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His whole bearing had gotten colder and more regal as he stood there, his gaze a demanding thing that beat at her, and she believed him. She believed that he would keep asking that same question, again and again, until she finally answered it. That he would stand here an eternity if that was what it took. That he was like the great desert that surrounded his country on three sides, monolithic and impassable, and deeply treacherous besides.
“He wanted to marry me,” Sterling said after a moment. Then she raised her gaze to meet his again and forced herself not to show him any of the emotion that swirled around inside of her. “I refused.”
Rihad laughed. Not at all nicely. It set her teeth on edge, as she imagined it had been meant to do, and she had to order herself to unclench her jaw before she broke something.
“Of course you did.” His tone then was so dark, so sardonic, it felt like another one of his disturbingly sensual touches inside of her. “He begged you, I imagine, and you nobly rebuffed him, in the vein of all gold diggers and materialistic mistresses across the ages.”
He didn’t quite roll his eyes. His derisive tone meant he didn’t have to. But Sterling felt sharpened all the same then. Honed into some kind of blade by that dismissive tone of his.
“I know it’s hard for you to believe, Rihad. I know it flies directly in the face of all the fantasies you have about social-climbing sluts like me. But that doesn’t make it any less true. Omar would have married me in a heartbeat. I was the one with reservations.”
“The prospect of becoming a Bakrian princess was too onerous for you? It seemed too much of a thankless chore?” There was that lash in his voice then that should have made her crumble, but she only tilted up her chin and glared back at him. “You were already living off him. Why not make it legal and continue to do so forever?”
“You’re such a small man, for a king,” she said softly, and had the satisfaction of watching his eyes blaze at the insult. This was the man she’d met in New York. This was the man who had sparred with her in that SUV. It was absurd that some part of her thrilled to see him again, as if she’d missed him. “Or maybe all kings are the same. What do I know? Obsessed with all these tiny details, territories and tabloids, that make them what they are. Life is a great deal richer and more complicated than that.”
He studied her for a moment, and Sterling stared right back at him. There was something about the way he was looking at her, about the particular quality of that dark temper she could see inhabiting his gorgeous face just then. If he’d been any other man—if she’d been any other woman—she’d have thought it was some kind of jealousy.
But that made absolutely no sense.
“Give me one good reason you wouldn’t marry my brother,” Rihad growled after a moment or two inched by and still they stood there, faced off like enemy combatants. “You are a woman with no family. No support.”
Did he know that was a sore spot for her? Or had he scored a lucky hit? Sterling sucked in a breath and hoped against hope he hadn’t noticed.
But his dark eyes gleamed. He noticed everything.
“A marriage to Omar would have changed all that. Even were you to eventually divorce, and even if you’d signed away everything ahead of time as our attorneys would have made certain you did, you would always have remained a part of the kingdom. Your child would always be a member of the royal family. Why would a woman like you turn down that kind of security?”
A woman like you. That phrase rolled around and around inside of her, picking up all the mud and grime of all the other people in her life who had said something like that to her. No one could want a child like you, her foster parents had told her. Girls like you are only good for one thing, her first, sleazy modeling contact had told her. I should have known a bird like you would land on her feet, a British photographer friend of Omar’s had sneered in an email only yesterday.
Omar had been the only person she’d ever met who had never, ever, put her in that kind of box. Sterling told herself she had to focus. This was about him, not her. This was about his life—the one he’d wanted to live, not the one his overbearing brother thought he should have lived.
Maybe there wasn’t much a woman like her could do to a king, but she could certainly defend her best friend.
“You don’t know anything about your brother, do you? You never did.”
“I’m growing impatient,” Rihad growled. “If you want to continue to talk in circles, that’s your prerogative. But I will make no promises about my reaction to that. What I can promise you is that you are unlikely to like it very much.”
