PROLOGUE
Zayn clicked on Julia’s name impatiently, his raven black hair glistening in the early evening sunlight. The flight from America to his home country of Naman was long, and kept him out of the loop for far longer than he liked. Besides that, the latest company he was in the process of acquiring had turned out to have a surprisingly diverse asset list, and it had taken his full concentration to decipher the complex information.
But now, in the comfort of his limousine, being luxuriously conveyed to his city palace, he waited for the communication from Julia to open. He had admitted to no one, least of all himself, how he lived and breathed for her emails.
It was ridiculous. In the six months since meeting her, he’d reached a state of almost perpetual distraction. He thought of little but her, and every nerve ending was taught, waiting for her scheduled trip to his country.
It was unheard of for Zayn to be in a monogamous relationship; even less so for him to wait to bed a woman he found desirable. But there was an indefinable quality about Julia Cosgrove-Howard that he found thoroughly intoxicating. And like a fine wine, he was happy to leave her to develop and mature before enjoying her fully.
With the same seductive smile that always crossed his face when he heard from her, he looked down at his phone.
And froze.
Unmistakably, it was Julia, languidly sprawled across the bed in the kind of lingerie he had fantasised about her wearing. Sheer and lacy, it was the stuff of dreams. But she wasn’t alone. Curled around her possessively was a man. Zayn’s face was ashen as he forced himself to scroll the whole way down the email. There was no text, just picture after picture. Ten in total, of the woman he had actually thought about marrying, being made love to by another man.
Zayn wasn’t sure why she’d sent it, and he wasn’t going to demean himself by asking.
He’d been an idiot to think he actually cared for her. Zayn was a lone-wolf. Always had been, always would be. No. He’d been wrong about his feelings. How could he have ever believed he cared? But one day, he’d make her pay for cheating on him. The plan came to him fully formed, and ready to execute. It would take time, but he knew Julia’s greatest weakness, and eventually, he would be able to use it, or rather him, against her.
He turned his focus back to the report he’d been studying on the flight over. Yes, every company had assets. It was just a matter of working out how to acquire them. The expression of furious intent that crossed his face would have chilled an onlooker to the bone.
No one made a fool of Zayn Al-melara and got away with it. No one.
CHAPTER ONE
Four years later.
Julia wound her window down and breathed in the fresh, floral scented air of the countryside. On one side of her silver Porsche, there were fields and fields of rolling green, delineated with low, stone fences. In the far distance, she could make out a small herd of sheep, grazing contentedly in the pale morning sun.
To her left, a bramble hedge ran for miles and miles. She knew they were blackberries, and that at this time of year, they would taste particularly sweet and warm, because her childhood summers had been spent clambering through the thicket and eating so many of the juicy little fruits that she frequently made herself ill. With a small, nostalgic smile, she gave into temptation and swerved her car onto the stone verge.
"Good morning," she grinned over at a little wren balancing precariously on the edge of the thicket. "I won't be long."
With fingers that had performed this task countless times in the past, she plucked berry after berry from the hedge, and stored them in a takeaway coffee cup she'd had since leaving London earlier that morning.
"See, I told you I'd be quick," she called to the bird before sliding back into her seat and pulling the car back out onto the deserted country lane.
She couldn't resist the berries, not even for a minute. As she pointed the car left, towards the imposingly grand entrance of Howard Manor, she reached across and dug a clutch of the night-sky colored orbs from the cup and popped them in her mouth.
They were so good, just as she'd remembered, that she made a moaning sound into the silent car. It was one of those rare, perfect summer days. The kind Keats wrote about, and Thomas Moore dreamed of. All blue sky and shining sun; and here in the country, everywhere she looked, things were green and glistening. And to punctuate it all, the sound of chirping birds seemed to serenade her car as she moved along the sweeping drive and approached the enormous building she'd once called 'home'.
Despite having spent the better part of nineteen years living in this grand old dame of a building, she still paused for a moment to stare up at it from beneath her dust-covered windshield. The façade had been built sometime in the early eighteenth century; erected as the country seat for her ancestors, who had been important at the royal courts since Elizabethan times. Though somewhere in the last century, the Cosgrove-Howards had moved out of politics and high-profile living, something Julia was excessively grateful for. Her father had sought a life of business, and he'd excelled at it. Julia had every intention of following in his footsteps. The thought of living in any kind of spotlight scared the jeepers out of her. She much preferred the privacy and anonymity of a quiet life.
She scooped her cup of berries from the front passenger seat and, pausing only to pop an extra few into her mouth, crossed the gravel forecourt. The day was young, and after a visit with her father, she was heading to Glastonbury. It would be her last festival for a while, she thought wistfully. University was finished now, and she had a career to consider. A career she was excited to begin. She'd worked her butt off at university for the simple reason that she wanted to make her own mark on the world. Having been born to a family of wealth and privilege was not going to preclude her from following her own dreams.
Her denim cut-offs were her fe
stival favorites. They were soft with wear, and came to just below her buttocks, while her Hunter wellies came almost to her knees. On someone with a little more height, they might have fit better, but Julia was not particularly leggy. She slid a manicured, berry stained finger beneath the strap of her singlet top and moved it back into position, from where it had slid down her shoulder..
"Dad?" She called from the front door. "Hey, Daddy? Where are you?"
She kicked the boots off and stood them up behind the door, before padding bare foot down the hallway in search of her father. This early on a sunny day, he should have been in the conservatory, reading every word of The Guardian, and guffawing with gusto at the liberal pieces he didn’t approve of. Only he wasn't. His coffee cup wasn't even in its usual spot, on the glass topped table.
"Dad?" Fear gripped at her heart sooner than it ought; but then, it had only been two years since his heart attack. She'd never forgotten that feeling of despair and worry, when the doctor had told her that he was in an induced coma. After all, he was her only family, and she was his. Since her mother had died bringing her into the world, it had been Julia and Colin, an unstoppable, co-dependent team.
"He has gone to town."
Julia froze at the bottom of the stairs, her whole body stiff as the words penetrated her mind. It was not the words, though, but the person who had spoken them. It had been years - four, she realized with a start - since they'd spoken, but she would know Zayn's voice anywhere. She dug her long nails into her palms until she thought she might draw blood, and slowly spun around.
The outfit she'd chosen that morning was absolutely perfect for stomping the fields of Glastonbury. But under the intensive scrutiny of Sheikh Zayn Al-melara, she felt like she might as well have been naked. Slowly, his dark gaze drifted over her. He started with her hair, longer than she'd worn it when they dated; it now fell half-way down her back, in dark, silky waves. She'd filled out since then too- after all, she'd only been nineteen. Now, at twenty three, she was curvy and womanly; a fact he obviously appreciated, as his insolent gaze paused on the swell of her cleavage revealed by the lemon-yellow singlet top. The shorts were perfectly fine, but the way his eyes lingered on the apex of her thighs and the tanned skin of her legs made Julia's cheeks glows.
"Are you quite done?" She queried haughtily, injecting enough ice into her voice to freeze a normal man. But beneath the cool attitude was a torrent of anxiety that threatened to burst any moment.
"When I am done, you will know it," he responded through gritted teeth, without switching his focus in the slightest. Slowly, so slowly she suspected he was trying to infuriate her, he dragged his gaze back up the length of her body, pausing again for an exaggerated inspection of her breasts, which were now heaving with her rapidly drawn breaths.
She forced herself to sound calm and crossed her arms across her chest. It was the wrong thing to do as it emphasised her narrow waist. "I see you're still as arrogant as ever."
His lips curled in a faint smile. "More so, if anything."
She lifted a perfectly sculptured brow in derision. "I find that hard to believe."
"You'll see."
A shiver of apprehension ran the length of her spine at his words, which seemed to foreshadow… something. Something ominous. She chose to ignore it. "Why has dad gone to town?"
"He had to take some contracts to his lawyer. He was impatient to file them immediately."
She frowned in consternation. "I told him a week ago that I would be visiting." Without thinking, she fished another blackberry from the cup and lifted it to her lips. Slowly, she pushed it into her mouth, wondering what on earth could have been so urgent that her dad would miss out on a chance to have lunch with her.
"It was an unexpected matter, Julia."
Her frown deepened. "Why do you always make me feel like I'm acting like a spoiled brat?"