‘Back home, only a micro miniskirt and a very revealing top would get me that reaction from a man,’ she whispered.
Rafiq frowned. ‘Do you dress like that when you go out?’
‘No, never been a fan of putting it all out there,’ she told him as he grasped her hand in his and led her down the corridor. The first thing she noticed was all the guards lining that corridor and then they were walking into a big sunlit room and a little portly man with a huge smile was coming towards her with an extended hand of welcome. The door closed behind them. Rafiq translated his uncle’s warm greetings because the older man didn’t speak much English, but it didn’t matter because his smile and his twinkling dark eyes were wonderfully friendly and relaxed. Prince Jalil did not stand on ceremony.
A robed elderly man approached them and he spoke words to them both before directing them over to a table where Izzy and Rafiq were instructed to sign the marriage contract. Indeed, the wedding ceremony happened so fast and was completed so quickly that she almost asked Rafiq if that was really all there was to it. Happily, however, she was on her very best behaviour in such exalted company and engaged instead in replying to the Regent’s polite questions about her family while Rafiq remained at her side, deftly translating.
‘What now?’ she murmured as Rafiq accompanied her back down the corridor.
‘Now we escape the goldfish bowl of palace life,’ Rafiq told her with resolve, guiding her downstairs and across an unbearably hot open space towards a helicopter.
‘To go where?’ she exclaimed. ‘I haven’t even packed!’
‘You have nothing to pack. You brought hardly any clothes with you!’ Rafiq pointed out. ‘I have taken care of that problem.’
‘Have you indeed? But—’ Her voice broke off as he scooped her up in his arms to stow her in the helicopter and the rotor blades began spinning, making further conversation impossible.
Seated in the back of the helicopter, Izzy surveyed Rafiq in frustration. He hadn’t told her where they were heading. He had implied that he had bought her clothes to wear. He had no right to do that, no right to make decisions without her input. They might be married but she was still struggling to accept the idea that bathroom guy, the father of the twins she carried, could now be her husband. And apparently, she had landed herself a bossy, I-know-best style of husband even if it was only for the next seven months or so...
She supposed he planned to visit their twins when he was in London on business and that they would both be very polite and civilised following the divorce. After all, what else but a divorce could he be planning?
Thirty minutes later, she was peering out of the window beside her when she saw a huge building loom up ahead of them and she blinked in astonishment because initially she thought she was hallucinating. They had flown over endless miles of desert, only occasional rock formations and black tent encampments interrupting the emptiness, and then all of a sudden she saw the giant construction looming ahead. Cream and gold in colour, it had a great domed entrance and a forest of tall turreted walls. It resembled a fantasy cartoon castle yet the lines of it were modern, but it was still an utterly out-of-place property to find in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.
‘Where are we?’ she questioned as the craft dropped down onto a helipad on a flat roof.
‘Alihreza,’ Rafiq informed her, his exotic bone structure taut, his intonation indicating some strong emotion but not one she could label. ‘It has been mine since my father’s death but I don’t use it.’
‘Then why now?’ she prompted as he assisted her from the craft to urge her through the blinding heat of exposure towards the building.
‘Being here frees us from the goldfish bowl of palace life and gives us privacy. You can have your own room. I can go back to work and you can sun yourself by the pool and if we only meet once a day for dinner, nobody will even notice,’ Rafiq completed with audible satisfaction.
Well, with her classic redhead’s skin, quick to burn, she was unlikely to be sunning herself beside any pool, Izzy conceded, dazed by the piercing sense of hurt that assailed her in the wake of that little speech. He had brought them to this out-of-the-way spot so that he could reclaim his freedom and ignore her existence.
Why on earthshouldthat make her feel hurt and rejected?
Hadn’t they been honest with each other about their feelings? Rafiq was no keener on being married than she was, and it was natural that he would want to return to his normal way of life. He didn’t want to be one half of a couple and feel forced to share a bed. He didn’t want the annoyance of having to be seen to entertain a woman people believed was his wife.
It might hurt her pride, but she needed to come swiftly to terms with the reality that she was only a wife on a legal document and not in any other meaningful way.
Rafiq didn’t owe her anything more and he wasn’t pretending that he did either. That was honest, fair, she told herself firmly. They had had a one-night stand, not a relationship. A one-night stand and an accidental conception did not make a relationship.
An assembly of staff greeted them with a near reverential respect, which made her feel more of a fake than ever because she wasn’t truly Crown Princess and future Queen—she was only a stand-in, a temporary aberration, Rafiq’s contraceptive mishap...or miracle, depending on one’s viewpoint, she adjusted ruefully.
A hail of polite introductions and smiles welcomed them to Alihreza before they were ushered into a lift that was as over-the-top opulent in mirrored design as the gilded marble corridors and staircases she had glimpsed.
‘This place is spectacular,’ Izzy murmured, staring in wonder at the tiers and arcaded terraces of carved stone walling that surrounded the huge central courtyard that sported a swimming pool, luxury seating areas and glorious vegetation.
‘It is a monument to excess and corruption,’ Rafiq contradicted between compressed lips as he strode through grand double doors into a bedroom.
Thoroughly taken aback by that lofty judgemental statement, Izzy directed a bewildered glance at him.
Rafiq was poised by the window, his bronzed face in sunlight as he removed the ceremonial turban, running long brown fingers through his black luxuriant hair, that hair thatfeltlike silk between her fingers. He was so beautiful at that moment that he made it hard for her to breathe, and something intimate tightened and clenched at her feminine core to send colour flying up into her cheeks.
Unnerved, Izzy made a show of examining her surroundings. It was a superb bedroom, awash with a jaw-dropping amount of luxury. In the simmering silence she ran a fingertip over the gilded trim on a nightstand and along the smooth crease of a delicate embroidered silk curtain.
‘Your room is next door,’ Rafiq informed her tautly, striding across the room to pull open the connecting door in invitation because the more he was exposed to her, the more he wanted her, which meant that keeping his distance made better sense. And he wasalwayssensible, he reminded himself with resolve.
He couldn’t have her, not now when their marriage was only supposed to be an empty charade, and it was a retrograde step to appreciate what he could not have. He saw that lush pink mouth and he craved it. She was like a fire in his blood, heating him up every time she came too close yet blissfully unaware of the effect she had on him. She had gazed back at him incredulously when he told her she looked amazing in that dress, utterly unable to see how the tight bodice cupped her full breasts and how the drape of the fabric outlined the curve of her generous hips, equally incapable of comprehending how a man who had already seen her naked could picture her shapely legs...spread.