In a sudden movement that took him by surprise she stepped past him and clambered into the limousine. The warmth and comfort of the opulent vehicle felt like a cocoon to her weary bones.
‘We could dine at my hotel,’ Shahir murmured.
‘I’d have to go home first…’ As Kirsten heard herself virtually agreeing to his invitation, she was disconcerted to appreciate that her tongue seemed to be running ahead of her brain.
Without comment, Shahir asked for her address and passed it to his chauffeur. She watched him from below her lashes the whole time, devouring every aspect of his appearance with a voracious craving for detail. Even the way he sat was graceful, with his proud dark head at an angle, his broad shoulders relaxed back, long lean limbs arranged with careless masculinity. She loved the way he dressed too, with a style that was both elegant and fashionable. His designer suit was perfectly tailored to his powerful physique. He always looked as if he had stepped straight out of a glossy magazine.
He really was incredibly good-looking…sin personified in male flesh, she conceded ruefully. It was little wonder she had fallen stupidly in love and even more stupidly into bed with him.
‘I’ll only be ten minutes.’ Kirsten hurried into the terraced house where she lived.
She lived in a grimy street lined with rundown housing. Shahir had to resist the urge to accompany her. At his nod the bodyguard in the front seat got out and alerted the security team in the car behind. He breathed in slow and deep, his brilliant dark eyes bleak, for he was very much shocked by the change in her appearance. Nothing could steal the haunting loveliness from her flawless face, but her skin was as white as milk and as transparent as glass, while her eyes were hollow and darkly shadowed. She had also become painfully thin. She looked ill.
Kirsten fed Squeak. She knew that she was going to tell Shahir about the baby. Not because it felt like the right thing to do, or because it was silly to feel humiliated by a pregnancy that he had inflicted on her. No, primarily she was going to tell Shahir that she was pregnant because she knew it would ruin his day. There it was—a mean, petty, vengeful and absolutely shameful motive. But that was how she felt at that moment.
All of a sudden she was wondering how many other women he had been with over the past seven months. Had he wined and dined them too? Of course she had just been a lowly cleaner, and while he might have been prepared to take that lowly cleaner to bed he had not been democratic enough to offer to take her out for a meal. Or give her a flower…or, for that matter, even a little magazine! She could not even regard herself as having been a cheap date, because there had not been a date to begin with. That acknowledgement did nothing to raise her sagging self-esteem.
She was convinced that while she had been struggling to survive Shahir had been partying. Household gossip had always implied that he led an astonishingly quiet and boring life at Strathcraig. Didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, did nothing but work, work and work, what free time he did have absorbed by the charitable foundation he had set up.
Kirsten, however, was unimpressed by that account of clean and decent living. Shahir might not have brought women he slept with to the castle, but he owned other properties round the world, and he had asked her to be his mistress, hadn’t he? He had also got her into bed faster than the speed of light, which signified no small amount of experience, she reasoned bitterly. Any man who kept a mistress was a womaniser. He might be a discreet womanizer, but he was a womaniser nonetheless.
Now she had stoked her hatred to new and heady heights, she saw that it was time that he knew exactly what she thought of him!
Squeak had arthritic joints, and had to be lifted into the limousine. Once on board, he curled up in the cosiest corner of the carpeted floor and went straight back to sleep. Kirsten sank heavily into the leather seat opposite Shahir and closed her eyes while she planned the speech she would make to him. Exhaustion weighed her down like a heavy blanket…
The unfamiliar sound of Squeak growling wakened Kirsten from her heavy slumber. Blinking drowsily, she gazed down at Squeak who, having stationed himself protectively in front of her, was baring his teeth at Shahir, leaning forward.
‘I was trying to wake you. He is a good watchdog,’ Shahir advanced dryly. ‘We’ve arrived at the hotel.’
‘Sorry—I must have dozed off.’ Running an uneasy hand through her rumpled hair, Kirsten took hold of Squeak’s lead. ‘Where are we?’
‘In the hotel’s underground car park. Did you think I was abducting you?’
Kirsten forced a laugh. ‘Don’t be daft.’
As she walked into the lift, Squeak, agitated by his unfamiliar surroundings, crossed in front of her and she stumbled over his lead. Shahir closed firm hands to her shoulders to steady her before she could tumble forward. ‘Careful…’
Without appreciating how close he was to her, Kirsten spun nervously round to face him again. Unfortunately her tummy got in the way of her smoothly completing the movement and rubbed against his hip. She glanced down and was transfixed by the way the fabric of her coat had pulled taut over her projecting midsection to define her fecund shape with cruel accuracy.
Bemused by her tense silence, Shahir followed the path of her gaze. Everything that had confused him fell into place: her ill-health, her unusually clumsy gait, the slowness with which she now moved.
At their feet Squeak growled at the tall dark man’s proximity, but he was ignored. Shahir lifted hands that were not quite steady and undid the two buttons on her coat and carefully spread the edges apart. ‘You’re going to have a baby,’ he breathed, his entire focus pinned to the sizeable swell of her belly. ‘And soon. Whose baby?’
Kirsten dug her hands into her pockets and used them to whip shut the coat and conceal her stomach again. Her face was as red as fire. ‘Whose do you think?’ she hissed like a stinging wasp, accusation etched in every syllable.
‘Then the baby will be due within the next few weeks…’
‘I’m glad you can count,’ she commented thinly.
A servant already had the door of his penthouse suite open in readiness.
Shahir felt light-headed. If his calculations were correct, in less than two months he would be a father. He was in shock. So he was not to feature as a statistic in the much-discussed global fall in male fertility. The baby she was carrying was his. Of course it was. Did that explain why she looked so ill? He knew less than nothing about pregnant women. But what he did know sent a cold shiver through him, for his own mother had died bringing him into the world.
Kirsten came to a self-conscious halt in the centre of the luxurious sitting room. ‘I want you to know that I hate you for getting me into this situation,’ she told him with feverish force. ‘I really, really hate you for it!’
Shahir released his breath in a soundless hiss. She was understandably upset, he reasoned. She must have had a rough time in recent months, and she was clearly unwell. But now that he was here to take care of her everything was about to change. The world would literally become her oyster.
He was tempted to scoop her into his arms and race for the airport at speed, but he knew he couldn’t take her back to his own country to enjoy the very best of tender care until she was his wife.
‘Did you hear me?’ Kirsten demanded, a tad shrilly.
‘Yes. I acknowledge that we have not enjoyed a conventional relationship—’
‘We didn’t have a relationship…you slept with me!’
‘Dragging up the past in an emotional way at this point is not constructive. You are expecting my child, and that is the key issue at stake here. It is vitally important that we marry as soon as it can be arranged,’ Shahir declared without hesitation, lean, powerful features taut. ‘Why? Because our baby will be heir to the throne of Dhemen—but only if his birth is legitimate.’
Unprepared for either of those two announcements, Kirsten stared back at him in a daze of angry confusion. ‘You still haven’t said anything about what I said.’
‘Rig
ht now I would be grateful if you would acknowledge that we currently have a much more pressing duty towards the child you carry.’
‘You’re still prepared to marry me?’ Without warning her mind had circled back to centre on Shahir’s earlier proposition, and there her mind stuck—as though her thoughts were lodged in cement. Once again she was getting the chance to marry Shahir. Pride and a strong sense of fairness had made her refuse his first proposal seven months earlier. She had not needed a wedding ring to compensate her for the loss of her virginity. Even loving him, she hadn’t wanted him on those humiliating terms.
‘Of course I am.‘
‘Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to take precautions and make sure that this didn’t happen in the first place?’
‘It would have been. But I didn’t.’ His strong jawline squared. ‘I assure you that I have never before been so careless.’
Although the subject embarrassed her, Kirsten was still amazed that a male of his sophistication and experience should have been so careless as to totally disregard the threat of consequences. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that you might make me pregnant?’
The faintest hint of colour scored his superb cheekbones. ‘By the time I appreciated what I had done, it was too late. Afterwards I confess that I underestimated the level of risk. And although I asked you to stay in contact with me, I didn’t seriously consider the likelihood of you having conceived.’
‘So how do you feel about it now you do know? Cursed? Bitter? Furious?’ Kirsten queried, desperate to get a real live human reaction out of him. She was convinced that he had to be feeling such emotions, even if he was determined not to show them.
‘I feel that this is our fate and we must accept it with grace,’ Shahir countered with rock-solid assurance.
Her teeth gritted at that suave reply. ‘You mentioned something about the baby being the heir to…to a throne? What was that about?’
‘I am the Crown Prince of my country. My father, Hafiz, is King of Dhemen.’ He awarded her a questioning appraisal. ‘Surely that cannot be news to you?’
Kirsten was stunned. She had assumed that the royal family he belonged to was a large one, and that he was only one of a whole bunch of princes. She had not been aware that he was the son of a king—or the next in the royal line of succession. In her brief time working at the castle she had not heard anyone mention those facts.
‘Let us eat now…’
A door had been quietly opened into an adjoining room and a beautifully laid table awaited them. She sat down, accepted a glass of water, and sipped at it.
‘So, Kirsten. Will you set aside your hostility and agree to become my wife?’ Shahir prompted gravely.
‘I can’t believe that you’re prepared to marry a thief,’ Kirsten heard herself whisper with malicious intent, and she was shocked at herself.
Challenging dark golden eyes flared and met hers in a head-on collision. ‘Life is full of surprises.’
Her face flamed, for she had dimly expected him to backtrack on that issue. ‘I didn’t steal that pendant…I’m not a thief.’
Shahir said nothing. He watched her shred her roll and leave it untouched.
Kirsten knew that his silence was as good as a statement of his disbelief, and she had to swallow back a hotheaded further comment. Why was it that whenever she tried to score a point with him she ended up sounding wretchedly childish and provocative? She wanted to argue her innocence, but sensed that it would be a waste of what little energy she had left. Right now, his entire focus was on the child she carried.
He wanted to marry her so that the baby would be born within wedlock. She had to be fair to him. The level of his commitment towards their unborn child was impressive, and the speed with which he had accepted responsibility equally so, she acknowledged unhappily. Of course he didn’t care about her personally, but what else could she expect? He wasn’t even concerned by the reality that she had sworn undying hatred for him. Evidently he was able to rise above such petty personal feelings and concentrate solely on the baby’s needs. Shouldn’t she be capable of acting with equal unselfishness?
Unfortunately her private emotions did not feel petty. She had fallen madly in love with Shahir bin Harith al-Assad, and he had hurt her terribly. And she only had to look across the table and notice the spectacular bronze of his eyes to be afraid that she was on the brink of being really badly hurt all over again. But she felt horribly guilty for thinking about herself when his example made it clear that she ought only to be considering what was best for the baby.
‘So…will you marry me?’ Shahir asked again.
‘Yes.’ Shadowed green eyes screened, Kirsten shrugged her thin shoulders, as if to suggest that she really couldn’t care either way. But she doubted that he was taken in by her play of indifference. In the community in which she had been raised the moral rules were narrow and unforgiving, and to have a baby outside the bonds of matrimony could not feel like anything other than a source of shame to her. It was hugely important to her that her child should not suffer the stigma of illegitimacy, and that he or she should have both a father and a father’s name.
‘I promise that I will not give you cause to regret the decision. I’ll make immediate arrangements for our wedding.’ The merest hint of a smile tugging at the edges of his sculpted mouth, Shahir stretched a lean brown hand gracefully across the table to engulf hers.
Pale face tensing, Kirsten snaked her fingers hastily back from that threatened contact. ‘Let’s not be fake,’ she said defensively, pushing the soup plate aside after only one spoonful had passed her lips. ‘It’s not as though it’ll be a proper marriage. It’ll only be a pretend one, so that we can put on a respectable front.’
Once again Shahir exercised restraint and said nothing. It might have surprised her, but he was renowned as the diplomat of the royal family. Negotiation was an art at his clever fingertips, and one in which he had great skill. Yet around her he was conscious of being as tactless as an elephant running amok in hobnail boots.
He had yet to work out why all judgement and discretion should desert him with such disastrous effect in her radius, so he embraced silence instead.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I LOOK like a blob with matchstick arms and legs attached.’ Strained green eyes full of disappointment, Kirsten turned away from the reflection taunting her in the mirror. She stiffened as a tiny pain curled in her pelvis, but it faded so fast that she thought it nothing to worry about.
Jeanie planted her hands on her ample hips and dealt the younger woman a reproachful appraisal. ‘That’s a lovely dress, and you look bonny in it!’
‘But I’m huge…’ Feeling forlorn, and as unlike a bride as it was possible to feel, Kirsten bent down awkwardly to close her suitcase.
She knew she was being unreasonable. She was heavily pregnant, and not even the most cleverly designed outfit could be expected to conceal that reality. Her suit was cream and trimmed with a coffee fringe that was young and stylish, but it was still maternity wear. Just for the space of that morning she would have given virtually anything to look more like a bride than an expectant mother.
A week had passed since she had accepted Shahir’s proposal. In the space of that time she had surrendered her job and her bedsit in exchange for a gold credit card, which she had barely used, two bodyguards and a hotel suite. Squeak had taken to a life of luxury with extraordinary ease. Indeed, the little dog trotted about his newly spacious surroundings with a decided hint of cheerful pomposity, but Kirsten still felt as if she was playing a starring role in someone else’s drama.
Shahir had applied for a special licence to enable their wedding to take place quickly, and then he had immediately flown home to Dhemen in order to gain his father’s consent to the marriage. He had also insisted that she invite Jeanie down for the wedding. He had phoned her every single day too, she reminded herself dully. He was courteous and considerate and…impersonal. He’d asked her how she felt, but not how she thought,
and when she had tried to ask him how his father had reacted to his son and heir’s desire to marry a very pregnant foreigner, he had smoothly changed the subject. She didn’t blame him for doing so, for on reflection she decided that her question had been an incredibly stupid one. After all, there was no earthly way that King Hafiz of Dhemen could possibly be persuaded to look on her as an acceptable bride for his royal son and heir.
‘I have something to tell you that will cheer you up,’ Jeanie told her with a grin. ‘Would you like to guess what the hottest gossip at the castle was when I left yesterday?’
Kirsten shook her head.
‘Everyone reckons that Pamela Anstruther framed you as a thief because she realised that Prince Shahir had fallen madly in love with you!’
Kirsten screened her eyes to conceal her pain. On her wedding day of all days she was all too conscious of the fact that her bridegroom did not love her. At the same time, however, she was extremely relieved to hear that the castle staff had started to question and doubt her guilt.
‘Is that really what people think?’
‘What else could they think? Lady Posh spent two years throwing herself at the Prince, and it didn’t matter how short she wore her skirts—she never got to pull him! She must’ve been mad with rage and jealousy when she saw the love story of the century happening right under her nose. I mean, you are absolutely besotted with him, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Kirsten mumbled tightly
‘Well, it does my heart good to know that all Lady Posh’s spite and scheming came to nothing in the end,’ Jeanie declared with strong satisfaction.
‘How did Morag Stevens react to the news that Shahir and I were getting married?’ Kirsten was keen to find out how the assistant housekeeper, whose damning evidence as a witness had convicted her, had behaved.
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