The Sultan's Reluctant Princess Read online

  “You have done this to hurt me,” Selena spoke softly, her pain obvious.

  “I have done what you have always known I would,” he intoned wearily. “It is not a debate. Marriage was never something I could avoid. So I have done it.”

  “This is because of Marni,” Selena accused darkly, looking at the blonde English woman with a sense of animosity.

  Tamir swore under his breath. “It is not, Selena. You are wrong.”

  Selena sucked in a deep breath. “This is not the end.” She stormed away, towards the limousine, without a backwards glance.

  “I apologise, your highness,” Selena’s husband spoke with a small grimace. His eyes were drawn to the blonde woman, with a sense of familiarity that made no sense. Olivia couldn’t shake the feeling that these people knew more about her than she herself did.

  “She will be required to act with more dignity at the next encounter, Saf,” Tamir responded coldly, feeling an irrational anger to one of his oldest friends. “My marriage is legally binding. Olivia is not going anywhere. The sooner Selena accepts that, the better.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I am ready now,” Tamir said tiredly, looking at his wife with a degree of concern. “Say what it is you have been thinking for the past hour.”

  The drive from the airport to the palace was not long, but once he had returned to his principle residence, Tamir had needed to meet urgently with his mother, to explain his hasty and unexpected marriage. He would have preferred to spend that time with Olivia, but the very idea of Selena breaking the news of his marriage to his mother before he had, filled him with worry. The situation was one he intended to control. It was his country, and his life. Only Olivia was the wild, unpredictable element.

  But now, in his bedroom, staring at the woman he’d married without her consent, he felt a stab of worry. She was so silent, and so still, that he couldn’t be certain she wasn’t in a state of catatonic shock.

  Olivia’s green eyes were round like duck eggs. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Want you to say?” He frowned. “I want you to say what you’re thinking.”

  Her laugh was shrill. “No, you don’t. Believe me.”

  He couldn’t help the smile that came to his lips. “Is it so bad?” The hope of seeing the spirit he knew she possessed was extreme. Even if that came out as anger, he would welcome it.

  She bit down on her lip. “You lied to me.”

  “Yes.” He nodded, regarding her thoughtfully.

  “Why?”

  “I need a wife.”

  “But it didn’t have to be me,” she pointed out with a small shake of her head.

  “We are married now.”

  “So you plan to keep me here forever?”

  He shrugged. In truth, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. “You wanted to spare Jack from persecution. I wanted to do the same for you. Marriage was the only way to guarantee your safety.”

  She arched her brows. “Oh?”

  “Yes. I could not bring you to the palace as my lover. That is not my way. It would be a disrespect to my mother and my country.”

  “You’ve never had a mistress at the palace?” She demanded scornfully.

  “No. Hotels. Apartments. Never here.”

  “Then why bring me here?” She hissed. “You could have kept me somewhere else. Kept me secret. This was not necessary.”

  “Perhaps not.” He loosened his tie and pulled it from his shirt, placing it onto the bureau near the door.

  “So? Why then?”

  Because I don’t want to let you go. The internal admission shocked him. It couldn’t be true. It was a red herring. That was not why he’d married her. “I had to make a quick decision. My chief of security, Kalil, was preparing papers against you both. This served to save you.”

  Her heart turned over in her chest. “So all that stuff about a baby, an heir, that was…”

  “To aggravate my sister. Nothing more. She is right, Olivia. Talidar has an heir. Her son would be accepted almost as well as mine would be.”

  “Then this doesn’t make sense.”

  He shrugged. “You’re seeing this from your cultural standpoint. That marriage must exist between a man and woman who are in love and have courted one another for years.”

  “Yes, damned right I am,” she responded acerbically. She wanted to stay calm, but her insides were zinging with fury and outrage.

  “It is not like this in Talidar. Not for people of royal birth. I have no expectations of love. What I have with you is already better than I have ever expected.”

  “What do we have?” She demanded scornfully.

  “A healthy sexual attraction. A mutual desire.”

  “But we hardly know each other,” she argued logically, lifting her fingers up and freeing her hair from the scarf. “And another thing,” she said quickly, passing the fabric over to him as though it might burn her fingertips. “Did you go to London looking for a bride? Why did you have your mother’s dress at your disposal? That makes no sense.”

  “A coincidence,” he said deeply. “The dress was being repaired.”

  Did she believe him? None of it made sense, so it was difficult to separate out what she could credit as real and not.

  “Who is Marni?”

  He froze, his dark eyes impossible to read. “Marni? Why do you ask?”

  “Your sister said you married me because of Marni.”

  He nodded, but his face had paled. It was obvious the accusation had affected him. “My sister is wrong.”

  “Who is she?”

  “No one you need to know about.”

  Olivia’s laugh was without any true amusement. “You forced me to tell you everything about my mother, which has nothing to do with you, yet you won’t tell me about this Marni? Who your sister believes to be the reason you married me?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “I told you what you need to know. That Selena was wrong. Marni is not the reason I married you.”

  But she wanted to understand! Nothing about what he’d done was comprehensible. To have ended up married to a man she hardly knew… and now he wouldn’t even explain his actions to her. She gritted her teeth, and tried to breath through the fury that was taking over her. What was the point? He clearly didn’t intend on giving her the information she sought. No, talking to Tamir was like banging her head against a brick wall. The futility washed over her.

  “I’m tired.” Her voice was surprisingly calm, given the maelstrom of emotions swirling within. “Am I to sleep in here?”

  “Yes. This will be our bedroom.”

  She straightened her back, refusing to show any trepidation. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. “Fine.”

  Tamir closed his eyes. “There are clothes for you in there,” he nodded towards a doorway, which Olivia would later discover housed an enormous walk in wardrobe complete with designer labels.

  “Thank you.” She ran her hands through her hair. “And a shower?”

  He frowned. “Your bathroom is separate to mine. It’s… tradition.”

  “Fine. Where is mine?’

  He linked his fingers through hers. “I’ll show you.”

  “Are you allowed?” She responded, a sarcastic inflection impossible to miss.

  “Respecting my traditions does not mean I am not allowed to do something. Far from it. My authority is supreme.”

  “So you respect your traditions more highly than you do me.”

  He stopped walking, and fixed her with a curious stare. “Meaning?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? You’ve railroaded me into a marriage without having the courtesy to even tell me.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Would you have agreed?”

  She laughed, sadly. “That’s the point. I wouldn’t have. And you denied me the chance to refuse. A basic human right. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t put much stock in your desire to respect me.”

  He lifted a hand, and touched the soft warmth of her ch
eek. “You forget, Olivia, that you are a criminal. That you slept with me to give your partner cover for his crime. Do you not agree that you forfeited the right to be respected as an equal when you plotted to defraud me of millions of pounds? When you decided to use your body to facilitate your criminal enterprise?”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know anything about me. And you had no right to do this to me.”

  “I know that you’re capable of cheating and lying. I know that you desire me. And I know that, in one way at least, you will enjoy being my wife.”

  She lifted her hand and slapped his cheek, hard. It surprised her completely. She stared at her tingling palm in total shock. If her temper had been less incensed, she might have apologised for the uncharacteristic gesture. “I have never lied to you,” she said instead, her tone brimming with frustrated anger.

  “So you didn’t plan to sleep with me to make it easier for Jack to steal the crown?”

  “No! Of course not!” She pushed at his chest. “I slept with you because I wanted to, and you know it. So stop turning it into something… devious and illegal.”

  Tamir’s heart seemed to lurch in his chest. “And that is the only reason?”

  “Yes,” she promised, nodding her head jerkily. “Tamir, I promise you, I would never steal. I work with priceless artefacts every day. I would never, ever, in a billion years, take something that didn’t belong to me.”

  His eyes narrowed, as he looked at her analytically. Olivia held her breath while she waited for him to speak. She couldn’t have said why, but she desperately wanted him to believe her. Eventually, he shrugged. “You still brought a man into my residence who intended to steal from me. That makes you complicit.”

  “No!” She closed her eyes. “You have to understand Jack. He’s not… he’s… damn you, Tamir, can you just stop staring at me like that for a second so I can think.”

  His smile was rich with amusement, despite the prickly nature of their relationship. “Your eyes are closed. How can you say that I am staring at you, Azeezi?”

  She blinked her big green eyes open. “I can feel you examining me as though I’m a bug in your microscope. Staring at me isn’t going to make you understand.”

  “Then use your words. If you think there’s something you can say that will make it clear. But you should know, Olivia, I believe stealing to be one of the worst crimes a person can commit.”

  She scowled at him disbelievingly. “Worse than kidnapping? Forced marriage?”

  He shrugged. “Are you going to explain? Or simply continue to throw old accusations at me instead?”

  She ran her fingers through her hair. She was desperate for a shower, but it would have to wait. Soon she would wash the day away. First, she had to try to get through to Tamir.

  “Jack has been through a lot. He’s coping as best he can, but he occasionally has these moments where he just loses control. He would never steal something and keep it, nor sell it.”

  “You already said that. That this is a thrill for him.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “That does not seem fair on you.”

  “Not in this case,” she agreed moodily, compressing her lips. “But he doesn’t think it through. He’s… just a bit… damaged.”

  “Why?” Tamir probed curiously. She was tired. Though he hadn’t known her long, he could see that her eyes had purple smudges beneath them, and her skin was so pale it was almost translucent.

  The urge to confide in Tamir was strange. It went beyond wanting to buy her freedom. It was a bigger requirement than that. “Jack and I lost our fathers at the same time.” She dropped her eyes away, and padded quietly over to the bed. She sat on the edge of it, and stared at the deep turquoise fabric of her dress. “My dad died suddenly. I wasn’t prepared. Jack’s father passed after a long battle with alcoholism. His demise had been obvious for years.”

  “I am sorry to hear about your father.”

  “I don’t want to talk about my dad,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

  “Why not?” Tamir demanded, refusing to soften his stance or voice.

  “Because if he weren’t already dead, seeing me like this would kill him.” She blinked away the tears that threatened to moisten her eyes. “Anyway, we were talking about Jack.”

  He nodded, but he felt something shift inside of him. “Go on.” Still, he didn’t move.

  “Jack’s father made his life a living hell. He was abusive. Physically and emotionally. He verbally eviscerated him at every opportunity he ever got.” She shook her head. “He drank far too much and he was not a kind man after a drink.” She shook her head wistfully. “The last thing he said to Jack was that his biggest regret in life was having Jack for a son.”

  Tamir shook his head. His own father had been an excellent man, and a guiding role model Tamir had admired hugely. “I can imagine that must have been difficult, but it does not justify such blatant disregard for decency. Not to mention the law.”

  “Don’t you get it? He’s trying to get in trouble. All his life, his father told him he was a piece of crap. That he was worthless and would never amount to anything. And even though Jack hated him, in my opinion, he misses him too. It’s like he’s trying to prove his dad right. Or something.” She shrugged. “I’m not a psychologist, but I know Jack. He’s got a fortune in the bank, yet he gets his kicks from criminal behaviour. He’s… kind of just broken.”

  Tamir rubbed a hand across his jaw. Was he crazy from exhaustion? Or had that made a strange sort of sense? “I do not condone theft,” he said, finally, uneasily.

  “Nor do I,” she whispered. “I am trying to help him through it, but there’s years of hurt to navigate.”

  “And why do you care so much?”

  She lifted her face, angling it towards his. Her eyes were sad, her mouth open in confusion. “Because he’s my friend. And I love him.” Tamir didn’t react, so Olivia was compelled to ask, “Don’t you have a friend like that? Someone you care about despite their imperfections? Someone who you can look beyond the crazy and see the goodness of their heart?”

  He laughed, and shook his head from side to side. “No. I’m not able to surround myself with people who might steal or murder me.”

  She shrugged. “You’re missing my point.”

  Tamir ran a hand through his hair, while his eyes studied every detail of his beautiful bride’s appearance. “I’m not, I assure you.” He wasn’t interested in hearing about Jack any longer. “You said your father would ‘die’ if he saw you like this. What did you mean?”

  Olivia closed her eyes and conjured the image of her father she always carried in her head. It brought a swell of emotion to her. “I was his little girl,” she said simply. “He wanted the best for me, and he was tireless in teaching me how to pursue that for myself. Being an antiquities appraiser was all I ever wanted. From childhood, I had a fascination for objects that were old. The way they can speak to you many years after their purpose has been answered.” She shrugged. “Dad saw it in me as a young girl. The way I’d traipse around flea markets, looking for buried treasure amongst the trash.” Her smile was whimsical. “He would not like to think of me having to… make decisions like this. To save a friend’s life.”

  Tamir angled his face so that she would not see the emotion her words had brought him. Shame, as strong as it was unfamiliar, almost buckled him. “There was nobility in your decision.” He said finally. And there had been. But not in his. What he had done, unashamedly, was to take what he wanted, anyway he could.

  She toyed with her fingers, in her lap. “I’m glad Jack is going to be okay.”

  Tamir cringed inwardly again. “You were close to your father?” He asked, trying to recollect the direction of their conversation.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He sighed. “It must have been hard for you, when he died?”

  “Why do you care?” She mumbled angrily.

  “Because you are my wife, and I wish to underst
and you better.”

  “Then perhaps you should have got to know me before kidnapping me and forcing me into a marriage I knew nothing about.” Her words were saccharine sweet, her lips pouted with frustration.

  He was unable to avoid the laugh that caught in his throat. “Perhaps I should have,” he agreed with a shrug. “But I didn’t. So answer my question.”

  She sighed heavily. She was rapidly coming to appreciate that Tamir was not a man who could be argued with easily. “Was it hard for me to lose my father as I did?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded slowly. “He was far more like me than my mother is. We were so alike. He was a feminist before his time.” She couldn’t help but smile as she remembered him. “Dad refused to allow me any girlish traits, as a child. While my friends did ballet and singing lessons, I was off doing three day hikes with dad.” She laughed. “He was a wonderful father, right up to the day he died.”

  “I see.” Tamir felt a pang of envy. For though he had loved and respected his own father, theirs had not been a close relationship. It was impossible to be truly close in the royal family. Their duties prevented it.

  Olivia was beautiful. A perfect bride; educated, intelligent and stunning. But she was exhausted and terrified. “You are tired. It is time for you to shower. Prepare for bed.”

  Her eyes were wide. “You mean… this bed? Here? With you?”

  He nodded, his expression mock-sombre as he closed the space between them and put his hands on her shoulders. “Relax, my beautiful princess. I have no interest in making your body sing as it can for mine. Not tonight. You’ve been through quite an ordeal today. You need to sleep.”

  She stood so that he wouldn’t see the searing disappointment on her face. As she scrubbed her body in the shower, she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of idiot she was. How could she still want him? Out of nowhere, her body seemed to burn with heat, as she recalled what it had felt like to have him moving inside her. His hands had tortured and pleasured her in equal measure. She moaned, remembering how desperately she’d wanted to stay in his bed forever and ever. Had that truly only been earlier that day? She shook her head, letting the water from the enormous shower run over her long blonde hair.