Monarch of the Sands (2 page)

He remembered, too, the cold air of neglect and despair which settled on the house when her mother left, pronouncing herself bored with her older, scientist husband. She’d run off with someone richer. Someone who had shown her the finer things in life. The first of the many wealthy lovers who would ultimately dump her before she died in a car crash, a tragedy sullied by the
shame of knowing that the car was being driven by a prominent and very married politician.

But Francesca and her father had rallied. They’d formed a tight little unit. The little girl had grown up surrounded by scientists and left largely to her own devices. Consequently, she hadn’t gone through the coy teenage years—or the stage of showing off her body with minuscule clothes. In fact, up until this precise moment you would barely have noticed she was a woman at all.

He remembered teaching her how to play cards when she’d been unhappy at school. And actually letting her beat him! He was deeply and instinctively competitive, and it was the only time in his life that he hadn’t insisted on winning. It had been worth it just to see the little smile which had briefly illuminated her troubled features.

A voice broke into his thoughts and he realised she was speaking to him. ‘Did you say something?’ he questioned, shaking his head a little because it was unlike him to be sentimental.

‘I was asking what had brought you here, to Surrey.’ She tipped her head to one side. ‘Or were you just passing?’

For a moment he didn’t answer. What
had
brought him here today? The realisation that he hadn’t seen her in nearly five years and the faint guilt which had accompanied that thought? He knew that she was alone in the world now—and though he’d always intended to keep an eye on her, life just somehow kept getting in the way. And ever since the unexpected crown had been placed on his head just eighteen months ago the
restrictions imposed by his new role had piled down thick and fast.

‘I have business in London, so I thought I’d do a detour,’ he said. ‘To see how you are. Realising that it is quite some time since I last saw you—and that I really ought to do something about it.’

He was looking at her in such an odd and piercing way that Frankie could feel colour stealing into her cheeks.

‘Would you … would you like a drink?’ she asked, knowing that he rarely accepted any kind of sustenance. She used to wonder if it was because he always had to be careful about someone trying to poison him until her father explained that royals always liked to keep a certain amount of distance about them, no matter where they were.

‘Yes, I would.’

‘You would?’

He knitted his eyebrows together. ‘Didn’t you just offer me a drink—or have I started hearing things? And if you offer something, then it’s usually expected you’ll provide it. Tea, please. Mint—if you have it.’

Nervously, she nodded, wishing that he’d disappear for a moment, leaving her to compose herself. So she could slip her engagement ring off until after he’d gone—thus postponing the inevitable questions she had no desire to answer even though she wasn’t quite sure why that was. ‘Would you … would you like to wait in the sitting room?’

Zahid frowned. What the hell was the matter with her today? He began to wonder if her dramatic physical transformation was responsible for her odd and rather secretive attitude? ‘No. I’ll come into the kitchen and
talk to you while you’re making it—that’s what I usually do.’

‘Yes.’ But usually she didn’t feel this odd and prickling kind of awareness fizzing in the air around them. As if something had changed between them and nobody had bothered to warn her about it. ‘Come with me,’ she said.

Zahid followed her along the chilly corridor, carefully trying to avert his eyes from the rhythmic sway of her bottom and wondering why she was being so edgy. And why she was walking in a way which seemed …

They’d reached the kitchen when he worked out just what the anomaly was and he frowned. ‘Is there something the matter with your hand, Francesca?’

She turned round, her heart thudding guiltily against her breast. ‘My hand?’

‘The one which seems to be glued to your left thigh.’

Was it rude to stand in front of a sheikh with your hand rammed deeply into your pocket? She supposed that it was. And she couldn’t exactly potter one-handedly around this vast kitchen making tea, with his clever black eyes watching her, could she? Reluctantly, she withdrew her fingers, aware of the scratch of the stone against the denim and the dazzle of the gem as it emerged into the light.

The feeling of wonderment she’d been experiencing just minutes before his arrival now evaporated into one of acute embarrassment. Stupidly, she found her cheeks colouring as she lifted her eyes to meet his—but finding nothing other than cold curiosity in his gaze.

‘Why, Francesca,’ he said, with a note in his voice she’d never heard before. ‘I don’t believe it. You’re engaged to be married.’

B
LACK
eyes burned into her with a question blazing at their depths and for a moment Frankie felt oddly weak beneath their fierce scrutiny.

‘You’re getting married?’ Zahid queried silkily.

Frankie nodded, her throat parchment-dry, wondering why she was feeling so damned nervous when she should have been feeling
proud
. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Just—yesterday.’

‘Let me see. Oh, please don’t be coy about it.’ His black eyes gleamed with some dark emotion she didn’t recognise. ‘Come on, Francesca—I thought that all women loved showing off their engagement rings?’

Reluctantly, Frankie extended her hand and as he took it in his she felt the prickle of awareness as the sheikh’s warm flesh touched hers. Hadn’t there been years and years when she’d dreamt of Zahid holding her hand like this? And yet the exquisite irony was that at last it was happening and it meant precisely nothing. All he was doing was holding her hand so that he could examine an engagement ring bought for her by another man!

Zahid frowned as he studied the gem closely, feeling
her unmistakable shiver as she pulled her fingers away. And hadn’t he felt the faintest whisper of something himself? Something which, if he didn’t know better, might almost have been the first potent shimmering of desire. Lifting his head, he met her eyes, raising his brows in mocking query. ‘But surely this should be a cause for celebration, rather than secrecy?’

The colour in her cheeks intensified. ‘Oh, but it is.’
So why had she been hiding the ring from him?
The unspoken question hovered on the air, but even if he’d asked her Frankie doubted whether she would have been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation. Not to him—not even to herself. And as it happened, he didn’t ask her.

‘So who’s the lucky man?’

‘His name’s Simon Forrester.’

‘Simon Forrester.’ Zahid pulled out a chair from beneath the large, scrubbed oak table and sat down, spreading his legs out in front of him. Idly, he noticed the unusual and fancy display of hothouse roses which were sitting there replacing the hand-picked sprigs from the garden which she normally favoured. Had ‘Simon’ bought her those? Was he the reason for the long hair and the junking of her glasses? The incentive to start wearing sexy jeans and a clinging sweater? Had Simon woken her up to all kinds of new experiences, as well as a new way of dressing?

Inexplicably, he felt the souring flavour of distaste in his mouth. ‘And what does he do, this Simon Forrester?’

Frankie’s smile became fixed. Wasn’t this what she had instinctively been fearing—having to give a detailed account? She felt like telling him that it wasn’t his place to just breeze in after however long it had been
and start interrogating her. But she knew that there was no point. Zahid was used to getting exactly what he wanted—and why on earth
wouldn’t
she tell him?

‘He owns the estate agency I work in. Remember I mentioned I’d started there, in one of my Christmas cards?’

Had she? Zahid frowned. He was certain she knew that Christmas wasn’t celebrated in Khayarzah, but she still insisted on sending him a card every year. And for some reason, he insisted on opening them himself—instead of letting one of his aides deal with it. They were always variations on a theme: images of robins and berry-laden sprigs of holly. Or carol singers singing in snowy villages. And even though he didn’t celebrate Christmas, he did find those cards made him nostalgic for the years he spent in England while he was at boarding school.

‘Maybe you did mention it,’ he said slowly. But it was a surprise. Hadn’t he thought she might follow a scientific route, like her father? ‘Tell me more.’

Frankie bit her lip. He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about! Obviously, he never even bothered to read the chatty accompanying letter she always took the time to tuck inside the annual card. ‘Well, Simon runs a very successful company—’

‘Not about the company, Francesca—about
him
,’ he butted in. ‘This man you are proposing to marry. This
Simon Forrester
.’

It wasn’t easy when she felt as if he were spearing her with hostile black light from his eyes and spitting out Simon’s name as if it were some particularly nasty kind of medicine, but Frankie tried to remember all the things she liked best about her fiancé. Those blue
eyes and the way he’d dazzled her with his attention. The roses which he’d had sent to her house, week after week—she, who had never received a bunch of flowers in her life!

She licked her lips. ‘He’s not the kind of man I would have normally expected to go out with—’

‘Really? You go out with many men, do you?’ he fired back. ‘And then compare them?’

‘N-no.’ Why on earth was he looking at her so
darkly
? ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘So what
do
you mean?’

Frankie swallowed as she filled the kettle from the big, old-fashioned sink and put it on to boil. Why was he tying her up in knots with his clever line in questioning and, furthermore, why was he being so …
aggressive
? As if he had some sort of
right
to question her. Resisting the impulse to tell him it was none of his business, she forced her mind back to Simon and an image of his face popped into her mind. She thought of the thick lock of hair which flopped onto his forehead unless he brushed it back, which he did—rather a lot, as it happened. ‘Well, he’s blond and
very
good-looking.’

Zahid scowled. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Francesca,’ he said. ‘Are you really so superficial that physical attributes matter most?’

‘That’s rich, coming from you!’ said Frankie quietly, before she could stop herself.

There was a short and disbelieving silence. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, but it does.’ His voice dipped to a tone of menacing silk. ‘Tell me.’

Frankie met the flash of annoyance which sparked
from his eyes. Why
shouldn’t
she tell him? He didn’t think twice about foisting his opinion on
her
. ‘You’re not such an angel yourself, are you, Zahid? Don’t you use your so-called “business” trips to Europe and the United States as a cover-up for your affairs with women?’

It would have been laughable if it were not so insulting and Zahid felt a mounting fury that Francesca—whom he had known all her life—could think so poorly of him. As if he were nothing more than some brainless
stud
. ‘And just where did you acquire this fascinating piece of information?’

‘The gossip columns are always full of your exploits—though I notice that they’ve tailed off since you became King. But prior to that, you were always being seen with some woman or other!’

‘How very naïve you are, Francesca.’ With a faint sigh of impatience, he shook his dark head and subjected her to a look of chilly censure. ‘Do you really believe everything you read in the papers?’

‘I believe the evidence of my own eyes! I’ve seen enough photos of you wit … with …’ To her fury and consternation, Frankie found that her breath was catching in her throat and that her mind was now being plagued with images far more vivid than that of Simon’s face.

Zahid with a Hollywood hottie gazing up at him, with naked adoration on her face. Zahid being papped with a sexy international lawyer who had been representing one of his rivals in some complicated court case. Except that she was pretty sure it wasn’t written into a legal code of conduct that a legal representative should look at her own client’s adversary as if she’d like
to eat him up for breakfast. ‘With all
kinds
of women!’ she finished hotly. ‘Making you look like some sort of international
playboy
!’

Zahid winced and, to be fair, he conceded that she
did
have a point. He
had
always enjoyed a colourful and varied sex-life until the constraints of his unexpected new role as King had forced him to employ a little more prudence. But even so …

‘And you think that’s the
only
reason I travel?’ he demanded. ‘To have affairs with women?’

As his tone of indignation washed over her Frankie forced herself to remember all his humanitarian work. She thought about the money he’d poured into a world peace project and the well-received speeches he had made on the subject. Just because she had experienced the green-eyed monster when she’d seen the photos didn’t mean that she should make him out to be some kind of uncaring brute who was only interested in bedding members of the opposite sex.

She shook her head. ‘No, of course I don’t and I shouldn’t have implied that I did,’ she said stiffly, tipping boiling water into a pot containing two mint tea bags and glancing up to find his eyes on her. ‘But even you wouldn’t deny that it’s probably one of the perks of being away from all the restrictions in Khayarzah.’

He gave a brief nod. How well she knew him. Or maybe it was just that she was permitted the rare freedom to be able to voice such thoughts because of her long association with his family. And because of the great debt he owed to her father …

‘I’m sorry about your father,’ he said suddenly. ‘And I’m sorry I couldn’t get to the funeral.’