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“I didn’t know you were interested in Mars,” Aysha teased.
“You know what I mean.” Chloe toyed with her wedding ring – an enormous solitaire diamond – out of habit. She often spun it around her finger when she was thinking, pushing it to the knuckle joint and back to the webbing of her slim fingers. “If you all wanted to be at the palace, you should have said so.”
“We are your servants,” Aysha chided, softening the rebuke with a gentle smile. “Our job is to serve you. Why should our desires matter?”
“How can you speak like that! You know they matter to me. We’ve worked together closely since I arrived in Ras el Kida. Have I ever seemed like a despot to you?”
“No. But you are a princess, a Sheikha, and your husband is the ruler of this country. No one in Ras el Kida is stupid enough to risk displeasing him.”
A shiver of apprehension ran down Chloe’s spine. Aysha was right, but she couldn’t have said that a desire to risk displeasing her husband was the sole motivation for her agreement with his plan. Out of nowhere, she imagined their child, she pictured a chubby little baby with dimpled cheeks and sparkling eyes and a mess of curling, bouncing hair, and a kick of maternal need anchored her to the spot.
Despite the fact she knew so little of her husband, despite the fact there were many things about him she did know and didn’t like, she found the idea of bearing his child unimaginably seductive. And just a little bit crazy.
3
WAITING WAS LIKE BEING on tenterhooks.
Being at the palace once more was like being transplanted into a whole other world. She’d forgotten the grandeur of this place, not to mention the sheer size of it.
She’d forgotten the protocols she was expected to observe, such as having all six of her maids in attendance at all time. It was a company she found cloying, and an expectation she most certainly intended to rail against.
If they were to have a child together, then Chloe was going to spend the rest of her life in the palace. It was a far greater commitment than marriage alone, surely, to bond themselves with a new life. That person deserved two parents who were committed to acting in his or her best interests irrespective of their own personal gripes. Besides, maybe once they got to know one another, this coldness and repressive distance would disappear?
No. Chloe stopped walking, so sharp was her determination to push that thought aside.
She was done expecting unavailable men to start valuing her! She’d wasted her whole life feeling meaningless and purposeless only because her father hadn’t valued her. She’d spent years waiting for any little crumbs of praise that he wanted to pass her way… there was no way she’d go through that miserable maze of rejection again. Not even for the man she’d married!
Raffa would never give her what she wanted – there was no hope that they’d be more than civil to one another. Civil co-parents, and co-rulers. There were other silver linings to her marriage, though. For one, the charity work she’d been free to undertake since moving to the city would continue regardless of where she lived. She l
oved her work – that gave her all the validation her father, and now husband, had withheld.
As for love? Malik loved her, and she loved him. After her father’s death, he’d been the only one who’d understood.
‘He failed you, child, except in one way. This marriage is the best thing he could have done for you. Here, you will be happy at last. You’ve always belonged here, even that first summer when you were little more than a fairy.’ And he’d hugged her in a rough embrace, his body – once strong and big – now a smaller version, his fingers trembling a little in that way they did now. He’d understood that she had been unloved and in small ways, he’d made sure she felt secure in her life in Ras El Kida.
He, alone, had welcomed her.
‘Do you remember when you came here, as a child? You would run the halls, singing, and I knew you belonged here. That you were a part of this Kingdom, even with your white hair and your pale skin.’
What foolish dreams she’d had when she’d entered into this marriage! To think that she could marry a man and suddenly ‘belong’!
That she’d ever belong anywhere.
How childish it had been of her to think Raffa had carried any intention of their marriage being more than a convenience to placate both their fathers!
Well, she wasn’t a fool anymore, and she was going to see their marriage for what it was: a means to an end. They were going to try for a baby, which would mean they were going to be intimate, but Chloe was determined not to let his touch affect her. No matter how good he was in bed, she would remain cold! And if that wasn’t possible, she’d damned well pretend! He wouldn’t have the satisfaction of knowing that one look from him could spike her blood pressure dramatically. She wouldn’t be another woman to stroke his oversized ego when it came to his bedroom prowess!
In the afternoon, having dealt with several emails pertaining to her charity, and taken a walk around the palace to re-familiarise herself with the place, she’d found there were many hours until night time.
When would he come? Would it be early in the evening? Late at night? Should she be dressed? Or, she gulped, naked, waiting for him? Would it give her more control if she showed herself to be accepting of their situation? More mature of her to seem sophisticated and to take this all in her stride?
The waiting was killing her.
In the early evening, she decided to allay her anxieties by going for a walk. It took some doing, but she managed to convince Aysha that she was safe to explore on her own. After all, the extensive gardens were well-guarded. There was a golf course, an artificial beach, an ancient forest that had been cultivated with great care. It grew alongside the same cliff that gave way to the palace, sharing its side with the Sheikh’s suite, and developing into the waterfall that fell into a pool in his living area.
She had wandered through this forest a few time over the years, and even in the first few days of their marriage – when she’d still entertained hopes that her husband would come to her and treat her like the woman she was sure, deep down, she really was.
Now, when she stepped under the lush canopy of trees, her anticipation was different, because it was borne of fact. He would come to her, on this night. She would be made his. She moved deeper into the forest, looking for familiar landmarks, but so much had changed with the seasons. Large trees remained, but smaller shrubs had given way, so too the colours of the flowers, so Chloe had to mentally map the forest almost from scratch. As she moved higher, though, the sound of flowing water reminded her of the natural landscape, the way the water gathered pace through these cliffs and mountains until it formed an overwhelming weight at the top of the cliff.
