More than a Convenient Marriage?

by Dani Collins

  His arms crushed her, making it hard to find enough breath to talk, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. She was shaking so hard she needed him to hold her up.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t think I could,” she managed.

  “You can, Ro. More than you know.”

  Because he cared. He was letting down his guard for her and she recognized what a sacrifice he was making. She silently swore a vow of duty to protect, never wanting to hurt him again.

  His mouth found hers and they kissed with a reverence anointed by salty tears. His hand in her hair was possessive and cherishing, his other hand gently stroking to meld her curves indelibly to his hard angles.

  The door to the trailer opened and a male voice cursed. “Get your own room.” The door slammed.

  Rowan choked on a laugh as they broke apart in surprise, breathless and blinking to see through her wet lashes.

  “I’ve missed this smile,” Nic said, with a tender knuckle against the corner of her mouth. “But I agree with whoever that was. What are we going to do? I want to marry you now.”

  “Are you sure?” His urgent determination lifted her heart into the stratosphere, but she forced herself at least to try to be sensible. “We can see how things go—have a long engagement. You and I...we have our clashes.”

  “We’re both too headstrong not to. But I’d rather have a ring on your finger as a promise that we’ll work it out.”

  The deep tenderness in his eyes turned everything in her to liquid heat, but she heard something else in his tone that touched her even more deeply. Implacable determination. He wanted a seal on this deal and no room for her to back out. Nic wanted her. Forever.

  With a trembling smile, she held out an equally trembling hand. “Okay, then. Yes, please, I’d love to marry you, Nic. I love you.”

  He drew in a sharp breath, like he was taking the words into him. His hands shook as he opened the velvet box and worked the ring onto her finger. “I only brought this to prove my intentions were honorable, never expecting you’d actually say yes...”

  It was a perfect fit, but the dazzling diamond and its band of emeralds almost made her start crying again. “Not trying to buy me, huh?” she joked, in an effort to hold on to her composure.

  “Go big or go home alone.” Nic’s grin was rueful. He offered her the key to Rosedale.

  Rowan tucked it into his breast pocket, giving it a little pat. “You hang on to it. This is a package deal. I don’t want the house unless you’re in it.”

  His chest rose as he took a big breath, and they both nearly fell into another passionate embrace.

  Rowan made herself check her watch. “Help me show a bit of responsibility here. There’s a few hours of filming left. Then we can go back to my flat. It’s not much, but I have a feeling you won’t be looking at anything but the bedding.”

  “I won’t be looking at anything but you.”

  EPILOGUE

  Eight and a half months later...

  NIC NEVER CLOSED his door against Rowan, but with workers running table saws and nail guns at the bottom of the stairs while he was trying to work he’d not only closed his door, but started thinking about disappearing to Athens.

  Rowan wanted to oversee the renovations, however. If she wouldn’t come with him, he wouldn’t go. It wasn’t his idea to change things, but she was insisting on finding a middle ground between keeping what they both loved about Rosedale while opening up the design more to his preference. Since that would make Rosedale very much theirs, he approved.

  “Nic?” She pushed in with a confused frown, giving the door a baleful glance as she closed it behind her.

  “I couldn’t hear myself think with the noise—are you all right?” He was always completely attuned to her moods. Both of them were still capable of putting on a facade around others, but they read each other like a book and Rowan was not herself at this moment.

  He scanned her slender figure, stopping where her hands were wringing out the cordless phone like a wet towel. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with shock, her bottom lip caught abusively between sharp white teeth. She was shaking.

  Stark concern lifted him onto his feet with instinctive readiness, adrenaline piercing his system like an injection of drugs. “What happened? Who was that?”

  “We’re in labor,” she said, with a sudden beaming smile that instantly became slushy with trembles.

  That was supposed to be a joke, he recognized, but his brain wasn’t computing humor when the implication was so huge.

  “That was the agency?” His knees almost buckled.

  If a crowd had rushed in here and hefted him high, touting him as a hero, he wouldn’t have been more shocked, elated or proud. Part of him had felt like it was a losing cause to chase adoption. The background interviews hadn’t been easy for him. He’d opened up for both of them, to give them this chance, but he couldn’t change the fact that he was perceived as a very distant man. The more they’d talked about what they might be able to offer a child, however, the more he’d wanted one. He hadn’t been sure he’d even pass muster as a prospective father—now this?

  Rowan was nodding and grinning, her brimming eyes spilling happy tears onto her cheekbones. “They have a baby girl. Her mum was killed by a landmine and she was injured. She needs to stay in hospital for a couple of weeks, and will need a number of surgeries over the next few years, but—”

  “Us,” he said, staggering his way from behind his desk to reach his wife in a lurch. “She needs us.”

  Rowan nodded, sobbing as she threw her arms around his neck, “Nic, I’m so happy!”

  “I didn’t think I could be happier than I already was,” he choked, lifting and crushing her to him, trying to absorb her lithe frame into his bones. “God, I love you. Look what you’re doing to me. Turning me into a father!”

  She took his face in her hands and looked at him in the undisguised way that always made his heart bottom out. “You are going to be the most amazing father. I can’t wait to see it.”

  He teared up, and swept her in a scoop against the racing pound of his heart, stumbling to the sofa so he could sit with her in his lap and stroke her shaking body with his shaking hands.

  “My whole life is better with you, Rowan. Thank you for loving me.”

  Rowan was so deeply happy and in love it was more than she could contain. Wiping her damp cheeks, she laughed helplessly, “I can’t stop crying and I want to kiss you!”

  “Did you have the sense to lock the door?” In one powerful twist he had her gently sprawled beneath him, his weight braced over her. He paused, hand massaging her flat abdomen. “Can we do this in your delicate condition? Being in labor and all?”

  She let out a peal of appreciative laughter. “Better hurry before we have a baby stealing our attention.”

  “When you put it like that, I think I’d better take my time. I want to give you all the attention you deserve.” He covered her smile with a reverent, loving kiss.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from DEFIANT IN THE DESERT by Sharon Kendrick.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘THERE’S A MAN downstairs in Reception who says he wants to see you.’

  ‘Who is it?’ questioned Sara, not bothering to lift her head from the drawing which was currently engrossing her.

  ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  At this Sara did look up to find Alice, the office runner, staring at her with an odd sort of expression. Alice was young and very enthusiastic, but right now she looked almost transported. Her face was tight with excitement and disbelief—as if Santa Claus himself had arrived early with a full contingent of reindeer.

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve afternoon,’ said Sara, glancing out of the window at the dark grey sky and wincing. No snow, unfortunately. Only a few heavy raindrops spattering against the glass. Pity. Snow might have helped boost her mood—to help shift off the inevitable feeling of not quite fitting in which always descended on her at this time of year. She never found it easy to enjoy Christmas—which was one of the main reasons why she tended to ignore the festival until it had gone away.

  She pushed a smile to the corners of her mouth, trying to pick up on Alice’s happy pre-holiday mood. ‘And very soon I’m going to be packing up and going home. If it’s a salesman, I’m not interested and if it’s anyone else, then tell them to go away and make an appointment to see me in the new year.’

  ‘He says he’s not going anywhere,’ said Alice and then paused dramatically. ‘Until he’s seen you.’

  Sara put her purple felt-tip pen down with fingers which had annoyingly started to tremble, telling herself not to be so stupid. Telling herself that she was perfectly safe here, in this bright, open-plan office of the highly successful advertising agency where she worked. That there was no reason for this dark feeling of foreboding which had started whispering over her skin.

  But of course, there was...

  ‘What do you mean—he’s not going anywhere?’ she demanded, trying to keep her voice from rising with panic. ‘What exactly did he say?’

  ‘That he wants to see you,’ repeated Alice and now she made another face which Sara had never seen before. ‘And that he craves just a few minutes of your time.’

  Craves.

  It was a word which jarred like an ice cream eaten on a winter day. No modern Englishman would ever have used a word like that. Sara felt the cold clamp of fear tightening around her heart, like an iron band.

  ‘What...what does he look like?’ she asked, her voice a croaky-sounding husk.

  Alice played with the pendant which was dangling from her neck in an unconscious display of sexual awareness. ‘He’s...well, he’s pretty unbelievable, if you must know. Not just because of the way he’s built—though he must work out practically non-stop to get a body like that—but more...more...’ Her voice tailed off. ‘Well, it’s his eyes really.’

  ‘What about his eyes?’ barked Sara, feeling her pulse begin to rocket.

  ‘They were like...black. But like, really black. Like the sky when there’s no moon or stars. Like—’

  ‘Alice,’ cut in Sara, desperately trying to inject a note of normality into the girl’s uncharacteristically gushing description. Because at that stage she was still trying to fool herself into thinking that it wasn’t happening. That it might all be some terrible mistake. A simple mix-up. Anything, but the one thing she most feared. ‘Tell him—’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me yourself, Sara?’

  A cold, accented voice cut through her words and Sara whirled round to see a man standing in the doorway of the office. Shock, pain and desire washed over her in rapid succession. She hadn’t seen him for five long years and for a moment she almost didn’t recognise him. He had always been dark and utterly gorgeous, gifted with a face and a mind which had captured her heart so completely. But now...

  Now...

  Her heart pounded.

  Something about him had changed.

  His dark head was bare and he wore a custom-made suit instead of his usual robes. The charcoal jacket defined his honed torso just as well as any folds of flowing silk and the immaculately cut trousers emphasised the endless length of his powerful thighs. He had always carried the cachet which came from being the Sultan of Qurhah’s closest advisor, but now his natural air of authority seemed to be underpinned with a steely layer Sara had never seen before. And suddenly she recognised it for what it was.

  Power.

  It seemed to crackle from every pore of his body. To pervade the serene office environment like high-voltage electricity. It made her wary—warier than she felt already, with her heart beating so fast it felt as if it might burst right out of her chest.

  ‘Suleiman,’ she said, her voice unsteady and a little unsure. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He smiled, but it was the coldest smile she had ever seen. Even colder than the one which he had iced into her the last time they’d been together. When he had torn himself away from her passionate embrace and looked down at her as if she was the lowest of the low.

  ‘I think you can probably work that one out for yourself, can’t you, Sara?’

  He stepped into the office, his clever black eyes narrowing.

  ‘You are an intelligent woman, if a somewhat misguided one,’ he continued. ‘You have been ignoring repeated requests from the Sultan to return to Qurhah to become his wife. Haven’t you?’

  ‘And if I have?’

  He looked at her, but there was nothing but indifference in his eyes and, stupidly, that hurt.

  ‘If you have, then you have been behaving like a fool.’

  His phrase was coated with an implicit threat which made her skin turn to ice and Sara heard Alice gasp. She turned her head slightly, expecting to see horror on the face of the trendy office runner, with her pink-streaked hair and bottom-hugging skirt. Because it wasn’t cool for men to talk that way, was it? But she saw nothing like horror there. Instead, the bohemian youngster was staring at Suleiman with a look of rapt adoration.

  Sara swallowed. Cool obviously flew straight out of the window when you had a towering black-haired male standing in your office just oozing testosterone. Why wouldn’t Alice acknowledge the presence of a man unlike any other she had probably met? Despite all the attractive hunks who worked in Gabe Steel’s advertising empire—didn’t Suleiman Abd al-Aziz stand out like a spot of black oil on a white linen dress? Didn’t he redefine the very concept of masculinity and make it a hundred times more meaningful?

  For her, he had always had the ability to make every other man fade into insignificance—even royal princes and sultans—but now something about him had changed. There was an indefinable quality about him. Something dangerous.

  Gone was the affection with which he always used to regard her. The man who had drifted in and out of her childhood and taught her to ride seemed to have been replaced by someone else. The black eyes were flat and cold; his lips unsmiling. It wasn’t exactly hatred she could see on his face—for his expression implied that she wasn’t worthy of an emotion as strong as hate. It was more as if she was a hindrance. As if he was here under sufferance, in the very last place he wanted to be.

  And she had only herself to blame. She knew that. If she hadn’t flung herself at him. If she hadn’t allowed him to kiss her and then silently invited him to do so much more than that. To...

  She tried a smile, though she wasn’t sure how convincing a smile it was. She had done everything in her power to forget about Suleiman and the way he’d made her feel, but wasn’t it funny how just one glimpse of him could stir up all those familiar emotions? Suddenly her heart was turning over with that painful clench of feeling she’d once thought was love. She could feel the sink of her stomach as she was reminded that he could never be hers.

  Well, he would never know that. He wouldn’t ever guess that he coul
d still make her feel this way. She wasn’t going to give him the chance to humiliate her and reject her. Not again.

  ‘Nice of you to drop in so unexpectedly, Suleiman,’ she said, her voice as airy as she could manage. ‘But I’m afraid I’m pretty busy at the moment. It is Christmas Eve, you know.’

  ‘But you don’t celebrate Christmas, Sara. Or at least, I wasn’t aware that you did. Have you really changed so much that you have adopted, wholesale, the values of the West?’

  He was looking around the large, open-plan office with an expression of distaste curving his carved lips which he didn’t bother to hide. His flat black eyes were registering the garish tinsel which was looped over posters depicting some of the company’s many successful advertising campaigns. His gaze rested briefly on the old-fashioned fir tree, complete with flashing lights and a glittering star at the top, which had been erected as a kind of passé tribute to Christmases past. His expression darkened.

  Sara put her fingers in her lap, horribly aware that they were trembling, and it suddenly became terribly important that he shouldn’t see that, either. She didn’t want him to think she was scared, even if that moment she was feeling something very close to scared. And she couldn’t quite work out what she was afraid of—her, or him.

  ‘Look, I really am very busy,’ she said. ‘And Alice doesn’t want to hear—’

  ‘Alice doesn’t have to hear anything because she is about to leave us alone to continue this conversation in private,’ he said instantly. Turning towards the office junior, he produced a slow smile, like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat. ‘Aren’t you, Alice?’

  Sara watched, unwillingly fascinated as Alice almost melted under the impact of his smile. She even—and Sara had never witnessed this happen before—she even blushed. In a single moment, the streetwise girl from London had been transformed into a gushing stereotype from another age. Any minute now and she might actually swoon.