by Lynne Graham
‘Yesterday was trying for both of us,’ he pointed out as he pushed away his plate and leant back fluidly in his chair to give her his full attention.
‘Why did you agree to go ahead with the marriage?’
‘My father has a serious heart condition. I didn’t want to risk refusing to marry you and stressing his temper,’ Saif admitted grimly. ‘He needs to remain calm, which is often a struggle for him.’
Tati was disconcerted by that admission. It had not occurred to her that he might have an excuse as good as her own for letting the ceremony proceed. That knocked her right off the moral high ground she had been unconsciously hugging like a blanket while silently blaming him for being willing to marry her.
He hadn’t had a choice either.
‘You must’ve been disappointed that I wasn’t my cousin, Ana,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘Why would I have been? She was a stranger too.’
‘Yes, but she’s much prettier than I am and she’s sophisticated and lively. I’m none of those things. Ana’s one of the beautiful people... I’m a nobody.’
‘How a nobody?’ Saif framed, his nostrils flaring with distaste. ‘She is your cousin. I assume you have led similar lives.’
Tati breathed in fast and deep as Marcel arrived with a mouth-watering selection of desserts. ‘Not for me, thank you,’ she said in creditable French.
‘Saif,’ she said quietly once Marcel had departed. ‘You married the poor relation, not the family princess. I’m illegitimate and my birth father, whom I never met, was imprisoned for fraud. He’s dead now.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ he demanded.
‘You need to know who I am. I grew up in a cottage on my uncle’s estate. My mother and I were never welcome there because my uncle didn’t get on with my mother and viewed the two of us as freeloaders. I received the same education at the same schools as my cousin but only because my grandmother insisted. This is only my second trip abroad...’
Saif was watching her closely. ‘I’m listening...’ he told her.
‘When I was about fifteen my mother began getting forgetful and confused. Eventually she was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. She was only forty years old.’ Tati looked reflective, her eyes darkening with sadness. ‘I looked after Mum for as long as I could but eventually she had to go into a nursing home. She’s been there for almost six years and it costs a fortune. My uncle pays for her care—’
‘Which is why you married me,’ Saif assumed, slashing ebony brows drawing together in a frown. ‘So that you could take care of her yourself.’
‘I didn’t receive that dowry for marrying you or whatever it’s called,’ Tati told him immediately. ‘My uncle got that. He has debts to settle. That was why Ana was originally willing to marry you, because she has never worked and she’s reliant on an income from her father.’
‘So, what changed?’ Saif pressed.
‘Out of the blue, her ex got back in touch and asked her to marry him on the phone while she was here. That’s why she ran back to England at the very last minute, leaving me to face the music... She asked me to pretend I was her to give her enough time to leave Alharia. She was afraid her parents would try to prevent her going. I really didn’t enjoy deceiving your relatives into believing I was the bride, but I didn’t truthfully expect any lasting harm to come from my pretence. I certainly didn’t realise that I would end up married to you instead!’
‘Then why did you agree?’ Saif asked bluntly.
‘Uncle Rupert threatened to stop paying my mother’s nursing home bills. I couldn’t let that happen,’ Tati murmured heavily. ‘She’s happy and settled where she is—well, as happy as she can be anywhere now.’
‘Will you excuse me for a moment?’ Saif asked tautly as he stood up and left the room.
Out in the hall he pulled out his phone and contacted the private investigation agency he often used in business. He wanted information and he wanted it fast. He needed to know everything there was to know about the woman he had married. Ignorance in such a case was inexcusable and had already got him into trouble. The last-minute exchange of brides had plunged him into a situation in which he was not in control and he refused to allow that state of affairs to continue.
Alone in the dining room, Tati felt like dropping her head into her hands and screaming out loud. Why had she told him all that personal stuff? What was the point? She might even be giving him information about herself that he could use as another weapon against her. Saif was not a man she could trust. She cringed at the recollection of what she had said about herself, as if she was apologising for who and what she was, as if she was openly admitting that she was something less than he was just because she hadn’t been born into either wealth or status.
Her pride flared at that lowering image and it shamed her, even more than he had already shamed her with that outrageous shopping trip. She had fallen head first into that nasty trap, she conceded painfully.
As Saif strolled back into the room, dark head high, green eyes glinting with assurance, Tati’s small hands flexed into claws, that family trait of violence he had accused her of harbouring leaping through her instantaneously. ‘You sent me out shopping so that you could snigger behind my back when I met all your worst expectations!’ she condemned furiously. ‘And I was mad enough at you to allow you to goad me into behaving badly!’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Saif countered with unblemished cool. ‘I do not snigger.’
Pansy-blue eyes now as hard as diamond cutters, Tati tossed her head back, soft, full mouth rigid. ‘I’m done with talking to you. I’m done with telling you the truth and letting you judge me for what I can’t help or change. You set me up to get me out of your hair and to make a fool of myself and I played right into your hands!’ she condemned.
‘I didn’t set you up when I sent you shopping,’ Saif retorted crisply. ‘I arranged the outing to entertain you.’
‘Like hell you did!’ Tati raged back at him.
‘And if you played right into my hands, surely that is your own fault?’ Saif drawled smoothly.
‘Oh, you...you...!’ The exclamation was framed between gritted teeth. Tati’s hands knotted into fists because she wanted to swear at him and she didn’t swear, not with the memory of her Granny Milly telling her that only people with a weak grasp of language needed to use curse words. ‘I’ve never been in shops that exclusive in my life. I’ve never owned clothing such as I’m wearing now. I went shopping to punish you.’
‘Why would you have wanted to punish me?’ he enquired in wonderment.
‘I thought you deserved to have a spendthrift wife after labelling me a gold digger! I know it doesn’t sound like much of a punishment right now but at the time...at the time...it made sense to me,’ she confided in an angry challenge that dared him to employ logic against her. ‘But then I got tempted by all those beautiful fabrics and designs and how I looked in them. I started to actually enjoy myself...and I’ll never ever forgive you for that, for tempting me into wasting all that money.’
‘I arranged for you to go out shopping and I would not describe the outfit you are currently wearing as a waste on any level,’ Saif asserted softly. ‘You look amazing in it.’
‘And do you seriously think that your opinion makes any difference to the way I feel?’ Tati flung back at him furiously. ‘Well, it doesn’t! I hardly brought any clothes with me to Alharia. Why would I have? As far as I knew I was only staying for forty-eight hours and I certainly didn’t factor in marrying you and being swept off to Paris!’
‘In other words, you needed to go shopping,’ Saif interpreted with an unshakeable calm that simply sent her temperature rocketing again because it was infuriating that the more she freaked out, the calmer he became. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so upset.’
‘Because I could have bought ordinary c
heap clothes and proved to you that I’m not a greedy gold digger!’ Tati yelled back at him.
‘You’re my wife and entitled to a decent wardrobe. I wouldn’t want you swanning round in what you describe as “cheap” clothes,’ Saif pointed out with distaste.
‘For heaven’s sake, I’m not your wife!’ Tati fired back at him in vehement disagreement.
‘From the instant you shared that bed with me, and an annulment became an impossibility, you also became my wife in law and in my eyes,’ Saif informed her with fierce conviction. ‘You were a virgin. While you urged me not to make a fuss about that fact, it did make a difference on my terms. Perhaps that is old-fashioned of me, but you do now feel very much like my wife and all this nonsense about how much you spend on the clothes you needed is pointless now.’
‘I’m not your wife,’ Tati argued in a low, tight voice. ‘If you wanted an annulment to end this marriage then you didn’t want a wife and we could still apply for an annulment. We could lie.’
Her prince threw his handsome dark head back and surveyed her with narrowed, glittering green eyes. ‘I do not tell lies of that nature and, now that the marriage has been consummated, neither will you. For the moment, we will make the best of our situation until such time as our circumstances change and we are free to go our separate ways. In the meantime, you are entitled to a very healthy allowance as my wife and I will take over the cost of your mother’s nursing care, so let us have no more foolish talk about how you shouldn’t spend my money.’
‘I would lie to get an annulment,’ Tati told him stubbornly. ‘I don’t normally tell lies but in this instance I would be prepared to lie... Just putting that out there for you to consider.’
‘I have considered it and I reject it,’ Saif stated curtly. ‘I—’
‘No, there’s no need for another moral lecture,’ Tati hastened to assure him. ‘I do know the difference between right and wrong but I also know that neither of us freely agreed to marry the other.’
‘And yet you gave your virginity to me.’
Tati’s face burned red as fire. ‘I didn’t give you anything... Well, I did, but not the way you make it sound! I was attracted to you and we had sex. Let’s leave it there.’
‘But where does that leave us exactly?’ Saif demanded impatiently.
Tati winced at his persistence. ‘You can’t put a label on everything.’
‘I need to know where I stand with you,’ Saif breathed with driving emphasis. ‘You have to put some kind of label on us.’
‘Friends...hopefully eventually,’ Tati suggested weakly. ‘Maybe friends with benefits. Wouldn’t that be the best description?’
In the tense silence that gradually stretched, a slow-burning smile slowly wiped the raw tension from Saif’s expressive mouth and his vaguely confrontational stance eased. His extraordinary eyes clung to her blushing face. ‘Yes. I could work with that,’ he murmured in a husky tone of acceptance. ‘Yes, I could definitely work within those parameters.’
‘I’m really sleepy,’ Tati mumbled, putting a hand to her mouth as if to politely screen a yawn, a potent mix of embarrassment and confusion assailing her. ‘May we call a halt to the post-mortem for now?’
‘It’s been a long day,’ Saif agreed, deciding to look into whether or not that phrase ‘friends with benefits’ encompassed what he thought it did.
Naturally, he had heard the expression before. He knew there was a movie by that name but he had never watched it and had never entertained the concept of attempting so spontaneous and casual a relationship with any woman. Although he was close to some of his female cousins, he was mindful of his position and there was no one in whom he confided. He had only once had a female friend. He had been a student at the time and his supposed female friend had suddenly announced that she was in love with him and everything had become horribly awkward from that point on. His sole sexual outlet was occasional one-night stands and that kind of informal never led to a misunderstanding.
At the same time, he marvelled at his bride’s audacity in making such a suggestion. He had always assumed that there was truth in that old chestnut that women generally wanted more than sex and friendship from a man, but obviously there were exceptions to every rule. Possibly his own outlook was a little out of date, he thought uneasily, wondering darkly if his father’s rigidly traditional attitudes could have coloured his views more than he was willing to admit. Even so, if he and his bride had no choice but to remain together for the present, why shouldn’t they make the best of it in and out of the bedroom?
Bearing in mind his distrust of committed relationships, formed by his inability to forget how easily his mother had walked away from him and his father, he suspected that being friends with benefits might be an excellent recipe for temporary intimacy.
* * *
Tati sped back upstairs as if she were being chased because she was reeling in shock from what she had accidentally said to Saif, and the manner in which he had received what had undoubtedly struck him as an invitation. Her face burned afresh as she got ready for bed, every movement reminding her of what had occurred earlier because the ache of her first sexual experience still lingered with tingling awareness. And, strangely, so did the hot curling sensation she experienced deep down inside whenever she thought about it.
Not strange, she adjusted, simply normal. There was nothing weird about sexual chemistry and Saif had buckets of sex appeal. Even moving across the room, all loose-limbed grace and earthy masculinity, he entrapped her gaze and when she collided with those startling green eyes of his she felt light-headed. So, no mystery there about what had led to her downfall, she told herself plainly. She had never been affected like that by a man before, certainly not to the extent that he interfered with her brain and her wits and smashed through her every defence.
She even said the wrong things around Saif, she acknowledged unhappily. She had been desperate to hide how deeply affected she had been by their intimacy, desperate to keep up an impenetrable front. After all, Saif had taken the sex in his stride without betraying any emotional reaction whatsoever. She had wanted it to look as though she took such steps with equally bold panache, so she had seized on the chance the friends idea offered with alacrity and had added in that ghastly benefits tag to coolly attempt to dismiss the reality that they had already got far more familiar than mere friendship allowed. She had been referring to the past, not to the potential future. Was it any wonder that he had seemingly got the wrong message? And was she planning to disabuse him of the idea that she was willing to continue their relationship as a friend with benefits?
Her head beginning to ache with her ever-circling thoughts and a growing sense of panic that she had let her life get so out of control when she was normally a very calm and organised person, Tati slid into bed, convinced that she had not a prayer of sleeping. And yet moments later, odd as it seemed to her the following morning, sheer emotional and physical exhaustion sent her crashing straight into a deep sleep.
Saif went to bed in a totally distracted manner far from his usual style. His wife, that much-maligned bride of his, had without warning become a real wife. It might be a casual bond, it might not be destined to last for very long, but he was much inclined to believe, even though he had yet to receive concrete facts in an investigation file, that Tatiana was telling him the truth about herself.
Saif was a shrewd observer and he trusted his own instincts. His assumptions about her had been laid down from Dalil Khouri’s first reference to her as a fortune hunter, an adventuress, a gold-digging socialite with expensive tastes, who could find no wealthier husband than a Middle Eastern prince from an oil-rich country like Alharia. That might well be true of the woman he should have married, the one they called Ana. She was the daughter of the grasping uncle and aunt. He had himself witnessed their threatening behaviour towards their niece with their raised hands, angry voices and devious looks, he con
ceded grimly. Now he believed that those original allegations were not true of the woman he had actually married.
The very beautiful, sensual woman he had married, Saif repeated inwardly as he glanced at her, sound asleep on the pillow beside his, long wheaten hair tumbled across the linen, soft pink mouth relaxed, porcelain skin flushed. He had stayed up late watching that film. It had struck him as fashionable and he didn’t do, or certainly never before had done, ‘fashionable.’ But the creeping, unpleasant suspicion that he could be as much of a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist as his father, unable to adapt to the modern world or to a modern woman, had cut through him like a knife and hammered his pride.
So, although it went against his every instinct, Saif was determined to do the ‘friends with benefits’ thing even though the movie had already demonstrated the pitfalls. After all, he would not be emotionally vulnerable, would he? He did not have the habit of attachment, he reasoned with resolve, he had never been in a proper relationship and had always kept his distance from that level of involvement. He would not be guilty of attaching feelings to sex. He knew all about sex. They would be friends, sexual friends. A pulse beat at his groin stirred at the mere thought of repeating that encounter with her.
Even so, he would exercise caution, he told himself fiercely, scrutinising her delicate profile and feathery eyelashes, noting the tiny group of freckles scattered across her nose, the gentle curve of her pink lips. He wanted to see her smile for a change. And why not? She was his wife, deserving of respect and consideration, regardless of how casual and temporary their alliance was. He might not be cutting-edge trendy, as she appeared to be, but he believed that with the exercise of a little imagination and research, he knew how to treat a woman well...
CHAPTER SIX
TATI STUMBLED AS she walked away from the giant Ferris wheel on the Place de la Concorde. Her head was still spinning from the experience and the fabulous views of Paris. Saif’s hand shot out to steady her and she glanced up at him with a huge grin. ‘My goodness...that was amazing!’ she exclaimed.