Surrender To The Sheikh

‘What a pity,’ she said lightly.

His black eyes lingered on the lushness of her lips, the creaminess of her skin. ‘A pity indeed,’ he agreed, briefly bowing his dark head before sweeping away from her across the ballroom.

And she watched him go with a thundering heart.

‘They’re leaving!’ called someone, and Rose looked across the room to see that Sabrina had changed out of her bridal gown into a silvery-blue suit and was carrying her bouquet, Guy in an impressive dark suit at her side.

Everyone began to surge out of the ballroom to wave them off, but Rose hung back. She could see Khalim talking to Guy and she found herself unwilling to face him, aware of a dull sense of an opportunity lost, an opportunity never to be repeated.

She saw Sabrina turn and teasingly hold her bouquet of lilies above her head while every female present lifted their arms in hope of catching it. Even Rose eagerly raised her arms to catch the waxy blooms as they came flying in her direction, but the redhead beside her was more eager still.

‘Gotcha!’ she shouted as she leapt into the air and pounced triumphantly on the bouquet.

It’s only a tradition, Rose told herself dully as she watched the girl ecstatically smelling the flowers. Why would catching a bunch of flowers guarantee that you would be the next to be married? And it wasn’t as if she even wanted to get married, was it? These days lots and lots of women in their late twenties were electing to stay single.

But when she looked up again, it was to find herself caught in the lancing gaze of a pair of glittering black eyes.

I have to get out of here, she thought, with a sudden sense of panic.

CHAPTER TWO

IN A daze, Rose left the Granchester and found herself a taxi, but afterwards she couldn’t recollect a single moment of the journey. Not until the cab drew up outside the flat she shared in Notting Hill did reality begin to seep back into her consciousness as she tried to rid herself of the memory of the dark prince, with his proud, sensual face.

She let herself in through the front door and put her handbag on the hall table, relieved to be home. And safe.

She loved her flat—it was her very first property and occupied the first floor of a grand old high-ceilinged house. But it was an ambitious project for a first-time buyer and the repayments on her loan were high, which was why she had taken on a flatmate—Lara.

Lara was a struggling actress who described herself as Rose’s lodger, but Rose never did. Equality was something she strove for in every area of her life. ‘No, we’re flatmates,’ she always insisted.

It was a typical bachelor girls’ home—full of colour in the shared areas and rather a lot of chaos in Lara’s bedroom—because, much as she nagged, there didn’t seem to be anything Rose could do to change Lara’s chronic untidiness. So now she had given up trying.

There were brightly coloured scarves floating from a coat-stand in the hall, and vases of cheap flowers from the market dotted around the sitting room. And the bathroom was so well stocked with various lotions and potions that it resembled the cosmetics counter of a large department store!

‘Anyone at home?’ she called.

‘I’m in the kitchen!’ came the muffled reply, and Rose walked into the kitchen to find Lara busy crunching a chocolate biscuit and pouring coffee into a mug. Her staple diet and my coffee, thought Rose ruefully as Lara looked up with a smile and held a second mug up. ‘Coffee?’

Rose shook her head. ‘No, thanks. I think I need a drink.’

Lara raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘But you’ve just been to a wedding!’

‘And I barely touched a drop all day,’ said Rose grimly. She had deliberately avoided liquor so that she would have all her wits about her, and then just look at the way she had behaved on the dance-floor! She sighed as she poured herself a glass of wine from the cask in the fridge.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Lara curiously.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘You just seem a little…I don’t know…tense.’

Tense? Rose sipped at her wine without enjoyment. She could see her reflection in the pig-shaped mirror which hung on the kitchen wall. Her face was unbelievably pale. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Or a vision maybe…‘I guess I am,’ she said slowly.

‘So why? What was the wedding like? Awful?’

‘No, beautiful,’ said Rose reflectively. ‘The most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to.’

‘Then why the long face?’

Rose sat down at the kitchen table and put her wineglass down heavily. ‘It’s stupid, really—’ She looked up into Lara’s frankly interested brown eyes. ‘Did I ever tell you that Sabrina’s new husband is best friends with a prince?’

Lara’s eyes grew larger. ‘You’re winding me up, right?’

Rose shook her head and bit back a half-smile. It did sound a bit far-fetched. ‘No, I’m not. It’s the truth. He’s prince of a country—more a principality, really—called Maraban—it’s in the Middle East.’

‘And next, I suppose you’ll be telling me that he’s outrageously good-looking and rich, to boot!’

Rose sighed. ‘Yes! He’s exactly that. Just about the most perfect man you’ve ever seen. Tall, and dark and handsome—’

‘Oh, ha, ha, ha!’

‘No, he is! Honestly. He’s divine. I danced with him…’ Her voice tailed off as she remembered how it felt to have his body so tantalisingly close to hers. ‘Danced with him, and—’

‘And what?’

‘And—’ No need to point out that she had got a little carried away on the dance-floor. She squirmed with remembered pleasure and glanced up to see Lara’s open-mouthed expression.

‘Oh, Rose, you didn’t?’

Rose blinked as the implication behind Lara’s question squeaked its way home. ‘No, of course I didn’t! You surely don’t imagine that I’d meet a man at a wedding and hours later leap into bed with him, do you?’ she questioned indignantly.

But you did it in thought if not in deed, didn’t you? mocked the guilty voice of her conscience.

Lara was looking at her patiently. ‘So what happened?’

‘He, well, he asked me to go for a drink with him once the bride and groom had left,’ explained Rose.

‘What’s the problem with that? You said yes, of course?’

‘Actually,’ said Rose, in a high, forced voice, not quite believing that she had had the strength of will to go through with it, ‘I said no.’

Lara was blinking at her in bemusement. ‘You’ve lost me! He’s gorgeous, he’s royal and you turned him down! Why, for heaven’s sake?’

‘I don’t know.’ Rose sighed again. ‘Well, maybe that’s not true, I suppose I do, really. He’s so utterly irresistible—’

‘That’s usually considered a plus where men are concerned, isn’t it?’

‘But he would never commit, I know he wouldn’t—it’s written all over his face!’

Lara stared at her incredulously. ‘Never commit?’ she echoed. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Rose, you’ve danced with the guy once and already you’re talking commitment? And this from the woman who has always vowed never to get married—’