by Lynne Graham
‘So…’ Izzy mused thoughtfully, mulling over what he was telling her. ‘None of the options let me walk away free and clear.’
His bold, strong profile went rigid and he swung back to her, golden eyes blazing like flames. ‘No,’ he agreed without apology. ‘I wasn’t prepared to let you go free and if you’d run away, I would have followed you and endeavoured to persuade you into returning. There is nothing I would not have done to keep you.’
As she listened Izzy’s heart was hammering and ridiculous hope was suddenly blossoming inside her tight chest to such an extent that it was a challenge to breathe. ‘And why was that?’
‘I do not think I could live without you in my life,’ Rafiq grated between his teeth, as though the words were being torn from him under the pressure of the cruellest torture. ‘You have transformed my life and I will do just about anything not to return to the life I led before I met you. It was empty, joyless. My sole focus was becoming King, and my sole interest was this country. Now…wrong though it is in my position…you are my main focus!’
‘Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with that or why you should get so worked up about sharing that with me,’ Izzy told him softly. ‘I think what you’re saying is that you love me.’
‘You don’t love me when you can ask about those options all these months on!’ Rafiq shot at her rawly, his pain and vulnerability palpable to her.
‘No, I just wanted to know where I stood and now I know that I’m standing exactly where I want to be,’ Izzy murmured gently as she crossed the room to his side. ‘Because I love you too. I started falling for you the day we met but you walked away, and I would never have seen you again if I hadn’t traced you because I’d fallen pregnant.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Misguided and unwise though it was when I was being expected to take a wife again, I had your name and your address and sooner or later I would have used that information to see you again because I don’t believe that I could’ve stayed away!’ he confessed in an emotional surge. ‘I wanted you the moment I first saw you and I never stopped wanting you, not for a moment. I didn’t even look at another woman after being with you.’
Izzy stretched up tender hands to frame his lean, devastatingly handsome features. ‘It was pretty much the same for me. Is that why you said that you believed in fate?’
‘Yes, I believe we were fated to meet, fated to be together,’ he told her raggedly. ‘You really do love me?’
‘You’re so very easy to love,’ she murmured, her heart lurching at the longing, the need for reassurance that she could see in his beautiful eyes, this man, who had known neither the love of his mother nor the love of his first wife, who did not even understand or fully believe that he could inspire love in any woman.
His essential humility had fooled her into crediting that he was merely staying married to her to preserve the status quo and keep his heirs in Zenara. How much blinder could she have been not to recognise that a man who still held her all night even when there was no prospect of sexual satisfaction had to truly care about her?
‘So at the hospital when you said, “There is only one you”—’
‘I was admitting that I loved you and that you are irreplaceable,’ he proffered tautly. ‘I was so scared that something would go wrong, that the staff would automatically prioritise the heir to the throne’s survival over yours…should there have been that horrible choice. We could, conceivably, have other children but I could not replace you, the woman I love, with anyone. I have never known such fear.’
‘Oh, Rafiq,’ she sighed, wrapping both arms around him, rejoicing in the strength of his tall, well-built physique. ‘If only you had told me sooner how you felt.’
‘My mother and Fadith showed me that women don’t appreciate men who get too emotional,’ he confided in a tight undertone. ‘I didn’t want you to think less of me. I didn’t want to appear weak in your eyes. Weakness is not an attractive trait and I was trying to win your love.’
‘And all the time you already had my love,’ she whispered with a huge smile bright with happiness. ‘Just as I couldn’t recognise your feelings, you couldn’t recognise mine.’
‘I’ve never been in love before, only in lust, and that only briefly and never with anyone who mattered to me beyond that level. But it was different with you from the start. I began falling for you the minute you told me about the guy who wore eyeliner because nobody ever chats to me about stuff like that,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I loved how natural you were with me. I didn’t want to tell you who I was. I didn’t want to walk away from you, but I wasn’t free to do what I wanted. I had promised my uncle that I would remarry so that Zayn could have another few years of freedom before being forced to marry and procreate for my benefit. And in the light of that promise, it would have been wrong for me to seek to see you again.’
‘And yet you still went to the trouble of finding out where I lived. How did you find out?’
‘I suspect that someone at the rental agency you worked for was bribed. I didn’t ask for the grubby details. I just wanted the information even though I knew I was only tempting myself with what I couldn’t have, because seeing you again would only have made the idea of marrying some other woman more of a nightmare than it already was.’
Rafiq freed her and strode over to open the safe in the wall, extracting a small box from it. ‘I was saving this for your twenty-second birthday next week but now seems more like the right moment,’ he breathed with a flashing smile as he handed the box to her.
Izzy lifted the lid on a glittering diamond eternity ring, and he removed it from its velvet mount and eased it onto her finger with an air of satisfaction. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered appreciatively. ‘I love you so much.’
‘You fill my heart to overflowing,’ Rafiq breathed, stroking his fingers down the side of her heart-shaped face, making her shiver. ‘You are everything I never dared to dream of in a woman and a wife. You make me amazingly happy and for the first time I am at peace with the future, content to become King when it is the right time, in no hurry to rush ahead and miss or waste a single moment of being with you and my children.’
Izzy gave him an intoxicated smile and watched the sunlight sparkle a rainbow on her ring. ‘You’re really very romantic.’
‘No, I’m not,’ he protested instantly, a tinge of colour scoring his high cheekbones. ‘Not at all.’
‘Nobody but me needs to know what you’re like behind closed doors,’ she pointed out softly.
Rafiq brought his mouth down hungrily on hers. ‘I’m starving for you!’ he groaned, instantly breaking away from her again. ‘But we should wait until the doctor has advised us that—’
‘Well, we still have a few weeks to wait,’ Izzy informed him ruefully, shimmying out of her fancy frock with a tantalising smile to expose curves embellished by silk and lace lingerie. ‘But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do other things,’ she pointed out shamelessly.
Rafiq hovered for a split second as if he couldn’t quite believe that he was allowed to touch her again and then he stalked forward and lifted her into his arms to kiss her with fierce urgency. ‘All those nights we couldn’t.’
‘All those nights,’ she agreed on the back of a sigh of recollection. ‘But you held me close anyway and I really loved that about you. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d shifted me back to my own room.’
‘I like being close to you even if I can’t make love to you,’ he breathed raggedly as he shrugged free of his jacket and tore off his tie with flattering enthusiasm. ‘And by the way, you don’t have your own room any longer.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘How don’t I?’
‘Why would you need your own room? We’ll turn it into a dressing room for you. From now on, you will always share my bed. I’ve got used to having company,’ he confided teasingly.
‘I suppose I’ll always
have the sofa to escape to when you annoy me,’ Izzy told him playfully.
‘And I’ll snatch you off it again,’ he promised, amusement dancing in his eyes, a new relaxation in his lean, darkly handsome features as he feasted his beautiful eyes on her smiling face. ‘I love you, Izzy. I love you like I never thought I could love anyone…’
Silence crept in, broken only by occasional murmurs as discarded garments fell to the floor and they rediscovered each other and the passion that had first brought them together in a blaze of glory that consumed them until the real world crept back in. Izzy realised that it was feeding time for the twins and she needed to put some clothes on again. The buoyant happiness that had flooded her peaked as Rafiq threw on jeans and watched her with loving admiration brightening his keen gaze.
‘You and our daughters have become the very centre of my world,’ he murmured with satisfaction.
EPILOGUE
TWO YEARS LATER, Izzy hurriedly clasped her son Nazir to her bosom and tugged her playful daughters into the lift with her, one after another.
Leila chattered in voluble toddler-speak and Lucia listened, her little fingers twisting at her copper curls and her thumb creeping into her mouth until her mother pulled it out again. Nazir, replete after a feed, snored gently below his mother’s chin.
‘Auntie Maya,’ Leila framed. ‘Like Auntie Maya.’
‘I should hope so.’ Izzy was almost bouncing with excitement at the prospect of seeing her twin and the rest of her family.
It was their twenty-fourth birthday and Maya and Izzy were having a joint celebration at the Alihreza palace. Helicopters had been flying in all afternoon, ferrying loads of VIPs to the party being staged.
Having ascended the throne and become King, Rafiq had become less sensitive about his father’s troubled legacy and the sleazy goings-on he had once associated with the desert building. After all, he and Izzy, their girls and their newborn son, Nazir, were now very much a family and Alihreza was the perfect place to unwind after a busy week of activity at the royal palace. It also provided an even more perfect backdrop for a large party because it offered plenty of luxurious accommodation for family members, who were staying on for a holiday.
Nazir had not been a planned baby. Traumatised by the twins’ emergency birth, Rafiq had announced that two children were quite sufficient for them and that there was no way he would allow Izzy to risk herself again with a second pregnancy. Even though Izzy had wheeled in medical support to underline the truth that she had simply been unlucky and that twin pregnancies were more likely to encounter complications, Rafiq had taken an immoveable stance. That had been a shock to Izzy’s system as usually Rafiq was willing to move heaven and earth just to give her whatever she wanted.
In fact, they had had heated discussions for weeks over whether or not they should have another child and then fate, that Rafiq was generally so fond of, had intervened and Izzy had discovered that she was expecting again. Of course, she wasn’t taking contraceptive pills any longer because the several brands she had tried after the twins’ birth hadn’t agreed with her and Rafiq had taken charge of the contraception. She had been three months pregnant by the time she finally appreciated that once again she had conceived. She had been overjoyed by the surprise but Rafiq’s reaction had been more shock and concern for her well-being.
Mercifully none of his fears had come to fruition during her second pregnancy. She had suffered minimal nausea and the delivery had been straightforward. Happy now to consider their family complete, she was even more grateful for the fact that Nazir was a wonderfully easy, good-natured baby, who slept when he should, ate at regular hours and smiled beatifically at everyone.
Leila had needed very little sleep and after a few weeks of sleepless nights they had hired an official nanny. It had amazed Izzy that Lucia could slumber on peacefully even though she was only feet away from her screaming sibling. But the twins were very different, Izzy conceded fondly. Leila was altogether a louder personality, a little extrovert in the making. Copper-haired Lucia was quieter and prone to wandering off to amuse herself with imaginative games with her toys, leaving Leila the one to follow her. Leila went looking for her twin the minute she moved out of sight, but Lucia was more independent. Izzy loved seeing the children’s different personalities emerging.
At that moment her mother, Lucia, walked up and stole Nazir out of her elder daughter’s arms, rocking him and murmuring sweet nothings to the sleeping bundle. ‘I swear an earthquake could go off and this child wouldn’t notice!’ she carolled appreciatively. ‘Matt is so excited about being put forward for the stem cell treatment, Izzy. We’ll never be able to thank Rafiq enough for doing that for him, even if it doesn’t provide either an improvement of his condition or a miraculous cure.’
Izzy swallowed hard. It had been Rafiq who had suggested that they sought stem cell treatment for her kid brother’s paralysis. Her family could never have afforded the costs involved. Matt had recently undergone a series of tests, which had concluded with him being offered a place in ground-breaking trials. She was married to a man with a huge heart, even if it was a heart that he often felt he had to bury deep and hide from notice, and if anything two years of marriage had only made her love her husband more deeply than ever. The happiness their relationship gave her was infinite.
Izzy watched as Rafiq snatched Leila back in the nick of time from the edge of an ornamental pond and scolded her. The little girl threw a massive tantrum and Rafiq just stood there watching it play out while Lucia sucked her thumb and stared. Izzy began to move in their direction. She gave her father a fond hug on the way, teased Matt about the latest piece of technology he was playing games with and greeted and kissed Rafiq’s uncle and aunt on the cheek, pausing to chat with the older couple for a few minutes. By the end of it, Leila was still stubbornly going strong.
‘Leila…’ she intervened sharply.
The tantrum died with Izzy’s arrival, but Leila ran off in a sulk instead, causing Rafiq to roll his eyes and groan out.
‘It’ll blow over,’ Izzy told him soothingly. ‘It’s the result of too much excitement and the annoyance of me choosing what she had to wear today.’
‘She’s very wilful,’ he said with a frown.
‘She’ll learn, just like we all have to learn how to behave,’ Izzy countered. ‘Just don’t tell her any more stories about the warrior queen who preceded her in case it gives her ideas.’
Laughing, Rafiq tugged her back under an archway onto the shaded terrace. ‘You look pretty spectacular in that dress,’ he remarked huskily. ‘Dark blue suits you, matches your eyes.’
Izzy lounged back against a sandstone pillar and preened herself like an old-style sex siren, looking up at her husband cheekily from beneath her lashes. She leant closer to walk her fingertips up over his shirted abdomen, one at a time, the spirit of wantonness personified as she stroked his lean muscled torso, appreciating his physical beauty with every fibre of her being and loving that he was all hers for ever. She watched his gorgeous eyes light up as golden as the sun and noticed with a wicked little grin how he shifted position to contain his arousal.
‘I married a shameless hussy.’
‘And you love that shamelessness, Your Majesty,’ she whispered, gazing up at him with her heart in her eyes.
‘I do and I always will. I will cherish my memory of the virgin who told me not to be a party pooper for ever,’ he husked, lowering his head to claim a single burning kiss that lit her up like a firework.
‘I love you,’ Izzy said sunnily, squeezing his hand. ‘You may be a king but you’re still my bathroom guy…’
Rafiq winced. ‘Are you ever going to let me forget our first meeting?’
‘Probably not.’ She laughed as they joined the festivities to mingle and chat and ensure that their guests had as good a time as they planned to have for the rest of their lives.
* *
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ISBN: 9781488059544
Cinderella’s Royal Secret
Copyright © 2020 by Lynne Graham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.