She didn’t feel much like laughing as, hand pressed to her forehead, she fell full-length backwards onto the bed and lay there, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
She had fallen in love with a man who, even if he’d had a future, would have had no place for her in it. Did irony get any darker? Did life get any more darned unfair? Tears began to seep from beneath her eyelids, streaming unchecked down her face.
Rafiq nodded to the maid who had brought coffee and turned to his brother. ‘You appeared to get on well with Miss Barton, Hakim? What did you think of her?’
He had to work hard to keep the note of accusation from his voice, and he was not entirely successful. It seemed an appropriate moment to remind himself that this was what he wanted, what he had actively engineered—more than he had in all honesty expected.
He had expected Gabriella to make herself as obnoxious as she knew how—and he knew from personal experience that was very. Instead she had laughed at his brother’s jokes—even when they weren’t funny. That damned dimple of hers had not taken a rest.
There had been an instant rapport between the two. His thoughts slipped back to a moment midway through the meal when he had seen their heads close together, fair and dark almost touching. Hakim had placed his hand on her shoulder and Rafiq had felt a savage compulsion to drag his brother from his seat.
Rafiq inhaled and closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring, the muscles along his angular jaw flexing and tensing, causing the sinews in his neck to stand out like steel cords.
He had been acting like an old wolf—the pack leader about to be replaced by young blood.
It was pathetic.
Why should he be jealous of his brother?
The answer was shocking in its simplicity: because Hakim would have Gabriella. She was everything that didn’t attract Rafiq in a woman, and yet he wanted her more than any woman he had ever met. He could not look at her without thinking about touching her skin, inhaling her scent …
‘Think of her?’ Hakim looked startled by the question. ‘It’s not like you to ask my opinion.’
‘Well, I’m asking now.’
‘I haven’t really thought …’ Rafiq’s dark accusing frown made Hakim backtrack. ‘She’s nice, very pretty—a bit serious …’
Rafiq’s face went blank with utter astonishment. Were they talking about the same woman? ‘Serious …? You mean not shallow? And this is a bad thing?’
‘I didn’t mean it that way. I meant … studious-serious,’ Hakim corrected, thinking his brother must really like this English teacher to spring to her defence that way.
Not really news. A man would have had to be blind and deaf not to have noticed the obvious charge crackling between them. And in his experience only people who were very aware of one another ignored one another quite so determinedly.
It was not amazing that Rafiq was attracted to Gabby—she was pretty gorgeous—but it was amazing … actually, more than amazing … that Rafiq was discussing her with him. He had always kept his personal life strictly private, and there had been no male bonding sessions when they were younger, where they exchanged stories about the women who had broken their hearts.
Hakim’s heart had frequently been broken, but if Rafiq had ever lost a night’s sleep over a woman it was news to him.
‘Studious?’ Rafiq echoed, thinking of her soft, naked and pliant in his arms … while she was asleep at least. Awake, she had turned into a spitting little wild cat.
‘All right, then, smart, clever. I find that a bit … intimidating.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘Because, unlike you, brother, I’m not what you’d call intellectual, I generally go for girls who are more—’
Rafiq, looking pained, cut across his brother. ‘Details are unnecessary. I have seen the sort of girls you like.’
Hakim grinned broadly. ‘I’m what you’d could call a work in progress. But one of these days, brother, I might just surprise you.’ And sooner than you think, he added silently. ‘And I do like Gabby. What is not to like …? I presume that you’re about to tell me?’
Rafiq lifted a brow. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘You usually warn me off unsuitable women. I’m amazed you introduced her to me—went out of your way to introduce her to me if she’s got a skeleton in the closet. And since when were you interested in what I think?’
A spasm of regret crossed Rafiq’s dark features. ‘I am sorry if I have excluded you, Hakim,’ he said abruptly.
Hakim stared. ‘Well, if that sorrow is worth a new Porsche—great. I’m really not all that scarred because I haven’t sat in on endless meetings on agricultural policy.’ His eyes narrowed, and despite the levity of his manner there was some concern in his face as he asked, ‘What is all this hair-shirt stuff, Rafiq?’
His eyes widened again as a fairly revolutionary possibility hit him. Was it possible Rafiq was asking his advice? Or at least asking for him to tell him to go for it, even if she didn’t tick all the boxes?
He must really like her!
‘What do you need my opinion for anyway? Are you trying to tell me that you haven’t already got a file an inch thick on Gabby?’ Hakim knew that his brother entered into relationships the same way he would a financial negotiation. He did his research and was not flexible. He did not make concessions.
But this time it looked as if whatever dirt he had on the girl in question had not put him off. But perhaps he thought it should? Who knew? Hakim thought. They were in new territory.
The file Hakim had spoken of had indeed arrived in its more complete form, on his desk that morning. Rafiq had put it straight in a locked drawer, telling himself that he would study it later.
But no matter what was in that file, no matter what or who lay in Gabriella’s past, it would not alter the fact that she’d make a better wife than his brother deserved, and would be a queen that any country would be proud to boast of.
‘What a woman did before she met you is hardly important.’
Hakim, in the act of stirring more sugar into his coffee, stopped and turned to stare at his brother in utter amazement. Rafiq was serious … How serious …? Wife serious?
‘So if you decided to get married tomorrow you wouldn’t want to know ahead of time if your prospective bride had any scandals that might be embarrassing?’
‘The same premise applies.’
Hakim’s jaw dropped. ‘Is this the same man speaking who once told me that a royal bride needs to be squeaky clean, no unsavoury secrets, no skeletons in the closet. The next thing you’ll be telling me is she doesn’t have to be a virgin.’
Rafiq did not join in his brother’s amused laughter. ‘It is better to be the last man in a woman’s life than the first.’ Better, of course, to be both. But Rafiq appreciated that in the modern world that limited a man’s choices. His choices were non-existent, but Hakim had a life of choices ahead of him. Of course he didn’t know how lucky he was, because it was the human way not to appreciate what you had until it was being taken from you.
Hakim stopped laughing and stared. ‘Will whatever alien that has taken over your body let me speak to my brother, Rafiq?’
‘Do not be foolish,’ Rafiq snapped, his brows knitting into an irritated frown.
‘You know what you’re talking like?’ Hakim fixed his brother with a narrowed, speculative stare. ‘You’re talking like a man who’s fallen in love. Have you ever been in love, Rafiq?’
‘Not as often as you, little brother.’