successful day of shopping, did she ask herself how meeting every one of Saif’s worst expectations of her character could benefit her in any way. She refused the champagne because she wasn’t in the mood to rejoice.

What had she done?Why had she let her raging resentment at her position and his attitude take over and drive her? Why had she set out to prove that she was every bit as greedy as he had assumed she was?

A severe attack of the guilts gripped Tati as she watched a procession of staff march through the echoing hall to deliver the boxes and bags of her accumulated shopping upstairs to the bedroom. There they would proceed to unpack and organise her many, many purchases before storing them in the empty drawers and closets. She flopped down on an opulent couch in the drawing room, her face burning with mortification as she pictured the sweater she had bought in four different colours. The cringe factor was huge because in all her life she had never made an extravagant purchase before.

When would she contrive to wear a sweater in a desert kingdom? Presumably, she would wear the winter garments when she went home to visit her mother, she reasoned weakly. As for the fancy dresses, the high heels and all the elegant separates, where was she planning to wear them? Observation currently suggested that the Prince she had married would be in no hurry to take her anywhere, particularly now that she had shown what he would no doubt deem to be her true colours. And yet she had needed clothes, she thought wretchedly, for not only had she packed very little to fly out to Alharia for what she had assumed would be a very short stay, but she also had nothing much worthy of packing back home. The kind of casual wear she had worn to run her aunt and uncle’s household wouldn’t pass muster in her current role.

But neither of those facts excused her extravagance. She could have gone to a chain store to cover her requirements and only bought the necessities, she conceded unhappily. Instead she had shopped and spent recklessly in some of the most exclusive designer shops in the world.

Marcel brought her tea and tiny dainty macarons on a silver tray. She glanced up when she heard a step in the hall and saw Saif still in the doorway. He had shed his jacket and tie and his sculpted jawline was shadowed with stubble. His gorgeous green eyes clashed with hers and she felt hot all over as if she had been exposed to a flame. She went pink and shifted uneasily on her seat, her mouth running very dry.

Saif was trying very hard not to gape at the blonde beauty on the opulent sofa. Like a fine jewel once displayed in an unworthy setting, she had been reset and polished up to perfection since their last meeting. A dark off-the-shoulder top clung to her like a second skin, lovingly hugging pert full breasts and skin that looked incredibly perfect and smooth. A short skirt in some kind of toning print exposed slender knees and shapely calves leading down to small feet shod in strappy heels. Off the scale arousal inflamed Saif as fast as a shot of adrenalin in his veins. An uncomfortable throb set up an ache at his groin.

Tati gazed back at him, dismay and a leaping hormonal response that unnerved her darting through her tense body. She found it utterly impossible to look away from Saif. His raw desirability was that intense from his tousled black hair to the rich green deep-set eyes fringed with ebony lashes that magnetised her.

‘We have to talk,’ she told him awkwardly. ‘We have to sort stuff out.’

His half-brother, Angelino, the consummate playboy, had once told Saif that the minute a woman mentioned the need to talk, a sensible man should go straight into avoidance mode. Saif collided warily with huge blue-pansy-coloured eyes and parted his lips to shut her down.

‘Please,’ Tati added in near desperation. ‘Because right now, everything’s going crazy and wrong.’

‘Is it?’

He did not know why he questioned that statement when he should have agreed because the arousal afflicting him was both crazy and wrong. He had to remain detached and in control. Nothing good could come from giving in to his baser instincts; nothing good could come from him backing down when confronted with her feminine wiles. And those flowery eyes of hers were shimmering with what might have been tears, her full lower lip quivering. The sight stabbed him to the heart, and he strode forward, a forceful, instantaneous urge to fix whatever was wrong powering him.

‘Tatiana,’ he began, determined to continue the conversation in private where they could be neither overheard nor seen. It was second nature for Saif to consider appearances, raised as he had been in a palace swarming with staff where keeping secrets was an almost impossible challenge.

‘Nobody calls me that,’ she told him in a wobbly voice.

‘Except me. I will not call you Tatty like your relatives. It is an insult and I don’t know why you’ve allowed it.’ Without another word, Saif bent down and scooped her off the couch as if she were no heavier than a doll.

‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed in stark disconcertion.

‘Taking you upstairs where we may be assured of discretion,’ the Prince countered, striding out across the hall with complete cool as if carrying a woman around were an everyday occurrence for him.

‘Why on earth would we need discretion?’ Tati queried nervously. ‘You can put me down now.’

‘You were becoming distressed... Crying!’ Saif pointed out with a raw edge to his dark, deep drawl.

‘I wasn’t crying!’ Tati protested, highly offended by the charge. ‘I don’t cry. You could torture me and I wouldn’t cry! Just sometimes my eyes flood when I’m upset—it’s a nervous thing but I don’t start crying, for goodness’ sake! I’m not a little girl!’

‘No, definitely not a little girl except in height,’ Saif quipped, pushing through the bedroom door to set her down on the big bed. ‘Now tell me, why are you upset?’

‘Because I let you goad me into behaving badly today and I’m furious with myself and with you!’ Tati told him roundly. ‘I went out today and spent a fortune on clothing because—’

‘I urged you to...how is that bad behaviour?’ Saif prompted, his gaze locked to the beautiful eyes angrily fixed to him, his fingers rising to brush back the silky blond hair rippling across her cheekbone. The long strands fell over his wrist, pale wheaten gold against his skin.

That light touch that seemed perilously close to a caress made Tati shiver while her skin broke out in goosebumps of awareness. ‘You don’t understand...’

‘The only thing I understand right now is that I want you,’ Saif breathed in the driven tone of harsh sincerity, his beautiful jewelled eyes smouldering as she looked up at him.

‘Me? You want...me?’ Tati almost whispered in disbelief and wonderment.

‘Why wouldn’t I want you?’ Saif turned the question back on her in equal surprise. ‘You are a remarkable beauty.’

That was a heady compliment for a woman who had never been called beautiful in her entire life, who had always been in the shadows, either unnoticed or passed over or summarily dismissed as being unimportant. Tati stared at him in astonishment and she was so blasted grateful for that tribute that she stretched up and kissed his cheek in reward.

As her breasts momentarily pressed into his chest and the intoxicating scent of her engulfed him, the soft invitation of her lips on his skin burned through Saif’s self-discipline like a fiery brand and destroyed it. Without any hesitation, he closed her slight body into the circle of his arms and brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a hunger he couldn’t even attempt to control.

Oh, wow, Tati thought abstractedly, wasn’t expecting this, wasn’t expecting to feel this...