The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride

by Lynne Graham

  Polly was shaken by that explanation. ‘But why would Hayat be angry and jealous? Were you involved with her before I came into your life?’

  Rashad frowned. ‘Of course not…she is Ferah’s kid sister. I found it hard to warm to her personality, though—’

  ‘Hayat’s your sister-in-law?’ Polly exclaimed in disbelief. ‘Why did nobody tell me that?’

  ‘It wasn’t a secret. I didn’t think it was important. I didn’t want to discriminate against her either because she is, or was, very efficient.’ Rashad lifted his handsome dark head high and expelled his breath in an audible rush, frustration and regret tensing his lean dark face. ‘I made a mistake in allowing her access to you and I’m afraid you paid for my lack of judgement.’

  Long lashes fluttering down, Polly cloaked her eyes to conceal her incredulity. How could he not have warned her about his familial relationship with the other woman? She remembered Hayat admitting that she had watched her sister break her heart over her inability to conceive and, remembering her own unease around the attractive brunette, she swallowed back angry words of condemnation. His first wife’s little sister, someone who would be challenged to wish Rashad’s second wife a long and happy life after Ferah’s tragic fate.

  ‘Hayat admitted that she resented my remarriage and our happiness,’ Rashad volunteered tautly. ‘I should have foreseen that likelihood and her spite.’

  ‘Well, it’s done and dusted now,’ Polly pointed out curtly, because she was annoyed at what she had learnt. ‘She’s left the staff and as it happens I’m all right—’

  ‘Inshallah,’ Rashad breathed, rising to leave as her grandparents bustled in, all smiles and concern, to present her with a very large basket of fruit. Their caring and affectionate presence was exactly what she needed to soothe her ruffled feelings at that moment. She received a hail of anxious words and a hug from her grandmother and a quiet squeeze on the shoulder from Hakim, who wasn’t given to drama.

  Rashad came to collect her from the hospital. He explained that there were crowds waiting for a glimpse of her outside the hospital and they left by a rear entrance.

  ‘Why won’t you look at me?’ Rashad pressed on the drive back to the palace.

  ‘I’m angry with you,’ Polly admitted curtly.

  Rashad released his breath on a slow hiss. ‘Of course you are. I spoiled what should have been a special moment—’

  She assumed he meant that she had missed the chance to tell him privately about their baby.

  ‘Not only that,’ she broke in jaggedly. ‘You behaved as if I was some kind of harlot who couldn’t be trusted alone in a room with a man!’

  ‘I deeply regret the way in which I behaved,’ Rashad admitted levelly. ‘If I could go back and eradicate what I said I would…but I cannot.’

  Colour scoring her cheekbones, Polly chewed the soft underside of her lower lip and made no response. What could she say? She knew he regretted it.

  ‘I didn’t like being confronted with the reality that you could think of me like that.’

  ‘We will talk when we get home. I don’t want to be interrupted,’ Rashad murmured tautly.

  A tense silence fell and Polly did nothing to break it. In truth she was as annoyed with herself as she was with him. Wasn’t she usually a forgiving person? But what Rashad had said had struck at the very heart of their relationship and had deeply wounded her because she loved him. He didn’t know that she loved him. He hadn’t asked her to love him. And she wouldn’t tell him because he would assume that she craved some kind of matching response from him when she did not. She didn’t want Rashad to feel that he had to pretend to feel more for her than he actually did. It would make him uncomfortable and he would be hopeless at faking it. Over the long term, honesty and common sense would be safer than emotional outpourings that would only muddy the water between them.

  Tearful staff greeted her on their knees in the entrance hall. She was deeply touched by that demonstration of affection. Rashad’s people were very emotional and unafraid to show it. She marvelled that they had a king who worked so hard at concealing every emotion he experienced as if emotion were something to be ashamed of.

  ‘The doctors advised that you rest now,’ Rashad reminded her as they entered the private wing of the palace.

  Flowers were everywhere in the airy drawing room and piles of gifts cluttered every surface. ‘What on earth…?’ Polly began to ask.

  ‘As soon as it was known that you had suffered an accident the flowers and the presents came flooding in,’ Rashad explained. ‘There has been no official announcement of your pregnancy, nor will there be for some time, but I suspect rumours are already on the streets. There were too many servants and guards hovering after your accident and Dr Wasem’s anxiety on your behalf was unmistakeable.’

  ‘And what about you?’ Polly whispered. ‘How did you react?’

  ‘It was the worst moment of my life,’ Rashad declared without hesitation, his strong jaw clenching hard. ‘Until I realised you were still breathing I was afraid you were dead—’

  ‘Or that I would lose the baby,’ she slotted in wryly.

  ‘I could have borne that better than the loss of you,’ Rashad parried harshly. ‘There could always be another baby…but there is only one you. And you are irreplaceable.’

  There was a little red devil in Polly’s brain because somehow she was not in the mood to listen while he made such comforting complimentary statements. ‘No, I’m not,’ she disagreed, turning her violet eyes onto his lean, perfect profile. ‘You would still have women queuing up to marry you and become your Queen and the mother of your children.’

  ‘Two dead predecessors in the role would limit my appeal somewhat. I would seem like a regular Bluebeard.’

  A startled laugh was wrenched from Polly. ‘There is that,’ she conceded, turning away to hesitantly finger a tiny velvet soft frog toy that had been unwrapped.

  It was undeniably a toy intended for their unborn child. Her eyes prickled with tears. Her most private secret had become public and she had been deprived of the right to share the news of her first pregnancy with her husband. She dashed the tears away with an angry hand, scolding herself for getting upset by gifts intended to express heartfelt good wishes.

  ‘I wanted to tell you myself,’ she framed gruffly.

  ‘I know… I screwed it up,’ Rashad bit out jerkily.

  ‘Maybe we both did,’ Polly muttered heavily. ‘In a marriage it takes two to screw up. Whatever way you look at it, it’s a partnership.’

  ‘No,’ Rashad disagreed. ‘I didn’t allow us to be a partnership. I have no experience of a marriage of equals. I have no experience of sharing feelings or memories. I have always had to keep such things to myself but with you…’ He hesitated, shooting a look at her from shimmering dark golden eyes. ‘With you, my control breaks down and things escape.’

  Polly studied him and her heart felt as though he were crushing it because she bled for him at that moment, seeing him boy and man, rigorously disciplined to hold every feeling in, never allowed to be natural. ‘That’s not necessarily a bad thing,’ she whispered shakily.

  ‘It was a bad thing when I confronted you about your dinner with Rio,’ Rashad pointed out heavily. ‘I was…irrational. Rage engulfed me. I could not bear to think of you enjoying his company or admiring him. You do not need to tell me that I’m too possessive of you… I know it. I have never known such jealousy before and it ate me alive—’

  ‘Well,’ Polly murmured, inching a little closer because his sheer emotional intensity drew her like a flame on an icy day, ‘I understand a little better now. But it upset me a lot that you seemed to distrust me—’

  Rashad swung back to her, his stunning eyes bright with regret. ‘But that is what is so illogical about it. I do trust you and Rio is my best friend and I know he would not betray me but still those feelings overwhelmed me!’

  Polly brushed his arm with hesitant fingers. ‘Because you’re not used
to dealing with that kind of stuff. You’re on a learning curve.’

  ‘I hurt you. If it hurts you I do not want to be on that curve,’ he breathed rawly.

  ‘But not expressing what you feel makes you a powder keg, which is more dangerous,’ Polly argued.

  ‘It won’t ever happen again,’ Rashad intoned. ‘I will be on my guard now.’

  ‘But that’s not what I want,’ Polly admitted ruefully.

  ‘I have kept too many secrets from you,’ Rashad confessed, striding over to the window, deeply troubled by his sense of disloyalty to his first wife’s memory but accepting that such honesty was necessary. ‘My first marriage was very unhappy—’

  ‘But you said you loved her,’ Polly reminded him in complete surprise.

  ‘At the outset when we were teenagers trying to behave like grown-ups, we clung to each other for that was all we had. She was my first love even though we had very little in common. I made the best of it that I could but I did not love Ferah as she loved me,’ Rashad declared with strong regret etched in his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘And she knew it. Her inability to conceive was a constant source of stress for both of us and she became a deeply troubled woman. Nothing I said or did comforted her. I tried many times to get through to her and I failed. What love there was died until by the end we were like two strangers forced to live together.’

  Polly stared at him in shock, utterly unprepared for that revelation.

  ‘Now you know the real truth,’ Rashad completed grimly.

  ‘But…’ she began uncertainly, frowning in bewilderment.

  ‘For the last five years of our marriage I was celibate. That side of our marriage ended the day Ferah learned that she could not have a child. She turned away from me,’ he revealed curtly, his difficulty in making that admission etched in the strained lines of his lean dark features. ‘I felt unwanted, rejected…’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Polly framed, still in shock from what he had just told her, her every belief about his first marriage violently turned on its head and her heart going out to him.

  ‘And that is why you were right to accuse me of a lack of enthusiasm on the day we married.’ Rashad surveyed her with anguished dark eyes, full of guilt and regret. ‘You said you wanted it all so I am telling you everything. I knew it was my duty to remarry but I dreaded the thought of being a husband again. I had nothing but bad memories of the first experience and my expectations were very low—’

  Polly unfroze with difficulty and sat down on legs that felt weak, not quite sure she was strong enough to take the honesty she had asked him to give her because what he was now telling her was beginning to hurt. ‘I can understand that,’ she said limply.

  ‘I was completely selfish in my behaviour. I was bitter and angry. I felt trapped. And then you saved me,’ he framed harshly. ‘I did nothing to deserve you, Polly. I am not worthy of the happiness you have brought into my life.’

  Reeling from that ‘trapped’ word that had pierced her like a knife, Polly studied him in confusion. ‘You’re talking about the baby?’ she pressed. ‘That’s made you happy?’

  His black brows drew together. ‘No, I’m talking about you. Our baby is a wonderful gift and I am very grateful to be so blessed but my happiness is entirely based on having you in my life…’

  ‘Oh,’ Polly mumbled in surprise.

  Rashad crossed the rug between them and dropped down on his knees at her feet to look levelly at her with insistent dark golden eyes. ‘I think I probably fell in love with you the first time I saw you. It was like an electric shock. I had never felt anything like it before and of course I didn’t recognise it for what it was. It was love but I thought it was lust because I didn’t know any better…’

  ‘Love?’ Polly almost whispered. ‘You love me?’

  ‘Madly, insanely,’ Rashad extended raggedly. ‘I can’t bear to have you out of my sight. I think about you all the time. The thought of losing you terrifies me. And yet I have made mistake after mistake with you and done nothing to earn your regard—’

  Polly grinned at him, the happiness he insisted she had brought him bubbling up through her in receipt of such an impassioned declaration. She definitely loved him and loved him all the more for abandoning his reserve and his formality and his pride to convince her of the sincerity of his feelings for her. ‘I felt that electric shock thing too,’ she told him teasingly. ‘Every time I laid eyes on you, I felt like an infatuated schoolgirl. Why do you think I married you? I married you because I fell in love with you…’

  ‘Truly?’ Rashad exclaimed in ego-boosting amazement as he sprang upright and stepped back for an instant simply to savour her beautiful glowing face.

  ‘Truly,’ Polly confirmed with a helpless beaming smile of encouragement.

  Rashad scooped her up very, very gently, being mindful of her sore hip, and carried her into their bedroom to lay her down on the bed. He shed his jacket and tie and settled down beside her to ease her fully into his arms. ‘I love you so much, habibti. But I am forbidden to do anything more than hold you close for a few days,’ he admitted in a roughened voice. ‘Yet it is enough to still have that right, believe me.’

  Ignoring the hint of soreness from her stiff hip, Polly squirmed round in the circle of his arms to face him. She ran wondering fingers across a high masculine cheekbone and marvelled at the silky black lashes semi-veiling his adoring eyes. ‘I think a kiss is in order…and I’m expecting a real award winner of a kiss,’ she warned him cheekily.

  ‘I will try to deliver,’ Rashad groaned, gazing down at her clear blue eyes with fervent appreciation. ‘I always try to deliver—’

  ‘Well, you were pretty nifty in the baby stakes,’ she conceded.

  ‘Nifty together…’ He nibbled at her full lower lip and she closed her eyes, literally so happy she felt that she should be floating on high, but then she wouldn’t have let go of Rashad for anything because his lean, powerful body felt so very good against hers. And they might be different and he might be much more old-fashioned than he was willing to admit, but she knew that they complemented each other beautifully.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE that after all this time we still haven’t found Gemma.’ Polly sighed and shot a pained glance at her sister, Ellie. ‘I mean, it’s been months and we still know next to nothing about our long-lost sibling!’

  ‘Well, we know that she had a tough childhood and she has no roots to cling to,’ Ellie argued in a more measured tone. ‘We can also assume that she moves around a lot because we never seem to catch up with her and we know she works in really dead-end jobs. That’s a lot more than we knew about Gemma starting out.’

  Polly nodded reluctantly. ‘True…but what if she doesn’t want to know about us?’ she asked worriedly. ‘We’ve advertised in the papers, notified social services that we’re looking, informed everyone who has known her in the past that we want to find her—’

  ‘We have to be patient,’ Ellie cut in firmly. ‘And that’s not a trait you possess although, heaven knows, you possess everything else.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Polly prompted.

  Ellie rolled her eyes. ‘Movie-star-handsome King as husband—check. An adoring population who think you can walk on water—check. Constant sunshine overhead, royal palace—check. Loving grandparents—check. An adorable baby son… Yes, I’m talking about you, you little darling!’ She stopped to speak to Karim, who crawled across the rug to his aunt to grab the toy she was extending. ‘I suppose you’re already planning on extending the family?’

  Polly flushed. ‘Not just yet. I’d like Karim to be a little older before we try again. I’m not a baby machine, Ellie. I mean, look at you, you don’t even date—’

  ‘I’m too busy working. Between my shifts and the hospital and the exams I don’t have time for a man. Anyway, most of them are a waste of space,’ her red-headed sister contended. ‘No, I like my life just the way it is. I eat what I like, go where
I like, do as I like and that’s important to me. The minute a man enters the equation, all your choices start disappearing—’

  ‘And you still have no plans to look into your background?’ Polly pressed.

  Ellie sighed. ‘Actually I’m taking a couple of months off once I complete my residency and I’m planning on heading to Italy and doing a little discreet detective work—’

  ‘Oh, that’s great!’ Polly gushed approvingly. ‘Will you tell me your father’s name now?’

  Ellie groaned. ‘The reason I didn’t tell you the name before is that I got given two names—’

  Polly’s eyes widened. ‘Two?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ellie confirmed drily. ‘Two names. Obviously our mother didn’t know which man fathered me and, sleaziest of all, the men were brothers. I’ve done some research. One of the men is alive, the other dead. The living one is a wealthy retired art collector who lives in a palazzo outside Florence—his brother passed away years ago.’

  Polly stared at her sister in consternation, belatedly grasping why the younger woman had been so silent on the topic of her own unknown father and background. ‘Oh, dear… I’m so sorry—’

  ‘No, you got the fairy tale…the military hero father who married our mother…and I got a pair of deadbeat dads,’ Ellie mocked with wry humour. ‘I’m glad it worked out that way. I can handle messy reality better than you can.’

  ‘I could come to Italy with you!’ Polly proffered in dismay. ‘Be your support.’

  ‘No, you’d wilt like a flower out of water deprived of Rashad and Karim,’ Ellie forecast drily. ‘And that’s if your husband would even let you go—’

  ‘Rashad doesn’t tell me what to do—’

  ‘No, but he hates it when you’re away even for a couple of days,’ Ellie reminded her wryly. ‘You came over to see me at Christmas and Rashad was on the phone every five minutes. You actually fell asleep talking to him one night. Having you to stay was like separating a pair of lovelorn teenagers. It’s unhealthy to be so attached to each other…’