servants. I was supposed to leave his home this morning. I just left a few hours earlier.”
“And went to an undisclosed location?”
She narrowed her eyes, her lips pursed in a haughty expression. “What did you say your name was?”
“According to the report I read on you, you’re a very smart woman. Perfect marks in school. I think you know perfectly well that I didn’t offer you my name.”
Her delicate brow creased. “I think that, considering you know everything about me from my marks in school and I shudder to think what else, I should at least know your name.”
“Adham.” He left out his surname, and in so doing his relationship to Hassan.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, folding a silk blouse and sticking it in the bottom of a pink suitcase. She paused mid-motion. “Actually, it isn’t, really. I don’t know why I said that. Habit. Good manners.” She sighed. “Because it’s what I was trained to do.” She said it despairingly, her luscious mouth pulled down at the corners.
“You resent it?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, firmly. “Yes, I do.” She took a breath. “It’s not nice to meet you, Adham. I wish you would go away.”
“We don’t always get what we wish for.”
“And some of us never do.”
“You’ll have the Eiffel Tower. That has to be enough.”
CHAPTER TWO
ADHAM’S penthouse apartment in Paris’s seventh district wasn’t at all what she’d expected from a man who worked for the High Sheikh. It was patently obvious that he had money of his own, and likely the status to go with it. He was probably a titled man—another sheikh or something. No wonder he’d looked at her as if she was crazy when she’d expected him to collect her things.
That had been mortifying. She hadn’t meant to be rude. It was just that she was used to being served. She’d always devoted the majority of her time to studying, reading, cultivating the kinds of skills her parents deemed necessary for a young woman of fine breeding. None of those skills had included folding her own clothes. Or, in fact, any sort of household labor.
She’d always considered herself an intelligent person; her tutors and her grades had always reinforced that belief. But the realization of what a huge deficit she had in her knowledge made her feel … it made her feel she didn’t know anything worth knowing. Who cared if you knew the maximum depth of the Thames if you didn’t know how to fold your own clothes?
The penthouse didn’t provide her with any more clues about the man who was essentially her captor. Unless he really was as sparse and uncompromising as the surrounding décor. Cold as brushed steel, hard as granite. Arid, like the desert of his homeland. That seemed possible.
She looked around the room, searching for any kind of personal markers. There were no family photographs. The art on the walls was modern, generic—like something you might find in a hotel room. There was no touch of personality, no indication as to who he might be, what he liked. That just reinforced her first theory.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, without turning his focus to her.
“Can I get something besides bread and water?”
“Is that what you think, Isabella? That you’re my captive?”
She swallowed hard, trying to move the knot that had formed in her throat. “Aren’t I?”
Wasn’t she everyone’s captive? A puppet created by her parents and trained to respond to whoever was pulling the strings.
“It depends on how you look at it. If you try to walk out the door I can’t let you. But if you don’t make another escape attempt we can exist together nicely.”
“I believe that makes me a prisoner.”
Her words made no difference to him. It was as though he took a hostage every day of the week. The only change in his facial expression was the compression of his mouth. The scar that ran through his top lip lightened slightly at the pull of his skin, the small flaw in his handsome face only reinforcing the warrior image her mind had created for him.
“Prisoner or not, I was wondering if you might like some dinner. I believe I took you from the hotel before you had a chance to have yours.”
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she’d been hungry for a couple of hours now. “I would like some dinner.”
“There is a restaurant nearby. I have them deliver food whenever I’m here. I assume that will be all right for you?”
“I.” Now’s the time to do it … get what you want now or you’ll never have the chance. “Actually, I’d like to have a hamburger.”
His eyebrows lifted. “A hamburger.”
She nodded curtly. “Yes. I’ve never had one. And I’d also like chips. Fries. Whatever you call them. And a soft drink.”
“Seems a simple request for a last meal. I think I can accommodate my captive.” She thought she might have heard a hint of humor in his voice, but it seemed unlikely. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed, then spoke to whoever was on the other end in polished French.
“You speak French?”
He shrugged. “I keep a residence here. It’s practical.”
“Do you speak Italian?” she asked, moving to a sleek black sofa that looked about as soft as marble and sitting gingerly on the edge.
“Only a little. I’m fluent in Arabic, French, English and Mandarin.”
“Mandarin?”
His lips curved slightly in what she assumed might be an attempt at a smile as he settled in the chair across from her. “That’s a long story.”
“I speak Italian, and Latin as well, French, Arabic—obviously English.”
“You’re quite well-educated.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to devote to it.” Books had been her constant companion, either at the family home, or for those brief years she’d gone to an all-girl school in Switzerland. Her imagination had been her respite from the demands that her parents had placed on her. From their constant micro-managing of her actions. In her mind at least she’d been free.
But it hadn’t been enough lately. She’d needed more. An escape. A reality apart from the life she’d led behind the palace walls. Especially if she was expected to go and live behind more walls, to be shut away again. Set apart. Isolated even when surrounded by hundreds of people.
She shivered, cold loneliness filling her chest, her lungs, making her feel as if she was drowning.
“It’s nice to know all those languages when you move in the type of circles my family do. I’ve gotten to practice them with various diplomats and world leaders.” During their frequent
