Hannah’s heart started to thud faster and her heart was healthy. Stress...what could be more stressful than bankruptcy? Unless it was the humiliation of telling a cathedral full of people that your daughter’s wedding was off.
She had accepted her share of responsibility for the heart attack that very few people knew about. At the time her father had sworn Hannah to secrecy, saying the markets would react badly to the news. Hannah didn’t give a damn about the markets, but she cared a lot about her father. He was not as young as he liked to think. With his medical history, having to rebuild his company from scratch—what would that do to a man with a cardiac problem?
Struggling desperately to hide her concern behind a composed mask, she turned her clear, critical stare on her prospective husband and discovered as she stared at his lean, bronzed, beautiful face that she hadn’t, as she had thought, relinquished all her childish romantic fantasies, even after her two engagements had ended so disastrously.
‘So you have made a case for me doing this,’ she admitted, trying to sound calm. ‘But why would you? Why would you marry someone you can’t stand the sight of? Are you really willing to marry a total stranger just because your uncle tells you to?’
‘I could talk about duty and service,’ he flung back, ‘but I would be wasting my breath. They are concepts that you have no grasp of. And my motivation is not the issue here. I had a choice and I made it. Now it is your turn.’
She sank onto a day bed, her head bent forward and her hands clenched in her lap. After a few moments she lifted her head. She’d made her decision, but she wasn’t ready to admit it.
‘What will happen? If we get married...after...?’ She lifted a hank of heavy hair from her eyes and caught sight of her reflection in the shiny surface of a metallic lamp on the wall beside her. There had been no mirrors in her cell and her appearance had not occupied her thoughts so it took her a few seconds before she realised the wild hair attached to a haggard face was her own. With a grimace she looked away.
‘You would have a title, so not only could you act like a little princess, you could actually be one, which has some limited value when it comes to getting a dinner table or theatre ticket.’
‘Princess...?’ Could this get any more surreal?
The ingenuous, wide-eyed act irritated Kamel. ‘Oh, don’t get too excited. In our family,’ he drawled, ‘a title is almost obligatory. It means little.’
As his had, but all that had changed the day that his cousin’s plane had gone down and he had become the Crown prince.
That was two years ago now, and there remained those conspiracy theorists who still insisted there had been a cover-up—that the royal heir and his family had been the victims of a terrorist bomb, rather than a mechanical malfunction.
There was a more sinister school of thought that had gone farther, so at a time when Kamel had been struggling with the intense grief and anger he felt for the senseless deaths—his cousin was a man he had admired and loved—Kamel had also had to deal with the fact that some believed he had orchestrated the tragedy that wiped out the heirs standing between him and the crown.
He had inherited a position he’d never wanted, and a future that, when he allowed himself to think about it, filled him with dread. He’d also inherited a reputation for bumping off anyone who got in his way.
And now he had a lovely bride—what more could a man want?
‘My official residence is inside the palace. I have an apartment in Paris, and also a place outside London, and a villa in Antibes.’ Would the lovely Charlotte still be there waiting? No, not likely. Charlotte was not the waiting kind. ‘I imagine, should we wish it, we could go a whole year without bumping into one another.’
‘So I could carry on with my life—nothing would change?’
‘You like the life you have so much?’
His voice held zero inflection but she could feel his contempt. She struggled to read the expression in his eyes, but the dark silver-flecked depths were like the mirrored surface of a lake, deep and inscrutable yet strangely hypnotic.
She pushed away a mental image of sinking into a lake, feeling the cool water embrace her, close over her head. She lowered her gaze, running her tongue across her lips to moisten them.
When she lifted her head she’d fixed a cool smile in place...though it was hard to channel cool when you knew you looked like a victim of a natural disaster. But her disaster was of her own making.
Her delicate jaw clenched at the insight that had only made her imprisonment worse. The knowledge that she was the author of her own disaster movie, that she had ignored the advice to wait until a driver was available, and then she had chosen not to stay with the vehicle as had been drilled into them.
‘I like my freedom.’ It had not escaped his notice that she had sidestepped his question.
‘At last we have something in common.’
‘So you...we...?’ This was the world’s craziest conversation. ‘Is there any chance of a drink?’ With a heavy sigh she let her head fall back, her eyes closed.
Exhausted but not relaxed, he decided. His glance moved from her lashes—fanning out across the marble-pale curve of her smooth cheeks and hiding the dark shadows beneath her eyes—to her slim, shapely hands with the bitten untidy nails. Presumably her manicure had been a victim of her incarceration.
She had some way to go before she could collapse. Would she make it? It appeared to him that she was running on a combination of adrenalin and sheer bloody-minded obstinacy. His expression clinical, he scrutinised the visible, blue-veined pulse hammering away in the hollow at the base of her throat. There was something vulnerable about it... His mouth twisted as he reminded himself that the last two dumb guys she’d left high and dry at the altar had probably thought the same thing.
‘I’m not sure alcohol would be a good idea.’
Her blue eyes flew open. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of tea.’
‘I can do that.’ He spoke to Rafiq, who had a habit of silently materialising, before turning his attention back to Hannah. ‘Well, at least our marriage will put an end to your heartbreaking activities.’
‘I didn’t break anyone’s—’ She stopped, biting back the retort. She’d promised Craig—who had loved her but, it turned out, not in ‘that’ way—that she’d take responsibility.
‘You’re more like a sister to me,’ Craig had told her. ‘Well, actually, not like a sister because you know Sal and she’s a total...no, more like a best friend.’
‘Sal is my best friend,’ Hannah had replied. And Sal had been, before she’d slept with treacherous Rob.
‘That’s why I’m asking you not to tell her I called it off. When we got engaged she got really weird, and told me she’d never ever forgive me if I hurt you. But I haven’t hurt you, have I...? We were both on the rebound—me after Natalie and you after Rob.’ He had patted her shoulder. ‘I think you still love him.’
Somehow Hannah had loved the man who had slept his way through her friends while they were together. She had only known about Sal when she had given him back his ring after he stopped denying it.
She hated Rob now but he had taught her about trust. Mainly that it wasn’t possible. Craig, who she had known all her life, was different. He was totally predictable; he would never hurt her. But she had forgotten one thing—Craig was a man.
‘You know me so well, Craig.’
‘So, are you all right with this?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘So what happens now?’
People who had never met you felt qualified to spend time and a lot of effort ripping you to shreds. ‘I don’t know,’