The Sultan's Choice (2 page)

And every year—not that she needed to be reminded—he hosted the biggest, most lavish birthday party and raised an obscene amount of money for charity. For years after that humiliating incident at his party, she’d been scornful of the excess he presided over. But she’d seen the evidence of how much bona fide charity work he did when time after time he was lauded for his fundraising. And how did she know all this? Hours spent researching him on the internet last night, much to her shame.

He stopped pacing and quirked an ebony brow. ‘Are you going to insist on refusing my offer of marriage and force me to look elsewhere for a wife?’

Samia heard the unimstakable incredulity in his voice. Patently he hadn’t expected this to be hard. It gave her some much needed confidence back to see this chink in his arrogant armour.

‘What would happen if I said no?’

He put his hands on narrow hips, and Samia’s gaze couldn’t help but drop for a moment to where his shirt was stretched across taut abdominal muscles. She could see the dark shadowing of a line of hair through the silk and her mouth dried. The physiciality of her reaction to him stunned her. No man had had this kind of effect on her before. It was as if she’d been asleep all her life and was gradually coming
to her senses here and now, in this room. It was most disconcerting.

‘What would
happen,’
he bit out, ‘is that the agreement between your brother and I would be in serious jeopardy. I would have to look to your next sister and assess her suitability.’

Samia blanched and her gaze snapped back up to Sadiq’s. ‘But Sara is only twenty-two.’ And she jumped at her own shadow, but Samia didn’t say that. Immediately all her protective older sister hackles rose. ‘She’s entirely unsuitable for you.’

Sadiq’s gaze was glacial now. ‘Which would seem to be a running trend in your family, according to you. Nevertheless, she would be considered. I would also be under no obligation to go through with my offer to help the Emir mine your vast oil fields. He would be forced to look for expertise from abroad, and that would bring with it a whole host of political challenges that I don’t think Burquat can afford at this moment in time.’

Samia tried to ignore the vision he was painting and smile cynically. But her mouth tingled betrayingly when his gaze dropped there for an incendiary moment. She fought to retain her focus. ‘And you’re saying that your part in this is entirely altruistic? Please don’t insult my intelligence, no one does anything for nothing in return.’

He inclined his head again, a different kind of gleam in his eyes now. ‘Of course not. In return I get a very suitable wife—you, or your sister, which is entirely up to you. A valuable alliance with a neighbouring kingdom and a slice of the oil profits which I will funnel into a trust fund for our children.’

Our children.
Samia ignored the curious swooping sensation in the pit of her belly when he said those words. ‘Burquat needs an alliance with one of its Arabian
neighbours, Samia. You know that as well as I do. On the brink of revealing to the world the veritable gold mine it harbours, it’s in an acutely vulnerable position. Marriage to me will ensure my support. We will be family. You and your brother will be assured of my protection. We’re also poised to sign a historic peace treaty. Needless to say our marriage would provide an even stronger assurance of peace between us.’

Every word he spoke was a death knell to Samia, and every word had already been spoken by her brother. She couldn’t tell if the Sultan was bluffing about her sister or not, and didn’t really want to test him. She also didn’t want to investigate the dart of hurt that she should be so easily interchangeable with her sister. She didn’t want him to choose her and she didn’t want him to choose anyone else. Pathetic.

She could feel her life as she knew it slipping out of her grasp, but an inner voice mocked her. What kind of a life did she have anyway? Burying herself away in the library and quashing her naturally gregarious spirit after years of bullying by her stepmother wasn’t something she could justify any more. Her stepmother was gone.

Even so, the prospect of moving out of that safe environment was still terrifying. Desperation tinged her voice. ‘What makes you believe that I’ll be a good wife? The right wife for you?’

The Sultan rocked back on his heels and put his hands in the pockets of his trousers. He was so tall and dark and forbidding in that moment.

‘You are intelligent and have not lived your life in the public eye, like most of your peers. I think you are serious, and that you care about things. I read the article you wrote in the
Archivist
last month and it was brilliant.’

Samia felt humiliated more than pleased at his obvious research. An article in the
Archivist
only cemented how deeply

boring
she was. She did not need to be reminded of the disparity between her and the man in front of her. He was a playboy! The thought of the exposure she would face within a marriage to him made her feel nauseous. Because with exposure came humiliation.

Sadiq went on as remorselessly as the tide washing in. ‘But apart from all of that you are a princess from one of the oldest established royal families in Arabia and you were born to be a queen. God forbid, but if something happened to your brother tomorrow you would be next in line for your throne. If we were married then you would not have to shoulder that burden alone, and I would make sure that Burquat retained its emirate status.’

Samia felt herself pale. She knew she was next in line to the throne of Burquat, but had never really contemplated the reality of what that meant. Kaden seemed so invincible that she’d never had to. But Sultan Sadiq was right; she was in a very delicate position. She might know the theory of ruling a country, but the reality was a different prospect altogether. And she knew that not many other potential husbands would guarantee that Burquat retained its autonomy. Al-Omar was huge and thriving, and the fact that the Sultan saw no need to bolster his own power through annexing a smaller country made Samia feel vulnerable—she hadn’t expected this.

Afraid that he would see something of the turmoil she felt, she turned to face a window which looked out over manicured lawns—a serene and typically English tableau which would normally be soothing.

She felt short of breath and seriously overwhelmed. There was a point that came in everyone’s life when a person was called to make the starkest of choices, and she was facing hers right now. Not that she really had a choice. That was becoming clearer and clearer.

But, desperate to cling on to some tiny measure of illusion,
Samia turned around again and bit her lip before saying to the Sultan, ‘This is a lot to take in. Yesterday I was facing only the prospect of returning to Burquat to help oversee the refurbishment of our national library, and now … I’m being asked to become Queen of Al-Omar.’ She met his blue gaze. ‘I don’t even know you.’

A flash of irritation crossed the Sultan’s face, shadowing those amazing eyes, and inwardly Samia flinched at this evidence of his dispassionate and clinical approach to something so momentous.

‘We have our lifetimes to get to know one another. What won’t wait, however, is the fact that I need to marry and have heirs. I have no doubt in my mind, Princess Samia, that you are the one who was born to take that position.’

Samia tried not to look as affected by his words as she felt. He was only saying it like that because he’d decided she’d make him a good wife and wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer. At another time she might almost have smiled. He reminded her so much of her autocratic brother.

She knew for a fact that there were many women who would gladly trample over her to hear him speak those words to them. And she wished right now that one of them was standing there instead of her—even though her belly did a curious little flip when she thought of it.

‘I just …’ She stopped ineffectually. ‘I need some time to think about this.’

Sadiq’s face tightened ominously, and Samia had the feeling that she’d pushed him too far. With that came a sense of panic that … what? He’d choose her sister instead? That he’d send her away and tell her to have a nice life? And why was that making her feel panicky when it was exactly what she wanted?

But an urbane mask closed off any expression on that hard-jawed face, and after an interminable moment he said
softly, ‘Very well. I will give you twenty-four hours. This time tomorrow evening I expect you to be back here in this room to tell me what you have decided.’

Sadiq stood at the window of his private sitting room, three floors above the office where he’d just met Princess Samia. He looked out over the city of London bathed in dusky light. The scent of late-summer blossoms was heavy in the air. He suddenly missed the intense heat of his home—the sense of peace that he got only when he knew that the vast expanse of Al-Omari desert was within walking distance.

Irritation snaked through him at the realisation that due to Samia’s patent reluctance he’d be forced to spend longer in Europe than he wanted to. He could see his discreet security men in front of his house—necessary trappings for a head of state—but he was oblivious to all that. For once he wasn’t consumed with thoughts of politics, or the economy, or women.

He frowned. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. One woman
was
consuming his thoughts, and for the first time in his life it wasn’t accompanied with the enticing sense of expectation at the prospect of bedding her. And then he had to concede that it had been a long time since pure expectation had precipitated
any
liaison with a lover—it was more likely to be expectation mixed with a lot of cynicism.

Sadiq’s frown became deeper, grooving lines into his smooth forehead. Since when had he acknowledged the fact that for him bedding women was accompanied by a feeling of ennui and ever deepening cynicism? He suspected uncomfortably that it was long before he’d witnessed his close friends’ weddings in Merkazad.

Seeing his friends wearing their hearts on their sleeves had induced a feeling of panic and had pushed a button—a button that had been deeply buried and packed under years
of cynical block building and ice. Perhaps that was what had precipitated his decision to marry? This impulse to protect himself at all costs—a desire to negate what he’d seen at Nadim and Salman’s weddings. The need to prove that he wasn’t ever going to succumb to that awful uncontrollable emotion again.

Even now he could remember that day, and the excoriating humiliation of baring his heart and soul to a woman who had all but laughed in his face.

In choosing to marry someone like Princess Samia he would be safe for ever from such mortifying episodes, because he was in no danger of falling in love with her. He was also safe from falling in lust. She was too pale, too shapeless. His stomach clenched … Funnily enough, though, he couldn’t get those enigmatic aquamarine eyes out of his head. And he had to concede she wasn’t unpretty. But she certainly wasn’t beautiful. He’d always accepted that the wife he picked would fulfil a role—an important one. As such, to find her attractive would be a bonus and a luxury. His responsibility to his country was greater than such frivolous concerns.

Altogether, she wasn’t as unappealing as he might have feared initially. He grimaced. He’d had his fair share of the world’s beauties. It was time to convert his lust into building up a country unrivalled in its wealth and economic stability. He needed focus for that, and a wife like Samia would provide that focus. He wouldn’t be distracted by her charms, and clearly she was not the coquettish type, so she wouldn’t waste time trying to charm him.

Sadiq’s frown finally cleared from his face and he turned his attention to the rolling business news channel on the muted television screen in the background. Despite the Princess’s reluctance he had no doubt that she would return the next day and give him the answer he expected. The alternative was simply inconceivable.

24 hours later

‘I’
M
not going to marry you.’

Sadiq’s mouth was open and he was already smiling urbanely in anticipation of the Princess’s acquiescence—already thinking ahead to buying her a trousseau and getting her out of those unflattering suits. Her bottom had barely touched the seat of the chair opposite him. He frowned. Surely she couldn’t have just said—

‘I said I don’t want to marry you.’

Her voice was low and husky, but firm, and it tugged somewhere deep inside him again. Sadiq’s mouth closed. She sat before him like a prim nun, hair pulled back and dressed in a similarly boxy suit to the one she’d worn yesterday. This one was just a slightly darker hue of blue. Not a scrap of make-up enhanced those pale features or those aquamarine eyes. Disconcertingly, at that moment he noticed a splash of freckles across her delicately patrician nose.

Freckles. Since when had he noticed freckles on anyone? Any woman of his acquaintance would view freckles with the same distaste as acne. Something nebulous unfurled within Sadiq, and he sat back and realised that it was a surprise—because it was so long since anyone had said no to him. Or been so reluctant to impress him. Princess Samia’s
chin lifted minutely, and for a second Sadiq could see her innately regal hauteur. She might be the most unprepossessing princess he’d ever met, but she was still royalty and she couldn’t hide it.

The thin line of her mouth drew his focus then, and bizarrely he found himself wondering how full and soft those lips would be when relaxed … or kissed. Would they be pink and pouting, begging for another kiss?

Samia could see the conflict on the Sultan’s face, the clear disbelief. That was why she’d repeated herself. It had been as much to check she hadn’t been dreaming. She was trembling all over like a leaf. She’d tossed and turned all night and had kept coming back to the stark realisation that she really did not have a choice.

But when faced with Sadiq again, and the clear expectation on his face that she was there to say yes, she had felt some rebellious part of her rise up. This was her only chance of escaping this union. She crushed the lancing feeling of guilt. She couldn’t worry now about the fallout or she’d never go through with it. The thought of marrying this man was just so downright threatening that she had to do something—no matter how selfish it felt.

Sadiq’s voice rumbled over her, causing her pulse to jump. ‘There’s a difference between
not
marrying me, and not
wanting
to marry me. One implies that there is no room for discussion, and the other implies that there is. So which is it, Samia?’

Samia tried to avoid that searing gaze. He was sitting forward, elbows on his desk, fingers steepled together. The way he said her name made her feel hot. She was already unravelling at the seams because she was facing this man again, even though the heavy oak desk separated them. Even the threat to her sister wasn’t enough right now to make her reconsider. She’d cross that bridge if it came to it.

He hadn’t kept her waiting today. He’d been waiting for her. Standing at his window like a tall, dark and gorgeous spectre. And now he was utterly indolent—as if they might be discussing the weather. He wore a shirt and no tie. The top button was undone, revealing the bronzed column of his throat. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, showing off muscled forearms more suited to an athlete than a head of state. Samia felt unbearably restless all of a sudden.

Abruptly she stood up, wanting to put space between them. She couldn’t seem to sit still around this man, and she couldn’t concentrate while he was looking at her like that—as if she were under a microscope. So clinically.

She went and stood behind the chair, breathing erratically. ‘Discussion …’ she finally got out. ‘Defintely the discussion one.’

Great. Now she couldn’t string a sentence together—and what was she doing, encouraging a discussion with one of the world’s greatest debaters? She paced away from the chair, feeling constricted in her suit. She’d never been as self-conscious about what she wore as she had been in the last thirty-six hours. Samia had always been supremely aware of her own allure, or more accurately the lack of it, and was very comfortable with a uniform of plain clothes to help her fade into the background. Or at least she had been till now.

She avoided his eye. ‘Look, I know you need a wife, and on paper I might look like the perfect candidate—’

Sadiq cut in with a low voice. ‘You
are
the perfect candidate.’ He stifled intense irritation. She was the
only
candidate. After carefully vetting potentially suitable brides from his world and dismissing them, she was the only one he’d kept coming back to. And once he’d set his mind on something he would not rest until he had full compliance. Failure was not an option.

Samia turned back to face him, and quailed slightly under
the glowering look he was sending her. ‘But I’m not! You’ll see.’ She searched frantically for something to say. ‘I don’t go out!’

‘A perfectly commendable quality. Despite what you’ve been led to believe, I’m not actually the most social of animals.’

Samia forced her mind away from that nugget of information. This man and a quiet evening in by the fire just did
not
compute. ‘You find it commendable that I don’t have a life? That’s not something to applaud—it’s something to avoid. How can I be your queen when the last party I was at was probably yours? You must have parties every week—you move in those circles. I wouldn’t know what to do … or say.’

Samia’s tirade faltered, because the Sultan had moved and was now sitting on the edge of the desk, one hip hitched up. She swallowed and wished he hadn’t moved. Heat was rising, and dimly she wondered if he had any heating on.

‘Of course you’d know what to do and say. You’ve been brought up to know
exactly
what to do and say. And if you’re out of practice you’ll learn again quickly enough.’

Samia choked back her furious denial. She ran a hand through her hair impatiently, which was something she did when she was agitated. She forgot that it was tied back and felt it come loose but had to ignore it.

She faced him fully. ‘You really don’t want me for your wife. I don’t like parties. I get tongue-tied when I’m faced with more than three people, I’m not sophisticated and polished.’
Like all your other women.
Samia just about managed not to let those words slip out.

Sadiq was watching the woman in front of him with growing fascination. She
wasn’t
sophisticated and polished—and he suddenly relished that fact for its sheer uniqueness. She was literally coming apart in front of him, revealing someone very different from the woman she was describing. He
agreed with absolutely everything she was saying—apart from the bit about her not being a suitable wife.

‘And yet,’ he drawled, ‘you’ve been educated most of your life in a royal court, and your whole existence has held within it the potential for this moment. How can you say you’re not ready for this?’

Samia could feel the unfashionably heavy length of her hair starting to unravel down her back. Her inner thermostat was about to explode. With the utmost reluctance she opened her jacket, afraid that if she didn’t she’d melt in a puddle or faint.

Before she could stop him Sadiq was reaching out and plucking the coat from her body as easily as if she were a child, placing it on the chair she’d vacated. Too stunned to be chagrined, Samia continued, ‘You need someone who is used to sophisticated social gatherings. I’ve been in libraries for as long as I can remember.’

The ancient library in the royal Burquat castle had always been her refuge from the constant taunting of her stepmother, Alesha. She started to pace again, disturbed by Sadiq’s innate cool.

‘You need someone who can stand up to you.’ She stopped and stood a few feet away, facing him. She
had
to make him see. ‘I had a chronic stutter until I was twelve. I’m pathologically shy. I’m so shy that I went to cognitive behavioural therapy when I was a teenager to try and counteract it.’ Which had precipitated another steady stream of taunts and insults from her stepmother, telling her that she would amount to nothing and never become a queen when she couldn’t even manage to hold a conversation without blushing or stuttering.

Sadiq had stood up and come closer to Samia while she’d been talking. He was frowning down at her now, arms folded across that impressive chest. ‘You don’t have a stutter any
more, and I’d wager that your therapist, if he or she was any good, said that you were just going through a phase that any teenager might go through. And plenty of children suffer from stuttering. It’s usually related back to some minor incident in their childhood.’

Samia blinked. She felt as if he could see inside her head to one of her first memories, when she had been trying to get her new stepmother’s attention and was stuttering in her anxiety to be heard. She would bet that
he’d
never gone through anything like that. But he’d repeated more or less exactly what her therapist had said. It was so unexpected to hear this from him of all people that any more words dried in her throat as he started to move around her.

Sadiq was growing more intrigued by the second. Her hair had come completely undone by now, and it lay in a wavy coil down her back. His fingers itched to reach out and loosen it. It looked silky and fragrant … a little wild. It was at such odds with that uptight exterior.

So close to her like this, for the first time he noticed the disparity in their heights. She was a lot smaller than the women he was used to, and he felt a surprising surge of something almost
protective
within him. With the jacket gone he could see that she was slight and delicate, yet he sensed a strength about her—an innate athleticism. He could see the whiteness of her bra strap through her shirt, and how her shirt was tucked into the trousers, drawing his eye to a slim waist and the gentle flare of her hips. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a prospective lover so demurely dressed, and that thought caught him up short. She was to be his
wife.
Lovemaking would be purely functional. If he got any enjoyment out of it, it would be a bonus.

He came to stand in front of her and could see where she’d opened the top button of her shirt, revealing the slender length of her neck right down to the hollow at the base
of her throat. It looked pink and slightly dewed with moisture. She must be hot. He had the most bizarre urge to push her shirt aside and press a finger there. His eyes dropped again, and he could see very plainly the twin thrusts of her breasts, rising and falling with her breath and fuller than he had first imagined.

To his utter shock, the unmistakable and familiar spark of desire lit within him. With more difficulty than he would have liked, he brought his gaze back up to hers and felt a punch to his gut at the way those aquamarine depths suddenly looked as dark blue as the Arabian sea on a stormy day. Tendrils of hair were curling softly around her face, and she looked softer, infinitely more feminine. In fact in that moment she looked almost … beautiful. Sadiq reeled at this completely unexpected development.

Samia was helpless under Sadiq’s assessing gaze. No man had ever looked at her so explicitly, his gaze lingering on her breasts like that. And yet she wasn’t insulted or shocked. A languorous heat was snaking through her veins. She was caught in a bubble. A bubble of heat and sensation. As soon as he had walked behind her she’d had to undo her top button because she couldn’t breathe—she’d felt so constricted. And now he was looking at her as though … as though—

‘You say I need someone to stand up to me and that’s what you’ve been doing since yesterday.’ His beautifully sculpted mouth firmed. ‘It’s a long time since anyone has refused my wishes. I encounter people every day who are overawed and inhibited by what they perceive me to be and yet I don’t get that from you.’ Before Samia could articulate anything, he continued. ‘Very few people would feel they had the authority to do that, but we’re the same, Princess Samia, you and I.’

Samia nearly blanched at that. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that she and this man were
not
the same.
Not in a million years. Polar opposites. ‘We’re not the same,’ she got out painfully. ‘Really, we’re not.’

He ignored her. ‘I know you’ve got a closely knit and loyal group of friends.’

Without a hint of self-pity and vaguely surprised that he knew this, she said, ‘That says more about who I am and the background I come from than anything else.’ Remembering one painful episode in college, she went on, ‘I could never fully trust that people weren’t making friends just because they thought they could get something out of me.’ When he still looked unmoved she said desperately, ‘I’m boring!’

He arched an incredulous brow. ‘Someone who is boring doesn’t embark on a three-woman trip across the Atlantic in a catamaran made out of recycled materials in a bid to raise awareness about the environment.’

Samia was immediately disconcerted. ‘You know about that?’

He nodded and looked a little stern. ‘I think it was either one of the most foolhardy or one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.’

She flushed deeper and couldn’t stop a dart of pleasure rushing through her at the thought she’d earned this man’s admiration. ‘I care about the environment … The other two were old friends from college, and they couldn’t raise the funding required on their own … But once I got involved …’ Her voice trailed off, her modesty not wanting to make it sound as if she’d been instrumental in the project.

Sadiq rocked back on his heels. ‘I have a well-established environmental team in Al-Omar that could do with your support. I often find I’m too tied up with other concerns to give it my full attention. We’ve both grown up in rarefied environments, Samia, both grown up being aware of public duty. If anything, your teenage and childhood experiences
will make you more empathetic with people—an essential quality in any queen.’

Samia objected to his constant avowal of partnership, and the tantalising carrot of being able to work constructively for the environment, but her attempt to halt him in his tracks with a weak-sounding ‘Sadiq …’ made no impact.