‘Marry you?’ she echoed, genuinely shocked.
Wry amusement vied with outrage in his black eyes. ‘You think that I would contemplate any alternative to marriage?’ he demanded. ‘That I should not want you as my wife? Assuming,’ he added arrogantly, ‘that you wish to be my wife? But if you do then you will be taking on more than most women do, and you must be certain in your heart that your destiny is beside me.’
Sienna licked her lips. She thought of the eagle which hung around her neck—powerful and fearless—the symbol of his country. This strange land with a tongue that was foreign to her. A place so very different from all that she had known—and yet it contained the only thing which was important to her.
Hashim.
Was she fearless enough in her love to grasp it tightly and never let it go? To make her vows to him and mean them? Never to leave his side? To promise to be true, no matter what life threw in their path? But wasn’t that what all marriages were supposed to mean?
‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, yes, and a million times yes.’ There was an odd kind of lump in her throat. ‘But will your people accept me?’
‘If they want me as their Ruler, then they will have to.’
‘Do you want to take that chance?’
‘I can’t not,’ he said simply. But he knew that he could never rule—nor would be fit to rule—if he allowed his people to prevent him from seizing his heart’s desire. Because any man who turned away from one of life’s greatest mysteries could never be a complete man.
‘But…’ Sienna bit her lip, not wanting to destroy the beautiful magic his words of love had created, but knowing that she must not hide behind her fears, must face them head-on—even if expressing them might put paid to all her future happiness.
‘But what, my beautiful Sienna?’ he prompted softly as he saw the hurt and the pain in her eyes.
‘The photos.’ It came out in a bitter sigh. ‘What if your people see that calendar—how on earth would they ever accept me then?’
‘They shall not see it,’ he breathed. ‘Not now and not ever.’
He sounded so certain that she stared up at him in bewilderment. ‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because I have bought up all the rights to those photos—they are now exclusively mine. No newspaper will ever publish them, the calendar shall never be reprinted, and the negatives have been destroyed. I have even made sure that they will never appear on the infernal internet,’ he finished grimly.
She opened her mouth to ask how, but then changed her mind. When you were as rich and as powerful and as determined as Hashim, then Sienna supposed anything was possible. Instead, she gave a rather wobbly smile, needing something more than words or reassurance now. Something which she had missed so unbearably. She was aching to have him touch her again. ‘Won’t you please kiss me?’ she whispered.
He felt a strange kick to his heart as he bent his face to hers. Was it a kind of weakness for a man to be so in thrall to one woman? ‘You wish your Sheikh to go before the cameras in a state of arousal?’ he murmured.
‘Oh, Hashim—I never thought of that! I’ve got so much to learn. Maybe we’d better not…’
He gave a low, rumbling laugh. ‘And you think that I have not been aroused since the moment you first walked in, my love? That I can look at you without wanting you? Then, yes, you still have much to learn! Now, come here.’
It was a brief kiss, fuelled by a sense of coming home rather than passion—though that was bubbling away beneath the surface as his lips brushed over hers.
‘Now,’ he said firmly, and, bending down, rang a small golden bell.
A stream of people began to appear. Men in flowing robes who bowed briefly to her and then deeper still to Hashim. And then they were walking along cool marble corridors towards the ‘small’ Throne Room—which seemed pretty vast to Sienna, but there again she hadn’t had much experience of them.
She had been in TV studios before, but never when everyone had been behaving with such genuine deference towards the interviewee.
Hashim settled her in a chair at the back of the room and she watched while the camera lights lit up his face like the brightest sunshine. And then the red light flashed and the cameras began to roll, and suddenly he was speaking live to the nation.
She watched on the screen, so that she could read the English subtitles, and much of it she missed, because her heart was beating so fast with nerves and excitement and protectiveness.
But key phrases would stay in her mind and her heart for ever.
‘I have been charged with the running of our country.’ His face grew very serious at this point. ‘An awesome responsibility which I have always embraced and cherished. But your Ruler must be allowed to fulfil his own personal destiny in order to best discharge his duties to his homeland.’