Mills & Boon New Voices: Foreword by Katie Fforde. Ann Lethbridge
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she emerged again, showered and dressed in a silk pantsuit and ballet flats, she didn’t expect to find Zafir waiting for her. Her heart did a little flip at the sight of him. He was once again dressed in traditional robes and headdress, and the sight of him literally took her breath away.
“You slept well?” he asked.
“Yes. And you?”
His grin was sudden. Wicked. “I was quite exhausted, I assure you. Thank you for a most pleasurable evening.”
A most pleasurable evening.
She didn’t like the way that sounded—as if she were someone who got paid to provide a service. But then, here in this place Zafir was far more formal than she remembered him ever being when they were at university.
Perhaps that was all it was.
“And how are your negotiations with the Sheikhs going?” she asked, wanting to change the subject before she mentally undressed Zafir and climbed on top of him.
“Eager to leave?” he said, his eyes growing shadowed.
“You know I want to go back to my dig, but that’s not why I asked.”
“Isn’t it?” He shrugged and walked toward the small table that she only now noticed was set with plates and food. “Come, eat. And after this I will take you to the temples.”
She joined him at the table, keeping her gaze from his while he once more dished out food for her. “I asked about the Sheikhs because I wanted to know,” she said when he’d finished. “It seems a dangerous situation, and I hope you are able to end the hostility.”
He sighed. His eyes, she noted, were troubled.
“I am working on it. In the old days I could have had them both executed. But times have fortunately progressed—even if I have often missed having that kind of absolute power while dealing with these two old fools. They grumble, but they will fall in line.”
She had the distinct feeling there was something he wasn’t telling her. “This isn’t at all what you wanted to do, is it? Be a king, I mean?”
“It was not my choice to make.”
“But if it had been?”
His dark gaze was sharp, assessing. “I would still be a Prince of Bah’shar, Genie. And I would still have duties to my nation.”
And she would still be Geneva Gray, a girl who’d had to work hard for every opportunity she’d ever had. She speared a piece of mango with her fork. “I guess we can’t ever change who we really are.”
“No.” He looked thoughtful. “But who are you inside, Genie? What can’t you change?”
She swallowed. Who was she inside? She’d thought about it a lot lately, especially since coming here. “I suppose the greatest constant in my life was uncertainty.”
Uncertainty over whether her father would come visit, whether her mother would make it to her school play or drop everything to be with the man she loved. Would Genie have to stand on the school steps long after the other kids had gone home and wait because her mother had forgotten again?
“I need control of my life. I get nervous when I’m not in control.”
“Your parents were divorced,” Zafir said, as if it explained everything.
Genie gritted her teeth. Why not tell him the truth? Why not let him see how devastating his revelation about an arranged marriage had been to her?
“That was a lie,” she said, lifting her chin. “A fiction I made up in order to keep from telling anyone the awful truth.”
“And what was the truth?”
She glared at him. “My mother had a decade-long affair with my father, a married man. He set her up in an apartment and came to visit us whenever he could get away from his real family.”
Zafir looked stunned. “You never told me this before.”
“Would it have made a difference?” she tossed at him, the old anger of her childhood and the disappointment of her relationship with Zafir mingling into an acid stew inside her. “When my father tired of us he had no problem walking away. My mother was too depressed to go after him for child support. She took odd jobs to make ends meet, and there were times we went without heat or groceries because she barely had enough to pay the rent.”
“I am sorry—”
“Yes, well, you can certainly understand why I wasn’t prepared to put myself in the same position.”
“I would have never abandoned you, habiba,” he said fiercely.
“I imagine that’s what my father said too.”
Zafir came and sank onto a chair close by, tossing one end of his headdress over his shoulder with a practiced movement that was too sexy for words.
Sexy? Genie looked away, studied the food on her plate. How on earth could she find him sexy at a time like this?
“I would change the past if I could,” he said, “but what I asked of you was not an insult in my world. I would not have forced you to stay with me once the marriage finally took place.”
Genie tossed her fork aside. Now, why did that knowledge sting? “Very noble of you, Zafir.”
She shoved to her feet before she lost her mind. She’d have never agreed to be a mistress, no matter what. But isn’t that what you were, Genie, considering he always intended to marry another?
She pressed two fingers on either side of her forehead to stem the rising headache. “Look, can we just stop talking about this and get to the temples?”
“We will go soon. You need to finish eating.”
“I’m not hungry. And I don’t need your pity,” she practically growled.
Zafir stood, his tall form suddenly towering over her. He was all formality once more, his robe draped over one arm, his eyes glittering dark and hot as he stared at her.
“As you wish, habiba.”
Chapter Seven
THE Temples of Al-Shahar were millennia old. The foundations were ancient, though the temples in their current form were only about a thousand years old. The one temple still standing bore the soaring arches and mosaic work typical of the early Islamic period. The others were in various states of ruin, but they were all an archaeologist’s dream. At the very least her team would be busy here for months. In truth, they could stay for years.
Genie walked through the structure, hands in pockets, her mind not quite as engaged as it should be for something so exciting.
Zafir was somewhere behind her, his footfalls distinct in the shadowy interior. His ever-present bodyguards had fanned out to guard the perimeter while they came inside alone. It seemed to her he’d gathered more security since yesterday. She’d asked about it, but he had shrugged the question off.
They’d hardly spoken since lunch. What was there to say?
She’d told him one of the darkest, most painful secrets of her life, and now she regretted it. Because he felt sorry for her. In Bah’shar, it seemed as if a man could have more than one family and no one thought anything of it. Not the women, not the children, and certainly not the men.
But her father had mostly ignored her existence, except for the occasional inquiry into her grades, or the awkward acceptance of a childish drawing that she’d used to believe he took home and put on the refrigerator. Now she realized he must have thrown them all out. His wife wouldn’t have wanted to know anything about the woman and child he kept across town.
One day he’d finally walked out for good. She’d never known why.
Zafir passed