The Sheik's Secret Bride (20 page)

“I have taken nothing from you,”
Malik
reminded her. “You have only gained from knowing me.”

“If we’re talking about the money you had placed in my account, you can forget it. I’ll be giving that all back. While it’s a generous payment for one night of sex, I refuse to be your whore for any price.”

He grabbed her upper arms. “Is that what you think? That I paid you to service me?”

Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “What else could it be?”

“Perhaps it was my way of making sure your dreams were not affected by all that has happened. It is not my intention to have you go when the month is up, but if I can’t stop you I don’t want you to leave El
Bahar
without what you came for. The divorce would have provided you with a generous settlement, but I thought you might be stubborn about that. I thought you would at least take what you expected to have earned from teaching. If you return to your country with that money, then both you and Bethany will be taken care of. You will have your house, and she will have her money for college.”

He shook her slightly, but didn’t give in to the rage boiling inside of him. “How dare you imply I treated you as anything but a precious part of my life? I didn’t take you last night without regard for your feelings. I asked you. I had you choose what you wanted. If you had refused me, I would have walked away. I have honored you by marrying you and yet you accuse me of treating you in such a despicable way.” He thrust her from him. “You know nothing of me.”

“You’re right,” she said, her breathing coming in hard pants. “I don’t know you and I don’t want to. I had my whole life planned. Everything was fine. I do a damn good job taking care of my daughter and myself, and we don’t need you.” A single tear slipped down one cheek. “But we’re stuck with you now. So tell me what’s going to happen? What about
Bethany
and how this is going to affect her? She’s going to be destroyed.”

“Why? I care for her.”

“Isn’t that nice.
Well, guess what? She cares about you, too, and living here is only going to make that worse. She’s going to start to have expectations.”

“I will be a good father to her.”

“Will you visit her when we’re back in
California
? Do you plan to fly in every other weekend? Don’t you realize that a month is plenty of time for her to get her heart broken?”

“I don’t want it to be just for a month. I want you both to stay.”

“Oh, that’s so nice,” she said sarcastically. “But this may be one of those times when you don’t get what you want.”

He refused to think about that. Liana was here and she was going to stay. Somehow he would convince her.

“You and Bethany will move into my suite today,” he said. “Someone has already been sent to pick up your things. I will give you a few days to settle in, and then I’ll be joining you in our bed.”

She bristled. “I don’t think so, Prince
Malik
. I might be stuck in El
Bahar
, but I’m not staying in the palace.”

“You are my wife. Your place is at my side. Besides, you don’t have a choice. The housing at the
American
School
is no longer available to you.”

She blinked. “Because I don’t work there anymore,” she said slowly, as if it was all just sinking in. “Let me guess the rest of it. No one will rent a room to me if you tell them not to.”

“You are my wife,” he repeated stubbornly. “Your place is here.”

“I’ll go to the American consulate,” she said. “They’ll have to help.”

He wasn’t sure if she didn’t see that she had no choice or if she was determined to fight him to the end, regardless of her lack of options. He suspected the latter. Liana could be most stubborn. While that trait made things difficult now, he knew it would be a great help later in their life together. She would fight for what she believed, and when they had sons together her strength would help them to rule El
Bahar
with wisdom and courage.

Liana continued to stare defiantly. He touched her shoulder. “They will not help you.”

Her whole body stiffened,
then
she seemed to collapse upon herself. She walked over to the sofa and sank onto a cushion. “It’s not fair,” she whispered.

“Perhaps not, but we must live with the situation as it exists. We are married. Nothing can change that. Would it be so difficult to make the best of things?”

She raised her head. Fire glowed in her eyes. “You haven’t won,
Malik
. I might be here for the next thirty days, but when the time is up, Bethany and I are leaving.”

“No. You will fall in love with me and you will stay.”

Her lips curved into a smile, but there was no humor in her expression. “Want to bet?”

Now it was his turn to smile. She couldn’t know that he was betting his very life on her staying. She was his last hope. Only with Liana did he have a chance of surviving, of being a man rather than a machine. She had the key to his heart and if she walked away from him, it would stay locked forever.

But he didn’t tell her any of that. For one thing, she would never believe him. For another, he couldn’t imagine allowing himself ever to be that vulnerable to another person. He’d been raised to be autonomous. He was Crown Prince
Malik
and he needed no one.

“You will love me,” he repeated. “And you will stay.”

“You will rue the day you tricked me into marriage,” she retorted.

He met her angry gaze and knew that only one of them was going to be right.
But which one?

“Mommy is really mad at you,”
Bethany
confided the following day as their horses picked their way across the open desert.

Malik
glanced at the child riding next to him. “I’m not surprised. She was angry last night when we spoke.” While Liana had conceded that it was necessary to stay in the palace, she’d not given in easily, nor had she moved into his suite. Instead, she and her daughter were back in their original guest quarters.

He tried not to think about the humiliation of being rejected by his wife less than twenty-four hours after their wedding. He knew there was talk in the palace, and soon it would drift out to the city. Still, he would survive this; nothing Liana could do would ever compare to
Iman’s
transgressions.

“You’re gonna have to do something,”
Bethany
informed him. “Otherwise she’s gonna stay mad forever.”

Malik
stiffened in the saddle. “I’m Prince
Malik
Khan. I do not compromise.”

The nine-year-old looked at him. She wore her blond hair pulled back in a braid under her riding hat. The combination of light-colored hair and the black cap made her eyes appear even more blue than usual.

“If compromising means you’ve made a mistake, and you have to admit it, I think that’s what Mommy wants.”
Bethany
flashed him a smile. “She says she wants a lot of other things, too, but I don’t think she really means them.
Especially not the part about cutting off your head and leaving it on a stick in the center of town.”

“How very visual,” he said dryly.

“Mommy has a great imagination. She can make really boring stuff interesting. That’s why she’s such a good teacher. Oh!” His riding companion brightened. “She’s mad about losing her job, too, and she’s even
more mad
about her getting all her money, even though she didn’t finish teaching.” Her voice lowered confidentially. “You’re kinda in trouble, Prince
Malik
. I didn’t know grown-ups could be in trouble like kids, but they sure can.”

He didn’t know how to respond. He understood that Liana was annoyed with him for tricking her, but she’d overreacted to the situation. After all, he was a prince, and he’d married her. It wasn’t as if he’d taken advantage of her then cast her aside. He had willingly given her his name,
then
set her up as his country’s future queen.

Yet in return she insulted him by refusing to move into his quarters. Didn’t she understand that he wanted her there? Not only so they could be lovers again, but because he wanted to think about her living where he lived. He wanted her fitting into his life, using his belongings, appreciating the art, enjoying the views, just being a part of his world. Was that so wrong? Couldn’t she see that he had not wanted anyone else to do that? Did she know what it cost him to open up enough just for this?

He stared at the horizon where the sun was barely visible in the cool, clear dawn. Sometimes his life felt as empty and cold as the desert in winter. Liana could be his sun—offering both warmth and light. Yet she turned her back on him and rejected him. Then he reminded himself that he should expect little else from her. The price of his position was isolation.

“I don’t understand why Mommy is so upset,”
Bethany
said a few minutes later when they’d turned the horses and were heading back to the stables. “I think she likes you, but she doesn’t want to say that. And she’s so mad now that she keeps talking about you being just like my dad.”
Bethany
glanced at him, her expression confused.

“You’re not like Daddy at all,” she said confidently. “You never forget our plans to go riding, and you’re never too busy to talk to me. You’re always nice, and we have fun. I told her that, too, but she said I’m too young to understand.”

Malik
didn’t understand either, but he wasn’t about to share that with
Bethany
.

“I’m sure we’ll come to some agreement,” he said.

“I hope so, because I don’t want to leave El
Bahar
. I want to live in the palace and be a real princess.”

“I’ll have to see what I can do about that.”
Bethany
grinned. “Then everyone in school will have to bow to me, and I won’t have to do what the teachers say.”

“Unfortunately, little one, it’s not that simple. Sometimes being royal means doing a lot of things you don’t want to do, even when all your friends are going out to play. There are many responsibilities.”

Bethany
sighed. “I guess it couldn’t be as wonderful as I think.” She glanced at him. “Is that why you married Mommy?
To have her help with your responsibilities?”

“Some,” he admitted. “Some of the reason is that I didn’t want her to go away.”

“But she says we’re going away anyway, and in a month, not in two years like we were at first.” She frowned. “You’re gonna have to do something, Prince
Malik
. Because if Mommy doesn’t stop being mad at you, she’s not going to stay here at the palace.”

“I know.” The problem was he didn’t know what to do to change Liana’s mind. “Do you have any suggestions?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m only nine. I don’t know about grown-up stuff like that. Except in those books she reads, the men are always getting the ladies to fall in love. And then they get married and live happily ever after. I think you forgot the in-love part. You should have done that first. Then she wouldn’t want to leave.”

They were by the stables.
Malik
slid off his mount,
then
helped
Bethany
down. “I suspect you’re right. I did do things backwards.”

“So make Mommy fall in love with you. It can’t be too hard. Those women in her romance novels are always falling in love. You could read one,
then
do what they do.” She beamed. “If you get it right, we won’t have to leave.”

Malik
was not the kind of man to take advice from a book, but he couldn’t quite explain that to a nine-year-old.

“I’ll think about it,” he said at last.

Bethany
hugged him, her small arms going around his waist. “I’ll try to talk to Mommy more,” she said. “So we never have to leave.”

Malik
removed her hat and then smoothed her sleek blond hair. “I don’t want either of you to leave,” he said.

What he didn’t dare tell her was that she was part of the reason he’d married her mother. Not only was
Bethany
proof that Liana would be a good mother for his sons, but he’d actually grown to care for the child. She was intelligent and spoke her mind with a frankness he found refreshing.

Sometimes when he was with her, he allowed himself to forget all the responsibilities waiting for him when he returned to his world. In
Bethany
he saw how life would have been had he not been the Crown Prince.

So different, he thought, remembering all the afternoons he’d spent watching from the window as his brothers left the schoolroom to go riding or out to the souk with their tutor. But his days lasted long after the hours of study. When he had finished with his tutor, he reported to his father. In the afternoons, the king and his ministers trained him in matters of government. After dinner, there had been more lessons, or state events he was expected to attend. While his brothers had been free to return to their mother’s side to be cuddled and read to or sung to sleep,
Malik
had lived alone. He’d been deemed a man at the age of four and had been expected to act like one at all times.