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And there was no sign of Kaden. Julia paced some more. Being dressed up like this made her intensely uncomfortable. She’d caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and for a moment hadn’t even recognised the image reflected back. Her eyes were huge and smoky grey, lashes long and very black. Her cheeks had two spots of red that had more to do with her emotions than with artifice.
The door suddenly clicked, and Julia whirled around to see Kaden striding in, adjusting a cufflink on his shirt. The breath literally left her throat for a moment. It was the first time she’d ever seen him in a tuxedo and he looked … stunning. It nearly made her forget why she was so incensed, but then he looked at her with that irritating non-expression. The irrational feeling of anger surged back.
She gestured to the dress. “I agreed to come with you to a wedding. I’m not your mistress, Kaden, and I don’t appreciate being treated like one.”
He put his hands in his pockets and looked her up and down, and then, as if he hadn’t even heard her, he said, “I’ve never seen you look so beautiful.”
To Julia’s abject horror her mind emptied and she stood there, stupidly, as Kaden’s black gaze fused with hers. She read the heat in its glowing depths. She’d always veered more towards being a tomboy, and had truly never felt especially beautiful. But now, here in this room, she did.
It made the bright spark of anger fade away, and she felt silly for her outburst. Of course Kaden didn’t see her as his mistress. She couldn’t be further removed from the kind of women he sought out.
She half gestured to the dress, avoiding Kaden’s eye. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s a lovely dress, and the attention … wasn’t all bad.” She looked back up. “But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t expect or even want this kind of treatment. I’m not like your other women. This … what’s happening here … is not the same …”
He took his hands out of his pockets and came close. Julia stood her ground, but it was hard. Black eyes glittered down into hers. A muscle throbbed in his jaw and she saw how tightly Kaden was reining in some explosive emotion.
“No, you’re not like my other women. You’re completely different. Don’t think I’m not aware of that. Now, let’s go or we’ll be late.”
After a tense moment she finally moved. Kaden stood back and allowed Julia to precede him out of the room.
Feeling off-centre, he didn’t touch her as they walked down the long corridor. She wasn’t and hadn’t ever been like any other woman he’d been with. It was only now that he was noticing the disturbing tendency he’d always had to judge the women he encountered against his first lover—noticing the faint disappointment he always felt when they proved themselves time and time again to be utterly different. Materialistic. Avaricious. Less.
He was used to being ecstatically received whenever he indulged a woman, and wondered if this was some ploy or game Julia was playing—affecting uninterest. But with a sinking feeling he knew it wasn’t. Years ago she’d have laughed in his face if he’d so much as attempted to get her into a couture dress. She’d been happy in dusty jeans and shirts. That crazy safari sunhat.
There’d only been one moment when she’d worn a dress. When he’d presented her with a cream concoction of delicate lace and silk that he’d seen in a shop window and hadn’t been able to resist. As dresses went, it hadn’t been sophisticated at all, but Julia had put it on and paraded in front of him as shyly as a new bride. It had been the first and only time she’d worn a dress, and that had been the night that he’d realised just how deeply—Kaden shut the door on that unwanted thought that had come out of nowhere. His insides clenched so hard he could feel them cramp.
Breathing deep, he brought his focus back to the here and now. To the woman by his side who was blissfully unaware of his wayward thoughts. He was vitally aware of the smooth curve of Julia’s bare back in the dress. The pale luminescence of her skin. And the vulnerable part of her neck, which was revealed thanks to her upswept hair.
The dim hum of the conversation of hundreds of people reached them as they rounded a corner. Kaden took Julia’s arm in his hand and felt her tension. Good. He wanted her to be tense. And unsettled. And all the things he was. They walked across a wide open-air courtyard and pristine Hussein servants dressed all in white opened huge doors into the glorious main ballroom.
Julia had been in plenty of stately homes and castles on her travels, but this took her breath away. She’d never seen such opulence and wealth. The huge ballroom was astounding, with an enormous domed ceiling covered in murals, and immense columns which opened out onto the warm, evocatively dusky night.
Waiting to greet them were the Sultan and his new bride—Kaden’s sister Samia. As they approached, Julia saw Samia’s face light up at seeing Kaden. She’d blossomed from a painfully shy teenager into a beauty with great poise. She’d always had
a strong bond with her older brother, being his only full sibling, daughter of their father’s first beloved wife. Their father had married again, and Julia remembered Kaden’s stepmother as a cold, disapproving woman. She’d gone on to have three daughters of her own, but no sons which, Kaden had once told Julia, made her extremely bitter and jealous of Kaden and Samia. Certainly Julia could remember avoiding her malevolent presence at all costs.
Samia transferred her look to her then, and Julia attempted a weak smile. Samia looked at her with a mixture of bewilderment and hostility. It confused Julia, because she’d imagined that Kaden’s younger sister would barely remember her.
But she didn’t have time to analyse it. Kaden gripped her hand, and after a few perfunctory words dragged her into the throng. Still shaken by Samia’s reaction, Julia asked, “Why did Samia look at me like that? I’m surprised she even recognised me.”
Kaden sent her a dark glance that was impossible to comprehend and didn’t answer. Instead he took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed her one. Raising his glass in a mocking salute, he said, “Here’s to us.”
He clinked his glass to Julia’s and drank deeply. She couldn’t stop an awful hollow feeing from spreading through her whole body. She sensed that he was regretting having brought her here. No doubt he would prefer the balm of a woman well versed in the ways of being a compliant and beautiful mistress. Suitably appreciative of all he had to offer. All Julia wanted to do was to get out of there and curl up somewhere comforting and safe.
Several people lined up then, to talk to Kaden, and Julia became little more than an accessory while they fawned and complimented him on the news that the vast Burquati oil fields were to be drilled. Once again Julia had a sense of how much had changed for Kaden since she’d known him.
Before long the crowd were trickling into another huge banquet room for dinner, and she and Kaden followed. He was deep in conversation with another man, speaking French.
During the interminable dinner Julia caught Samia’s eyes a few times, and still couldn’t understand the accusing look. Kaden was resolutely turned away from her, talking to the person on his other side, which left Julia trying to conduct a very awkward conversation with the man on her left, who was infinitely more interested in her cleavage and had not a word of English.
Kaden was acutely aware of Julia, and how close her thigh was to his under the table. He had to clench his fist to stop himself from reaching out and touching it, resting his hand at the apex of her thighs, where he could feel her heat.
He felt constricted. His chest was tight. It had been ever since he’d seen Samia’s reaction to Julia. Samia was the chink in his armour. She was the only one who knew the dark place he’d gone to when Julia had left Burquat. It made him intensely uncomfortable to remember it. He reassured himself now, as he had then, that it had only been because he’d physically ached for her, his lust unquenched.
He knew he shouldn’t be ignoring Julia like this. It was unconscionably rude. But he was actually afraid that if she looked at him she’d see something that he couldn’t guard in his eyes. Samia’s reaction had been like rubbing sandpaper over a wound, surprising in its vividness.
Assuring himself that it was nothing—just another trick of the mind where Julia was concerned—Kaden finally gave up trying to pretend to be interested in what his companion was saying, made an excuse, and resolutely ignored Samia’s pointed looks in his direction. They were like little lashes of a whip.
He turned to Julia and could see from the line of her back that she was tense, that her jaw was gritted. Instinctively he put his hand around the back of her neck, and felt her tense even more in reaction. He moved his fingers in a massaging movement and she started to relax. Kaden had to hold back a smile at the way he sensed she resented it.
