The Sultan's Choice (5 page)

And then he realised that Samia was still resolutely avoiding his gaze. Her reluctance for this scenario was palpable. He had an uncomfortable flashback to the way his father had used to insist on his mother parading the latest fashions from Paris he’d bought for her. He knew this was nothing like that, but his desire was doused as effectively as if he’d stepped into a freezing cold shower.

His voice was arctic. ‘That dress is entirely unsuitable. Clearly we’ve come to the wrong place. Go and change. We’re leaving.’

Sadiq saw Samia’s jaw tense, and the set of her shoulders as she turned and walked stiffly back through the curtain, and had to restrain himself from stopping her and explaining … what? That for a second he’d been afraid that he’d turned into his father? His overweight, overbearing father, who had flaunted his women in front of his only son as if it was something to be proud of, and in front of his stoic wife like a punishment for as long as Sadiq could remember?

Distaste curdled his insides, and he got up and paced impatiently while he waited for Samia.

At least he would never subject her to what his mother had had to endure for years, despite whatever justification his
father might have believed he had. Sadiq had always vowed he would do things differently. He would have nothing but respect for his wife and would treat his heirs like human beings, not pawns.

Samia took a breath and stepped back into the main suite. She was still stinging inside at Sadiq’s cold condemnation of the outfit—and
her.
She hadn’t looked at him once but she hadn’t had to to know that his eyes had inspected every single piece of her and found it lacking. It had taken all of her strength to stand there and endure it. Even her rejection at the hands of that college boy was paling into insignificance next to Sadiq’s silent but damning appraisal.

She stepped back into the suite to see Sadiq looking so broodingly at the floor that she had to battle the almost overwhelming feeling of
déjà vu
and curb the impulse to ask him if anything was wrong. She almost laughed at herself. As if she needed to ask! He was marrying her. And it was all wrong—if only he would agree with her.

He turned to look at her and her hands gripped her jacket. She felt shabby and more unsuitable then ever to be Queen. ‘That dress—I don’t think it—’

His hand slashed through the air. ‘It did nothing for you because it was far too obvious and your beauty is not obvious. It’s subtle. Clearly this was the wrong place to come. We’ll have to go to Paris instead.’

Samia’s mouth opened but nothing came out. She hadn’t known what he would say but she hadn’t expected that. For a moment her weak heart had fluttered to hear him describe her as beautiful, but then the
subtle
had struck home. It was just another way of saying she was plain.

Sadiq was already pacing away and speaking rapidly into his phone in fluent French, taking her arm to hustle her out of the suite and the shop. Anger was starting to bubble low
in her belly at his heavy-handed behaviour, but now he was on his third phone call and she could tell from the guttural Arabic that it was about politics in Al-Omar. Samia was used to her brother switching off and becoming impossible to deal with at times like this, so she just crossed her arms and seethed silently beside Sadiq.

Within an hour they were ascending into the clear blue sky from a private airfield in the middle of London. Samia wasn’t unused to private air travel—her own family had a fleet of jets and helicopters—but she and her brother only used them when absolutely necessary. Both were keenly aware of the environment and their carbon footprint, and of wanting to set an example.

She wasn’t aware that Sadiq had terminated his phone call until a drawling voice asked, ‘Are you going to ignore me for the entire flight?’

Samia turned to face him, instantly cowed by how gorgeous he looked with his jacket off and his shirt open at the throat. She wanted to know what he would look like in jeans and a T-shirt.

Her wayward imaginings made her snap more caustically than she would have intended, ‘I could ask the same of you. And I’ve told you all along how unsuitable I am, so I don’t appreciate your silent, cold condemnation when I don’t morph into the bride you want.’

His eyes narrowed on her. ‘I meant what I said back there, Samia. I don’t hand out platitudes or compliments for the sake of it. It’s not my style. I simply recognised that the establishment I’d chosen was entirely wrong for you.’ His eyes travelled up and down her body with leisurely appraisal, and then back to her face, which was hot. ‘Like I said, your beauty is subtle and needs a more … delicate approach.’

Samia still refused to believe for a second that he really meant what he’d said. This was just his way of placating her.

And now he was taking her somewhere they could camouflage her better. Stiffly she said, ‘Well, I hope it’s worth the expense and environmental impact of taking a private plane all the way to Paris just to dress me.’

Dark amusement made his eyes glint and Samia’s heart speed up.

‘Don’t worry, Princess. I can assure you that our carbon footprint will be as minimal as possible. One of my own team of scientists is using this plane as a vehicle to test out more environmentally friendly fuels. So, actually, we’re providing valuable research.’

Samia refused to let his humour infect her. ‘You really have an answer for everything, don’t you?’

He smiled properly now, and it made him look ten years younger and less cynical. ‘Of course.’

Samia had to turn away. He was far too attractive at that moment, and she feared that he’d see something of the ambiguous emotions she was feeling on her far too expressive face. That she found him attractive was undeniable, but that was just pure human reaction to one of the most virile specimens of man on the planet. She denied to herself that the attraction went any deeper than that—that what she felt went beyond the physical.

‘Believe me,’ he said now, ‘when we announce our engagement to the press on Monday you’ll be grateful for the armour of suitable clothing.’

‘Monday …’ Samia looked around, feeling herself pale. If there was any last moment when she could try and get out of this, it was now.

She was unaware of the wistful look on her face or the way Sadiq’s tightened.

‘Don’t even think about it, Samia. We’ve gone too far to turn back now. There’s already been speculation in the
papers after that photo. Now they’re just waiting for an announcement.’

Her eyes narrowed on Sadiq and any hope was doused at the steely look on his face. Bitterly she said, ‘It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? You’ve had your life of hedonistic freedom, and now you’ve decided to marry it’ll be executed with the minimum of fuss and maximum haste.’

Sadiq’s eyes flashed. ‘You’ve had your freedom too, Samia. As a modern twenty-five-year-old woman you can’t expect me to assume you’ve led such a nun’s existence that you’re still a virgin?’

Instantly reacting to his mocking tone with a visceral need to protect herself, Samia taunted, ‘You mean you don’t mind that you won’t be getting a pure wife on your wedding night? I would have thought with the amount of care you put into choosing your oh-so-suitable bride that it would have been part of the checklist.’

Their gazes locked. Samia was breathing far too rapidly for her liking. And she couldn’t believe she’d more or less lied so blatantly. She was leading him to believe she’d had plenty of lovers.

A cynical smile curved Sadiq’s sensual mouth. ‘It doesn’t bother me in the least,’ he drawled. ‘Of course I didn’t expect a pure bride. I’m not so old-fashioned or such a hypocrite. I’ve got a healthy sexual appetite and quite frankly the thought of sleeping with a novice is not something I relish.’

A sudden pain lanced Samia. Ever since that experience in college she’d locked away any romantic desire that she would one day give herself to someone who would appreciate her for unique self. She’d told herself she didn’t harbour such dreams. And now she had to face the prospect of Sadiq’s horror when he found that he had indeed bagged himself an innocent bride on their wedding night.

Overcome with an emotion she didn’t want to analyse, and
feeling terribly vulnerable, Samia scrambled inelegantly out of her seat. She felt permanently inelegant next to this man. Muttering something about being tired, she escaped to the back of the cabin, where she’d been shown a bedroom earlier, and firmly closed the door behind her. They’d be landing soon, but Samia curled up on the bed anyway and tried to block out the taunting and gorgeous face of Sadiq in her mind’s eye. She wondered how on earth she’d ever been deluded enough to think he might be vulnerable.

Sadiq flung down his phone and glared out of the small oval window of the plane. All he could see were clouds upon clouds—and Samia’s face, with those big wounded aquamarine eyes shimmering more blue than green against the pale skin of her face. He had already come to notice how her eyes went dark blue when she was emotional.

She’d looked close to tears just then, but he couldn’t fathom what he’d said to upset her. His mouth twisted wryly. Apart from asking her to marry him. He hadn’t had such a comprehensive attack on his ego ever … and he had to acknowledge at the same time that it wasn’t altogether unwelcome. Being surrounded by yes people and sycophants became wearing after a while.

He thought back to what he’d said, and still couldn’t see that he’d said anything untoward. Of course he hadn’t expected her to be pure and untainted. He was a modern man and a modern ruler. Why would he behave one way himself and expect his wife to have lived like a nun? The important thing was that, whatever Samia had been doing, he’d seen no evidence of it.

He gritted his jaw against the pervasive memory that threatened to burst free when he thought of the words
pure
and
untainted.
A woman had said those words to him with a scathing voice a long time ago.

Analia Medena-Gonzalez. A stunningly beautiful socialite from Europe who had come to visit Al-Omar with her ambassador father when Sadiq had been eighteen. He’d been no innocent youth then, but he hadn’t exactly been experienced either.

Analia, who was ten years his senior, had seduced him and reduced him to putty in her hands, enslaving him with the power of her sensuality and sexuality. And Sadiq, like the young fool he’d been, had believed himself in love with her.

She’d stood in front of him the day she was leaving and looked at him as if he’d just crawled out from under a rock. ‘You
love
me? Sadiq, darling, you don’t love me. You are in lust with me, that’s all.’

Sadiq could remember biting back the words trembling on his lips to contradict her. Even then some self-preserving instinct had kicked in—much to his everlasting gratitude.

She’d looked him up and down with those exotic green eyes and sighed. ‘Darling, I’m twenty-eight and looking for my second husband. You’re still a boy. The sooner you learn to harden your heart and not fall for every woman you sleep with, the better it will be for you. I know the kind of women you’ll meet. They will all want your body, yes, but they will also want you because you’re powerful and rich. Two of the greatest aphrodisiacs.’

She’d come close then, and all but whispered into his ear, ‘Believe me, Sadiq, they won’t care about the man you really are—just as I don’t really care. That’s why you have a mother. One day you’ll choose some pure and untainted local girl to be your wife, and you’ll live happily ever after.’

The banal cruelty of those words hadn’t had the power to shock or hurt Sadiq for a long, long time. He’d learnt a valuable lesson, and her prophecy had turned out to be largely true.

Once he’d become Sultan on his father’s death, at the age
of nineteen, he’d been catapulted to another stratosphere. For almost a year Sadiq hadn’t even taken a lover, too intent on taking control of a wildly corrupted and chaotic country. But once he’d re-emerged into society women had surrounded him in droves.

He’d quickly become an expert at picking the ones who knew how he wanted to play the game. No emotional entanglement, no strings. He’d become used to seeing the glazed, avaricious glitter in their eyes when they saw the extent of his inestimable wealth and on some perverse level it had comforted him—because he never again wanted to be standing in front of a woman laying himself bare to her pity and ridicule.

He’d actually met Analia once or twice over the years, and once had even seduced her again, as if to purge the effect of that day from his mind and heart for ever. He’d looked at her as she’d dressed the next morning and hadn’t felt a thing. Not a twinge of emotion. It had been a small moment of personal triumph.

Seeing the way his father had been so pathologically enraged because his wife didn’t love him should have been enough of a lesson to Sadiq, but it hadn’t. He wasn’t about to forget either of those valuable lessons now, just because the woman he’d chosen to marry was singularly unimpressed with everything he put before her, wore her vulnerability on her sleeve and made him feel unaccountably protective.

Samia was facing another velvet drape in another exclusive shop about three hours later—albeit this time in a secluded side street in Paris, the centre of world fashion. She’d woken just before the air stewardess had come to tell her they were about to land, and Sadiq had largely ignored her on the journey into Paris. She fiddled for a moment with the chiffon
overlay of the dress, and then the much friendlier French stylist appeared at her side and tugged her through the drape. ‘Come on,
chérie.
We have a lot of outfits to get through.’

Samia closed her eyes for a split second and held her breath, the bright light blinding her for a moment so she couldn’t see the initial expression on Sadiq’s face. He was standing near the window and he lowered the ever-present smart phone from his ear.

Samia desperately felt like fidgeting in the long dress, but the stylist was already fussing around her, tweaking and pulling. Resolutely refusing to be intimidated this time, she hitched up her chin and looked straight at Sadiq—but his gaze was somewhere around her breasts. Samia’s jaw clenched; he was looking
for
them, no doubt. Although she had to admit that even she’d been surprised at how voluptuous the dress made them look.