A Royal Bride at the Sheikh's Command. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ the now-empty bedroom. She had gone. Good. The music she had left playing was still on and the dimmed lights were far too evocative a reminder of what had happened, but nowhere near as compelling as the scent of her, which seemed to cling to his own flesh despite his shower. It was an unusual blend of sensual warmth spiced with something he couldn’t name, and it had insinuated itself into his awareness in a way that infuriated him.

      What was he doing wasting time thinking about her? She was nothing to him. Nothing, just a woman who was a sexual opportunist. He wouldn’t have gone near her if it hadn’t been for the fact that a near deathbed promise wrung from him by his dying mother that he end his relationship with his mistress had resulted in a period of celibacy far longer than he was used to. That was the only reason for what had happened, the only explanation there could be.

      After all, it hardly suited the new roles he was about to take on, of both King-in-waiting and newly married man, for him to be having sex with a stranger; a masseuse, for heaven’s sake. What had happened to his self-control? He normally found it easy to control his sexual appetite. She hadn’t even been his type—he liked petite women, not sensual Amazons with lush curves and demanding sexual appetites. Yet he had allowed his loins to rule his head.

      Well, it certainly must not happen again—not with any woman.

      Kadir had no intention of being one of those rulers who pretended to have a certain moral stance in public whilst freely indulging in the most salacious of habits in private. There had never been a time in his life when sensual promiscuity had appealed to him. There had been women, yes, especially during his years on the professional polo circuit, but those were long behind him now and the only women to share his bed these last years had been a modest succession of discreet mistresses, of which Zahra had been the latest.

      He had known her for many years, but they had only become lovers after her husband’s death. From his point of view it had been a very convenient and practical arrangement. Kadir liked such arrangements; emotions weren’t something he wanted to bring into his relationships, and an over-emotional mistress was the last thing he wanted. Or had been. Surely now the last thing he wanted was an emotional new wife.

      It had been some financial business connected with his late mother’s estate that had brought him to Venice, and he was glad now that he had without thinking booked into the hotel using his alias from his polo-playing days.

      From what he had learned about King Giorgio his father might have enjoyed a pretty varied sex life himself, but he had very strict views on the conduct of current members of the Nirolian royal family, especially his own heir.

      Kadir’s frown deepened. Should she discover who he was and try to make use of that information, he might be forced to defend his behaviour to his father and the thought of that was totally unpalatable. How could he have put himself in such a situation? And with such a woman; the very antithesis of everything he personally wanted to see in a woman—especially one who shared his bed.

      It was lucky that he had had the means of protection to hand, otherwise…Otherwise he would have stopped; there was no question of that. How could there be? He had a responsibility, after all, not just to himself, but to the woman he was committed to marrying. Was he really so sure that he could have stopped? Kadir swore inwardly as he ground the taunting inner voice into silence.

      It was too late now to wish that he hadn’t come to Venice. His mother had loved the city. ‘It is like a miracle to those of us born of the desert to live in a city of water,’ she had once told him.

      Kadir’s mouth hardened with bitterness. He had thought he had known his mother; had believed he shared a special closeness with her, but he had been deceiving himself just as she had deceived him. The last thing he had expected in those final days before she had finally succumbed to the fatal illness that had stalked her all summer was to hear her tell him that the man he had always thought of as his father had been no such thing and that, instead, he was the result of a youthful affair she had had with a European. And not just any European, but King Giorgio of Niroli, the head of what was reputed to be Europe’s richest royal family. Not that money was of any primary concern to him. Kadir had turned the million-plus inheritance he had received from his maternal grandfather into a billion-figure empire before he had reached his thirtieth birthday, thanks to his own financial and entrepreneurial skills. No, he had no need of King Giorgio’s wealth, and no real need either of the title he would inherit from him, but what he did need was to find out if this new persona his mother’s revelations had given him fitted him more comfortably than the one he had always previously worn. And if didn’t? If he felt as alien and apart from those he lived amongst as King Giorgio’s son and heir as he had done as Hadiya’s sheikh, then what? Then he would just have to live with it. He was forty now, after all, not an untried boy who knew nothing of himself. Niroli would give him the chance to stretch himself, to prove himself in many ways that ruling Hadiya could not. Besides, it was too late now for him to change his mind. He had given his commitment to his brother, Ahmed, to support his claim to become Hadiya’s new sheikh and he had also given his commitment to his as yet unmet father to become Niroli’s next King.

      But whilst the outcome of his mother’s revelations might ultimately be to his benefit, Kadir could not overcome his sense of betrayal that his mother could have kept something so important to him a secret.

      She had begged him to understand and to forgive her, telling him that she had already been promised in marriage to her husband when she had met King Giorgio. She’d stopped off on the island of Niroli on her way home to Hadiya. According to her, theirs had been an intensely passionate and equally intensely brief affair, and her marriage to her husband had taken place before she had realised she was carrying King Giorgio’s child.

      ‘So why tell me now,’ he had demanded angrily, ‘since you have not seen fit to do so before?’

      ‘Before I was afraid for you,’ she had told him. ‘Everyone assumed that you were the legitimate heir to the sheikdom and I could not bear to be responsible for taking that from you. But now…I am close to death, my son, and I have watched you these last weeks since your uncle died. For all that you are ready to assume your responsibilities to Hadiya I can see that you do not have the heart to do so. You have always yearned to be free of the restrictions our small kingdom has imposed on you. Where your brother is content to go and count the revenues from Hadiya’s oil wells and listen to the state advisers, you could never exist beneath the yoke of another’s rule.

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