eyebrows lifted with surprise.
“Just letting you know, Princess, in case you thought you’d married the wrong brother. We’re all the same on this subject.” It was the truth. Even if he weren’t masquerading as Mac, Cade would never be interested in this whole scenario.
Except maybe for the princess. He eyed her covertly over the food they both ignored. She was gorgeous and sexy, a hottie in gauzy fabric. But he couldn’t see her with Mac.
Uh-oh. I don’t even want to have this thought.
“Listen, princess—”
“Do you mind calling me by my name?” she asked. “Somehow, when you say princess, I’m pretty sure you’re not expressing a term of respect. I feel you could just as easily interchange babe, doll, or sweet cheeks for princess. And I don’t like it.”
She glared at him.
Caught by surprise, he hesitated before grinning widely.
“It’s your attitude,” she told him. “And your tone. I prefer you address me as Serena when we are alone together.”
“Anything else you want from me, Serena?”
“All I ask is that you always be honest with me. I didn’t expect a love match, but I would appreciate honesty and respect.”
“All right.” He tossed the napkin onto the table, unable to eat the strongly spiced food. “I did expect a pampered princess who would be mainly an ornament.”
“So sorry to disappoint you.” Her eyes blazed at him.
He drummed the table, causing the servant to jump to anticipate Cade’s needs. This put Cade into a worse mood, not the least because the tea he hadn’t wanted was replaced with something else—which he wouldn’t drink, either. “Can we ditch this guy? He’s like a jumpy puppy.”
The first hint of a smile he’d seen on Serena’s face came and went quickly—but it had been there. “I don’t mind.”
He waved a hand to dismiss the servant, who backed reluctantly from the room. “So, I’ll leave you here while I finish my business and then come back and get you sometime,” Cade offered.
“You do not intend to…to—”
“I don’t think so,” he interrupted. “It would be better if we didn’t.”
“But the marriage won’t be binding unless it’s consummated.”
“Do you want it to be binding?” He looked at her curiously.
“I—I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I don’t think we have much in common. Yet it would break my father’s heart.”
There was that. His mother would be none too pleased, either, especially when she discovered what he’d done.
“Don’t you want to make love to me?” she asked suddenly.
His throat dried out. His entire body electrified at her soft question. “I do, Princess,” he said, without a trace of the mockery with which he’d referred to her before. “But you want honesty, and you deserve that from your husband. And I can’t give that to you right now.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. Then he leaned close to her ear, which brought the scent of her to him fully and made him somehow regret what he had to tell her. “I’m not Prince Makin,” he said.
SERENA HELD BACK A SMILE, thinking this prince had a strange sense of humor. “Of course you are Prince Makin. My father would know if you were not.”
“I have a twin, who is Prince Makin. I am Prince Kadar.”
She raised an eyebrow. “If that is true, why are you lying to my father? To the people of Balahar?”
“I had no intention of marrying you when I came here,” he said. She sensed the honesty behind his striking words. “Everything happened quickly. There didn’t seem to be a good time to pull the reins in, actually. And once I realized that I’d agreed to marry you, I didn’t want to insult King Zak by saying that I’d changed my mind.”
“I see.” Serena tried to hold back her rising dismay. “No, I don’t see. So you didn’t marry me for the throne of Balahar.”
“No.”
He shook his head, and a vague sense of feminine insult, no matter how irrational it should have been, rose inside her. “Where is Prince Makin, your brother, then? The man I was intended to marry?”
“At home, tending to The Desert Rose.”
“You are his emissary. He sent you to spy on me.”
“No. Well, maybe. I had business over in Saudi Arabia and said I’d pop by and visit you. This wasn’t the way I intended for the visit to work out, obviously.”
“You’d pop by and visit me. How American that sounds.” She was starting to feel more than a trace of bitterness. “So you popped by and married me instead.”
One dark brow rose as he stared at her. “You have every right to be angry. I fully expect that we can have this marriage annulled because it won’t be consummated. Then you can marry my twin, who is your proper intended.”
“Or?” Now her brow rose. “I assume there’s an ‘or’ in this.”
He shrugged. “You could come home with me. I’m not flying commercially, and my co-pilot is waiting at the airport, so we’d have plenty of secrecy.”
“The purpose of coming with you would be?”
“Popping by and checking out Mac. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.”
She refused to smile at his suggestion, although his tone suggested irony. “Prince Kadar, I am not a plaything.”
“I am not suggesting you are.” He leaned close to where she sat, touching her hair with a reverent finger. “Quite the opposite. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Both her brows rose in astonishment. “I find that difficult to believe from such a playboy.”
“I am not a playboy!”
“A man who ‘pops’ by a foreign country to check out the goods is obviously a connoisseur. Or else your brother wouldn’t have sent you,” she stated with conviction. “Besides, your very personality tells me that you are too confident that no matter what situation you find yourself in, you always find a way to turn it to your advantage.” She raised her chin. “I do not like that trait in you. You remind me of Prince Sharif.”
“I wouldn’t compare me to a spoiled prince.”
“Oh?” She smiled without the sentiment behind it. “You know so much about him then, in the thirty minutes you’ve seen him?”
“He reminds me of someone I know.” His
