The Sheikh's Bought Wife Read online

  She met his eyes. ‘Why exactly did you just have sex with me, Zayed?’ she questioned. ‘Just tell me the truth. Please. That’s all I ask.’

  There was a pause and she saw something like indecision shadow his features. A split second of hesitation, as if he recognised that there could be no coming back from what he was about to say.

  ‘Because I imagined you in the arms of David Travers and I couldn’t bear the thought of another man being the first.’

  And that was the moment she knew it really was over. It had been all about possession, not passion—she had been right all along.

  She pushed a wayward lock of hair back from her face. ‘I’d like to leave as soon as possible.’

  ‘Where are you going to go?’

  Jane realised he didn’t actually care about her answer—he was simply protecting his precious reputation, probably thinking that it wouldn’t look good if the estranged wife of the Sheikh was going off to live somewhere unsuitable. Because he had shut down emotionally, she realised. He’d gone back to being the Zayed he preferred to be. They’d just had full sex but they might as well not have bothered. At the time she’d felt close to him but the feeling obviously hadn’t been reciprocated. All she represented to him now was a symbol of his failure to resist her, and she suspected he would never forgive himself for that. Or her.

  So she gave him a cool smile. The kind of smile intended to let him know that this really was the end of their ill-fated marriage. That once she walked out of that door there would be no coming back. Her heart felt shattered enough as it was—there was no way she was going to risk inflicting any further pain on it.

  ‘Where I’m going is none of your business, Zayed. This is it. It’s over. I don’t want anything more to do with you,’ she said quietly. And, walking into the adjoining bathroom, she locked the door behind her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FOR THE FIRST time in her life, Jane was without a plan. Within hours she had left Kafalah and flown into London, but she didn’t go back to her half of her rented house. She didn’t dare. She’d told Zayed she wanted nothing more to do with him, but she was aware that nothing was that straightforward. For the time being she was still legally his wife. What if he decided on a whim that he wanted some more hot sex with her? He might try to seek her out to do just that and she wasn’t going to risk it.

  She didn’t dare risk being unable to resist him.

  So, dreading what she might find when she got there, she travelled to Cleo’s home, surprised to discover that her sister had moved. No longer in a scruffy room in the farthest outreaches of East London, her twin was now ensconced in Ascot, in a cute little cottage which stood in the grounds of an enormous mansion.

  ‘I’m a housekeeper,’ said Cleo, by way of explanation. ‘And don’t look so surprised, Jane. Did you really think I was going to live in a shoebox for the rest of my life, trying and failing to be a model?’ Her gaze had narrowed. ‘Didn’t you ever think I might be capable of turning things around—or is it only you who is capable of positive change?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Jane slowly as she put her single suitcase in the hallway, thinking how badly wrong her sister had got it because nothing positive had come out of her ill-fated marriage to Zayed. Nothing but an ache deep in her heart and a sense of how badly she was going to miss him. ‘It’s just I can’t imagine you as a housekeeper.’

  Cleo smiled. ‘Being subservient, you mean—on my knees, scrubbing floors, like Cinderella? You don’t honestly think I’d risk ruining my manicure?’ She wiggled her bright red fingernails in the air. ‘No danger of that! The guy who owns it is some big-shot billionaire who’s never around, who employs an army of cleaners and gardeners to look after the main house. I just live there when he’s away and my presence is supposed to deter any would-be burglars.’

  ‘But is it safe?’ questioned Jane worriedly.

  ‘I told him I had a black belt in judo.’

  ‘Oh, Cleo—you didn’t?’

  ‘Why not? I am actually learning at evening class, so who knows? And anyway.’ Cleo was looking at her thoughtfully. ‘That’s enough about me. Are you going to tell me why you’ve been crying?’

  ‘I haven’t been crying.’

  ‘Jane,’ said her sister gently. ‘This is me, remember? I know you and I can hardly believe the state of you. You never cry.’

  The trouble was that ever since she’d left Kafalah she couldn’t seem to stop. Tears began to well up in her eyes as she sank onto a sofa while Cleo made her a cup of tea she didn’t really want. And suddenly Jane was glad she’d never had a relationship before now, or had her heart broken. Why had nobody told her it would feel like this?

  ‘Okay,’ said Cleo solemnly as she sat down on the sofa next to her. ‘The last I heard, you were whooping it up in Washington—wowing the locals and having dinner at the White House. What did I miss?’

  More tears spilled down her cheeks before Jane dashed them away and the story came tumbling out. Some of it she told how it was, but much of it she missed out. She didn’t think anyone had the right to know about someone else’s sex-life and even though she was angry with Zayed—angrier than she’d ever been in her entire life—she wasn’t going to betray him by talking about the intimacies of what had gone on in their marital bed.

  ‘And then I flew back to England,’ she finished, with a sniff.

  ‘Drink your tea.’ Cleo handed her the mug. ‘So basically, you had a marriage of convenience—the proceeds of which helped bail me out of my predicament and for which I am eternally grateful—and which went wrong when you started to fall in love with him?’

  ‘I never said I was in love with him.’

  ‘Oh, Jane. Come on. It’s written all over your face.’ Cleo’s eyes narrowed. ‘And he thinks you’re interested in this guy David.’

  ‘In a nutshell, yes.’

  ‘But if Zayed doesn’t love you...then why was he so jealous of some random guy you knew from college?’

  ‘Because he’s possessive,’ said Jane darkly. ‘He doesn’t want me, but he doesn’t want anyone else to have me.’

  ‘Masterful,’ breathed Cleo admiringly.

  ‘Brutish,’ corrected Jane.

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  Jane drew in a deep breath as she put down her untouched mug of tea. She’d thought about this until it had spun in an endless cycle around her head. ‘I have enough money to live on for the time being,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to find myself somewhere to live—somewhere cheap and remote—and then I’m going to write the definitive history of Kafalah.’

  ‘But...’ Cleo looked slightly confused ‘...if the whole point is to forget Zayed, won’t writing a book about his country make it impossible?’

  Jane shook her head, suddenly fired up by her own resolve. ‘It will be cathartic,’ she said firmly. ‘Nobody’s ever done it before, so there’s definitely a gap in the market. And it means I can get that wretched country out of my system once and for all,’ she finished darkly.

  ‘And what about Zayed? What if he tries to get in touch with you?’

  ‘He won’t,’ Jane said, hating the instinctive shivering of her skin as she thought of the dark Sheikh turning up on her doorstep out of the blue. ‘If he wants to communicate with me, he can do it through his lawyers. His precious lawyers,’ she finished bitterly.

  * * *

  In his vast office within the Kafalahian palace, Zayed stared at the painting which hung in pride of place above his desk. A painting not unlike the one he’d donated to his club in London, the one which Jane had recognised on the night he’d taken her to dinner and asked her to become his wife. He looked at the famous three blue towers of Tirabah and realised he’d never once taken her there, so she could see for herself the beautiful vista which so many artists had c
aptured on canvas.

  But he didn’t want to think about his omissions as her husband. He wanted to concentrate on her failures as a wife. On the disloyalty she had shown towards him by communicating secretly with another man.

  Yet it didn’t seem to matter how many times he tried to convince himself otherwise, deep down he was aware that he had behaved very badly towards his English bride. At least, once he’d allowed his jealousy to disperse and started engaging his brain. And when he thought about it properly, he was appalled at how wrong he’d got it. No way would someone like Jane be flirting with some diplomat when it was abundantly clear that she’d made him, Zayed, the focus of her attention. Could he have asked for any more than she had given him? He thought not. Sexually inventive, stimulating company and a huge hit with his court, she had been an exemplary partner in every way.

  He shook his head. He had told her he didn’t need her any more—just as he’d never needed a mother or father when he was growing up. But no matter how much he tried to convince himself that was true, his arguments sounded increasingly empty. How could he miss her so much? Why did everything seem to lack lustre without her, so that even the gilded fittings of the palace looked dull in the desert sunshine? He stood up and went to the wardrobe where her tunics were still hanging. He knew he should ask one of the staff to remove them and donate them to a worthy cause, but he had been reluctant to do so and he couldn’t quite work out why. Was he somehow imagining she might come back? Of course she would never come back—and could he really blame her?

  Word had got out, of course, that the Sheikha was no longer in residence. Some of the western press had hinted that all was not well within the marriage and there had been several profile pieces carrying a distinctly disappointed tone that the unusual match hadn’t worked out, because the new Queen of the desert had proved to be a big hit in Washington and the rest of the world was eager to meet her.

  Zayed’s phone had begun to ring—his private line buzzing with calls from ex-lovers casually suggesting hooking up. But their predatory intrusion had made his temper boil and he had instructed Hassan to change his number. Because he didn’t want an ex-lover and he didn’t want a new lover. He wanted Jane. He realised that when he’d ravished her on the divan he had—for the first time in his life—neglected to wear a condom. Could she be carrying his child? An heir to the throne of Al Zawba? His heart clenched. He had to find out.

  But a London aide who was despatched to her home with an armful of flowers was informed that the Queen had moved out and, no, she hadn’t left any forwarding address. The news had both infuriated him and excited him, for there was nothing Zayed liked better than a chase. He tried ringing her but it seemed he wasn’t the only one who had changed their number. He contacted his embassy in London but nobody had seen or heard from her. He’d even rung a high-powered contact in the Foreign Office who was able to confirm that the Sheikha of Kafalah had not applied to enrol on the system’s fast-track channel.

  And that was when it began to sink in that maybe he had been wrong. Wrong in so many ways. He had judged her by his own standards and done her a terrible disservice. He had treated her as his chattel. He was a brute. Purposefully, he lifted the phone to have one of his planes put on stand-by, planning to make it up to her, knowing there wasn’t a woman alive who could resist him when he set his mind to something. After a brief consultation with his aides, he put the journey into motion and within ten hours was touching down at a private airfield just outside London.

  But tracking down his wife wasn’t as easy as it should have been and he was forced to accept that she didn’t want to be found. At least, not by him. It took a great deal of resourcefulness, not to mention a team of private detectives, to determine the whereabouts of Jane’s twin sister, Cleo, and when at last he found her, he was surprised. Contrary to what he was expecting, his wife’s twin sister was very different from the image he’d formed of her. Despite her dyed blonde hair and eyes the colour of emeralds, she looked a little like Jane. But she was not Jane, he reminded himself bitterly. She was not Jane.

  And neither was she particularly friendly.

  ‘She doesn’t want to see you,’ had been her opening gambit.

  ‘I realise that.’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  Biting back his instinctive retort that nobody should speak to a desert king in such a way, he sucked in a ragged breath instead, telling himself that never had diplomacy been more vital. ‘I must see her,’ he said simply.

  She stared at him very hard for a moment and he didn’t know what made her change her mind but at last she grudgingly wrote down Jane’s address and phone number and handed it to him.

  ‘All I ask,’ said Zayed unsteadily as he glanced down at the information he’d been given, ‘is that you don’t tell her I’m on my way to see her.’

  ‘Because you know she’d make sure she was out.’

  ‘That’s right.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Yet you’re giving me access to her. Why?’

  Cleo hesitated before glaring at him and in that moment he thought she looked very like her sister. ‘Because this is all such a mess and I don’t think she’s ever properly going to get over you until she sees you again.’

  He nodded. It was not the answer he wanted but at least it was an honest one. ‘Thank you.’

  Cleo leaned forward, her voice a soft whisper. ‘But if you ever hurt her—’

  ‘I promise never to knowingly hurt her,’ he said gravely. ‘Please believe me when I tell you that.’

  His car was waiting in the road outside and he gave the address to the driver, who happened to be English.

  ‘North Wales, Your Royal Highness?’ The driver’s voice dipped in concern as he stared out at the dark sky. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to set out in the morning? It’s a fair old trip in this weather.’

  ‘Now,’ said Zayed tersely. ‘I want to go there now.’

  He’d never been to Wales before, a country he knew was renowned for its beautiful mountains and above average rainfall. It was raining when they passed Birmingham and raining even harder when they drove through a little town called Bala, his bodyguards following at a discreet distance. Finding Jane’s cottage wasn’t easy because there seemed to be a shortage of signposts, no streetlights, and in the dark and moonless night several sheep suddenly loomed out of the gloom, fixing him with their unwavering stare.

  He was wearing jeans, a sweater and a leather jacket and was glad he’d decided to blend in as much as possible, especially when he walked into a pub which was just closing and the room went silent and everyone stared at him as if he’d just descended from outer space.

  He found her place eventually. A tiny cottage joined to several others—just a few yards away from the narrow winding road, with an upstairs window showing a square of golden light. He told the driver to park a little way up, pointing to a nearby layby where he could wait—who knew for how long? And then Zayed got out of the car, sucking in a breath full of cool, damp air as he walked towards the tiny cottage and rapped on the door.

  After a couple of minutes, a light went on at the front of the house but he couldn’t hear the sound of footfall, only the unbolting of a lock before a pair of shadowed amber eyes peered out at him. In their widening he saw shock and then the glint of fire in their depths. Briefly he thought how immensely flattered any of his other lovers would have been to discover that he had just travelled halfway across the world in order to see them, but on Jane’s face there was nothing but hostility.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FROM INSIDE THE tiny cottage, the knock had sounded authoritative and demanding. Perhaps that was why foreboding had shivered its way down Jane’s spine. Or maybe the seemingly habitual cold of her Welsh cottage had seeped beneath her skin and decided to stay there.

  She’d tried to tell herself it couldn’t be Zayed bu
t who else would be banging on her door at this time of night? She’d been huddled up in bed, trying and failing to get warm while reading about the Kafalah-Hakabar war of 1863. Trying to stop Zayed’s hawkish face from swimming into her thoughts and wondering if Cleo had been right all along. That working on a book about his country would make it impossible to forget the current ruler.

  Another knock.

  Should she ignore it? Hope her silence might make him give up and go away? She sighed, knowing Zayed wasn’t the kind of man to give up and go away.

  But if she answered it, she couldn’t afford to crumble. She needed to stay strong. To remember the way he’d read her emails and accused her of all those outrageous things. To calmly tell him that whatever he said would have no effect on her resolve to put as much distance between them as possible. What she mustn’t do was to give any hint of how much she’d been missing him. She was like someone who’d never tasted sugar and then suddenly become addicted to it. At first the sweetness was almost too good to be true...and then too late you discovered it made your teeth rot.

  Undoing the chain on the door, she peered out. There were no moon or stars to lighten the night but there was no mistaking the formidable physique silhouetted there, a towering shadow of fathomless black against the darkness.

  She kept her voice low. ‘What are you doing here?’

  His voice was just as soft. ‘Maybe I need to know if you’re having my baby.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have just picked up the phone to ask me that?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No.’ Somehow she managed to keep the pain from her voice. To hide the unexpectedness of yet another layer of hurt. ‘Whatever else it is you want to say, I don’t want to hear it. So why don’t you save us both some time and go back where you came from?’

  His voice was quiet. ‘I’m not going anywhere unless you agree to see me. I’ll stand on the doorstep all night until you let me in, if necessary. Alternatively, I could go back to the car to fetch a toolbox and take the door off its hinges.’