He laughed softly and stood up. “Yes, Kate. We are.”
“No!” she told him, trying to be firm, but he was standing up as well and the thrust of his erection caught her eye. Darn it, he wasn’t playing fair! He was a big man, everywhere! And she knew, in intimate detail, what he could do to her. Oh man! She wanted him.
Kate shook her head, trying to shake off the insidious desire that was still snaking through her body. “Talal, this isn’t right. You don’t want me. You just want a wife.”
He froze, staring at her in the dim light. Then he threw back his head and guffawed. Kate watched him, not sure what she’d said that was so hilarious, but his laughter gave her the opportunity she needed to get around him. She spotted a closed door and hurried to it, wanting to find a robe for him. Flicking on the lights, she blinked as her eyes adjusted to the brighter interior of the massive closet. Good grief, this room was bigger than her entire house in Wyoming!
Okay, granted, she had a pretty extensive wardrobe at her Los Angeles home, but that was because she wore a gown and then couldn’t be seen in it again for a long time. She hadn’t gotten around to selling her worn outfits at a consignment place yet.
She flipped through several items and sighed with relief when she found a black, silk robe. Bringing it back to him, she extended her hand towards him, even as she looked away. “Here. Put this on and then we can discuss the future.”
He took the robe, but instead of slipping it on, covering up those amazing shoulders, he tossed it onto the bed. “I’ve never been ashamed of my body, Kate. You know that.”
She rolled her eyes and took several steps away. Crossing her arms over her chest protectively, she glared up at him, refusing to look lower than his chin. “Fine!” she snapped. Okay, her eyes dropped once. Just once. Well, twice…
“What do you want to discuss?” he asked, mimicking her posture.
That didn’t help, since it only caused his shoulder and bicep muscles to bulge. Kate’s mouth went dry as she ordered herself to lift her gaze, to look higher.
“I won’t marry you. And I’m not sharing a bed with you.”
He nodded and stepped closer. “We are getting married. And you can sleep anywhere you want.”
She sighed with relief, not sure what he meant by sleeping anywhere, but she’d figure that out later. “I can’t marry you, Talal. I won’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because I don’t trust you. It took a long time to get over you.” She took a deep breath. “I loved you, Talal. Really loved you. The way we talked, the nights in your arms, the laughter and our conversations…all of it made me tumble head over heels in love with you. The first time you left, I was worried that something had happened to you. But you came back. I couldn’t believe it, but you did.” Kate turned around, needing a bit of distance and to stop looking at his body. “But then you left me again. No word, no information at all. You were just gone. I tried leaving the island that time, but…well, obviously, I didn’t. So when you came back, I accepted that our time together was just going to be short. That you’d leave again. But that time lasted longer. You were with me for over a week.”
“And that was the problem? That I was there for too long?”
She shook her head. “No Talal. The problem was that week gave me hope. You made me dream. The way you spoke to me, the words you used, made me think that you wanted a real future too. And even though I couldn’t figure out how that could work because of our jobs, I wanted to try. I wanted to hope.” She took a deep, shuddering breath before continuing. “I wanted the dream, Talal.”
He looked grim, but also determined. “And I let you down.”
“Exactly.” She was relieved that he understood.
“That was in the past. It will be different going forward.”
Kate’s mouth fell open with his arrogant declaration. Shaking her head, she squeezed her eyes closed, praying for patience. When she opened them again, she held her hands out to him, pleading with him to really understand what she was saying. “Talal, you’re not getting it.”
He shook his head. “I do. Your heart is tender and I hurt it. You don’t trust me. You don’t want to trust me because you are afraid I will hurt you again.” He paused for a long moment. “You are also distrustful of my motives, not understanding that I do want a family. And I want that family with you. You are wary because you think that I am only using this as a convenience.”
Her eyes were wide as he recited the issues perfectly. “Um…”
“What you don’t understand Kate, is that you aren’t a convenience.” He moved closer. “In fact, you’re incredibly inconvenient.” His voice was lower now. “You’re one of the most inconvenient women I’ve ever met.”
She pulled back, frowning.
“When I met you, I thought you would be a nice fling. I wanted you from the moment I first saw you in that seaside restaurant.”
She held her breath, still not daring to hope.
“The more I got to know you, the worse it became.”
Her breath went out in a whoosh. “Okay, well, that’s not exactly romantic.”
He chuckled, but took her hands. “Kate, I’m not a romantic person. I have too much to do, too many responsibilities. When we were together before, it was possibly the worst time ever to have found the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that you were the one until you’d gone. I came back to the island, but you’d already left.”
“I wasn’t going to wait for you again,” she told him, her chin lifting in defiance, trying to block out the hurt she’d felt that day and for months afterwards.
“Good. It was exactly what I needed. You weren’t there when I returned, and I was furious with you. I tried to tell myself that it was for the best. Every time I was away from you, all I could think about was you. How much I wanted to see you, to talk to you.”
“Talk to me?” she asked, disbelief clear in her voice.
He laughed, hearing what she wasn’t saying. “True, I wanted to make love to you too. But yes, I also wanted to talk to you. I wanted you by my side as I dealt with the ugliness of my father’s death as well as the difficult transition of power. I told myself that, if you’d been with me, you would have only distracted me. I didn’t want you around and yet,” he chuckled, shaking his head, “and yet, you distracted me because you weren’t around.” He pulled her closer still. “Kate, I haven’t been with another woman since I left you that morning. I couldn’t.”
She swallowed, holding her breath as hope began to blossom. “Why?”
“Because you’re who I want.”
Wrong! Kate snorted, shaking her head and pulling back. “That’s just sex.”
He gestured to his erection, which hadn’t diminished in any way during their conversation. “Obviously, I can’t deny that sex is a part of it.”
“A huge part,” she added without thinking, and blushed when one of his dark eyebrows shot up with her quip. “I didn’t mean it like that!” she came right back.
Talal laughed. “I know, honey. I was just teasing you.”
“Stop it.”
“I can’t. You’re adorable when you blush.”
Kate rolled her eyes and moved further away from him. “Pretty words, Talal. But I don’t believe you. I can’t.”
He stood there watching as she paced the length of the bed. Did she have any idea what her body language and pacing was telling him? Probably not. They might have spent a great deal of their time together in bed making love, but she was still pretty innocent in that department.
But as she paced, he started to notice things. Subtle things. “You’re breasts are bigger,” he announced.
Kate stopped pacing, turning to glare at him. “You shouldn’t be looking at my breasts!” she pointed out. “But yes, nursing does that. They…” she paused to find the words, her hands waving around slightly, “fill up when I know that Jaffri is hungry.”
He smiled
slightly, unable to pull his eyes away. “That’s pretty hot.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “It’s not ‘hot’, Talal. It’s biology. I didn’t increase my breast size in order to entice you. They increased in order to feed my son.”
“Our son.”
Kate stopped pacing when he pointed that out. “Yes. Well. Yes.” She couldn’t really argue with him because he was right. Jaffri was their son.
“How about this,” he began. “I’ll re-earn your trust.”
She stared at him, not sure she wanted to trust him. “No.”
He laughed and continued. “I’ll show you in small ways that I can be trusted and that you are the woman I want to marry. Not the woman I need to marry in order to make our son legitimate, but the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
Her chin went up, not believing him for a minute. “I believe that you’ll do anything to convince me, and I also know that you’re really good at getting your way. You talk to seasoned diplomats all the time. That’s not fair.”
He conceded her point with a slight tilt to his head. “Yes. But you’re an actress. You can easily hide your feelings from me. You could hurt me as well by pretending to reject me.”
She couldn’t do that. Not with Talal. Especially not with Talal! She couldn’t. Kate didn’t think she could hide anything from him. But if he believed her capable of that, then she wasn’t going to disabuse him of that assumption.
Kate continued to glare at him. “It seems as if we’re at an impasse,” she announced. “I’m not willing to trust you and you’re not willing to accept that.”
He smiled and looked down for a moment. When he looked back at her, she felt her stomach muscles tighten with…dread? Anticipation?
“How about this? While you’re filming this movie, you stay here at the palace. If I can’t convince you that you’re the woman I want, forever, then you take Jaffri back to Los Angeles with you.”
Her eyes widened with shock. “You’d allow that? You’d just let him go?”
He laughed again. “Kate, you don’t understand my determination to convince you. No, I won’t let you go, because I’m going to win.”
She hesitated. He was a powerful man. He could do things that… “And if I’m not convinced by the end of filming, you’ll let me go? No strings attached?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I get to see my son regularly. And I won’t always have the time to go to you in Los Angeles, so you’d have to bring him here, at least sometimes.”
Kate felt her shoulders relax with those concessions. That sounded like a real option, as if he had doubts. For some reason, that made her feel better, more confident that he was genuinely going to honor the agreement. “That seems fair,” she finally agreed.
“Then we have an agreement.” He announced, as if it were a done deal and she hesitated again, wondering what he had up his sleeve. Then she realized that he couldn’t have anything up his sleeve since the man was naked! And still fully aroused!
“Doesn’t that hurt?” she asked, waving towards his erection.
“Yes. But I know you’re not going to get back into that bed with me right now, so I’m fine.”
She hesitated once again, but then she heard Jaffri. It was just a slight sound, but she knew that a more adamant call from her son would follow if she didn’t hurry. He always woke up hungry.
“I have to go. Jaffri is awake.” She could tell from his startled expression that he hadn’t heard the soft sound, but as a mother, she was more attuned to sounds.
She hurried of the room, grateful that he hadn’t removed her clothes when he’d carried her into the bedroom last night. It was easier to walk away from him when she knew that he wasn’t…
She glanced back over her shoulder. Sure enough, his eyes were focused on her butt. “Go shower,” she muttered, but the pink in her cheeks only increased when she heard his knowing laughter, telling her that he’d noticed her blush.
Mumbling, she hurried over to Jaffri’s room, opening the door just as he really began to get going. “I’m here, little guy,” she cooed sweetly. Instantly, his temper soothed and he lifted his arms to her, his adorable cheeks puckering to a smile.
She settled into the rocking chair, opened her blouse and shifted the nursing bra. It was possibly the ugliest piece of underwear ever created, but it was helpful when she needed to hurry.
Chapter 10
Three days. Three days!
Kate rubbed her forehead as she sat in her dressing room. Filming was over for the day and she knew that her bodyguards were waiting outside, ready to drive her back to the palace.
The film was coming along beautifully!
It was the rest of her world that was falling apart.
Oh, that wasn’t exactly true, she thought. Talal and Jaffri were getting along extremely well. Just this morning, Talal had fed Jaffri by himself, father and son laughing, enjoying each other’s company. Jaffri might be only nine months old, but he’d accepted Talal into his life as if he’d always been there.
Even Joan was fitting in extremely well!
So, what was wrong?
Sex. She couldn’t avoid the sexual tension that had been building over the past several days. Kate refused to sleep with Talal, but that didn’t diminish her awareness of the man. Nor was he helping her, either! Every time he passed by her in their suite, he would touch her in passing or when he took Jaffri out of her arms, his hand would “accidentally” brush her breast.
In all honestly, it probably wasn’t Talal’s touches that were driving her to distraction. It was more likely that her resistance was breaking down and she was merely clinging to pride now.
But pride was a difficult thing to overcome.
Was it just pride that was keeping her from…slipping into his bed and re-discovering all of those wonderful feelings that only Talal could generate inside of her? Or was there something more?
Fear.
Yes, it was fear. She’d been hurt so badly the last time. Eighteen months ago, she’d been devastated by his disappearance. How could she trust him now? Her heart was still wounded, so tender from his last rejection of what they had together.
But…he’d left her because of his father. Of all the reasons for a quick disappearance, a sick father, one who ruled a country, no less, was a pretty darn good one!
But…Talal hadn’t told her what was going on. All he’d had to do was shake her awake and tell her that he’d be back after a family emergency.
But…it had been a national emergency as well. If someone had overheard him telling her, or if she’d mentioned reasons for his renewed absence, she might have caused a civil war.
But…he could have told her not to say anything. He’d been sleeping with her at the time! They’d talked, they’d laughed together. He should have known that she would keep his secrets!
But…
Kate sighed, dropping her head down on her folded arms. She couldn’t go back to the palace. She just couldn’t! Talal was there and…she wasn’t sure she had the strength to resist him tonight.
She was weak. She was pathetic.
And she wanted to make love to Talal.
Good grief! All her life, she’d thought she was so strong, so ethical about her sexuality! She’d considered the people who slept around, men and women who had sex with people simply because they enjoyed it, to be wrong.
And yet, here she was, contemplating doing the exact same thing. She wasn’t in lo…
Uh oh.
No! She was not in love with Talal! She couldn’t be! No way would she be so stupid as to fall in love with the man who had hurt her so deeply.
Granted, they talked and laughed over meals now. And yes, he’d come to the film site yesterday with a picnic lunch, which had been incredibly sweet.
Kate groaned as she considered the past three days. He’d been chivalrous, helpful, calm, and wonderful. He listened to her griping during the filming and had even discussed a couple of problems he’d experienced dur
ing his day. It was almost as if he were…sharing with her? Was that what he was doing?
Hadn’t she just been complaining because he hadn’t shared his life’s struggles with her a year and a half ago?
A knock sounded on the door of the trailer and she jumped.
“Are you okay, Ms. Childress?” one of her guards asked respectfully through the door.
Kate looked at the door, trying to figure out the correct answer to that question. No, she wasn’t okay.
“I’m fine!” she called back, lying through her teeth. With a sigh of resignation, she stood up, grabbed her bag, and joined her guards.
The rest of the film crew was still working, the other actors were doing their thing now. She’d thought they would resent her for the eight hour contractual requirement since most filming days were more along the twelve to sixteen hour schedule. But she suspected that the director was taking notes about her comings and goings, more than ready to use her “romance” with the Sheik of Altair to promote the movie.
He played dirty, but other than pretending that she wasn’t going to see Talal, there was nothing she could do about it. She would adhere to the contract terms because she didn’t like breaking her promises.
The drive back to the palace was silent. Kate stared blankly out the window without seeing anything. When the guard opened the back door, she blinked, surprised to find that they’d already pulled up to the doors of the palace. She had to enter underground now because of the increased security.
Stepping out, she took a deep breath, staring through the already opened doors. This was it, she thought. Be strong! Resist his subtle seduction!
Kate ignored the curious expressions on her bodyguards’ faces as she continued to stand there, mentally bracing herself to enter the palace. To face Talal.
Why was this so hard?
Another deep breath and she nodded, telling herself that she wasn’t going to fall into his arms. She was strong!
Twenty steps to the elevators and then…
Her Secret Page 15