The Sheikh and the Virgin

When their own English mother had chosen her freedom over her children, Khalid, who had been three at the time, had crept into his big brother’s bed each night for months after to cry himself to sleep. How, Tariq wondered, could a child of such a disastrous union, who had suffered so much as a child, not now realise that it was impossible to combine two cultures?

Maybe, Tariq brooded, it was some genetic defect? Their father was a man whose actions had always been characterised by strength and rational thought; he had shown inexplicable weakness and lack of judgement in only one thing—love.

Well, if this was a genetic flaw, and the weakness surfaced in him, Tariq, he had no doubt that he would be able to subdue it. Tariq was a man who prided himself on his iron control. It would not even occur to him to follow such selfish impulses. He had no immediate marriage plans, but when he did eventually commit himself Tariq knew his choice of consort would not be a woman who had split loyalties. Not for him a woman who could not or would not adapt to her new life in a foreign land.

No, he would marry a woman—when the time came—who would stand beside him as he continued the onerous task of bringing modern reforms to their ancient kingdom and its rich diverse cultural heritage. Love, too often in his opinion, was used as an excuse for inappropriate behaviour, and would be very low down the list when he came to look for a suitable bride for himself.

The lawyer guided her through a series of interconnected rooms, and when they reached the last he stood back and indicated to Beatrice that she should go inside.

In the doorway she turned to call out to the retreating figure. ‘Look, what is this all about …?’

A stranger’s rough velvet voice from inside the room cut across her bemused protest.

‘Just come in, Miss Devlin.’

Cautiously Beatrice responded to the terse instruction and stepped into the room. Her inspection of her surroundings only got as far as the figure seated behind the desk. He rose as she stepped forward: a seriously tall man, lean, long of leg and broad of shoulder.

He was also young and sinfully good-looking, if you liked the dark fallen angel look, and frankly, Beatrice thought staring, who wouldn’t?

‘Take a seat.’ He commanded, in that velvet voice again.

‘I’m sorry—I don’t know who you are, or—’

‘I doubt that …’ His long lashes brushed against the sharp angles of his chiselled cheekbones as his midnight glance dipped, skimming the lush contours of her body.

By the time his attention returned to her face Beatrice knew her cheeks were burning in reaction. There was something of a calculated insult in his insolent scrutiny.

Later she might be bewildered by his attitude, but right now Beatrice was too furious for analysis. Was he trying to make her lose her temper? Or was he always this obnoxiously rude? Well, either way she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of responding.

Beatrice lifted her chin, raised her brows in a quizzical fashion and gave him a calm smile. ‘Manners really aren’t your strong point, are they …?’ She murmured amusedly before pulling out a chair. ‘I’m assuming I wasn’t summoned here just so that you could insult me …?’

She was rewarded by a perplexed frown that twitched his strongly defined sable brows into a straight line above his hawkish nose. The frown stayed in place as he watched her settle herself in the chair and casually cross one slender ankle over the other. It was a scrutiny that Beatrice was painfully conscious of. She was equally determined not to betray the fact.

This was not a person to show weakness to. The man was clearly a barbarian, she decided, and no amount of tailoring could disguise the fact. As mad as she was with him, for looking at her as though she were a piece of meat, she was madder with herself for responding on some primal level to the raw sexual challenge in his stance.

Cut yourself some slack, she counselled herself, as she slowed her breathing to a less agitated level. The man does have more undiluted blatant sexuality in his little finger than the average male has in his entire body. Her eyes skimmed the long lean length of him again, and she stifled an internal sigh. Whatever else the man was, there was nothing about him physically that she could find fault with.

Finally he stopped his appraisal of her and spoke. ‘You look like a smart girl.’ You only had to look into those green eyes to see this woman was no fool. Though admittedly intelligence was not the first thing that hit a man when this woman walked into a room.

Since the moment she had strolled in, with a sway of those feminine hips, filling the small room with the scent of roses and rain, he had been more than conscious of the sexual allure she radiated.

Beatrice flashed her white teeth in an insincere smile. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, but she was not making the mistake of assuming this was a compliment.

It was pretty hard to think that when he was looking at her as though she was something unpleasant he’d discovered on his shoe! She wondered idly what he’d look like when he wasn’t sneering.

It seemed doubtful, given the inexplicable antagonism vibrating in the air between them, that she was ever going to find out. But, despite this, her wilful imagination toyed with a mental image of those arrogant patrician features relaxed in a genuine smile. The corners of his wide sensual lips pulled upwards, maybe a few sexy crinkles at the corners of those sensational eyes, and the temperature on those silver-flecked depths a few degrees above zero …

‘And as a smart girl I’m sure you already know why I arranged this meeting.’ He slowly folded his long lean length gracefully into the chair behind the desk. ‘Let’s lay our cards on the table.’

No cards, but his hands lay on the mahogany surface of the desk that stood between them. His tapering fingers were long and brown, and exerted a fascination for Beatrice that she was beginning to think bordered on the unhealthy.

‘My brother plans to marry you.’

Beatrice’s head came up with a jerk that jarred her spine. Eyes as hard as obsidian that were lightened only by those strange silvery flecks bored into her.

If she had any remaining doubts that this was a case of mistaken identity, this bizarre statement washed them away.

‘I’m not marrying anyone’s brother,’ she promised him.

Irritation chased across his lean features. ‘Then this is not you?’ he drawled.

Beatrice looked suspiciously for a moment at the item he extracted from a file and placed on her side of the desk before she picked it up.

Her eyebrows almost hit her hairline when she recognised the holiday snap. It had been taken two summers earlier, when she had been working as an au pair in the South of France.

The two people with her on the beach were friends she had met that summer. Emma, whose father had owned the villa next to hers, and Khalid, the charming young man Emma had introduced her to.

Both had remained her friends—in fact her sleeping bag was at present on the sofa in Emma’s London flat.

Her narrowed eyes left the photo and flew to the man’s face. ‘How did you get this?’

He dismissed the question with a shrug of his powerful shoulders. ‘That is not relevant.’

Strange men with photos of her in a bikini were extremely relevant to Beatrice!

‘I do not normally concern myself with my brother’s holiday romances.’

‘Your brother … Khalid is your brother? Then that makes you …’ She swallowed, her voice trailing off. That made him Tariq Al Kamal, heir to the throne of one of the richest countries in the world.

This incredible information certainly explained the autocratic air and the imperious arrogance she had been witness to since she had arrived.

Not that Beatrice was impressed. Why be impressed by an accident of birth? This man had been handed everything on a plate. Beatrice, on the other hand, had worked for everything she had. The way she saw it, the people who had been born to wealth and privilege should be required to prove themselves, not the other way around.

Khalid was the most self-deprecating un-royal person you could ever imagine meeting. The summer she had spent with Emma and him had been half over before Emma had discovered by accident his royal connection. A connection that he had typically played down.

‘Sorry, if I’d known who you were I’d have curtsied.’ Which no doubt he’d take as his due. God, the man was everything she detested most wrapped up in one package!

A gorgeous package, admittedly. Her glance drifted as he shrugged off his jacket. The suggestive dark shadowy triangle on his chest, visible beneath the fine white fabric of his shirt, sent an embarrassing rush of heat through her.

‘Forget the pretence, Miss Devlin.’

Forget the body, Beatrice.

‘I am aware of your relationship with my brother.’

She didn’t have the faintest idea how the man had got the idea she and Khalid were an item—Emma would laugh when she shared the joke—but it was definitely time she put an end to this farce and got out of here.

‘Look, I know Khalid—sure.’ She spread her hands in a pacifying gesture and raised her eyes to his. ‘He’s a friend, but—’