The Desert King / An Affair with the Princess: The Desert King. Michelle Celmer

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      Her hand trembled over the track pad. The cursor shook across the screen, missed its target. Hissing, she squeezed her hand to steady it, returned it to the track pad, clicked the e-mail open.

      She stared at the words for what could have been an hour.

       We will have dinner to discuss the situation. You will be picked up at 7:00 p.m.

      That was all. No closing. No signature.

      We will have dinner. You will be picked up. Picked up…

      Yeah, like he’d picked her up that night they’d first met.

      She’d been so deluded she’d thought him the embodiment of the best of her dominant half’s culture, a knight of the desert, with chivalry and nobility running in his blood. She’d thought him her counterpart, her soul mate, a man burdened with inherited status, struggling with its shackles, its distorting effect on people, overcoming its limitations while making no use of its privileges to become his own person and a phenomenal success. She’d done the same, even if her success had been nowhere as phenomenal.

      She’d thought he’d seen through her hyper surface to the vulnerable soul inside, struggling to conquer her weaknesses, the one man who wanted more than friendship from her, who’d valued her as a person, didn’t consider her as a means to access status and wealth or a pawn in royal games of pretense. She’d thought he’d never get enough of her. Then he had, had walked away without a word.

      She’d gone up in flames of desperation, begging for an explanation, a reconciliation. He’d walked away time and again, as if she’d ceased to exist to him.

      His dismissal had driven her over the edge. And she’d gotten what she deserved for disregarding all survival instincts. Kamal had smeared her face in the ugly truth. What she’d thought a powerful love affair with her perfect match had been nothing but the sick game of a twisted hypocrite who’d exploited her and reviled her for falling for it.

      And here he was, reinvading her life. Relegating her to being picked up like a pile of dirty laundry he didn’t deem to touch himself.

      That royal bastard. Literally royal. Regal even, in a matter of days, thanks to the weird game of musical chairs the heirs of Judar had played, leaving him the one poised to sit on the throne. Not that he needed a throne to be ruthless. He’d always swept through life like a scythe, cutting down anyone who didn’t make way for his advance. And she’d been pathetic enough to consider his cruelty a strength, one she’d been desperate to be close to, to absorb a measure of.

      And she was supposed to marry that bulldozer.

      Or so decreed some archaic tribal stupidity. Thanks to everything her two sets of parents had done before she’d been born, she was suddenly the main piece in that political game, her only purpose to make one move. Marry the crown prince of Judar—its king in a few days’ time—and produce heirs to the throne with Aal Shalaan blood in them.

      To that she said, like hell.

      And it seemed she’d get to say it to his face.

      She looked in fascination at her hand. It was no longer trembling. And that was only the outward manifestation of the stillness that had spread inside her.

      It was as if after two weeks of feeling like she was struggling to get free of an octopus, she’d figured out how to escape. Why keep beating away the octopus’s tentacles when she could bash it on the head?

      Especially when said head was six foot six of despicable male heartlessness and chauvinism.

      She rose to steady feet and walked to her dressing room.

      She started to undo her buttons, then met her own gaze in the mirror.

      He’d invited her to discuss the “situation,” as he’d put it. He hadn’t even deemed her worth picking up the phone to deliver the invitation. Not that it was an invitation. It was an order. One he fully expected her to rush to obey.

      No. She wouldn’t bash the head.

      She’d chop it off.

      At the strike of seven, they’d arrived. Kamal’s men.

      Or rather, the men of his new status. The king’s men. Dressed in black, deferential yet daunting. Two had come up to her condo and escorted her down to a three-stretch-limo cavalcade where half a dozen clones had been waiting. They’d turned every head on the busy street, some in alarm, the band of Middle Eastern not-so-secret service guys flitting around her as if she were their king himself, not just his summoned guest.

      It had surprised her, this show of power. The bustle of pomp and ceremony. Kamal hadn’t had an entourage in the past, had rejected the fuss, the servitude, the imposition. Being royalty herself, she’d known that, as a prince of one of the most powerful oil states in the world, he’d had bodyguards following him. But she’d never felt them, let alone seen them. It had been another thing that she’d loved about him. Fool that she’d been.

      Beyond lack of an entourage, he’d also never flaunted his inherited status or acquired power. Yet even people who didn’t know him had always responded to his innate authority and had launched themselves at his feet. She’d been a victim of that influence herself. And he’d found their—and her—fawning abhorrent. He’d told her so.

      Seemed he’d changed his mind.

      That must be just one of many things that had changed about him. All for the worse, no doubt. If there could be worse than what he’d been. Whatever worse was, she was sure he’d managed it.

      God help Judar and its entire surrounding region.

      As for her, she’d help herself, just as she’d learned to do, thank you very much.

      She inhaled on renewed purpose and stared at Los Angeles rushing by through the smoky, bulletproof window. She recognized their route. She’d taken it many times before. To his mansion by the ocean.

      He’d always world-hopped, he’d told her, never staying in one place outside his kingdom long, never bothering with more than rented, serviced lodgings. Then he’d bought that mansion a week after they’d met. He’d given her the impression that he’d bought it for her. He’d implied he’d leave only when necessary, would always come back. He’d given her every indication that he’d been thinking long-term.

      Now she guessed that a thirty-million-dollar mansion had been the equivalent of a thirty-thousand-dollar car to her. Too affordable to indicate commitment. And to a playboy of his caliber, six months must have been his definition of eternity.

      Even though that mansion had been a beacon of hope to her, she’d never risked staying there overnight. She’d never stayed the night with him at all. She’d been terrified that during the intimacy of nights under the same roof, he’d see more manifestations of the imbalance she’d been battling, that he might have despised her for it.

      She shouldn’t have worried. He’d despised her anyway.

      Suddenly it was there, at the end of the palm-lined road that sloped up the hillside to overlook the breathtaking panorama of the Pacific. The mansion that had dominated her stupid dreams just as СКАЧАТЬ