by Lynne Graham
‘Right... OK.’ Tati hovered, fighting to compose herself again when she had the most extraordinary desire to cry and shout and yell like an hysterical woman at the end of her tether. And that wasn’t her, had never been her, she reminded herself. She had always been the calm, practical one compared to Ana, who flung a tantrum when she didn’t get her own way and sulked for days. But for Tati, it had been a truly horrible long strain of a day and it was not done yet, and she did not feel that just then she had the necessary resources to cope with Saif’s antagonism on top of everything else.
‘I hate you,’ she told him truthfully, because no guy that good-looking, who had chosen to marry her, had the right to tell her that she disgusted him. He was gorgeous to look at, but he had no manners, no decency and no sense of justice. If she were to blame for marrying him, he was equally to blame for marrying her. ‘You’re just one more person trying to blame me for your bad decisions!’
CHAPTER THREE
THE BRIDE AND the groom dined at opposite ends of the cabin.
A private jet, Tati acknowledged, covertly admiring the pale sleek leather and gleaming wood fitments in the cabin while telling herself firmly that she was not impressed. There were a lot of stewards on board as well. The level of contemporary luxury on the jet was not even remotely akin to the Victorian grandeur of the palace. A bundle of glossy fashion magazines was brought to her. She was waited on hand and foot and the meal that duly arrived was amazing. Only then did she appreciate that she was starving because she had barely eaten all day.
That terrible looming apprehension that had killed her appetite had drifted away, but the anger still lingered. Her face burned afresh at the recollection of being labelled a shameless gold digger. But wasn’t that kind of woman what Prince Saif of Alharia deserved in a wife? After all, he had agreed to marry without demonstrating the smallest personal interest in his bride. He had not bothered to engineer a meeting or even a phone call with her cousin before the wedding! So, if he was displeased with the calibre of wife he had acquired, it was all his own fault! Still fizzing with resentment, Tati shot a glance down to the far end of the cabin where her husband was working on a laptop, once again showing off his indifference to the woman he had married. She wasn’t one bit sorry that she had told him she hated him!
But my goodness, he was, as her mother would have said, ‘easy on the eye.’ Black hair tumbled across his brow, framing his hard, masculine profile. Those ridiculously long ebony lashes were a visible slash of darkness even at a distance and the curve of his shapely mouth was as obvious as the dark stubble beginning to shadow his jawline. Annoyingly, he kept on snatching at her attention. And she didn’t know why he interfered with her concentration. Well, that was a lie, she acknowledged ruefully. A guy that gorgeous was kind of hard to ignore, especially if you had just married him, even though there was absolutely no way it would ever be a real marriage.
By the time the jet landed, Tati was smothering yawns. She was too incredibly weary to do more than disembark from the plane and climb into the limousine awaiting them without comment. The Prince was silent as well, probably busy brooding over the sheer indignity of being married off to a money-grubbing foreigner, she thought nastily. She had assumed they would be staying in a hotel, so it was a surprise when the limousine purred to a halt outside what appeared to be a rather large three-storey house in an affluent tree-lined street.
A little man in a smart jacket ushered them into a big opulent hall with a chandelier hanging overhead that was so spectacular she suspected it was antique Venetian glass. And she only knew that because her aunt Elizabeth had once had one made to look as though it were an antique and had regularly passed it off as such to impress her guests. Saif addressed the man in fluent French.
‘Would you like a meal? A snack?’ he then enquired politely of her.
‘No, thanks. I just want to sleep for about a week.’ Her face flamed as she belatedly realised that it was their wedding night and she stiffened, averting her attention from him in haste, although she didn’t think he had any expectations whatsoever in that field. The look the Prince had given her when she had earlier told him she wasn’t going to have sex with him should have frozen her to death where she stood. He had been outraged, but at least he hadn’t argued. There was a bright side to everything, wasn’t there?
‘We will have to share a bed tonight,’ Saif informed her in an undertone. ‘We were expected to remain in Alharia until tomorrow. This place will not be fully staffed until then and only one bedroom has been prepared. Marcel is already apologising in advance for any deficiencies we may notice.’
The concept of having to share a bed with the Prince almost made Tati groan out loud. But she was too tired to fight with him. She didn’t think he would make any kind of move on her. She was quite sure that she could have located linen and made up a bed for herself, but she was in a strange house, wary of treading on domestic toes and too drained to make a fuss. ‘I’m too exhausted to care.’
It went without saying that she was not accustomed to such luxurious accommodation. Her aunt and uncle’s home, Fosters Manor, was a pretty Edwardian country house but, as such houses went, it was not that large and it was definitely shabby. When her grandmother had still been alive, it had been beautifully kept, but maintenance standards had slipped once her uncle took over and dismissed most of the staff.
‘It has been a long day,’ Saif gritted, relieved she hadn’t thrown a tantrum over the bed situation. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with that.
Yet after the way he had confronted her with his opinion of her, it was little wonder that she had lost her temper with him, he conceded grudgingly. He had been insanely tactless when he had told her the truth of what he thought of her. It would have been more logical to swallow his ire because he was trapped in their marriage until such time as he was able to divorce her. On the other hand, he could take the annulment route, he reasoned thoughtfully. But that would upset his father, who would feel responsible for the whole mess because he had insisted that the wedding go ahead with the substitute bride.
He wondered if the little blonde beside him and the cousin who had taken flight had planned exactly this denouement. Clearly, her uncle had suspected her of that duplicity. Who would know her nature better than her own flesh and blood? Furthermore, anyone with the smallest knowledge of his father’s character would have guessed that he would do virtually anything sooner than accept his son and heir being jilted. The Emir loathed scandal and he was very proud and touchy about any issue that might inflict a public loss of face on the throne. It seemed rather too neat that the original bride had vanished at the eleventh hour and her stand-in had appeared in her place, dressed as a traditional Alharian bride. He needed answers, Saif acknowledged, because now that she was his wife, he wanted to know precisely who and what he was dealing with. How calculating was she? How greedy? Could he make her less of a problem simply by throwing money at her? It was a distasteful idea but one he was willing to follow through on if it granted him peace.
Marcel cast open a door at the top of the stairs into a superb bedroom suite. Saif was reluctantly amused by the opulent appointments, thinking fondly that his half-brother, Angelino Diamandis, certainly knew how to live in luxury. Having worked hard to put any personal issues with his deserting mother behind him, he had gained sufficient distance from that betrayal to seek out his younger half-brother. A smile illuminated his lean dark features, softening his set jawline. If he was honest he occasionally envied his brother, Angel, for his freedom and independence, but he was not prepared to lose his father and step up to the throne to attain that same lack of constraint.
Barely able to credit how a single smile could light the Prince up to reveal ten times the charisma he had so far shown her, Tati got all flustered and heard herself ask, almost as if it were normal to speak to him civilly, ‘Does this house belong to you?’
‘No, it belongs to my
—’ Saif hesitated and swallowed what he had almost revealed, because he couldn’t trust her with that information lest it reach the wrong ears. ‘It belongs to a relative of mine. He offered it to me because he was unable to attend the wedding.’ Well, at least not in his official capacity, Saif adjusted with a winning smile of satisfaction, for he had contrived to spend almost an hour with his brother that same afternoon. ‘I prefer this to the anonymity of a hotel.’
‘It’s a fabulous place...from what little I’ve seen,’ Tati adjusted awkwardly, moving past him to scoop up her toiletries bag and nightwear from the case that a maid had already begun to unpack, just as another had embarked on Saif’s luggage. Two maids and yet supposedly the household was understaffed this evening?
As she bent down Saif stared, focused hungrily on her curvy bottom and the bounce of her full breasts as she straightened again, blond hair flaring like polished silk round her heart-shaped face, big blue eyes skittering off him at speed. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He didn’t like that. It made him wonder what she was thinking, what she could be planning. The more he considered the manner in which she had immediately stepped into her cousin’s shoes, the more suspicious he became of her every move. He winced at the current of lust still trying to pull him in a dangerous direction. Possibly an annulment would be the path to take if he could sell the idea to his father without shocking him too much. In the interim, he definitely needed to keep his hands off his bride.
Through an open door Tati could see a bathroom and she hastened into the sanctuary it offered. She didn’t really need a bath but she ran one just the same, determined to make the most of her time alone. She took off the make-up, cleaned her teeth before finally lying back in hot, scented water and striving to relax. But how the heck could she relax with him out there? Ana would have charmed him out of the trees by now, she reflected ruefully. Men adored her cousin for her looks, her smiles and her flirtatious ways. Tati had never had that light, fluffy, girly vibe. She was sensible, practical, blunt. Life had made her that way, forcing her to be responsible. She loved her mother, but she had also learned very young that she had to look after her only parent, rather than the other way round.
Having a man in her life had been the least of her ambitions. Mariana had had a whole raft of unsuitable boyfriends, among them drunks, abusers and cheats. After Tati’s first serious boyfriend, Dave, had ditched her to chase Ana instead, Tati had decided that men drummed up way too much drama in a woman’s life. Once or twice, she had wished that she had got a little more experience out of the relationship and had tried out sex with Dave, because sometimes still being a virgin at her age made her feel out of step with the world she lived in. But the attraction had just never been strong enough for her to experiment with Dave and once he had succumbed to her cousin’s allure, she had been relieved that she had held back.
An hour later, Tati emerged, flushed and soaked clean from the bathroom. Saif, casually clad in jeans and a black shirt, twisted round from his laptop to glance at her. His bride wore nothing suggestive, nothing even slightly sexy, so evidently seduction did not feature in her current plan. Saif strove to feel suitably relieved by that reassuring reality while wondering how the hell pink and white shorts with little bunnies on them and a plain white vest top could offer such dynamite appeal. It was all about shape, he reasoned abstractedly, a mathematical arrangement of feminine proportions in the exact combination that most appealed to the average male.
Evidently he was very much an average male, he decided, attention lingering on the smooth upper slopes of the soft firm breasts showing above the top, the shadow of the valley between, her tiny waist and the pleasing swell of the pert derriere that the clingy shorts enhanced. A pulse kicked up in his groin and he swung back to his work with a curse brimming on his lips.
‘What are you working at?’ she asked to break the taut silence, her face still flaming from his lengthy appraisal.
‘I’m checking figures. I manage Alharia’s investments,’ Saif murmured tautly.
What had that long look of his been about, for goodness’ sake? Tati supposed that she should have worn a dressing gown, but she hadn’t packed one. Her inclusion in the trip to Alharia had been very much a last-minute thing, an added expense loudly objected to by Ana’s parents. Ana, however, had said she could not go through with the wedding without Tati’s support and that had got Tati on the flight, her case packed in a rush and not even full. She had left behind several items which she should have brought.
‘Is the bathroom free now?’ Saif enquired without turning round again.
Momentarily, Tati froze, mortified by her thoughtlessness: she was a bathroom hog. ‘I’m sorry, I should’ve thought that you might want—’
‘There must be a dozen such facilities in this property. Had I needed to do so, I could easily have found another.’
In silence, Tati nodded. ‘Goodnight,’ she said in a muffled tone and dived below the duvet.
Strange little creature, Saif decided, glancing at the bed, seeing her curled up in one small corner, only a tousled mop of blond hair showing above the duvet. If he hadn’t known what he did know about her he might’ve thought that she was shy. He smothered a laugh at that ridiculous idea, shut down the accounts he had been working on and started to undress.
Tati peered out from under her hair and watched the jeans hit the polished floor in a heap. So, he was untidy as well as obnoxious, she thought without surprise, as he left them lying there and the shirt drifted down to join the jeans. He stretched in a fluid movement and for an instant she saw him standing there, naked but for a pair of boxers, every muscle flexing and pulling taut...and he had an awful lot of muscles enhanced by coffee-coloured skin that resembled oiled silk. Tati stared, remembering the ghastly charity calendar of half-naked men her mother had once put up on the wall. Mariana had accused her daughter of being a prude when Tati had said it embarrassed her.
But it had been an embarrassment to have that hanging in the kitchen, particularly after Ana had seen it and had told everybody at school. Tati had had to live through a barrage of sniggering ‘dirty girl’ abuse for weeks afterwards. Compared with Ana and her mother, she was a prude because, from what she had seen of their experiences, a more adventurous approach to men and sex more often led to hurt and disappointment than happiness.
Now watching Saif stretch and muscles ripple across his hard, corrugated abdomen and down the length of his smooth brown back, Tati reminded herself that it was just a body, truly a more blessed body than most men rejoiced in but simply a body, an arrangement of bones, flesh and muscle that every single living person had. Only that very grounded outlook did not explain why she was still staring and why she had a hot, tight, clenched sensation tugging at the junction of her thighs. She had stared because he was beautiful, and she hadn’t realised that a man could be beautiful that way. Really, Tati, she mocked her excuse. All that Adam and Eve stuff in the Bible hadn’t tipped her off about that essential attraction? Cheeks hot enough to fry eggs on, she rolled over and buried her face in the cool pillows, trying not to listen to the distant sound of water running in the shower.
Saif was unaccustomed to sharing a bed and his bride’s every movement disturbed him, reminded him of her existence and pushed rudely past his wall of reserve. He couldn’t ignore her, he couldn’t forget the allure of those eyes with the velvety appeal of a flower, her pale slender thighs or her surprisingly full breasts. That failure to maintain his usual mental discipline only made him even angrier with her. As he lay awake, he came up with a plan as to how to keep her occupied and marvelled at its simplicity. He could send her out day after day...
Tati wakened in the early hours because she felt cold. As she flipped over, she discovered the reason: the duvet had been stolen. That fast, she remembered that she was sharing a bed and she dug two hands into the bedding and yanked her side of it back with violent determination. Saif sat up with a jerk and
flashed on the light.
‘I was cold,’ Tati announced in a snappish tone of defence and she hunched under the section of duvet she had reclaimed, turning her back on him.
Saif thought with satisfaction of the bride-free day ahead of him and lay back down. Even hunched in the bedding, she contrived to look unbearably alluring. How could she make him want her so much? Were a few sexless weeks sufficient to make him desperate? He lay there thinking of the many sensual ways he could have raised his bride’s temperature without recourse to warmer bedding. Just considering those pursuits, indeed leafing through them with the intensity of an innate sensualist, left Saif as hard as a rock and it was dawn when he finally gave up trying to rest and rose to start work again.
* * *
The maid bringing her breakfast wakened Tati. She sat up while the curtains were being opened and registered that she was alone in the bed and expected to eat there. Pushing her hair off her brow, she accepted the tray, setting it down again once the maid had gone and scrambling into the bathroom to freshen up before she ate.
While she was enjoying her cup of tea and a buttery, flaky, delicious croissant, the Prince strode in. Saif emanated pure sophistication and sleek good looks in his perfectly tailored dark business suit. Involuntarily, her mouth ran dry, her tummy fluttering, responses she struggled to suppress. Expensive fabric outlined and enhanced his wide shoulders, his narrow hips and long, strong legs. He was very well built...as she had cause to know after ogling him while he undressed the night before, she reminded herself irritably. He was also infuriatingly calm and in control while she still felt as though her life had lurched off track without warning and fallen into a very large, very deep pothole.
As she sat there, Tati was extremely tense, her fingers locked tight to her china cup. It had occurred to her for the first time that she had overlooked one very obvious point of dissension between them. Saif had expected to marry her glamorous, sexy cousin and had instead ended up with her dull, plain and unsexy substitute. Of course, he was disappointed; of course, he was angry. No man would choose Tati in place of Ana, she reflected painfully. ‘I’ll sort out another bedroom for me to use tonight,’ she proffered stiffly, meaning it as an olive branch of sorts in the aftermath of the duvet tussle.