was trembling, his body screaming for release. You’re not persuading me, she had said. Outrage roared through him when he grasped the significance of those words. What was it that Tilda found persuasive? What did it take to make Tilda surrender? As the answer came his fists clenched and he hated her as much as he wanted her and the force of that internal turmoil threatened to rip him apart.
‘How much?’ he intoned in a wrathful undertone. ‘How much of a financial inducement do you want to share my bed?’
Shock at that question turned Tilda’s flushed face white. Did he still think so little of her? Of course he did. Had she not agreed to sleep with him in return for having a very large debt written off? Her fire of anger was doused, but she was appalled at being directly confronted with his belief that she would do anything for cash.
‘I don’t want your money,’ she whispered tightly, forcing out the denial between tremulous lips. ‘Please don’t make me an offer like that ever again.’
Rashad was eager to believe that he had misinterpreted her behaviour. ‘Then why do you deny us what we both desire?’
Sucking in a steadying breath, Tilda spun back to him, her bright eyes veiled to a wary glimmer. ‘Sex isn’t so simple for me as it is for you. I may have been willing to protect my family at the cost of my pride, but I’m not for sale any more. I’m sorry if you think that’s dishonest,’ she muttered defensively, ‘but I think that it’s a fair enough exchange if I agree to act like your wife and jump through all the right hoops to please everyone. I’ll keep up the performance for as long as you ask, as well. That will be enough of a challenge when I can’t possibly think of myself as your wife in any real way.’
Striving to control his hunger for her, Rashad regarded her with passionate force. ‘Did I misunderstand what you meant by persuasion?’
A strangulated laugh was wrenched from Tilda. ‘Oh, yes. But don’t worry about it. All I’m asking for is a separate bedroom.’
‘And that is what you want?’ Rashad was frowning. He could barely credit what she was saying. She was his wife. She already felt like his wife. Was that really how she felt?
‘All that I want from you, believe me.’ Tilda would not look at him again for she had little faith in what she was saying even though pride had demanded that she say it. She wanted him with every fibre of her being but she would not let herself sink to the level of sleeping with a man who assumed he might have to pay her for his pleasure. He was his own worst enemy, she thought painfully. A few pleasing words, even a fleeting reference to the beauty of the desert sunset, and he could have had her for nothing. But flattery and romantic allusions to sunsets had never been Rashad’s style.
‘It will be as you wish. I have work to do. Excuse me,’ Rashad responded with scrupulous politeness.
The door closed and the silence folded in. She expelled her breath in a long jagged surge. Her fingers lifted to the reddened and tingling contours of her lips and something like a sob tugged at her vocal cords, forcing her to grit her teeth and fight for self-control.
She dined solitarily later that evening in a state dining room with superb marble walls and floor. She ate everything that was put in front of her and tasted nothing. What had gone so badly wrong between herself and Rashad that he could think she was so cheap? Why was he so convinced that she had gone with other men behind his back? He was logical, intelligent. What was the proof of her infidelity that he evidently considered irrefutable? She knew that for the sake of her self-esteem she had to find out.
Sitting there alone, she remembered how madly in love with Rashad she had once been. She recalled cherished memories of fun, sweetness and passion. Once, a car had backfired in the street. Assuming that it was gunfire, Rashad had thrown her to the ground and protected her with his body. The sheepish expression on his face in the aftermath had been comic, but she had been touched to the heart to realise that, at a moment when he had honestly believed that he was in danger, he had instinctively put her safety before his own.
Nobody had ever really tried to look after Tilda before and, although she had scoffed at the idea, she had liked it because, for too long, she’d had to be the strong one in her family and look out for everyone else’s interests. She had leant on Rashad and found him wonderfully supportive, even while the power of her passion for him had terrified her as much as it excited her. Determined not to be hurt, she had believed that she was in full control of her emotions. Then, out of the blue, he had dumped her and all her proud illusions had crumbled faster than the speed of light.
One day everything had seemed fine, the next it had been over. Rashad had arranged to take out her for a meal. She had sat waiting for him to pick her up. Time had crept on and he hadn’t arrived, hadn’t phoned, either. She had tried to call him on his mobile and there had been no answer. The next day, frantic with worry that something had happened to him, she had called round at the house he had rented and his staff had refused her entry. No explanation, no apology, nothing. Believing that in some way she must have offended him, she had gotten angry then and had decided to sit him out. For several days she had lived in denial of her growing misery until, one evening, when she just hadn’t been able to bear being without him any longer, she had found out from a friend where he was and had gone in search of him.
The party had been at Leonidas Pallis’s apartment. Through the crush, she had seen Rashad on a sofa with a sinuous redhead wrapped round him. Rashad, who supposedly didn’t like such public displays of intimacy, had been kissing the girl. Something had died inside Tilda and all her proud pretences had fallen apart as she had fought her passage back to the exit. She had been convinced that he had ditched her and replaced her with a more sexually available girlfriend. There had been a desperate irony to the fact that it had been only then that she had fully appreciated how much she loved him.
As Tilda let herself recall the terrible hurt of Rashad’s betrayal five years earlier, her chin came up. No way was she going to give Rashad the chance to put her through those agonies again! She might still be drawn to him like a stupid moth to a candle flame, but that didn’t mean she had to surrender to her weakness or let him suspect that it existed. Events had made them more equal, she told herself bracingly. She was trading cooperation rather than sex in return for the debts he had written off. At least being partners in a pretend marriage left her with some dignity and he was already discovering that he could not treat a wife like a concubine.
Tilda straightened her slight shoulders, turquoise eyes luminous with purpose. She might not feel as though they were married but, goodness, she intended to be the perfect wife in public. By the time she left Bakhar, Prince Rashad Hussein Al-Zafar and his family would feel that he was losing a woman who had been an absolute solid gold asset to him. And not if he offered her a million pounds, not even if he begged on his knees, would she stay with him!
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE privacy of his office, Rashad watched the film footage for the third time. The camera, obviously wielded by a man hopelessly enthralled with Tilda’s exquisite face, followed her every move at a children’s concert. In front of a camera she was a natural and highly photogenic, and the Bakhari media industry had succumbed to their first bout of celebrity fever. When his sisters had taken Tilda shopping in Jumiah, the traffic had been brought to a standstill because interest in Tilda had been so great that drivers had abandoned their cars to try and catch a glimpse of her in the flesh.
Alarmed by the size of the crowds that had swiftly formed that morning, Rashad had wasted no time in tripling the size of Tilda’s protection team. He had also put a more experienced man in charge of her security. She was incredibly popular. He ran the footage of the concert again and absorbed the lingering shots of his wife’s
