bit her lip. She was babbling again. She had to get a grip.
‘They’re never still, except when they sleep.’ A hint of a smile lurked at the corner of Tariq’s mouth and suddenly he wasn’t a stern stranger but the friend she remembered from years ago.
Friends she could deal with. It was the potently masculine Tariq who unsettled her. The man whose deep laugh and imposing body awoke longings that had no place in her life.
‘They must keep you very busy.’ This time her smile was genuine.
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
Samira nodded. The Tariq she knew would find time for the demands of his small sons, just as he’d found time for his best friend’s kid sister. He took duty seriously but, more than that, he was kind. He was the sort of man you could trust.
That was why she couldn’t shake the outrageous idea that had taken root as she’d watched him last night at the gala. The idea that he held the key to her future happiness.
Samira swallowed hard. She’d known only one trustworthy man, her brother, Asim. The other men in her life, even her father, had let her down terribly. Could she trust Tariq not to do that too?
‘Samira.’
‘Yes?’ She looked up to see him lounging back in his chair, the picture of ease. Yet his eyes were intent.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong.’ Her laugh sounded woefully unconvincing and caught her up short. She was stronger than this. Here was her chance to reach out for the one thing she really wanted in life. Surely she wasn’t coward enough to give up without trying?
‘On the contrary.’ She sat forward, projecting an air of certainty she’d mastered in her professional dealings. She could do this. ‘I wanted to see you because I have a proposal to put to you.’
‘Really?’ Interest sparked in his eyes.
‘A rather unusual proposal, but a sound one. I’m sure you’ll see the benefits.’
‘I’m sure I will.’ He paused. ‘When you tell me what it is.’ Those slashing dark eyebrows angled up in query.
Samira leaned closer, suddenly urgent to get this done. She licked her dry lips, holding his keen gaze.
‘I want to marry you.’
‘MARRY YOU?’ ANGER SPLINTERED through Tariq that Samira should make him the butt of some jest. He sat bolt upright, hands curling tight around the arms of his chair. ‘What game is this?’
Marriage was an institution to be taken seriously, as he knew first-hand. Sharp talons dragged deep through his chest; claws clutched at what passed for his heart.
No, marriage wasn’t something to joke about, even between old family friends.
Though Samira was more than an old friend, wasn’t she?
At one point he’d wanted much more from her. Long-buried sensations bombarded him—lust, regret, weakness. Above all, guilt. For despite the years apart, even throughout his marriage, Tariq had never completely managed to forget her. His one consolation was that no one, least of all Samira, had known. It had been his secret shame.
‘It’s no game.’ Her voice, uneven before, rang clear and proud. Her gaze, which previously had skittered around the room, meshed with his and Tariq breathed hard as fire heated his veins. Those soft sherry eyes had always been amazing. Now, fixed on him so earnestly, they might have melted a lesser man.
But Tariq’s strength had been forged and tested well. He wouldn’t be bowled over by a beauty’s wide eyes. Even if the beauty was Samira, the most stunning woman he’d ever known, the woman he’d once craved body and soul.
‘What is it, then?’ he barked. ‘If not a joke?’ His initial instinct—to avoid this meeting—had been right.
‘It’s a proposal of marriage.’ Her voice was crisp and even, as if she had no notion how bizarre her words were.
Slowly Tariq shook his head. He couldn’t be hearing this. Asim’s little sister proposing marriage! Didn’t she know it was a man’s place to choose a wife? A woman’s to accept?
What sort of tame lapdog did she take him for? The years since they’d known each other yawned into a fathomless gulf. She didn’t know him at all.
He shot to his feet and stalked across the room, staring blankly at the city beyond the sound-proofed glass. ‘Whatever the game, I don’t appreciate it, Samira.’ He swung round. ‘Does your brother know about this?’
‘It has nothing to do with Asim.’ She folded her hands in her lap, for all the world as if they were politely discussing the weather. As if she hadn’t offered herself to him in marriage.
An image of her last night, svelte and flagrantly feminine in that dark-red dress, filled his head and his temperature soared, his body tightening in all the wrong places. His hands curled into fists as he fought to focus on her words, not her sensual allure. Anger bit deep that, even now, just one look could ignite the fire in his belly.
‘What is this about?’ Savagely he reined in his temper, drawing on years of practice at patient diplomacy.
‘I want to marry you.’
Those brilliant eyes looked up at him and again shock punched him hard in the gut. She looked, and sounded, serious.
For one disquieting moment he felt a quickening in his body, the sharp clench of arousal in his groin, a welling of possessiveness as he took in the pale honey perfection of her features, the sheen of her lush, dark hair and the Cupid’s bow of the sexiest mouth he’d ever known.
When she’d been seventeen that mouth, those eyes, the promise of incandescent beauty to come, had sent him back to his homeland, shocked and ashamed by the hot, hungry thoughts that stirred whenever he’d looked at Asim’s little sister.
He’d known then that she’d be breath-stopping, just like her mother, who’d been one of the world’s great beauties. But the sight of Samira in the flesh, after twelve years of seeing only photos, took his breath away.
He stiffened, forcibly rejecting his body’s response.
She sat there with her ankles primly crossed, her hands folded in her lap, saying she wanted to marry him! It was enough to drive a man crazy.
Tariq cupped the back of his neck, tilting his head and rubbing his skin to ease the tightness there.
‘I have no idea what foolishness prompted this, Samira.’ He paused, telling himself it was impossible that he tasted pleasure at her name on his tongue. ‘But you of all people know royal marriages are carefully arranged. You can’t just come in here and—’
‘Why not?’ She cut across his words and it struck Tariq that no one, not even Jasmin when she’d been alive, interrupted him. As Sheikh, his word was law, his
